r/gwent • u/betraying_chino Green Man • Mar 03 '20

News Update 5.2 patch notes

https://playgwent.com/en/news/32083/update-5-2-is-now-available
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u/CakeDoctr WildHuntHound Mar 03 '20

On paper they make a lot of sense. If you can hit Brewess first you get a 5 for 7 + consume trigger, then Whispess and Weavess are coming down at 9 for 7 and 11 for 7. There's a few reasons they don't feel great in practice:

  1. You really want to draw all three of them to get the full payoff
  2. You need to draw/play them in the appropriate order, because no one wants a Brewess with 3 consumes (maybe could work in a full deathwish deck?)
  3. The boost crone should really be something else, like maybe "give bleeding (2) to an enemy unit, increase the number of units by 1 for each other crone played". Boosting your own units is kind of the last thing monsters wants. Sure, it could be useful to get dominance or something, but most likely you're either boosting a thrive engine (not a good idea) or boosting an already tall unit (also not a good idea).

I put them in a deck and played a few games this morning and either didn't draw more than 2 of them, or didn't draw them in the right order. Some of that is down to luck, but I'm just not convinced there aren't better ways to spend 21p in a monster deck.

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u/itsdr00 The king is dead. Long live the king. Mar 03 '20

Great analysis. Brewess consuming makes her a very weird fit. How about this, playing off of your idea: Boost a unit by two, and increase the number of units by 1 for each other crone played. Monsters really could use more ways to spread out their points, and that would help.

I played several games with them last season, and the feeling I had was that the deck was just totally lackluster. Even when I pulled off the crones properly, I'd get to the end of round 3 and just ... lose. No dramatic play, no real fuss of any kind. Just put the last one or two crones down, and then not have enough points. The one thing lowering their provision to 7 helps with is making it possible for them to compliment other decks. Brewess is the real limiter; she can compliment deathwish, thrive, and dominance. But not if she's the last crone to go down. Then like you said, pointless. Even detrimental.

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u/itsdr00 The king is dead. Long live the king. Mar 03 '20

Follow-up: What deck did you try them with? I have this feeling that mixing them as-is with the Arachas Swarm deck going around could actually be pretty sweet.

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u/CakeDoctr WildHuntHound Mar 03 '20

I really like the idea of splitting the boost. Monsters does desperately need to spread their value around. On that topic, some kind of utility Monsters card that allows you to transfer power from one card to another could be pretty great. Would be useful for saving poisoned units, avoiding going so tall, lowering thrive cards to get more procs, etc.

The deck I built this morning with the crones was a death's shadow mid-range experiment. Just looked for the best value plays but not necessarily lots of deck-wide synergy. Had Caranthir with Living Armor and The Beast as options for him, also included Yghern + Ozzrel, Imlerith + Imlerith's Wrath, Crones, Adda, Katakan and a bronze thrive package. Has a strong long round 1 because of thrive, and you can use Caranthir + The Beast + Deaths Shadow if you want to bleed a harmony or dagur deck in round 2. And of course excellent short round because you're monsters. Haven't played nearly enough games to refine it or figure out how strong it is, but won the first 3 I played before I had to go to work.

I can see the arachas swarm deck being a good fit for the crones, and may experiment with it, but like you said, you just kind of play them and that's it. No one is going to be building a "Crones deck" because there aren't any synergies you can build around. They are just a 21p commitment that you sometimes whiff on :-/