Gwent: The Witcher Card Game

Lemme Explain. Oxenfurt Guard is the best-designed Claws and Daggers Bronze in Gwent because its Trade of Potential is the fairest. We have Cards like Reaverguard or Messenger that play for a billion Provision when not removed. They lead to a lot of binary unhealthy Gameplay Implications.

Oxenfurt Guard on the other side should be the prime example of every future bronze trade-off design CDPR should do in the Future.

On deploy a wholesome 4 for 4. When you trigger its masterfully crafted Fee Ability its ah 4 for 8! It's capped every turn so its not unfair. He will entertain you at every turn in case you fulfill its crafty condition. What a great deal for gentlemen like us. The Enemy does not feel bad when he can't remove the Guard. But he always got the option.

What happens when you can't remove a Reaver? You get ganged by a bunch of half-naked men pulling out their unfair P to Points Value. The enemy feels bad because he could not answer your bronze.

Every Bronze should follow the Guard Equation. It would improve the Life Quality and Skill intensity of a Game that tries to be like Hearthstone and less like Chess.

The addition of Drakenborg, Clog, Cargo, Kolgrim, and the new Rain cards made it difficult to climb as you have to answer a lot of stuff or just flat out pray that you have enough points to win (which you probably wont).

It also doesn't help that the prevalence of these decks made people play more control decks like SC Traps and NG Vamps which is always guaranteed to be a fun time.

I used to run a lot of the standard Dagon DW and WH Frost but now it feels impossible to win without heavy rng. If you don't get Heatwave when you need it you lose. If you don't have graveyard punish you lose, if you don't have answers to multiple engines you lose. etc.

So far this is the [deck](https://www.playgwent.com/en/decks/170b263ef9de10b9dd98500d379c3ed4) that I've been running but it still feels inconsistent. Would appreciate if anyone can give some advice on how to improve it or what other decks to play. I mainly play MO with a little bit of NG on the side.

I've got a mates 30th and for her birthday I wanted to buy her a physical set of Gwent Decks.

The only options Ive found are on ebay and etsy, but the delivery from overseas ends up putting it around $200-$250 AUD. Ive checked a few card stores here in Melbourne and none of them seem to stock them.

Anyone have any ideas or directions where i could look?

Thanks

Been seeing a lot of complaints about this new archetype. Decided to try it yesterday to see what the fuss is about. Some footnotes below. Key points in bold. tl;dr at the end.

Yes, it's very strong. Yes, it's very reliable. There are no "bad draws" with it, if piloted correctly, and it will always pop off, if uncontrolled. Yes, I managed to win about 5 out of 6 games I played with it (Rank 3).

But all it has is Drakenborg.

A single Korathi or Bearification completely OBLITERATES this deck.

Without hyperbole - I cannot think of a single other deck that seizes and implodes so hard when countered by a single card. Most other decks that play around single card usually have a plan B and C, or they can at least put some points down even if they lose their main wincondition.

But Drakenborg decks functionally have no chance to win if you nuke Drakenborg the moment it hits the board. There are also no other valid targets for either Korathi or Bearification. There's no thought process here for you -> you figure enemy is playing Drakenborg -> you draw & keep Korathi/Bearification in hand for it -> you autowin the game. Optimally you would also keep a Pellar in hand at all times in case they happen to have a defender to cover Drakenborg.

Only realistic issue is if they get lucky with Temple, they could manage to drop more than 1 Defender covering Drakenborg. Could be hard to bypass that. But if you win Round 1, you can let them spend Defenders on Round 2, then nuke Drakenborg in Round 3 immediately.

You might not have room in your deck for a Korathi, but I think at this point in the meta there is no point to not tech in Bearification in your decks, unless you are playing Devotion. It's a 5 provision card that will find use in almost any game these days. Even if enemy doesn't have any Artifacts, you can turn your used one into 10 points, which is not bad value for 5 provisions.

As an addendum, even if you have no Bearification or Korathi, it can be possible to still outhustle Drakenborg, if you play control. What helps is killing their deck boosters (Dandelion, Agent) in R1, and then focusing all your control in R2 and R3 onto Dwims. The way this deck works is it bounces off Dwims off the board to repeatedly reset the location. If you kill any Dwim the moment it hits the board, they will have plenty of useless cards in hand (Teleportation, Practice Makes Perfect, Reinforcements).

tl;dr: I think this subreddit is heavily overstating the power of this deck. Yes, it's gimmicky. Yes, if you fall for it and let it rip, there's no way to counter it and you will lose. But it's the same with other silly memedecks like Tibor Spam, Kelly, etcetera. It's easy to counter this one. Do your homework and tech your counters and play around it.