Talk:Gwent: To Everything - Turn, Turn, Tournament!/@comment-2A01:E35:2F23:2F0:5C24:BA4E:21FE:3134-20180113151620

I built my Skellige deck the opposite idea of "Hints and Tip" section and Xiiliea and succeeded with it to win nearly every match the first time.

Here is my following list of 25 cards in total with King Bran as leader :

22 Unit Cards : 1x Geralt, 1x Ciri, 1x Yennefer, 1x Villentretenmerth, 1x Olgierd, 1x Dandelion, 1x Mysterious elf, 1x Olaf, 1x Hjalmar, 1x Cerys, 3x Clan an Craite Warrior, 3x War Longship, 1x Clan Dimun Pirate, 3x Clan Drummond Shield Maiden, 1x Draig Bon-Dhu, 1x Birna

3 Special Cards : 1x Skellige Storm, 1x Biting Frost, 1x Decoy

If I specify that this an opposite idea of the 2 cited above, this is firstly because the berserker feature is really too unreliable, or required to add some Mardroeme in the total of the deck to counter just a little bit that weakness, and even if you succeed to get 2 Transformed Young Vildkaarl on a round, it's not a guaranted win. And secondly because I built my deck with a minimum of cards to make it as reliable as possible, meaning each card will have a use if drawn. The exception are the Clan Drummond Shield Maiden which are pretty weak in power when they aren't summoned by Cerys. So you should always mulligan them to try to have better cards. The second card you should mulligan if you have a low chance to draw a Clan Drummond Shield Maiden, is Hjalmar. This allow to have pretty consistently 2 Tight-Bond of either Clan an Craite Warrior or War Longship, which mean both cards value at least 12 strength.

If I take Dandelion and Draig Bon-Dhu, it's because if you have at least one card of their combat row, they value at least 2+6=8. And they may value a lot more. The advantage to take them instead of Commander's Horn is to have a minimum of cards in total.

If I take 1Skellige Storm and 1 Biting Frost and no more, it's because if you have one of them, with King Bran, you can easily get a lot more strength value than a unit card without loosing to much on your side. And the reason that I don't take more than one of each, is because if you draw 2 of the same, the second becomes much harder to get value from, and is oftenly weaker than a unit card.

If I take 1 Decoy and no more, it's for the same reason as the strategy from the "Hints and Tip" section : to reuse Birna or to bounce and use an enemy spy. But once again, no more, because if this conditions aren't met, it's pretty weak. I still use it on the round I plan to loose if the conditions aren't met, to at least make my opponent play one of his cards.

Finally, as I stated in my previous sentence, I always plan to loose a round to get value from the faction bonus. And to get the most value from it, I use a strategy a bit counter intuitive. The IA opponent tend to pass his first round if he is facing too much strength. A Cerys on the first turn of the first round, always means he is gonna pass. But even with other cards of the deck, I'm able to put pretty consistently enough value with few card to make him pass, like 2 Tight-Bond + some hero cards. And if you have a graveyard composed of between 2 and 5 non hero cards, at the 3rd turn, you can instantly put on the board a lot of value thanks to the Tight-Bond, like 24 or more. And about more than 2 non hero cards in the graveyard, it's in the case you have Birna and a Decoy and/or Yennefer. To summary, on the 1st round, you need to plan your graveyard for the 3rd round.

I hope I'm clear enough to make you be able to counter the RNG gods :)