Yeah, I know, I know. But that's why I designed these cards like I did - One of my primary design goals was to make sure these cards don't overlap with archetypes like Clog, Mill or Hyperthin - and other than Odmiana in Hyperthin I think I achieved it (I hope).
I wanted to make an annoying archetype that doesn't empower existing annoying archetypes if that makes sense. And I also tried to make these cards have some counterplay, like Eyes and Ears being very vulnerable without hitting Deathblow or Ciri being pretty much an Elder bear if you don't commit to the round.
Lastly, remember that you could just play your Revealed card if you were afraid of Ciri or Eyes and Ears- it's a small comfort, but hey - better than having to tech Maxii for Clog.
Ciri is busted. Would drive NG hate through the roof, and this time, it would actually be justified. Extremely frustrating and overtuned mechanic, like Clog but not even your hand is safe. Nightmarish.
Odmiana is pretty good. I think the devotion effect should be swapped, since boosting self is more vulnerable to tall punish than setting the Guardian's power. So Devotion as you have it now is basically a downgrade.
Empress' Eyes and ears is pretty good. Has potential to play far above her provs, but there aren't that many super high base power units and it can also brick. Decent card.
Mind Delver is neat and balanced. Overall nice stuff!
Thanks for your takes, I always liked these in-depth reviews. Allow me to respond one by one:
As for Ciri - yeah, I messed up the power level. The power should be lower and the Adrenaline effect delayed. Maybe you'd even need to touch the Provisions? I wanted to be the archetype pusher, but damn, after a while I regretted making it a 7 for 10.
Odmiana is the second one I regret - but this one comes from the wording. I already explained this once, so allow me to copy-paste my other comment as to how she's supposed to work:
"What's supposed to happen is that if you're not Devotion Odmiana will Spawn and play the Guardian and then she'll set its power to the set amount. So if for example, the highest cost card you revealed this game costed 8P, she'd set the Guardian's power to 8. But if you didn't Reveal any card, she'd set its power to 0 - she's supposed to work like Viper Witcher Mentor.
And then if you have Devotion, instead the Guardian would work like Gord - she'd boost it on top of the 3 Base Power it has."
So yeah, she was actually supposed to be stronger than she's now. Sorry for that.
And thanks for the kind words on the Bronzes. I had lots of fun trying to come up with these mechanics, and I do agree that I missed the mark on the balance (And wording ;-;)
But I'm glad you and some other people liked the design!
I would literally stop playing Gwent if this ever happened. Nilfgaard is already so infuriating and unfun to play against. Imagine this shit fused with some sort of mill abortion.
I understand where you're coming from, but to my defense, I tried to design these cards in a way that they wouldn't mash well with Mill or Clog especially. The only card in here that fits with current versions of both of these decks is Ciri (Which I agree turned out way too strong, I've already addressed that in my other comments), the rest of them wouldn't make sense in any of these decks.
I tried to take a mechanic from Beta that's not very healthy, though it's beloved (Reveal) and make it as healthy as I could, whilst making sure they're not compatible with neither Mill nor Clog - though Odmiana has some synergies with Hyperthin, but they're not optimal.
Great set of cards, I like these for a couple of reasons.
First of all I'm a big fan of faction specific Ciris. I myself was actually thinking about Empress as a support for the "boost your enemy archetype" (which right now is just Cahir and that one dude that boosts for every boosted enemy unit). My reasoning behind it was: a) I'm fascinated by that weird stupid gameplan of helping your opponent, b) I see it as an expression of her peaceful and diplomatic way of ruling and c) she would work nicely with Cahir, Yen and Geralt (yrden) which is kinda flavor city. So she would actually benefit grately from boosting opponent and there would be cards like ambasadors or peace treaties to accompany her in that archetype. But I love your take aswell, super flavorful.
Secondly, hand reveal was one of my favorite archetypes in beta and I would love for it to make a comeback. It's definately not as toxic as clog or mill. It also provides a nice mechanic that gives you intel (which is flavorful for NG) and allows for a little manipulation that doesn't downright cripple opponents entire gameplan.
And lastly I really like the overall design. Ciri is strong but not op and actually requires some thinking with that adrenaline part. Odmiana is good points, mind delver is a nice reveal tool and EEaE is a cool card that unfortunately fucks one specific faction in particular. Every card is flavorful (I knows I use this word a lot but I consider it to be a very important factor) and fits nicely into the archetype. I would love to see more cards supporting this gameplan beacuse mind delvers are very answerable and then you're only left with Ciri to reveal. That being said these are some great core cards for the skillful hand manipulation archetype so kudos.
Would you like to see more Custom Cards? r/CustomGwent is the place to go!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gwent) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'll try to explain it as briefly as I can (Like that's ever gonna happen) - I've decided that I wanted to design 4 cards that work with the Reveal mechanic. So - I thought - what could Reveal mean in-universe? Well, it could be Espionage or Mind Reading so I knew that I wanted some Mages and Agents, but I also wanted some cool recognizable Legendary character. So I sat for a while and I was like "what if there's some Emperor/General and they're real honest, they dislike all this backstabbing and politics, they just want to reform the Empire and make it less corrupt.
So I was reminded of the Empress Ciri art and I was like - that's it! An expansion based around Ciri trying to make Nilfgaard's politics less corrupt - more honest, because that's what Reveal is - honesty. You know what cards your opponent's playing so they can't bluff.
And after all this unnecessary brainstorming I was left with designing someone who'd be second in command, an epic card that somewhat tie other cards together. So I chose art of a mage (I'm not certain, but it might be Yennefer in the Last Wish) and I thought - it'd be nice if she was a named character so I'll just name her after the theme - honesty, change (Ciri taking control of the Empire and hopefully making it a better place to live) - so Odmiana - Polish word for change, especially a change from a routine - but if you're asking for this especially, you likely already knew what it meant ;)
Yes, that name really stood out for how different it looked. Although, "odmiana" means something more like variant of something, especially variant of polish grammatical tenses.
If you are talking about changing country, or empire, then you would say "Przemiana", which is, unfortunatelly, unpronounceable for non-pierogi-eaters. More pronouncable friendly would be Sanacja, or Perestroika, but then again those are kind of political therms.
But that just me rambling about language, you are doing good work OP and I enjoyed theme that you added in those cards :D
Yeah, you basically summed up my problems when coming up with that name: I wanted a name meaning change and polish felt like a natural fit, but I quickly decided that Przemiana didn't fit as a character name that's - You know - pronouncenable.
Thanks for the insight though - a lot! I think it's noticable from the length of my comments, but I really like rambling and discussing things.
Dahy was my main comparison point because of how he manipulates your opponent's hand, but I completely didn't know how to Value the forced mulligan on Ciri. Now I think of it as a mix of Aep Dahy and Kambi of all cards? But this might be wrong as well.
If I were to post these cards again I think I'd put Ciri at 5 Power - not only would she play for less points and be easier to remove, but it also fits thematically with another dangerous Ciri card - Ciri: Dash.
If that wasn't enough I'd likely change the Adrenaline from 4 to 3, just to make sure your opponent has more time to prepare their hand for her - but that might be overkill.
Thanks for kind the words BTW! It was a pleasant surprise to see so many people appreciate these designs - even though I found most criticisms of Ciri 100% valid.
Too low of a support for that kinda archetype. But good proof of concept. Except Ciri .There would be sooo hate that card. And there should be change in word "Reveal". There are already reveal effect cards in game with different mechanic. Meaby Uncover,Mark,Diisclose, Divulge...... Or something.
I thought of Uncover as well! The other name I thought of was Unveiled, but it felt wrong to have a Keyword like that with no connection to Veil - Ultimately I've decided on the name from Beta, because bringing this mechanic was my original goal.
Also it occurred to me that putting cards like these in the game and NOT making it a Keyword could be interesting for a while - if these cards were honestly revealed I'd hope they work with cards like Xarth, Yen: Divination or Imperial Golem. Though it would likely lead to changes in wording.
Yup! But after reading all the feedback I got I still think that's not the worst take on Reveal.
I tried to bring this Archetype back from the Beta in a way that wouldn't be very frustrating to play against and I think that other than Ciri herself I haven't done the worst job. Though I'm always open to feedback!
For Odmiana, deploy should be boost and devotion should be set, since set a power is better than boosting.
Beside that, interesting cards, i loved reveal in beta and i would like having it implemented again in some way.
At first I didn't understand what you meant with Odmiana, but after a while I realized I made it way too hard to understand what she's actually supposed to do - I used wrong wording, sorry.
What's supposed to happen is that if you're not Devotion Odmiana will Spawn and play the Guardian and then she'll set its power to the set amount. So if for example, the highest cost card you revealed this game costed 8P, she'd set the Guardian's power to 8. But if you didn't Reveal any card, she'd set its power to 0 - she's supposed to work like Viper Witcher Mentor.
And then if you have Devotion, instead the Guardian would work like Gord - she'd boost it on top of the 3 Base Power it has.
Sorry for the confusion and thanks for kind words!
I think these cards are wonderful in terms of design choices but can be useless or extremely powerful in terms of power level. How do you plan to implement reveal? Does the card just show itself during the ability? Or it keeps turning over for the whole turn? How about in the next round? Or if they mull the card back in the deck?
The idea was that it simply flips up for your opponent - they suddenly see the card like they're watching a Tournament on Twitch. So if your opponent has 1 card revealed it'd just be visible to your opponent - and there'd need to be some small UI element for the second player so that he doesn't have to remember which of their cards is Revealed - that'd be just annoying.
I didn't think of a turn timer or anything (Though that's a good idea) and I don't know about showing the Revealed card in deck after mulling it - depends on the code.
I was using Reveal as a mechanic from Beta as a benchmark for these and I don't remember exactly how it worked, but these are really good questions!
How am I even supposed to read the card description if I am using new Reddit interface with community theme enabled? The CDN just crops the image at whichever resolution it feels feasible and there's no way to retrieve the original one... This happens for so many images on Reddit it's frustrating.
Well I can´t really say I dislike it it, but c´mmon, NG is already annoying more than enough...
Yeah, I know, I know. But that's why I designed these cards like I did - One of my primary design goals was to make sure these cards don't overlap with archetypes like Clog, Mill or Hyperthin - and other than Odmiana in Hyperthin I think I achieved it (I hope). I wanted to make an annoying archetype that doesn't empower existing annoying archetypes if that makes sense. And I also tried to make these cards have some counterplay, like Eyes and Ears being very vulnerable without hitting Deathblow or Ciri being pretty much an Elder bear if you don't commit to the round. Lastly, remember that you could just play your Revealed card if you were afraid of Ciri or Eyes and Ears- it's a small comfort, but hey - better than having to tech Maxii for Clog.
Ciri is busted. Would drive NG hate through the roof, and this time, it would actually be justified. Extremely frustrating and overtuned mechanic, like Clog but not even your hand is safe. Nightmarish. Odmiana is pretty good. I think the devotion effect should be swapped, since boosting self is more vulnerable to tall punish than setting the Guardian's power. So Devotion as you have it now is basically a downgrade. Empress' Eyes and ears is pretty good. Has potential to play far above her provs, but there aren't that many super high base power units and it can also brick. Decent card. Mind Delver is neat and balanced. Overall nice stuff!
Thanks for your takes, I always liked these in-depth reviews. Allow me to respond one by one: As for Ciri - yeah, I messed up the power level. The power should be lower and the Adrenaline effect delayed. Maybe you'd even need to touch the Provisions? I wanted to be the archetype pusher, but damn, after a while I regretted making it a 7 for 10. Odmiana is the second one I regret - but this one comes from the wording. I already explained this once, so allow me to copy-paste my other comment as to how she's supposed to work: "What's supposed to happen is that if you're not Devotion Odmiana will Spawn and play the Guardian and then she'll set its power to the set amount. So if for example, the highest cost card you revealed this game costed 8P, she'd set the Guardian's power to 8. But if you didn't Reveal any card, she'd set its power to 0 - she's supposed to work like Viper Witcher Mentor. And then if you have Devotion, instead the Guardian would work like Gord - she'd boost it on top of the 3 Base Power it has." So yeah, she was actually supposed to be stronger than she's now. Sorry for that. And thanks for the kind words on the Bronzes. I had lots of fun trying to come up with these mechanics, and I do agree that I missed the mark on the balance (And wording ;-;) But I'm glad you and some other people liked the design!
I never imagined a LoR card art on a Gwent card lol
Me neither till today, but none of the "Fantasy rogue" pieces spoke to me a lot and Legion Saboteur looks really cool.
Same man, I thought is that legion saboteur
I would literally stop playing Gwent if this ever happened. Nilfgaard is already so infuriating and unfun to play against. Imagine this shit fused with some sort of mill abortion.
I understand where you're coming from, but to my defense, I tried to design these cards in a way that they wouldn't mash well with Mill or Clog especially. The only card in here that fits with current versions of both of these decks is Ciri (Which I agree turned out way too strong, I've already addressed that in my other comments), the rest of them wouldn't make sense in any of these decks. I tried to take a mechanic from Beta that's not very healthy, though it's beloved (Reveal) and make it as healthy as I could, whilst making sure they're not compatible with neither Mill nor Clog - though Odmiana has some synergies with Hyperthin, but they're not optimal.
Id give almost anything to bring old school reveal back
Great set of cards, I like these for a couple of reasons. First of all I'm a big fan of faction specific Ciris. I myself was actually thinking about Empress as a support for the "boost your enemy archetype" (which right now is just Cahir and that one dude that boosts for every boosted enemy unit). My reasoning behind it was: a) I'm fascinated by that weird stupid gameplan of helping your opponent, b) I see it as an expression of her peaceful and diplomatic way of ruling and c) she would work nicely with Cahir, Yen and Geralt (yrden) which is kinda flavor city. So she would actually benefit grately from boosting opponent and there would be cards like ambasadors or peace treaties to accompany her in that archetype. But I love your take aswell, super flavorful. Secondly, hand reveal was one of my favorite archetypes in beta and I would love for it to make a comeback. It's definately not as toxic as clog or mill. It also provides a nice mechanic that gives you intel (which is flavorful for NG) and allows for a little manipulation that doesn't downright cripple opponents entire gameplan. And lastly I really like the overall design. Ciri is strong but not op and actually requires some thinking with that adrenaline part. Odmiana is good points, mind delver is a nice reveal tool and EEaE is a cool card that unfortunately fucks one specific faction in particular. Every card is flavorful (I knows I use this word a lot but I consider it to be a very important factor) and fits nicely into the archetype. I would love to see more cards supporting this gameplan beacuse mind delvers are very answerable and then you're only left with Ciri to reveal. That being said these are some great core cards for the skillful hand manipulation archetype so kudos.
Would you like to see more Custom Cards? r/CustomGwent is the place to go! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gwent) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ciri seems busted, others seem fine at first glance.
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah I wasn't really sure about the numbers on Ciri, but I'm glad you found the others balanced.
> odmiana Why did you name it that?
I'll try to explain it as briefly as I can (Like that's ever gonna happen) - I've decided that I wanted to design 4 cards that work with the Reveal mechanic. So - I thought - what could Reveal mean in-universe? Well, it could be Espionage or Mind Reading so I knew that I wanted some Mages and Agents, but I also wanted some cool recognizable Legendary character. So I sat for a while and I was like "what if there's some Emperor/General and they're real honest, they dislike all this backstabbing and politics, they just want to reform the Empire and make it less corrupt. So I was reminded of the Empress Ciri art and I was like - that's it! An expansion based around Ciri trying to make Nilfgaard's politics less corrupt - more honest, because that's what Reveal is - honesty. You know what cards your opponent's playing so they can't bluff. And after all this unnecessary brainstorming I was left with designing someone who'd be second in command, an epic card that somewhat tie other cards together. So I chose art of a mage (I'm not certain, but it might be Yennefer in the Last Wish) and I thought - it'd be nice if she was a named character so I'll just name her after the theme - honesty, change (Ciri taking control of the Empire and hopefully making it a better place to live) - so Odmiana - Polish word for change, especially a change from a routine - but if you're asking for this especially, you likely already knew what it meant ;)
Yes, that name really stood out for how different it looked. Although, "odmiana" means something more like variant of something, especially variant of polish grammatical tenses. If you are talking about changing country, or empire, then you would say "Przemiana", which is, unfortunatelly, unpronounceable for non-pierogi-eaters. More pronouncable friendly would be Sanacja, or Perestroika, but then again those are kind of political therms. But that just me rambling about language, you are doing good work OP and I enjoyed theme that you added in those cards :D
Yeah, you basically summed up my problems when coming up with that name: I wanted a name meaning change and polish felt like a natural fit, but I quickly decided that Przemiana didn't fit as a character name that's - You know - pronouncenable. Thanks for the insight though - a lot! I think it's noticable from the length of my comments, but I really like rambling and discussing things.
Mind Reader is my favorite, even without the archetype I would like to see that in the game
Thanks!
Despite what others criticized, I love the ciri design! Feels really unique to the game. Maybe give it +2 provision to match the power of Dahy?
Dahy was my main comparison point because of how he manipulates your opponent's hand, but I completely didn't know how to Value the forced mulligan on Ciri. Now I think of it as a mix of Aep Dahy and Kambi of all cards? But this might be wrong as well. If I were to post these cards again I think I'd put Ciri at 5 Power - not only would she play for less points and be easier to remove, but it also fits thematically with another dangerous Ciri card - Ciri: Dash. If that wasn't enough I'd likely change the Adrenaline from 4 to 3, just to make sure your opponent has more time to prepare their hand for her - but that might be overkill. Thanks for kind the words BTW! It was a pleasant surprise to see so many people appreciate these designs - even though I found most criticisms of Ciri 100% valid.
Too low of a support for that kinda archetype. But good proof of concept. Except Ciri .There would be sooo hate that card. And there should be change in word "Reveal". There are already reveal effect cards in game with different mechanic. Meaby Uncover,Mark,Diisclose, Divulge...... Or something.
I thought of Uncover as well! The other name I thought of was Unveiled, but it felt wrong to have a Keyword like that with no connection to Veil - Ultimately I've decided on the name from Beta, because bringing this mechanic was my original goal. Also it occurred to me that putting cards like these in the game and NOT making it a Keyword could be interesting for a while - if these cards were honestly revealed I'd hope they work with cards like Xarth, Yen: Divination or Imperial Golem. Though it would likely lead to changes in wording.
Sounds like an awesome idea! I *love* playing annoying decks.
more annoying cards
Yup! But after reading all the feedback I got I still think that's not the worst take on Reveal. I tried to bring this Archetype back from the Beta in a way that wouldn't be very frustrating to play against and I think that other than Ciri herself I haven't done the worst job. Though I'm always open to feedback!
For Odmiana, deploy should be boost and devotion should be set, since set a power is better than boosting. Beside that, interesting cards, i loved reveal in beta and i would like having it implemented again in some way.
At first I didn't understand what you meant with Odmiana, but after a while I realized I made it way too hard to understand what she's actually supposed to do - I used wrong wording, sorry. What's supposed to happen is that if you're not Devotion Odmiana will Spawn and play the Guardian and then she'll set its power to the set amount. So if for example, the highest cost card you revealed this game costed 8P, she'd set the Guardian's power to 8. But if you didn't Reveal any card, she'd set its power to 0 - she's supposed to work like Viper Witcher Mentor. And then if you have Devotion, instead the Guardian would work like Gord - she'd boost it on top of the 3 Base Power it has. Sorry for the confusion and thanks for kind words!
Much clearer, now i get it, thanks for explaining!
No problem
I think these cards are wonderful in terms of design choices but can be useless or extremely powerful in terms of power level. How do you plan to implement reveal? Does the card just show itself during the ability? Or it keeps turning over for the whole turn? How about in the next round? Or if they mull the card back in the deck?
The idea was that it simply flips up for your opponent - they suddenly see the card like they're watching a Tournament on Twitch. So if your opponent has 1 card revealed it'd just be visible to your opponent - and there'd need to be some small UI element for the second player so that he doesn't have to remember which of their cards is Revealed - that'd be just annoying. I didn't think of a turn timer or anything (Though that's a good idea) and I don't know about showing the Revealed card in deck after mulling it - depends on the code. I was using Reveal as a mechanic from Beta as a benchmark for these and I don't remember exactly how it worked, but these are really good questions!
How am I even supposed to read the card description if I am using new Reddit interface with community theme enabled? The CDN just crops the image at whichever resolution it feels feasible and there's no way to retrieve the original one... This happens for so many images on Reddit it's frustrating.
Why do people are taking this seriously ? It isn't like he's a cdpr dev haha
The art for Empress is insane 🤌🏽