META SNAPSHOT #5 (Patch 10.8)

After a month of endless Renfri shenanigans, we are blessed with the update of 10.8: Renfri is nerfed, Journeys are back, CDPR celebrates its 20th birthday and Gwent meta is again filled with a nice level of diversity. Skellige receives some deserved nerfs while Scoia'Tael is probably among the top 3 best factions to play right now. Northern Realms, Knights in specific, see a lot of plays, and a lot of people seem to love Nilfgaard Cultists.

In general, the meta looks healthy and every faction has at least one viable archetype that can compete at the top of the ladder. I am Axii from Team White Frost and let's join me in exploring the meta of Gwent August Season!

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AUGUST SEASON: Aug 8 - Sep 6, 2022

TIER LIST SUMMARY

TIER 1

Double Kekker Poison [8.75]

A wise man once said: "There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes."

Self-poison has been around for some time and it finally gets to a top position in the meta. The deck has pretty much everything: tempo with Golden Nekker (potential 2 GN), carryover with Ciri: Nova, lock/unlock with Aguara, thinning with Roach and Knickers, Drill with Crime specials to remove threats with decent Coins-Points ratio, . . .

Generally, you would like to win R1, and since there are no "real" top-end cards, it's okay to commit your golds or even GN to secure the round. A long R3 is what you should be aiming for. It would be great to setup the Candle beforehand, and buff Azar's Scarabs once they appear. From that point, just keep the engines rolling, you should be able to kill all important threats either with poisons or damage from the drill.

Against Elf Swarm, it's extremely important to keep the Drill alive to deal with the Deadeyes.

Despite its strengths, this list is among the hardest ones to pilot. Coin management is a thing, as you may easily overflow your pouch, especially at the moment you play Kekker. There are also multiple lines at almost every given turn, and you have to weigh between options. You probably need to memorise options from Shady Vendor and Stolen Mutagens as well to maximize the values. That's not to mention the sequencing. The deck can easily fall apart if you messed up once or twice and lose your key cards like Gellert, Drill or your Failed Experiment.

Knighty Knights [8.5]

Your "Knightmare" is here!

With the recent nerfs of Renfri blessing and curses, people started to experiment with different decks and especially, scenarios. Among the newly introduced ones, Damsel in Distress is probably the scenario with the most points if their core cards are left unchecked.

Royal Inspiration with the recent rework seems to perfectly aid Knights and boosty decks in general. Bronze knights with the additional Grace ability also help the deck compete better in R1, which protects Damsel in Distress from getting bled out while enhancing Aerondight for future uses.

Explanation for some of the card choices

  • Oneiromancy, AA and Lady of the Lake added for better cards tutoring (we came up with a greedier version with Margarita, Arcane Tome and without Lady of the Lake - but this list consistently performs better)

  • Aerondight because the deck has a huge tempo at any given time, also to help with the deck's control aspect

  • Heatwave to deal with Scenarios, since Renfri decks are becoming less and less popular

  • A lot of units with Shield & Damned Sorceress as strong engines

  • Pellar & Squirrel as popular tech choices

Bad matchups against control-ly decks like Siege or Pirates.

TIER 2

Elf Swarm [8.25]

We totally didn't initially name the deck "Elves Presley".

Elf swarm is back on top of the food chain. With no recent nerfs and a great buff to Free Company, elves are seeing much more play and the deck's performance so far has been at least decent.

Explanation for some of the card choices

  • Simlas-Vanadain-Alissa-Waylays is a standard pew-pew combo that is easy to setup and provides a lot of undisrupted points

  • Feign Death is a must-have in an Elf deck, it also provides another Waylay for the combo above

  • Vernosiel, Isengrim and Free Company as swarm payoffs (Free Company now works just like an Isengrim: All elven deadeyes now have the "Bandit" tag and Free Company just happened to boost all allies bandits by 1)

Tech choices

  • Dol Blathana Archer => Maxii

  • Vernossiel's Commando => Vrihedd Neophyte

Compass Pirates [8.25]

Crach kicked Renfri and her gangs (including Knickers) out of the crew and continued with their raids. F!

With so many good options nerfed, Renfri was kicked out of the previous tier 1 Pirate list. However, this version still performs really well, even without the Renfri powerhouse that usually plays for 25-ish points.

Generally, you would like to have Bjorn and Terror of the Seas on your hand as soon as possible and start building up the armor. Start with Deranged Corsair to build up some armor for your ships, then use as many pings as possible to create more Cataclysm and armor. In R2, only use Magic Compass if you have drawn a majority of golds in your hand to avoid discarding good cards.

Explanation for some of the card choices

  • As a Magic Compass deck, the list has a lot of thinning tools like Sunset Wanderer, Coral, Roach, Birna, Morkvarg, Skirmisher and Skald (Knickers got cut because of a provision nerf).

  • Holger as a long round engine

  • A lot of Ships/Pirates can benefit from gaining armor. At the same time, the pirates can enable Magic Compass to go for Endless Voyage in a medium-long R3.

  • Pellar & Squirrel as the usual tech suspects

Harmoney SUSkia [8.25]

Any Loc Feainn mysteries explorer here?

This deck is arguably the best Harmony list out there. You have Saskia as a strong power play in R1, providing strong tempos as well as thinning out bronzes in the process. And it gets better if you're on Red coin since you can pressure the Blue coin player to lose on even.

Explanation for some of the card choices

  • With Saskia in play, it's a must to include non-deploy bronzes to maximize their values.

  • Lady of the Lake is used to tutor Oneiromancy and later on, Aerondight.

  • Heatwave to counter other strong Scenarios

  • By running Saskia, the deck has to cut Cat Witcher Saboteur, which means fewer offensive movement options, hence reducing the control aspect of the deck.

  • Some argue that they would replace Aerondight with Maraal. That is fine, we put Aerondight in this slot because we're confident that the deck's tempo is enough to grow the sword. Besides, we think that having the fifth and sixth poison options in the deck is a bit redundant.

Thriving Monsters [8.25]

Do you like to see a lot of green numbers popping up on your screen? We do!

Sir Scratch-A-Lot has been quite popular since the release in Patch 10.7. However, the ability to have multiple kitties in play has been limited so now, we're going back to the original thriving combo of Koshchey and Kitty.

Ideally, you would like to find Scenario and thrive units to win the first round and save the ultimate combo for the deciding round. Being a point-slammy deck, it's better to be on Red coin to abuse your opponents. In later rounds, try to setup Defender, float the Kitty, use Caranthir with Koshchey and combo with second Koshchey plus Leader. Unless you're playing against a Yrden deck, it's impossible to lose a match if your combo is left unchecked.

Explanation for some of the card choices

  • Oneiromancy and Royal Decree to get you your Scenario, Caranthir or Kitty

  • Heatwave to not lose to Cultists

  • A lot of point-slammy cards like Golyat, Old Speartip, Ozzie to trigger thrive and tempo up when needed

  • Orchard Mantrap to double trigger thrives once you've got a lot of thrive engines on the board

Renfri Vamps [8]

A wise man once said: "There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes."

Renfri vamps is still one of the strongest Monster decks at the moment. The deck is quite simple to pilot. You basically keep playing vampires from the first to the last turn. Fleders are your best bronzes and probably your main source of points. With Renfri's Gang, Roach and Knickers, your thinning is okay-ish, letting you get your hands on the stronger golds.

Curse of Gluttony gets a surprising buff among all the nerfs, allowing you to have a strong finisher with Gluttony on Regis: Reborn.

Explanation for some of the card choices

  • We prefer Igni over Vanilla Geralt simply because of the higher ceiling and the less probability of being a brick.

  • We use Prince Villem instead of Triss Butterflies to save some provisions and also because the deck doesn't have that many golds.

TIER 3

Devotion Raid Warrior [7.75]

A 4p bronze playing for 12 is absolutely "popping off" :)

SK Warrior has never been Tier 1 in such a long time, but the control aspect of the deck is quite remarkable in this greedy meta. And somehow, we saw a reasonable performance of the warriors in the past few weeks, hence the appearance in this meta snapshot.

Generally, you would like to have access to both Highland Warlords in R1, play them and start getting values from the Raid specials. In addition, you would like to play some 4p warriors to have them ready in the graveyard for War of Clans. Usually, SK Warrior fails to win R1 and will help to survive a bleed in R2. However, if the Warlords have been used in R1, it's much easier to defend the bleed with the Raid cards. Harald and Fucusya could also be used on Warlords in R2 to even further enhance your remaining specials. In R3, your Eist-Leader-Jutta combo and a buffed King Bran should win you the game.

Explanation for some of the card choices

  • A devotion list to use the combo Eist-Leader-Jutta

  • King Bran as a point-slammy card and also enhancing your 6 veteran cards

  • Morkvarg as a tall removal for extremely tall units (so, not the dwarves)

  • Deranged Corsairs are simply value cards, use the specials & pings to enable the most Cataclysm

Stonkpile [7.75]

Click click click click click click ...

In our opinion, Siege Stockpile has never been out of the meta in the past 4 months. The ladder would see Siege here and there every 10th game, with the exception of July Season, where most decks were Renfri.

Coming to this patch, Siege actually performs okay as the average deck gets a bit greedier, which allows the siege engines to stick and start getting more values. In this patch, Siege is a decent counter against Elf Swarm or engine-heavy decks like Harmony or Koschey.

Explanation for some of the card choices

  • AA-Siege-Henselt-Radovid-Heatwave-Foltest's Pride are the cores of the deck and therefore shouldn't be replaced.

  • The 8 provision slot of Hubert could be replaced with Ring of Favor and a 5p-downgrade.

  • Xavier just to deal with Oneiromancy, AA, Aerondight or even Fleders.

Cultists Spam [7.5]

Yeah, it's always Nilfgaard and their shenanigans. We're not even surprised anymore.

Cultists spam is a straight-up broken deck if left unchecked. They might be behind for 90% time of the game, but a few turns in the end can generate 3-digit points that you're just gonna be like "alright, whatever, just go next".

To do well against this deck, what you need is a heavy control deck and an artifact removal, presumably Heatwave. You will need to Yeet the Scenario and try to kill as many Eternal Eclipse Initiate as you can. The deck doesn't have any tempo outside of the Cultists, so it's not hard to out-point them early on.

(And yes, we are aware that all the stuff we said above is about countering the Cultists and not how to actually pilot the deck).

Honorable Mentions

Renfri Pointslam [7.5]

Here in our sight, we can spot a wild Renfri deck in its natural habitat.

This is a decent control and point-slam deck that can especially be good against other Renfri decks. Just like other Nilfgaard decks, this one has some strong control tools, including tall removals and locks.

Explanation for some of the card choices

  • Top-end cards all support Assimilate

  • Runemage to improve Renfri's consistency

  • Leo and Vilgefortz as tall removals since the deck cannot play Yennefer Invocation

  • Fringilla Vigo might look like a weird choice but a 10 for 7 is acceptable

  • Doppler is a 10 for 5 if you can find it in a long round, preferably R1

  • Because of limited provisions, the Turncoats are used to give Spying for Terranova. This can also be done by using the Van Moorlehem Servants.

Magic Selfwound [7.5]

A standard Self-wound list, with a bit of magic!

Although not that popular compared to the previous decks, this Magic Self-wound list is actually quite strong, considering that you can play a lot of your golds more than once thanks to Lippy and Troll Porter to speed up the process. The list has a lot of win-cons, and the synergies among the cards are amazing.

Ideally, you can draw a lot of bronzes and use Troll Porter to get rid of them. This allows you to play some golds twice or even three times. However, the deck is very vulnerable to Heatwave or Purify. In addition, given the popularity of Self-wound decks on the ladder, it's impossible for the archetype to reach higher than tier 3 in this meta snapshot.