Why people think Shackles will be good?
I did not get it, new version of Shackles does not seem any better than previous. I mean locking any silver/ bronze with this card is bad idea, because it is always better to play Thunder. I mean even on 8 power silvers using Shackles is terrible play that will loose you 8 power and Thunder will be much better anyway.
Yeah, there are few gold that could Shackles lock, but most gold have high power and ability when they are played, so using Shackles on them will be useless. The only exception are Kambi, Lugos, YenCon, scorch dragon and Ciri. But even in best case scenario, you actually loosing 4 power, which would be acceptable considering you play bronze vs gold. But I really did not think it is good idea to play card that will in best scenario loose you 4 power and in worse case it will be doing absolutely nothing.
I think Shackles will be playable only in weather deck, when demoting gold will actually reduce power too. Otherwise it is really terrible card. I mean compare it to Cleaver, which will be doing same in most cases, but you will get 6 power body with him. And planing to demote gold to Scorch is terrible idea, most gold with exception of Kayran are not that powerful, you will just waste silver and bronze card to deal with one card. Any proactive bronze + silver card give you much more power than single opponent gold with very few exception.
Posted Mar 19, 2017, 12:25 PM UTC
A lot of people are evaluating Shackles as a "lost" strength, when in fact it´s not really the case in the bigger picture. You can´t evaluate actions in Gwent in the picture of 1 turn only.
Imagine locking an Axeman when he drops on the board. Now many people,like you, would argue that you just played nothing and you "lost X power".
But then you see streamers playing with/against the new mardroeme and say "wow this card is awesome, this card just removed 20 strength off of that buffed Axeman!"
In truth, locking that unit has the same effect that Mardroeme has, but it´s the other way around. You are locking the unit now and preventing future buffs that happen. And with every point of strength that unit would have gained, your lock gains value. You lost tempo, yes. But tempo can be recovered with high-tempo cards such as Crones or Foot Soldiers.
What is the difference of locking the unit and preventing the buffs in the first place and using Mardroeme on that unit later? It seems like Mardroeme gives you huge value, but Shackles before gives you that value as well, you just don´t see it because it doesn´t remove that X strength in a huge swing.
I mean most people would agree that saving Dbomb to negate huge buffed values is a great play. But preventing those high values in the first place is weak?
With that in mind, you can see that Shackles has value when used even on bronze/silvers. You can´t think of it in the sense of 1 turn only. Yeah, of course Cleaver/Auckes is better tempo-wise. But then again, Cleaver or Auckes can´t target gold units and use a silver slot.
In the scenario you described, this card would be better used on the axeman rather than shackles imo
Why do you think that? Care to elaborate?
And even if that would be the case, you also need to consider the flexibility aspect. Mardroeme might fulfill a similar role than Shackles here, but Shackles also has the flexibility of negating golden cards like Lugos or Borkh. That added effect can be the difference between which one you include in your deck and the one you decide is not good enough.
Assuming an axeman is 4base str and anytime in the round he is 25. Shackles would prevent 21str. Shrooms reset the 25 back to 4 but additionally remove 3bse str on top making it a 24str play.
True. but when talking about 20+ strength plays, 3 base is arguably not as big. And as I said, it´s mostly also about flexibility in other cases.
I´m not saying Mardroeme is bad, it´s a great card. I just used the Dbomb-mechanic on it as an example towards proactive and retroactive strength removal.
Mardroeme would be way better in that situation precisely because it removes the buffs after they've been applied. Simply locking the axeman means that they can hold onto all their synergistic cards for a better time
Consider the current Rot Tosser -> Canterella combo (which is getting nerfed). Why is this commonly considered a "no-win" situation for the opponent? If NG tosses a cow onto an empty ranged row, at this point everyone knows they're going to canterella next turn. It's the most telegraphed play in the world, should be easy to counter right? No, because if you remove the cow, they have a really easy answer: they just don't play canterella! They just hold onto it until they can get good value out of it later.
This is basically the problem you're walking into with lock vs mardroeme. If you mardroeme that 20 str axeman, you've reset all the buffs. All those synergistic damage spells they've played thinking they were getting good value out of them have lost value as well. By weakening the axeman, you've decreased the value of almost every card they've played thus far. Compare to preemptively locking the axeman. Now they can hold onto that blueboy, or that harald, and get full value out of it at some other time. You're essentially giving your opponent so many more options when you preemptively stop something compared to when you reactively stop something.
That´s true and you are completely right. Preemptive plays give your opponent many ways to adjust their future plays as well.
The thing is, sometimes it does matter. If you Dshackle something early on, then yes, your opponent can react accordingly. But what if you use Dshackles later? Example: in R3 right when your opponent resurrects his Axeman. Or when Borkh is played when you already have a big board and your opponent is counting on that Borkh swing. Your opponent can´t hold on to that Blueboy/Harald, it´s Round 3, you mostly negated his R3 win condition and he has to find a different one. Sometimes that´s possible, sometimes it´s not.
I´m not saying Dshackles is a brutally opressive card, that everyone will be running 3 and all golds are unplayable. That´s completely idiotic. What I am saying is that Dshackles is a legitimately good bronze card to include into your deck and has the potential to make certain effects/gold cards problematic to include in the meta. And that it´s not really horrible value as most people are saying-you can usually find a nice target for it in the meta.
Locking Axeman is much worse than using Thunder on him and Thunder is much more flexible.
Debatable. Thundering Axeman leaves the enemy to resurrect him. And he is much more likely to have a resurrection effect in hand than a counter-lock. Thunder also can´t neutralize 8+ strength cards, Shackles can. While also being able to target Golds, where Thunder is useless.
So the "flexibility" of Thunder/Shackles isn´t as simple as you think.
There will be only 2 eight power cards with ability that you could shackle - Malena and Nithral. In case of Malena Shackles will be better than Thunder only if opponet will play more than 7 elves in same turn. For Nithral, yeah you probably will prevent more power with Shackles if opponent did not play Wild Riders before. Still don't think it is good idea to play Shackles because this one scenario, that leave you 8 power behing anyway and it will be much better if you instead play some proactive cards.
Alzur´s Double Cross or Dragoons exist as well, making 7 and less STR targets like Margarita or Ocvist etc. non-Thunderable.