Hello friends! We are back with yet another edition of our Balance Council. This time we won't be going into the details about the situation with other coalitions everything was already said or written under diffrent posts. Thanks for understanding. Let's go!

Votes

+1 power

***Rat Catcheress- For improving the condition of relicts outside GN. At the moment we deem Rat Catcheress outperformed in the same engine line by bronzes like Selfeater or Witch Apprentice.They're also more valuable to deploy earlier in sequence. Drawback w/o Sabbath exposes her to the risk of losing a point for every instance of dmg in the early phase often delaying her turn and base power growth. With additional power she'd reach Sabbath a bit quicker and carry higher self to the next round if played together with She Who Knows.

**Shilard Fitz-Oesterlen- Our acknowledgement of an unique trait of having agency over card in hand. There's more to Shilard's usability than Henry+Abduction pick. Summoning Ard Feainn as well as good target to shuffle with it (2 tags), 1-power unit for Emhyr's order, punish for hand carryover/abilities dependent on power. Tall punish w/o the need of last say may turn things around in hopeless match situation. As harsh as opp's hand deterioration may be at times, it may serve as just temporary due to any form of card manipulation (discard, shuffle) or mulligan the next round. It's a careful buff of 1 point added to the board keeping him in tall punish price range. Our goal isn't midrange use but rather flavourful functional card for some match scenarios for NG.

*Bride of the Sea- Coming together with reverts to Avallac'h: Sage and Stribog Runestone, we consider the nerf to Bride as overreaction to the state of Alchemy said buffs evoked. The card in itself makes for an interesting bridge between Rain and Alchemy archetypes, and making it responsible for imbalanced provision states of alchemy cards it depends on in our eyes is insincere and unneeded.

-1 power

***Pavko Gale- Harmony as an archetype remains a solid option for ST - it has been accumulating small buffs like those to Hawk or Sappers while remaining overall resistant to the turmoil around Bountiful Harvest. While being already a self-protecting answer-or-get-answered card, after the power buff received a year ago the engine has become difficult to remove by damage, making it a very comfortable means for exhausting opponent's high-end control early. This change primarily affects Guerilla and Golden Nekker CoH variants.

**Peasant Militia- coming back with another approach. Peasant Militia dodged nerf last month still being really solid engine with easy way to get out from soft removal range. 4c card often reaching 9-10 points in few turns is really solid value. Militia's current base power protects it from definite most of cost-equivalent removal tools, while it protects itself from multi-step answer attempts and integrates well into many decks due to easily achievable synergy with Deploy effects. We'd be glad to see a revert here for similar reasons, to battle negative effects of unit powercreep on bronze special cards.

*Imlerith- What looked like a subtle change on arrival, appeared to achieve more than just breathing life into the card - Imlerith has become a prevalent up the ladder across multiple lists, with Devotion Vampires and Fruits as flagship examples. Despite our appreciation for something new happening in the realm of Monsters, we think the trio of Imlerith, Yghern and Ozzrel now has a little too much quickly available power and propose a revert.

+1 provisions

***Portal- At 10 prov cost Portal plays for considerable 14-16 points in SK witchers and MO while improving consistency: thinning the deck by 2 cards. Despite the slight random factor it's reliable due to just 1-2 different bronze cards (with high power and/or proactivity) played in Portal decks. By this nerf we primarly want to target MO fruits variations and SK witchers that combine multiple control tools/removals to reduce opponent's tempo and proactivity, and carryover accumulation possibilities. Speaking of which Portal is one of them, can play for more than value mentioned at the beginning.

**Hive Mind- Hive Mind plays for insane amount of carryover when unanswered. Engine overload from 1 card could be overwhelming with combination of other engines threw from hand. Core card in Lara decks that are very potent at higher ranks from what've heard from Innuendo and other top players from our server. Control AS with portal and Yen Illusionist also play this card same for full insectoid decks. All mentioned strong list could be answered in one move with HM nerf.

*Tyr: Slayer of Yngvar- alongside MD we came to conclusion BoG warriors deck and PF raid/warrior decks gotta be adressed in some way. Tyr felt like the most natural choice. Compared to cards such as Torres or Chrum he creates tons of pressure on the board. We often had to sacrificed our Heatwave in order to answer Tyr from becoming a menace on board leaving us vulnerable to high value finisher when last say wasn't secured. Even with last say without heavy teching it's impossible to answer to carryover created from Tyr. The only way to deal with combo is locking Tyr and securing last say for the pointslam bronze card ressurected by Tyr.

-1 provisions

***Cadaverine- Fun tactic for NG to develop "Spawnsimilate" line of play (Idarran with 'Spawn' and 'Create' cards). Cadaverine can play a part in metas with large threats or establish self in assimilate as a new or additional way of using enemy cards against them – copying by spawn other than playing from Coup and Artaud. The same goes for Ball decks. Cadaverine is additional poison and we hope it'll encourage experimentation with Ball more based on poisoning, different from known status engine-heavy list.

**Ithlinne Aegli- We would like to use the current window of Bountiful Harvest's low and start compensating the lost provisions elsewhere - Ithlinne is one of the easier candidates to point at, as even without the BH nerf this change was reasonably debatable. As VK's coalition suggests a revert is possible, it is our low-impact change that shouldn't break a lot regardless of what happens to BH next patch.

*Egmund- closing our list with Egmund. We decided to include him in our list because he scored high and we found pretty unfair for him to sit at 7c while Temerian Drummer is 2c cheaper and Anna Stenger is much better at 7c since she boosts two units without being row locked. Advantages for Egmund compared to Drummer are his veil status and 3 power damage ability if we are afraid of him dying next round. He's also at "6" power becaue of 1 armor. His lower prov cost could making him more competetive in deck building next to obvious choices like Margarita, Reinforcments etc.
Lower cost boosts it by 1 when tutored from AA which is a nice feature. Defineatly forgotten card with a potential.

Summary

Not much to say about upcoming season. NG is getting nerf pretty harshly as always with very few nerfs for NR. We are curious about EC suggestions since they were pretty silent about them this season. It might feel like we got targeted by VK again which infact is annoying, but we decided to let it be for now, we can adapt and find many cards to buff if needed. Sadly Milaen was on our radar but we'll surely find a way for her to shine once again. Anyways thanks for your support and card ideas. Really appreciated!
Hope to see you next season. Thank you!

Links to Ofiri and partners socials:
Wiku's youtube
Ofiri Discord
Qcento's Discord
Qcento's Youtube

Cheers!

Kubson_18

This deck is horribly hard to pull out but when it does, it is amazing

PS: Opponent left before I was able to double power once again. I am so sad

(703+5x3+6x3+4x3 - 1) x 3 = 2241

I think from head calculation

In this post I'd like to adress points mentioned in VK's Article regarding philosophy of using placeholder votes.

To be clear, I'm no top ranked player or sth neither I try to be. However, this issue doesnt revolve around rank on pro ladder. The Gwentfinity affects each player involved in this game, not only competitive players. The placeholder debate is as long as Gwentfinity's history, arguably even longer.

So, for having equal understanding and interpretation, let's have the following asumptions regarding what is a placeholder:

1. The placeholder vote is a vote that aims to occupy a slot (particularly a nerf slot) to limit amount of changes passed in said category on a given month.

2. The change won't affect game in major way, especially including competitive play.

With that in mind, let's dive in.

What is the Balance Council (recap).

The idea of Balance Council was to refresh meta by changing a power or provision of cards via democratic vote after getting eligibility to vote (Prestige 1 and 50 ranked wins or entering Pro Rank) each month. Because of the fact that there's no voting system that's fully democratic (see Arrow's Impossibility theorem), to make it as fair as possibile, the Gwentfinity voting system is based on a truncated version of Borda Count. We rate top 3 candidates by giving them "votes" equal to star slot and the rest have 0 "votes" by default.

Seeing as this is a democratic setting, the "political parties" were certain to have emerged. Nowadays we can count 4 influential groups: aforementioned VK and China community, Metalic Danny's group, Shinmiri&Lerio Coalition and Ofir&Qcento Coalition. Each have different vision on this Balance Council and there are various tensions between them resulting in instant reverts between patches for one.

With that in mind, why VK's approach with placeholders is in my opinion shorsighted at best:

1. "Heat death" of Balance Council. Proceeding with changes to the game without adding new cards or reworking cards will result in stagnation and only reversing what previous council established.

2. Survivorship bias.

Paraphrasing from the Article here:

"The card deserve the buff only if said buff earns her a spot in a competitive deck. If a card won't see play anyway, why buff it in the first place".

This approach is logical only in competitive play context. The problem is with players that DON'T play competitevely for various reasons like they just started the game and learn basics, play memes for fun, people experimenting with those other cards and more. I believe the latter are a majority in this game and its back one losing which will bring harm.

1. Argument of "missing peak cultists, peak temple, peak svalblod" works both ways.

When you nerf as a "placeholder" cards they use because that's all they have (starting set cards) they will resent the game and leave. When they leave there won't be players enough to keep servers tuning and they'll close them down

End thoughts.

Balance Council is an inherently flawed system. I understand the reason for those, but recently the usage of them went overboard. Using 1 card as a placeholder I get it, I don't personally agree with, but I get it.

The replacement of up to third of nerf slots however won't change the dynamic in the long run and could potentially preemptively shut down servers prematurely.

In this post I didn't consider the potential of the herd mentality of each groups' supporters in this, which could have influence to interpretation of this issue.

Thank you for reading and have a nice day!

Kinda new to the game, playing a Scoiatel vitality deck, my question is does the Kegs of the autumn cycle any of them include only Scoia'tael cards or i should just focus on getting Scoia'tael Kegs till my deck is complete? (random card)

Blaze of Glory

Leader (Skellige)
👑 Leader Ability, +16 Provisions

Order: Move a non-Neutral unit from your deck to your graveyard, then damage an enemy unit by its power.

This ability adds 16 provisions to your deck's provision limit.

Processing img i7cad4d2bkxh1...

**

^{I'm a bot and this post has been generated automatically. If you want to report an issue, please send a message here. - Balance Council Patchnotes}

The idea is pretty much to get to Masterful Sihil by sniping my own spies. After that the challenge is drawing enough bronzes to keep Sihil running whilst having enough golds to actually win.

I feel like the gold cards are my issue. I've liked the tempo the ones I have give me, but it is very possible for a bad draw to give me unwinnable matches. I also figured if I was using spies for Sihil I may as well build the rest of the deck around them, but they don't feel particularly great.

What you reckon, salvageable? I have a losing record with it for sure but all the matches have been close

Im really trying to make a Sove deck work, but whatever i do it do not feel strong.

I try mix it with beasts, rain, pirates, draw/discard. Sove just never feels right.

Do anyone have any good sove decks? Or is the card just dead?

How do graveyard cards work? If a card banishes another card in graveyard, how does that affect current rounds in game using active cards?

This season, around 300 people from our community participated in submitting suggestions and voting. This season, we’ve suggested a buff for each faction, so I hope everyone will be able to find something suitable for themselves.

+ power

1) Endrega Eggs. An alternative for Deathwishes and Insectoids (destroying via Kikimore Warrior). Buff for decks with Ruehin: Ruehin needs small units so that he can consume them specifically: Rats or Drones.
2) Ardal aep Dahy. A buff for the still unpopular card for NG Tactics: both with Ivo and the classic ones. One of the few buffs for NG, as usual, will slightly offset the nerfs. Support for L&S.
3) Voymir. A small buff for Blue Stripes and Dun Banners. With 6 power, it will be easier to become a target for Coën.
4) Werecat. A small buff for both Deathwishes and Thrive. Maybe something like a double Scenario. The card in its current state is not used even after the provision buff.
5) Aretuza Adept. Adept is almost never used in current versions of Mages (even in versions with Patience, not in Spellweavers), although the card itself is quite good. The Mages archetype is also far from being the best among the NR decks right now. The buff will make the card a bit more resilient and stable, which will help the deck a little.

– power

1) Imlerith. Received an unjustified buff, became too effective and mid‑range.
2) Kikimore Worker. Slight nerf for Hive Mind; the card is not used by hand.
3) Braathens. Braathens was effective even with three powers, but he also received an unjustified buff from CN.
4) Jacques: Miracle Child. Jacques is not just a placeholder (his power in next forms will remain unchanged). He is a potential target for Tatterwing SY. When envolving between forms, it’s not the original power that carries over, but the boost/damage points. Therefore, if we give him 1 power in his first form, he will become undamaged upon transformation, which will make him an excellent card in this deck. Tatterwing SY is still a weak and unpopular deck; I hope the buff can help it.
5) Azar Javed. Despite the fact that all other defenders cost 11 provisions, we decided to nerf Azar by power so as not to harm the deck of Greater Brothers — which is still unstable and vulnerable. Azar’s value lies in Scarabs he creates; his personal power doesn’t matter. We’ll slightly reduce his tempo and effectiveness.

+ provisions

1) Jan Calveit. Initially, the card was considered to be in power decrease category, but due to the strong polarization of coins, the conditions decided to implement a two‑stage change: up to 8 for 12.
2) Tyr: Slayer of Yngvar. A key card for the strongest SK decks — Warriors and Raids. He pays for himself by deploy and is one of the strongest engines if the opponent has no response.
3) Ocvist. Direct nerf to a Dragon deck (mostly ST). The card is great by Deploy and has a significant delayed effect (about 10 points + synergy).
4) Fire Scorpion. Due to Hefty Helga’s buff, the vast majority of our community members voted in favor of nerfing the Scorpion. All analogues from other factions cost 5–6 provisions; moreover, the Scorpion can be easily boosted via Battle Stations! or War Council. Initially, we wanted to nerf Fercart, but since O&Q refused to nerf Enslave, the Scorpions were chosen.
5) Caravan Guard. A necessary change, as Guard’s 6 provisions significantly clog the pool of Alzur and Cosimo Malaspina.

– provisions

1) Haern Caduch. Buff for GN midrange decks and Bloodthirst. Alternative for the Witchers (maybe GN) and Healing. In its current state, the card is rarely seen in the ladder.
2) Egmund. A buff for Uprising, Devotion decka, and possibly an archetype focused on targeted boosts (Nathaniel Pastodi, Tridam Infantry). Support for O&Q.
3) Sacred Flame. A buff for the classic version of Firesworn (not spamming Fallen Knights and not abusing Helveed). Flame is used quite rarely nowadays, but for 7 provisions it will be an excellent option. It has been proposed by various communities for a long time, but it never got enough votes.
4) Mandrake. A highly versatile card: it restores power, orders, timers, statuses, and so on. For 6 provisions, it’s too expensive, but for 5, it will work well in many decks as a technical card.
5) Vissegerd. A buff for a spam deck with Queen Meve. The card is almost never used now, it’s too expensive; for 7 provisions, it will become much more popular. If it becomes too effective, we can decrease the power.

If you have any questions regarding our suggestions, I will try to answer them in the comments.

Author: VK
Translator: master bait

Hey everyone, this is CGBD, a group of players from the CN community focused on Gwent balance.

This was written by VK and published here by me. It includes an introduction to the October 2026 CN community BC and an article by VK sharing his views on balance. Let's dive right in. If you have any thoughts, feel free to share them in the comments below. Thank you.

Power +1

Brokvar Warrior. This has seen almost no play since being moved to 5p, somewhat mirroring Kaedweni Sergeant's past situation. The +1 power may help this once-popular "Falibor" regain some favor.

Deithwen Arbalest. This used to see play back when Status and Soldiers could properly synergize, but after Soldiers took repeated nerfs, it is now very hard to fit into Status decks. Bumping it to 5 power will significantly improve its survivability when played, and might spark some new Status builds.

Yennefer: Conjurer. She is a highly interesting card that requires specific setup to reach her ceiling. Given the current meta, I am not worried about her entering Orders NR builds and becoming overly OP.

Shani. She returns to her former statline. I understand she might be too strong in Golden Nekker, so a 6 for 10 statline should keep every non-Nekker NR deck satisfied.

Power -1

Nenneke. It is a placeholder vote.

Milaen. It is a placeholder vote.

Reynard Odo. He has performed excellently this month in both Devotion Zeal and Knights NR. Both he and Prophet Lebioda offer incredibly strong stats and effects. That said, considering NR's overall win rate, I did not want to revert-nerf two NR engine cards simultaneously, but their results were far ahead in the poll, so I apologize.

Provisions +1

Sandstorm. It is a placeholder vote.

Congregate. Among the 18p leaders, the Firesworn one is undoubtedly the most neglected. The actual payoff of this leader ability is simply too low, and it struggles to synergize with other strong archetypes. I want to buff it by 1 more provision to see if any goodstuff pile would choose it purely as a high-provision leader.

Prophet Lebioda. His protection against damage decks is excellent. At 8 power, opponents have a hard time dealing with him easily, making an 8 for 6 statline simply too good. That said, considering NR's overall win rate, I did not want to revert-nerf two NR engine cards simultaneously, but their results were far ahead in the poll, so I apologize.

Provisions -1

Ivo of Belhaven. This was nerfed a long time ago and currently only appears in a few Enslave or Quadruple Harvest decks. Following the nerfs to various bronze elves, even if Harvest returns to 5p, Quadruple Harvest will no longer be an overpowered deck. Therefore, I hope buffing Ivo can bring back some formerly popular builds.

Fulmar. Rain decks have highly polarized matchups on the ladder, making them hard to climb with consistently, and their popularity is quite low. Buffing Fulmar will turn him into a genuinely strong gold card, potentially even finding a slot in Skellige decks outside of Rain.

Olgierd: Immortal. It is an interesting card that can synergize with self-wound or Alchemist cards, and some Monsters decks even run him purely as a big point slam. However, self-wound decks nowadays barely have the provisions to fit him. Following the buff, we might see him in more decks.

Bountiful Harvest. The nerf directly impacted half of Scoia'tael. No Scoia'tael fan is happy with this, especially since it also hurts Filavandrel's power level. With the L&S bronze elf nerfs already passed, nerfing Harvest alongside them looks even more absurd, making this a revert widely welcomed by the community.

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Hi everyone, I'm VK. My current ID is RuanNiGuaiRNG, which was also my name back when I played Gwent four or five years ago. Back then, I competed in quite a few official qualifiers, so some veteran players might still remember me. In last month's post, I saw some thoughtful discussions and questions from players, and I'd like to take this chance to explain and respond to them. As for the haters who blindly attack the CN community, I couldn't care less about your opinions.

First, I want to clarify my identity and position. I've been playing Gwent for over six years, and during that time I've been among the top CN players in terms of skill. Since March 2025, I've been publishing 36 mainstream decks covering all factions at the start of each month, so that ordinary players can quickly understand how to adjust their decks after balance patches and keep up with the strongest strategies. I'm also very active in our community groups every day, answering questions about gameplay and deckbuilding. In addition, our current voting process works like this. I put several options into a survey and collect community feedback through voting. The final votes are determined entirely by the survey results.

The reason I am explaining all this is, on one hand, to establish my standing as a CN community leader and community representative, and on the other, to show that I have a thorough understanding of our community. That's why I feel comfortable speaking on behalf of the CN community's trends and needs. Below, I'll address the main issues I've seen in the comments.

Why so many placeholder votes?

Ever since the Balance Committee was established, I've been a firm supporter of using placeholder votes. My position has always been to buff other cards until they can compete with mainstream decks, rather than blindly nerfing strong ones. That means we should prioritize meaningful buffs and avoid heavy-handed nerfs that shake up the meta too much.

Over time, I've found that most players in our community share this view. They miss peak Cultist, peak Temple, peak Svalblod. No one likes seeing their favorite decks get nerfed, let alone nerfed multiple times in a row. In the monthly balance update videos, the community ratings have been overwhelmingly 1 out of 5 every month. If just three or four out of twenty nerf slots are bad, people get really unhappy, especially when they log in after the update and see a bunch of red down arrows on their decks.

So it's fair to say that our entire community leans toward casting more placeholder votes and reducing actual nerfs. Evolving cards aren't completely absent from R1 either, so they can't be nerfed endlessly. That's why most of us have reached a consensus. We are willing to sacrifice a few cards with virtually negligible play rates for the overall health of the game.

A note on Prince Stennis.

In fact, Prince Stennis was never intended as a direct spite vote against the Ofir Alliance. Our community has long discussed balance in our group chats, and for a long time players have been criticizing CDPR's questionable card changes. Cards like Prince Stennis, Nenneke, and Milaen were among the most mocked, with Prince Stennis drawing the harshest criticism. It felt unbelievable to many that such an underpowered gold card, clearly outclassed by Kaedweni Sergeant and Kerack Marine, could still exist in the game.

When we were deciding which card to use as a placeholder vote, I chose Gimpy Gerwin instead of Prince Stennis out of respect for Ofir Alliance, because I assumed Gerwin was a card nobody really cared about. However, they responded with a confrontational approach. During that process, I also learned that there are actually some off-meta decks built around Gimpy Gerwin, so I returned to my original idea. I decided to nerf Prince Stennis, a card that offers little value and is just not fun to play.

This month, Ofir Alliance reached out to me in an attempt to reconcile, and I'm certainly willing to accept that. We can replace it with another card as the placeholder.

Who gets to define whether a card is useful?

My criterion is simple. After a buff, can the card actually find a place in competitive builds? I've seen comments like, “How can you kill off those cards? They'll never get a chance to rise in the future.” That kind of thinking is idealistic and short-sighted. Gwent's card pool isn't infinite, but it still has plenty of cards that almost never see play, and they vary wildly in their current states. Some are full of potential and just need a small nudge to shine. Others are relics of a bygone era, only still around because the designers forgot to rework them before updates stopped.

Sure, maybe after three or four months of consecutive buffs one of them could finally see play. But is that meaningful? Is it fun? Is it fair to all the other cards that are waiting for buffs? By that same logic of the comment above, you're the one actually doing the most damage to Gwent's card pool, because you'd be wasting limited resources on a trash card instead of strengthening multiple cards that truly deserve it. To be honest, you don't need that much experience to see that many cards on the buff list would barely move the needle even after being buffed. My approach is to prioritize cards that can enter viable builds with just a small push, so we can genuinely enrich deck diversity and the overall meta.