The monster "Consume" deck is absolutely scandalous. I honestly don't see how any deck of other faction can fight the "Nekker/Lizard/Dune-Sandworm" consuming strategy. :(

Easy... Dagon with even those new dementified weather cards can... Foltest with multiplied infantry made gold could too... Henselt/Margarita/siege engines too... But Dagon & weather is the best, I think... Have a dimeritium bomb ready too, just in case :-)

LEARN from your opponents... I started using the same deck you describe too, it looks so innocent, yet it is dangerous as hell...

I did the same thing as you, but I made myself a Harald the Cripple Tuirseach Axeman deck... 1 week later -> Nerfed. To be fair, it was waaay too strong, but a way to refund scraps for recently nerfed cards would be nice - at least in Beta. The whole point is to test balance and whatnot, isn't it?

People as sson as they saw me play that card, they usually instakilled it off. Unfortunately now Skellige can't balance the strength loss of its fighters except it they have the luck to draw warcry cards.

I also started by playing NR only... Where are the good ol' times when the poor infantry spawned an exact copy and not two base copies - it was a perfect powerplay to win most of the games when played with Foltest without using any offensive card... Anyway this strategy became soon popular and well known, so either everyone was using it, or, everyone developped a counter- strategy.

So, what I want to say with this is, if you will be using but one faction (and perhaps one and the same strategy), you only will be likely to loose more... If you play the ranked matches then most definitely... The game does not choose the opponents randomly, it follows the patterns the players play and pairs them accordingly. So what I personaly do is start to play one faction/strategy and use it as long as I win, and as soon as I loose the first game, I switch to different strategy... Try the same and you will see you will be succesful. Use the confidence of your opponents against them - consume strategy players are so confident - and yet a well timed move can disrupt their whole thing... Nilfgaardians for example tend to use all their cards in the first round - god knows why - but they like to do it... They like to use Cahir card to be able to play the leader card at least twice - but they do it often at the wrong time which helps you to win the game too... Etc. etc. etc. Anyway, there is no universal strategy or deck capable of beating any other strategy... That is why you have to change yours too.

I play a lot, and I can usualy make 1000 ore units in 3 days - that means 10 new kegs. Collecting that I usualy can gather at least 500 scraps and of course I mill the spare cards - all this gives pretty good possibilities to forge new cards and decks each 3 days...

You forget about the blacksmith. I have 2 in my deck and they help immensly.
I don't like these changes tho, it's a pretty heavy blow to the Skellige deck. People had no trouble whatsoever countering my axeman with scorch, lock or dimeritium bombs. I'm kind of disappointed by these choices and I don't feel like playing anymore 'til they made their mind about all this.

Yeah but if you have three and priestesses then even if you kill the first that doesn't always stop it. I was having great success with a weaken deck before this fix.

Now that I think about it, the axeman's nerf made the savage bear completely useless. I can also remove my drummond maidens from my deck since it revolved around the synergy with the bear. :(

Uhmm, savage baar can still be used with the drummond maidens, that card that transform into bear, the bear that got buffed depending on how much unit is weakened, that neutral skill card that double the damage of weakened unit, etc.

Well, the axeman benefits from enemies being weakened, so the savage bear still does that. It's now more of a negative, but you can still use it with other units that benefit from weakening or with cards like warcry.

Again, thanks for the tips. I now decided to radically change my strategy. I'm now using a "Control Deck". Very few creatures, lots of damage cards. Very agressive. I've been very successful. I've been slaughtering the enemy, really.
Alas, it's not the kind of game I like. I really prefer the "army metaphor" decks where every card seems to symbolise a unit or a creature. In fact most of my cards are Neutral. Only 10% of my deck is NR. While all the other decks is the opposite.

I'm winning, but I don't like the games I'm playing :(

I sure hope CDP will give more character to the NR in the next update.
Anyway, when CDP resets all the decks when Gwent leaves closed Beta, I inted to collect all the cards and play with every deck. I just tried upgrading solely NR becuse it's by far my favourite one, aesthetically speaking. :)

That's the way to do it & good luck... Why, there can be fun even in loosing... I like to play sometimes just to observe how others use certain strategies and cards and learn... And collecting cards themselves is fun even greater... Nothing better than, say, collect 1000 ores, win a keg or two to that for tiers finishing, along with about 1000 scraps - the game is very generous with rewards for finishing tiers... And then to open them and listen to that troll's funny comments :D

I gave CDP more than enough suggestions for new cards in the feedback, many character cards among them, since there are a lot of characters in the Witcher's world that would deserve a place in gwent... What about queen Calanthé of Cintra for example... Captain Vincent or his lover Carmen, charachters from The Witcher 1 - that would be a perfect duo if they co-operated together like I proposed - we would have even a story going on on the battlefield... I even proposed new "Character" cathegory - a cathegory of cards that would exist only in one instance on the battlefield at the same time... There was only one Geralt, Dethmold, Triss Merigold etc., right? So why should, say, 6 Johnnies roam the battlefield (Operator vs Johnny)... Off all the things I proposed they made only Cleaver and Whoreson Junior so far (not necessarily because I suggested them of course), and there are so many good charachters that would bring spice and fun to the game...

As for the aesthetics and looking at Nilfgaard, oh... waste of words... To mention an example, the nilfgaardian Vicovaro medic is probably the ugliest card ever... And speaking of aesthetics of a strategy, well, even a strategy can be elegant... Like the Blue Mountain Commandos dancing around Fireball Traps and devastating the opponents effort to bring at least some cards to the board - I like that... You'r right, bombarding the opponent with Alzur's thunder, Scorch or weather - brute force... Where's the art in that...

Anyone has problems with skellige where you do not draw any card after you have discarded them?

Fine... If I was paired today 2 times then it is much... Fuck the beta excuse. How am I to beta test this? By staring at the looking-for-worthy-opponent 10 hours a day? Shite work this, CD Project, and to be honest I cannot understand how you could ever succesfuly manage to put the Witchers to the market... Was the beta testing also like this???