How to counter the Saint Alessia deck?

Athra_Sohlstavir · January 24

Right now, this is the deck that I just cannot figure out how to counter it. Pretty much every time I'm going up against it, I end up on the losing side.

So, how do you go about countering this deck? Which patron(s) do you pick that may help? Any particular things that you should definitely do, as well as definitely don't, with this deck in play?

SeaGtGruff · January 24

Once I realized that the NPCs were just going to use that deck to knock out any agents I happened to have up-- most of the time knocking out their own at the same time-- my first strategy was to just buy every agent I could and then use Hlaalu to convert them into Prestige (assuming Hlaalu was in the match).

Then I changed strategy to just try to buy the "knock out" cards before the NPC could.

My current strategy is to try to buy the 4-coin cards that let you either knock out all active agents or return cards from your Discard pile to your Draw pile (before the NPC buys them, obviously), as well as the 5-coin and 7-coin agents that let you knock out 1 or 2 of your opponent's agents. Most of the time I use the 4-coin card to try to manipulate my deck in my favor, and rarely use it to knock out everyone's agents except as a last resort. The 5-coin agent that lets you discard 2 cards and draw replacements can also be useful. And the agents which give you Prestige if you can get a 3-card combo are also nice.

Personofsecrets · January 25

Sometimes you can hope for a power card like Psijics Insight or Customs Seizure to catch you up, but there are many starts that you can't really do much about.

Athra_Sohlstavir · January 25

Thanks for the replies so far!

Though I forgot to mention one thing; I've not really been doing the playing against NPCs, but other players. They're the ones that are wiping me out with this deck!

Personofsecrets · January 26

Sure, it's real players who are the ones who know to abuse the patron power and leave the tavern dead. Unfortunately, not all gamestates can be countered easily or even countered at all. Alessia creates those game states within the first few turns.

spartaxoxo · January 27

That's the neat part, you don't.

Seraphayel · January 27

Any deck that offers cards that give you power. Without tanks the Alessia deck is very vulnerable to any power deck like Pelin or Ansei. With just one of their cards you can take out multiple agents easily. This also works if the opponent has favored the Alessia patron and you get power by doing so, offering another option to kill the agents. It‘s a really easy deck to counterplay.

Personofsecrets · January 27

Seraphayel wrote: »

Any deck that offers cards that give you power. Without tanks the Alessia deck is very vulnerable to any power deck like Pelin or Ansei. With just one of their cards you can take out multiple agents easily. This also works if the opponent has favored the Alessia patron and you get power by doing so, offering another option to kill the agents. It‘s a really easy deck to counterplay.

That's not necessarily how things work.

If someone didn't have agents, then the player with power generators gets to earn prestige. Against an alessia player though, the power has to be used up over and over and over. That's to say that agents counter power generation.

SeaGtGruff · January 27

I think what they meant was that Alessia agents have low "health," so they're easy to take out with small amounts of Power. You wouldn't want that to be your only strategy, but it's sound advice when combined with other strategies.

Personofsecrets · January 27

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I think what they meant was that Alessia agents have low "health," so they're easy to take out with small amounts of Power. You wouldn't want that to be your only strategy, but it's sound advice when combined with other strategies.

Alessia generating agents is what leads to toxic blowouts.

If someone misses on their power generation and doesn't want to turn the Alessia dial from unfavored (or can't), then they start to get blown out by the snowballing advantage that the agents generate.

There absolutely is a game type that happens where the tavern is dead and the first player get's to turn Alessia. It's unnecessarily difficult to counter this skilless line of play.

Anyone that would diminish these toxic asepcts by saying something like "no this is really okay because of x, y, or z" is just wrong. The times when a toxic strategy can be overcome does not negate the times when that toxic strategy causes a "non-game" where one person doesn't get to play.

Seraphayel · January 28

Personofsecrets wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

Any deck that offers cards that give you power. Without tanks the Alessia deck is very vulnerable to any power deck like Pelin or Ansei. With just one of their cards you can take out multiple agents easily. This also works if the opponent has favored the Alessia patron and you get power by doing so, offering another option to kill the agents. It‘s a really easy deck to counterplay.

That's not necessarily how things work.

If someone didn't have agents, then the player with power generators gets to earn prestige. Against an alessia player though, the power has to be used up over and over and over. That's to say that agents counter power generation.

I mean… there’s a reason why Alessia agents all besides Pelinal have just 1 HP and the deck has no tanks. You can get easily swarmed by them, but you can easily get rid of them as well with just one single Power card (and it doesn't even need to be a good one). Cards that cost only 4 coins give you 3 (green/black) or 4 (red) power and we're not even calculating combos here yet. Countering Alessia with these cards is super easy and super effective.

Personofsecrets wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I think what they meant was that Alessia agents have low "health," so they're easy to take out with small amounts of Power. You wouldn't want that to be your only strategy, but it's sound advice when combined with other strategies.

Alessia generating agents is what leads to toxic blowouts.

If someone misses on their power generation and doesn't want to turn the Alessia dial from unfavored (or can't), then they start to get blown out by the snowballing advantage that the agents generate.

There absolutely is a game type that happens where the tavern is dead and the first player get's to turn Alessia. It's unnecessarily difficult to counter this skilless line of play.

Anyone that would diminish these toxic asepcts by saying something like "no this is really okay because of x, y, or z" is just wrong. The times when a toxic strategy can be overcome does not negate the times when that toxic strategy causes a "non-game" where one person doesn't get to play.

I've yet to play a match where Alessia was the reason I lost. I wouldn't call it skilless either. Crow is an absolutely skilless deck, making Alessia work isn't. A dead tavern can lead to this, yes, but at that point both players are wasting ressources on gameplay that might not help any of them win. I'm not denying these games can happen, but they're rare and if you chose the right deck(s) to counter won't be that difficult or hard to overcome.

Alessia is one of the decks that requires you to know what to do and which action is good and which isn't. Spamming the patron here is as bad as it is with Sorcerer King when you don't have the deck to benefit the playstyle. And spamming the patron is especially bad if the enemy already has gotten one or even more power generating cards.

Personofsecrets · January 29

There may be games with Alessia that don't follow the dead tavern toxic play pattern, but those games do not diminish in even the slightest way that the toxic play pattern games are real, happen way more often than should be allowed, and are a dirty stain on the game as a whole.

vuwuv · February 5

Devs can change patron costs like they did with Orgnum, but I don't know how many years it will take to do it. I'm happy not many players pick Alessia deck (more coming when Gold Road turns into DLC).

Seraphayel · February 5

Personofsecrets wrote: »

There may be games with Alessia that don't follow the dead tavern toxic play pattern, but those games do not diminish in even the slightest way that the toxic play pattern games are real, happen way more often than should be allowed, and are a dirty stain on the game as a whole.

What's the real issue though? I don't get it. One green / black / red Power card and your opponent that plays Alessia doesn't have anything going for them. The agents are killed so easily that you just cannot support this gameplay. I mean even the Alessia deck has more than just one counter measure to prevent the toxic gameplay you're mentioning.

vuwuv · February 5

Seraphayel wrote: »

Personofsecrets wrote: »

There may be games with Alessia that don't follow the dead tavern toxic play pattern, but those games do not diminish in even the slightest way that the toxic play pattern games are real, happen way more often than should be allowed, and are a dirty stain on the game as a whole.

What's the real issue though? I don't get it. One green / black / red Power card and your opponent that plays Alessia doesn't have anything going for them. The agents are killed so easily that you just cannot support this gameplay. I mean even the Alessia deck has more than just one counter measure to prevent the toxic gameplay you're mentioning.

One power card is surely not enough. When opponent gets more sergeants, economy starts snowballing, they buy those morihauses and whitestrakes giving them prestige. To beat that stuff you need some money and rich tavern.

But if the patron costs 1 coin at unfavored position, that'll change a great deal. You'll still be able to buy cards while keeping your opponent at bay.

Patron cost is what actually makes Alessia and Rajhin broken: you can't afford buying cards and using patron at the same time. And you can't afford using treasury cause only one patron use per turn, so no more money for you.

Seraphayel · February 5

One power card lets you kill multiple agents. As I said above, most of them grant either 3 or 4 power so one single card can knock out the entire army of agents.

Then you have Saint‘s Wrath which only costs 4, Ayleid Defector as a contract (5) etc etc. The deck itself offers several counter measures already. The agents are of no threat when you can kill them easily.

If that’s not enough just pick Orgnum as a patron so you can always generate power to kill them. Heck if you pick Mora, the entire playstyle of Alessia becomes obsolete because it simply doesn’t work anymore.

If you‘re playing two slow decks against an opponent that chose Alessia, that’s your fault. I can imagine how drawn out matches with Rahjin / Alessia / Almalexia / X can be, but these situations can easily be avoided. If someone plays an agent heavy deck, you simply have to pick either Psijic or a power deck to counter (or Rahjin, if you are fine with just making the match longer than it needs to be).

vuwuv · February 5

Seraphayel wrote: »

One power card lets you kill multiple agents. As I said above, most of them grant either 3 or 4 power so one single card can knock out the entire army of agents.

Then you have Saint‘s Wrath which only costs 4, Ayleid Defector as a contract (5) etc etc. The deck itself offers several counter measures already. The agents are of no threat when you can kill them easily.

If that’s not enough just pick Orgnum as a patron so you can always generate power to kill them. Heck if you pick Mora, the entire playstyle of Alessia becomes obsolete because it simply doesn’t work anymore.

If you‘re playing two slow decks against an opponent that chose Alessia, that’s your fault. I can imagine how drawn out matches with Rahjin / Alessia / Almalexia / X can be, but these situations can easily be avoided. If someone plays an agent heavy deck, you simply have to pick either Psijic or a power deck to counter (or Rahjin, if you are fine with just making the match longer than it needs to be).

Well, picking 3 power heavy decks to counter should give a chance high enough to get all necessary cards, I guess. It doesn't tell that the patron power is not broken. Remember devs balancing Orgnum, that should mean something.

Also players tend to choose Alessia deck by their last pick (Rajhin too lol) to lessen the chances to get countered.

Seraphayel · February 5

You don’t need three power decks, you really just need one. The patron power is not broken, you can start spamming it asap, but you‘re just cluttering your deck while it’s still full of useless 1 coin cards. If you don’t thin out or sort your deck, you‘ll have a lot of rounds where you achieve nothing. I just can’t imagine how I have to play against someone abundantly using Alessia that I’m going to lose in the end.

vuwuv · February 5

Seraphayel wrote: »

You don’t need three power decks, you really just need one. The patron power is not broken, you can start spamming it asap, but you‘re just cluttering your deck while it’s still full of useless 1 coin cards. If you don’t thin out or sort your deck, you‘ll have a lot of rounds where you achieve nothing. I just can’t imagine how I have to play against someone abundantly using Alessia that I’m going to lose in the end.

It might happen when there are no decent cards at the tavern. And those Sergeants, it's almost a Warrior Wave, even better cause an agent.

Northwold · March 13

To an extent, play the Alessia deck right back. If the wipe all agents card turns up in the tavern or an agent that knocks out agents, try to get it before the other player does. Take the agents where you can that allow you to exchange two cards in your draw for others, to reduce the need to hit the tavern button early on because you will have more of an ability to pick and choose your hand and get rid of gold cards (leaving you free yourself to use the Alessia patron). Rahjin can be helpful for its agent removing cards and gold.

Stop using the Alessia patron once you have accumulated enough agents and start playing for power, at which point you will crush Alessia-addicted opponents because their cards will be too weak.

If you're not yet comfortable with how the Alessia deck behaves, play it to death against NPCs until you are (concede NPC matches if you don't own the deck until they choose it).