The Season of the Wolf is the first competitive season in the Masters 3 cycle. There was no balance patch with respect to last season, in which Way of the Witcher (WotW) expansion was released. However, a new card: Madoc was introduced as a support to bomb archetype. It found its way to control Scoia’tael builds (pioneered by Adzikov), as well as some Nilfgaard meme decks focused around copying Madoc with Letho:Kingslayer. While the second approach was fashionable mainly in the early season, Precision Strike Madoc proven to be decent in the long run.
Nilfgaard is still triumphant in popularity statistics (-2.1%). Next to Lockdown Ball, the place of Assimilate was conquested by other builds, like Midrange Double Cross and especially Lockdown Nova Cloggers discovered by Russian player prv1605 and then adopted by Shaggy and other players.
Skellige always solid (+0.8%). Last season’s dominant Ursine Lippy and Patricidal Fury Warriors were joined by Battle Trance Gedyneith (or Fish Flappers if you will) and Ursine Warriors.
Scoia’tael popularity didn’t change. It was probably the most varied faction, ranging from control (Precision Strike Madoc) to pointslam (Devo Gift Gezras, Deadeye Ambush Elves) and engines (Devotion Guerilla Movement).
Monsters on the other hand were least varied, with Overwhelming Hunger Viy and Carapace Keltullis as exclusive competitive decks (-0.5%).
Northern Realms witnessed the biggest popularity growth (+3.3%), while being restricted almost only to Uprising Witchers with various tech choices.
Syndicate went even deeper down the niche (-1.4%). Will it ever come back into daylight?