And dont give me that "use anti wepon counters" crap,
keeping them in a deck is counter productive and almost all the free unlockable ones are trash when it comes to counter stats.

Why are anti-weapon cards bad? Nearly every deck uses weaps to ramp into things. I use bar fight in virtually all of my decks. Great little bit of extra damage for aggro decks, good solid hit for AP build decks and ofc, great for sniping weapons before ppl go into Jad, HD, Barrelchest, etc.

There are two ways to counter Linza. One is by stealing/removing her gold (works against Karam/Tetsu), the other is by breaking her weapons.

And in second case, there are two best cards at doing that - Kalphite Emissary and Bar Fight.
If you manage to snipe out Linza's weapon, not only she will spend support on nothing, she might also die via barrel-bots and similar.

Originally posted by tyflikw:

Why are anti-weapon cards bad? Nearly every deck uses weaps to ramp into things. I use bar fight in virtually all of my decks. Great little bit of extra damage for aggro decks, good solid hit for AP build decks and ofc, great for sniping weapons before ppl go into Jad, HD, Barrelchest, etc.

Im just a little salty about it,
I run a low cost raptor armor nuke deck with minor healing and agrro.

On good starts I can get 40+ armor and Dondakan's Cannon and 4base and max out Hp by the finial fight provided they survive.

It does well against most other Hero's with the exception of Ozan,
Otherwise 9/10 times I have lost to Linza just because she stacks unpredictably and insainly fast.

I'd need to invoke dark magic clarivoance to determine if they got a bad draw, or if they are going to play a an equipment card on the first orsecond turn of a round, or if the antiwepon counter (barfight) will chip off enough durability before they stack it to the point that Its super glued to them and wrapped in Nokia's.

Whats worst is that all her counter cards are massive deck space hogs and most of the time don't do nearly enough to stop the stacking. as most of the Nuke Linzas Ive played against use high gold/risk cards as insurance for securing the equipment.
(one went as far as to knock their health down to 10 to secure a 12 gold lead.)

Like seriously, I love my Raptor deck and all but I have the weakness in terms of high damage aggro.
I can't do damage to a 13/8 sword.
and if it isnt destroyed by the second round the game is essentally over,

Linza has some seriously spcific counterplay...

Originally posted by Alpha100f:

There are two ways to counter Linza. One is by stealing/removing her gold (works against Karam/Tetsu), the other is by breaking her weapons.

And in second case, there are two best cards at doing that - Kalphite Emissary and Bar Fight.
If you manage to snipe out Linza's weapon, not only she will spend support on nothing, she might also die via barrel-bots and similar.

At which point I have to ask is, why is it that you have to thread a needle to counter her...
Serious question, Her kit is almost absurdly diverse and requires a handful of spcific cards to counter her with.
She gets armor, and base attack, and wepon stacking, and Temporary attack, AND all of it has incredible synergy. Honestly the most effective thing Ive seen used on her is deleteing her gold but even then there are not alot of gold starvation cards that fit in well with most decks and would be better spent on something with more synergy.

And Again, there is the factor of timing the use of these cards as linza players have complete control over the outcome of a turn (because her cards have so much utility)
counter play her stack 1 turn early and its wasted, counter play it 1 turn late and (in the case of bar fight) you just took a full hit of a stacked god sword to the face.


Nuke Arine I find has the same issue and similarly and particular set of spcific needed counters...

You know what,
Aside from RaptorNuke I get the impression that most of the other Nuke builds have very low counterplay potential.

Right, you usually can't break Linza's big weapon once she has added enough durability, and sniping the weapon in the same spot where she equips it depends on a lot of luck.

i have played her with half of the characters already, she has won in all of them. the biggest problem with her is her weapon cards have no catch to them. no secondary hinderence. mostly every other card has a catch, why cant these?

A few things:

Linza is, arguably, the most consistently good character in the game. Most of the recent nerfs were because of Linza, especially nerfing things like Dust Devil and a lot of the sustain nerfs, since Grief Linza was so dominant and had too much healing to where it never died. They also hit big weapon Linza by nerfing Pulverize incredibly hard.

Here's the deal: Linza is far from unbeatable. No legend can beat all other legends every time. That breaks the balance circle. Raptor is a strong tank character, but he should never be able to beat all 6 legends. Raptors toughest matchups are actually Arianne, Venescula (if she's aggro, not so much AP), and Linza.

Linza's weapons do build extremely fast, there's no denying this. A good Big Weapon Linza can build up an extremely powerful weapon faster than you can react. This is true. However, there are weapon grief cards for a reason. Kalphite Emmisary and Bar Fight are two of the best cards in the game because they weapon grief.

Before you say "they're bad outside of Linza matchups" lets look at General Slimetoes, one of the most commonly played cards in the game. It drops a 3/2 weapon that a lot of decks rely on. Ozan relies on weapons, though not as much due to access to safe spot, to deal with his big monsters that give him great effects. Nearly every AP deck runs Tormented Demon, which drops a 4/2 weapon. There's literally no reason not to run weapon grief, as the only match up that they're likely to be dead draws is against 1AP Arianne.

You want to know a really good counter that you can tech in 1 copy of for the big weapon match up? It's expensive, but Black Knight Titan can do a ton of damage to Linza, since most Big Weapons are somewhat telegraphed, as most big weapon building combos need 5+ slots to do it and most players (myself included) can get greedy. You can see it coming and drop a BKT and strike them with their 17 attack weapon.

Ogre Chiefton may actually be a better tech card to play, as it's a good counter to both big weapon and AP stacking decks, dealing damage to your rival equal to their attack +4.

So, here's a list of cards that you can throw in to deal with Linza, and most of them have function outside of Linza decks (technically they all do, but the Black Knight Titan isn't as good):

Barfight (sapphire)
Kalphite Emmisary (sapphire) (when did this become a sapphire? I thought it was emerald)
Ogre Chieftan (emerald)
Black Knight Titan (diamond)

If you can't afford any of these, even the sapphire, there's also other, though admittedly worse, alternatives:

Black Chinchompa (default)
Giant Rat (emerald, don't craft this, but use it if you have it)

Here are also some weapon grief exclusive to The Raptor:

Crazed Whaler (emerald)
Troll General (emerald, removes weapon attack)
Bash (default)
Slam (emerald)

So yea, the TL;DR version: You have plenty of weapon grief options, and they're good against any deck, not just Linza.

Could just revert the changes on BlackKnight Titan . That card was fun before :(

Originally posted by TheVoid:

A few things:

Linza is, arguably, the most consistently good character in the game. Most of the recent nerfs were because of Linza, especially nerfing things like Dust Devil and a lot of the sustain nerfs, since Grief Linza was so dominant and had too much healing to where it never died. They also hit big weapon Linza by nerfing Pulverize incredibly hard.

Here's the deal: Linza is far from unbeatable. No legend can beat all other legends every time. That breaks the balance circle. Raptor is a strong tank character, but he should never be able to beat all 6 legends. Raptors toughest matchups are actually Arianne, Venescula (if she's aggro, not so much AP), and Linza.

Linza's weapons do build extremely fast, there's no denying this. A good Big Weapon Linza can build up an extremely powerful weapon faster than you can react. This is true. However, there are weapon grief cards for a reason. Kalphite Emmisary and Bar Fight are two of the best cards in the game because they weapon grief.

Before you say "they're bad outside of Linza matchups" lets look at General Slimetoes, one of the most commonly played cards in the game. It drops a 3/2 weapon that a lot of decks rely on. Ozan relies on weapons, though not as much due to access to safe spot, to deal with his big monsters that give him great effects. Nearly every AP deck runs Tormented Demon, which drops a 4/2 weapon. There's literally no reason not to run weapon grief, as the only match up that they're likely to be dead draws is against 1AP Arianne.

You want to know a really good counter that you can tech in 1 copy of for the big weapon match up? It's expensive, but Black Knight Titan can do a ton of damage to Linza, since most Big Weapons are somewhat telegraphed, as most big weapon building combos need 5+ slots to do it and most players (myself included) can get greedy. You can see it coming and drop a BKT and strike them with their 17 attack weapon.

Ogre Chiefton may actually be a better tech card to play, as it's a good counter to both big weapon and AP stacking decks, dealing damage to your rival equal to their attack +4.

So, here's a list of cards that you can throw in to deal with Linza, and most of them have function outside of Linza decks (technically they all do, but the Black Knight Titan isn't as good):

Barfight (sapphire)
Kalphite Emmisary (sapphire) (when did this become a sapphire? I thought it was emerald)
Ogre Chieftan (emerald)
Black Knight Titan (diamond)

If you can't afford any of these, even the sapphire, there's also other, though admittedly worse, alternatives:

Black Chinchompa (default)
Giant Rat (emerald, don't craft this, but use it if you have it)

Here are also some weapon grief exclusive to The Raptor:

Crazed Whaler (emerald)
Troll General (emerald, removes weapon attack)
Bash (default)
Slam (emerald)

So yea, the TL;DR version: You have plenty of weapon grief options, and they're good against any deck, not just Linza.

Problem is almost none of them are deaults,
Games still in a weak beta stage and I can't exactly dump money into a game that might fail.
So all her strong counter play is locked behind RNG and a pay wall,
While her core kit can easly be built out of her set and the basic cards + a few strong craftable weps.

And, the the point of the problem is that you have to snipe her,
Which is a fairly unpreditable process still,
She could force out and strong wep on round 1, and by round 2 stack it to a point where its nearly impossilbe to take off without nearly killing yourself of just flat out dying.

Like you said, she is consistantly good-
But realisticly, againts everyone.

As someone that plays Big Weapon Linza, I can say that she's very vulnerable to most of the weapon grief cards I just listed earlier. You don't need to dump money into the game, just use gem shards. If you have been playing for more than a week or so, you should have gotten the 1k shards from Jagex, use them to craft 2 Bar Fight and/or Emissaries. If you haven't played that long, you just need to recycle some of the more useless cards that you have, even if you don't have more than 2 of them. You only need 100 gem shards for 2 copies of either card.

Originally posted by TheVoid:

As someone that plays Big Weapon Linza, I can say that she's very vulnerable to most of the weapon grief cards I just listed earlier. You don't need to dump money into the game, just use gem shards. If you have been playing for more than a week or so, you should have gotten the 1k shards from Jagex, use them to craft 2 Bar Fight and/or Emissaries. If you haven't played that long, you just need to recycle some of the more useless cards that you have, even if you don't have more than 2 of them. You only need 100 gem shards for 2 copies of either card.

I have gotten that 1k shards, and yes I crafted both sets of them and I run them in my deck.
out of 20 linza matches I sniped at most 3 of her builds thanks to turn order and failed predictions.

This is when experience comes into play. You're going to need to learn how Linzas play and when to drop those weapon griefing cards. This format is harder to predict than previous ones, but it's pretty safe in second or third slot if you're second, third or fourth if you're first. Older formats would have you pop one in slot 1 if you're second or 2 if you're first and you'd usually hit a weapon, but with the nerf on Dust Devil, second slot Devils, and thus first slot weapons, are all but non-existant now.

Common plays are usually a card to lower the cost of the weapon, such as Dwarven Miner, then a weapon in slot 2, but this is getting predictable so now I've personally been altering this setup to go slot 3. You need to just play against other players and learn how often Linza drops weapons in which slots.

There is an inherent flaw with the strategy of counter-weapon play. Not only do you need to "read" when you will need it, you simply won't always have them in hand. You cannot put a lot of them in your deck and still expect to beat regular SMOrc decks like AP Vanescula.
If you don't have the Bar Fight and Linza gets beyond 4 Durability, you're basically boned. OP makes a solid point in that regard.