Hi all,
Did any of you manged to win that batlle on highest difficulty lvl? I have fully upgraded camp. But i've lost a few golden cards durring the campaign. Eyc, Gabor and Rayla.
I'm struggling with it for a few days now, trying different deck builds and i can't defeat that nilfgardian bastard!
His ability to draw 3 additional cards from his enormous 90 card deck to his hand is killing me. He can win even if i have 100 points (or even more) of adventage over him after pass!!!

I am experienced Gwent Player and If whole Thronebreaker game wasn't a big challange even on the hardest difficulty than this battle.... it feels impossible to win...
I'm begging you please help me
Did any of you manged to win this nightmare?

Battle is not that hard,i won with knight spam deck easilty since u can get 300+ points in single round with it.Just use reinforce on adepts to add mass knights into ur deck and save ur combo for last round, u have to win round 1 tho.

Hello.

I won battle on first attempt using Skelige warriors + Lyrian Scytheman + Alchemists.
First round won by Skelige Wariors alone (something around 72 to 68).

Second round Lyrian Scytheman deployed with card that allow You to draw all of them from Your deck, Skellige warriors resurected from graveyard and Alchemists.
With this comibnation I had around 350 points at end - enough to win battle.
Also Mahakam Beer (or whatever its called) card was useful, since it was giving me 4 points for every enemy turn.

I am sorry that I do not remember names precisely - I was playing in polish language version and I have finished campaning already so I can not get back to my deck and check names in english.

Best regards.

R1 I used rivian pikemen (have 5 of them in the deck) so it's instant 30 points with high morale.
Then I play around with stray slingers to buff Gascon, and r3 ez win with black rayla, reynard, gascon, etc..

Thank you for all of your posts I've finaly manged to beat this lvl
with spam of Lyrian Scytheman.

There is also a "Fury" solution, with destroying an entire aep dahy's deck in the 1st round, then finishing his hand off in the 2nd. It's only possible if you have requisited ballistae earlier.
The Deck is Angreni Blade, Manticore Trophy, 5 Ballistae, 5 Pathfinders, 5 Adepts (2 cloning of the Scouts in the first round is essential for the victory), 5 Medics, 1(2 for higher initial draw rolls) upgraded(!!!) Bomber(s), 2 Pitfalls, Arnjolf, Blacksmith (Marching Orders, Reinforcements, Decoy, Any card), Eyck, the rest is entirely optional.
The strategy is to create 2 Fire rows, then deploy Arnjolf and as much as possible ballistae as fast as possible. At the rounds around 5 you need to expand your pathfinders count with 2 adepts to 9 and deploy them with reinforcements card in time to repopulate your hand before it runs out. The remaining Adepts should create more ballistae, for the 2nd round. Then just keep rotating your pathfinders back and forth, to and from, deck and graveyard, using Angreni Blade, Medics and shooting out your worked out pathfinders to free the space on battlefield. Having that done, you will have guaranteed enjoyment of the 30 rounds of burning agony of the nilfs, to the last one in the deck. The 2nd round use blacksmith to summon another several ballistae (created with adepts in the 1st round) and serve them with the topping of Eyck and whatever you like from the rest of your deck.
!!!===Patch 1.2 Update===!!!
Due to enormous cut in gold received in this patch, on Bonebreaker difficulty you'll never build enough structures for the army specified above, so here I put what can be substituted to make full eradication tactic still work.
1. You'll have army cap of 200, with -25% mess hall upgrade.
2. You'll have only basic adepts - no big deal, perhaps this is even for better, as you spawned scouts will have less hp and easier to snipe by ballistae for the merry go round.
3. Pitfalls will not be deployed - again, it could be even for the better, as it'll allow more nilfs burning simultaneously and therefore result in higher overall damage per turn.
4. The principle, sequence and timings are essentially the same.

It is possible, with a bit of luck and point stealing units you can turn the tide easily. However, the fight, similarly to several other fights in game is bugged. I lost several times just because the enemy's general used his special ability two times in a row. I also won several battles during the game even though I literally lost them. CD Projekt, fix your game, it brings you shame!
Also, the fact that you cannot just resume from this battleafter quitting the game is utter nonsense! Why? Why am I forced to repeat the useless part before it? And why do I have to watch the beginning of the intro each time I start the game (plus, thanks to that I realized that the bounty hunter who releases the narrator is an utter idiot)? Why press and click through three screens which makes no other sense than to just piss the people who have bought the game?

Sorry for the rant, I am really annoyed by the fact that this battle I have just finished had to be repeated so many times due to a bug (and that leaving today would force me to go through the previous one and all the narration-spree again).
Not cool, CDP, not cool. After this whole Thronebreaker thing, with all of the bad PR, and talk of real like politics references in your next game, I am pretty worried about Cyberpunk and I am not sure I will pre-order (which was my intention before).

Yeah, can't pass this battle on a middle difficulty. Other battles(except some puzzles) were pretty easy.
Aep picks a card with 18(!) power very often. So somme cards on the desk become 50+ power. %)
And takes cards on and on and on.
Seen letsplays from 2018 - players on a hardmode plays easy-breezy.
Maybe it's karma... or maybe some update made the battle a DarkSoulsGwent.

You can just forget about field control and stop worrying about his strength boosts if you employ a deck based around cloning his card power.

Let him get nice buff cards, then use combinations of horse thief, strays infiltrators and alchemists to steal his high numbers right onto your cards.He's so dumb he'll sometimes even strength boost your strays infiltrator before it comes back to your side of the board..

After cloning his high numbers with horse thief or infiltrator, knock his card power down to nothing (without destroying them) by using Mahakam Shieldbearer. Then clone those guys into high power beasts with alchemists. I combined this with my usual strats of Regiment drummers & Meve: Warhammer to have access to specific summons. Refresh your orders with Reynard and Hajduks.

Use Muzzle on his Alba Armoured Cavalry to have another card that he'll relentlessly keep buffing with his Leader's Order. This gives you another option to clone with Alchemist.

Once I switched to the cloning tactic from my usual Strays of Spalla/Strays Bomber strats, it went from impossible to done in first try. I actually totally screwed up implementing these strats I've described, due to misclicks and poor placement, but still ended up 200 points ahead of him by the time I ran out of cards in round 2. He was unable to catch up (but got close).

Unlike what some people argue the Upper Keep battle is not badly-conceived or "broken". In matter of fact it's cunning thinking from the devs.

Thru almost all the of game the logical thinking of most players is: more damage = faster win. Meaning, the more damage you give to the enemy, the more the vitory is assured.
Then, all of a sudden, the victory conditions are turned upside down.
For this battle one must forget all previous strategies used and think "outside the box". Now the strategy is not to hurt the enemy (since the enemy has an almost endless supplies of fresh units) but rather to boost our own forces and overwhelm the enemy.

At first I admit I too was frustrated with this, but after some time passed I admit that CDP made a master move, forcing people to rethink their entire strategy and adapt to the conditions. Isn't that what real war strategy is like? ;)

Except that by the time you reach this, you've maxed your deck and if you need to craft more cards you're SOL. Meaning if I've pursued a strategy of steamrolling all enemies, and the final battle requires a different strategy, at least give me the chance to redo my deck. As it is I'm stuck and I don't have enough spies/horse thieves to take him on. At least let me dismiss the dwarves "Thank you very much for your service you may return to Mahakam now." "Reynard! Train more spies!"

It was a super hard battle, I ended up winning it (after quite a few attempts and different strategies) with 161 points to 160! I was so relieved. Very satisfying, though.

My strategy was to use all the Skellige warriors in R1, and the spawn and destroy 3 deathwish units runestone to get more in my graveyard, going down to 4 cards and killing as many Skellige units as I could while keeping ahead, to get more points on them in the graveyard. Pass R2, then R3 set up the Balistas and Arnjolf early, and keep using them to ping down enemy units to 1 (NOT kill them, as then they'll be replaced). Use the Skellige guy to resurrect all your previous Skellige warriors, and you'll end your round with lots of points and NG should just have a bunch of 1 strength units. Then you just wait for them to play their extra turns and pray.

Oh, and I also used the draw 2 cards and set their power to 1 trophy in round 1, to hopefully get more Skellige warriors for the graveyard, or the dwarfs who set enemies to their power that can be saved for round 3.

The other strategies I've read above are cool too, and might well do better, but this one has the advantage that you don't need many army camp upgrades at all (I didn't have much upgraded), as the Skellige units come for free and the Balistas are the only other high provision unit that's essential.