Emerald Legionnaire — First Black Chantry Nerf?

I think it's useful to remember that Unmasking was first printed back when most allies were overcosted. I remember when it was first printed, nobody seemed to understand how good it was, and I was able to trade for a pile of them for almost nothing - all because back then, there were almost no viable ally-based decks. (A list made even shorter by the extreme difficulty of acquiring enough Nephandi to make a deck at that time.)

Now that there are so many more good allies in the game, ones that would be viable even without Unmasking, Unmasking seems to be more of a sore point. But at the time it was printed, it absolutely enabled a lot of decks that were otherwise unplayable.

TryDeflectingThisGrapple wrote:

Please describe the myriad ways in which Unmasking can be stopped when played. Then please describe the myriad ways in which Unmasking can be burned after being put into play.
...

This was the intended gist - its VERY hard to prevent the Unmasking from hitting the table,
...
For something with the potential for generating a powerful and persistent effect, the Unmasking ITSELF in too difficult to interact with.

You seem very focused on the card itself, but I have yet to see a game where unmasking was played and it somehow made the game unwinnable for the other parties. I would like to hear what kind of decks do you play and why can't they deal with 1 permanent intercept? You don't mention anything about the effects of the card on the table, just the difficulty of removing it, which is kind of by design.

If your deck can't deal with 1 permanent intercept (maybe 2 with carlton) then its, no offense, not a very good deck. There are in my opinion enough solutions, One is universal: oust the player. Second is running uncoiling, which my vote decks will pretty much always do. You can play Ossian and rush the vampires that are responsible for the allies (except in case of legionnaires) thru unmasking. You can play tension in the ranks and smash allies for pool damage. You can run cards that provide permanent stealth (blithe acceptance etc) to counter permanent intercept. etc etc.

If your deck has trouble against unmasking, then it will have even bigger trouble against a dedicated combat wall. I just don't see unmasking as oppressive, but for some reason some people do, and I'd like to hear more about their meta to understand why.

As others have mentioned, unmasking makes ally decks somewhat playable. This doesn't immediately swing fully into the "so good its broken" territory.

Unmasking has the big problem to be "once per game" as any other event in the game. That is, in a game with more than 1 ally deck (and it happens),, you have to choose if you want to play against the intercept you are granting to another player or not. Anyway, if your deck is screwed by a single +1 intercept, run uncoiling...

thelonius wrote:

Anyway, if your deck is screwed by a single +1 intercept, run uncoiling...

It's not just +1 intercept. It's +1 intercept against every action with every ally. Ally decks typically run a wide or horizontal board. Good luck finding enough stealth even with the most dedicated stealth decks to consistently get through.

Running uncoiling shouldn't be the only answer. Non-interactive cards are the opposite of what VTES is in my opinion. The game should be about inviting actions and fun counterplay. Instead you pack in an uncoiling because you might see an unmasking? Silver bullets aren't fun or interactive.

Bloodartist wrote:

TryDeflectingThisGrapple wrote:

Please describe the myriad ways in which Unmasking can be stopped when played. Then please describe the myriad ways in which Unmasking can be burned after being put into play.
...

This was the intended gist - its VERY hard to prevent the Unmasking from hitting the table,
...
For something with the potential for generating a powerful and persistent effect, the Unmasking ITSELF in too difficult to interact with.

You seem very focused on the card itself, but I have yet to see a game where unmasking was played and it somehow made the game unwinnable for the other parties. I would like to hear what kind of decks do you play and why can't they deal with 1 permanent intercept? You don't mention anything about the effects of the card on the table, just the difficulty of removing it, which is kind of by design.

If your deck can't deal with 1 permanent intercept (maybe 2 with carlton) then its, no offense, not a very good deck. There are in my opinion enough solutions, One is universal: oust the player. Second is running uncoiling, which my vote decks will pretty much always do. You can play Ossian and rush the vampires that are responsible for the allies (except in case of legionnaires) thru unmasking. You can play tension in the ranks and smash allies for pool damage. You can run cards that provide permanent stealth (blithe acceptance etc) to counter permanent intercept. etc etc.

If your deck has trouble against unmasking, then it will have even bigger trouble against a dedicated combat wall. ....
.

I'm CERTAIN Darby has built and faced plenty of decks that fall into both categories of "dies like a bitch to 1 standing intercept " and "kills things dead that die like a bitch to one intercept.".

He typically takes issue with non-interactive cards, and while I strongly disagree on Ashurs and Unmasking, its because unlike other cards, I see the problem rooted elsewhere than the card because it allows otherwise unplayable things to stand a chance (which could be preserved by Ashurs and fix problems if it only scooped back minion cards...) while Also giving too much gas to things that work well anyway and elevate to too well status in some games.(imbued unmasking, the best War ghouls decks in 8% of games, tunnel runner decks the 18% of the time they get a great seat in front of a slow wall and behind non bouncing bleeder
...)
Legionnaire decks aren't as good without Unmasking, but what gets hurt by its absence is other decks . Its place in the global meta ecosystem keeps other cheese decks in thier place (to be honest, half of those decks, like weenie voters roll over to Neighbor John with Atonement) .
But Unmasking isn't alone in it's only truly despicable property:
It's an event.
Events need rebalancing. Too many are wall paper but cant be better because they show up and stay. (Its way easier to burn Sense Dep, TBH) . Unmasking should be viewed as proof that the card type is like an extra master. And we know those get out of hand (to the point we should reword Anson, Cebele, Parthenon, etc to grant "two master phases this turn ") .

Unmasking, if it could be proven worse than several other things that haven't changed, could warrant something hurting events that's playable popping up, or additional proliferation of Allies to essentially make it a liability, Similar to Nocturn decks as prey of Dead Hookers Samedi (Reanimated Corpses totally get the better here, between Samedi stealthing and Hookers blocking nocturne recruits) .

Until the broken nonsense that I can achieve EASILY running Cybele, Nana, Aksynia and Parthenon is mitigated by liquidation getting hurt or MMPA generating sources being Erratad, I maintain Legionnaires are solid but not unmanageable(and could survive tiny but unnecessary errata as such) and Unmasking is good to the level of villein, pentex, Jack, PBMonty, and other master cards, as well as weaker than the fact that effects that grant extra MPAs are STACKABLE.

The simplest fix for the game is not on ANY card I've mentioned, but instead on 2 OOT masters we can erratta:

Sudden Reversal
Master

Master: out-of-turn.
Cancel a master or Event card played by another Methuselah as it is played (no cost is paid)

Wash
Master

Master: out-of-turn. Trifle. Do not replace until your next untap phase.
Cancel a master or Event card played by your predator or prey as it is played (no cost is paid). That Methuselah gains a master or Discard phase action (if the canceled card is an out-of-turn master, the master phase action is gained during that Methuselah's next master phase).
(Also this guy)
Santaleous
Camarilla: Santaleous gets +1 bleed for each unique hunting ground in play. He may burn 3 blood to cancel a master or event card as it is played.

I wont concede Unmasking is too much. But I 100% agree that the non-interactivity of Events is too much, that they are like extra masters, and there should be better ways to stop them since they are on the table to stay once played 91% of the time.

DJHedgehog wrote:

It's not just +1 intercept. It's +1 intercept against every action with every ally. Ally decks typically run a wide or horizontal board. Good luck finding enough stealth even with the most dedicated stealth decks to consistently get through.

a.) Its not every action. The intercept is only against vampires, thus Ossian can rush straight through with 1 stealth.

b.) Wide or horizontal board means nothing if +2 stealth goes past all of them at the same time. I actually have started using obfuscate more since my starting days and don't consider unmasking a problem (unless Im drawing really badly). Getting to cycle your stealth cards is almost a good thing. I've said elsewhere that if legionnaires are in front of you, bog-standard stealth bleed deck is perfect against them. Few bleeds of 5 with 2+ stealth and there are no more legionnaires. Same for vote decks. Its when legion is behind you, do they feel difficult to stop (Malks can also bleed backwards though).

Like I said earlier, if you are stumped by +1 permanent intercept your deck isn't very good.
Stop playing all those weenies and start playing vampires that can actually play cards (this from watching lackey games, there seems to be a lot of weenies around).

We had a talk about this thread last night in our local weekly game night, and got a number of laughs out of it. The consensus was that the saying unmasking is broken or a problem is "ridiculous".

There may be discussion about how good legionnaires are, or whether liquidation is healthy for the game, but saying that unmasking is the problem is silly.
(Currently I don't even run unmasking in my own legionnaire deck)