Nerf on Imbued Powers

Why?

Imbued Powers allow for strong, versatile, and permanent effects and equipping them has very little cost since you untap if you succeed. In VTES, you usually untap automatically only from minor things like Abbot or Divine Sign and these effects are considered good because the opportunity cost is so low. Imbued Powers are much stronger than these.

How?

After successfully playing a Power, an Imbued can burn a Conviction to untap right away, otherwise they untap during their discard phase.

What will happen?

It will give a decision to make and will nerf the Powers slightly. Powers remain playable and strong.

I don't see the imbued strong enough to warrant any nerf.

I could theorically understand people wanting to ban them outright because they believe they "don't belong" or anything, but if they stay in the game, they do need all the help they have right now.

Yeah, I would be perfectly content with pretending that expansion never happened.

I have limited experience with imbued. I've never built a deck based on imbued, but I do have a deck that that splashes them in.

Making the untap cost a conviction is a bad idea. I never have enough convictions because you can only recur ONE conviction per turn (per imbued.} A lot of powers cost conviction to activate.

People moan and groan about the imbued (including me) but they aren't as overpowered.

The problem with the imbued is that when they hit the table they CHANGE the game. They are not vampires, cards interact with them differently. If you don't take the time to read the cards and understand how they work, the player who is using them will take advantage of that.

We don't need to nerf the imbued. I'm all for removing them from the game, but not for the sake of the power level, but the effects on the meta-game.

There is an issue with power level for the Imbued, but it doesn't impact some groups, so it's not always visible.

The baseline of Imbued is significantly higher than many decks because Imbued decks are pretty much weenie permanent decks that don't have to put any effort into getting permanents.

Convictions go and come, but that they keep coming, means they are effectively permanent. Powers are less like equipping or retainers than they are like turning average 4-caps into minions with special abilities. If you could give an AUS/obf 4-cap vampire Rutor's Hand without needing Thaumaturgy, needing any blood, and being able to untap immediately, you get something like what one Power does.

Then, they have recursion with Unity, adding to the consistency.

Now, they do lack variety. This makes them inherently more match up dependent - stealth vote is not good for them, grinder is not good for them, etc.

But, beyond the interaction issues they cause, they are a bunch of 4-caps with +1 bleed/+1 intercept/+1 damage that can get built in Freak Drive and more. That eats weaker decks.

Now, there are tons of Imbued killer plays people can make, but silver bullets (ironic) for Imbued aren't all that common outside of ally steal which is less effective against them, leaving people to address them on the deck strategy level - intercept combat, stealth vote, Crows anything, or whatever.

Also, with so many people disliking them, familiarity with how they work is often missing, which means players do a poor threat assessment job, letting them build up until they are a fortress. Crippling Imbued early enough (mostly through minion annihilation rather than massive pool loss), IME, typically causes them to rapidly collapse.

Basically, if you factor them into your metagame planning, sure, I don't see the power problem and interaction problems are mitigated. But, I rarely see people plan for them.

Ohlmann wrote:

I don't see the imbued strong enough to warrant any nerf.

I could theorically understand people wanting to ban them outright because they believe they "don't belong" or anything, but if they stay in the game, they do need all the help they have right now.

Gotta agree with Ohlmann here - if there's a problem with Imbued, it's not their power level. They have certain very strong mechanics but a lack of explosiveness, acceptable wakes and next to no pool gain forces them to always make choices between going forward and losing resources that they can't really replenish. Liquidation, of course, makes most of those problems go away...