Emerald Legionnaire — First Black Chantry Nerf?

I maintain the stance if one card should be banned, it should be govern the unaligned.

ps. This new legionnaire technology with infernal pursuit seems interesting, let's see if I need to adjust my opinion. As with all turbo-decks though, sometimes they just trip over their own feet, or die to a single well-aimed direct intervention.

Bloodartist wrote:

I maintain the stance if one card should be banned, it should be govern the unaligned.

I 95% disagree. It is not a problematic card. It is just one of the best cards in a given discipline.

But, ultimately, that is besides the point of this topic. Emerald Legionnaires didn't win the EC, nor did they win any of those main tournaments. They won some, and afterwards were hosed pretty bad by Goratrix and Presence.

Once the meta evolves and settles we'll see if Legionnaire decks are actually worth the nerfs or not. It's too soon to say, I'd say.

Ke. wrote:

Emerald Legionnaire
Wraith with 2 life. 2 strength, 1 bleed.
During your unlock phase, you can remove 7 cards in your ash heap from the game to move an Emerald Legionnaire from your ash heap to the ready region with 2 life.

OK, so it's become pretty obvious this card is broken. Yes, Harbringers needed something — however this card has become the scourge of online play and this likely to filter through to real world games / tournaments.

It seems unlikely that the popularity of this card is not due to it's new shininess — it's due to the power level. So it's unlikely to go away anytime so.

Nerf seems pretty straight forward; only allow one to come back into play per turn.

Honest question from a non-hardcore VTES player: Would playing Kindred Segregation thwart these decks at all? Has anybody tried?

From a distance, I'm trying to discern if claiming this card broken is a knee-jerk initial reaction from people in a stagnant meta or if it is really, truly broken. The intent from the designers may have been to introduce a powerful, metagame-affecting card. I mean...3 other sets were released with a bunch of filler cards that were thoroughly play-tested and mostly did a good job fitting a niche in the game. In other words, those 3 sets hit the mark with what was intended for those sets. Now, all of a sudden, there was a misstep with the fourth set and there's a "clearly broken" card that slipped through the cracks? I doubt it. I think the power level of Emerald Legionnaire was deliberate.

Honest question from a non-hardcore VTES player: Would playing Kindred Segregation thwart these decks at all? Has anybody tried?

Not really. They cost only 1 pool, so the effect is at best similar to Anarchist Uprising or Ancilla Empowerment. Segregation could work fine against Nephandi, but against any other ally deck prevalent in the meta it is next to useless.

It wasn't excellent design to begin with, to be honest.

Kraus wrote:

Honest question from a non-hardcore VTES player: Would playing Kindred Segregation thwart these decks at all? Has anybody tried?

Not really. They cost only 1 pool, so the effect is at best similar to Anarchist Uprising or Ancilla Empowerment.

Except for the fact that the legionnaire player can CHOOSE the best option for them (burn pool or the ally), making segregation immediately inferior to ancilla empowerment. Not to mention that empowerment actually works against all decks to an extent. Its never entirely useless, unlike segregation.

So what I'm trying to get at is has anybody actively tried to thwart an Emerald Legionnaire deck (either using Ancilla Empowerment or whatever else works against allies) and failed, or is this thread just a knee-jerk reaction to a powerful card being introduced? In other words, is the card really "broken," or do people just not want to have something new affecting their metagame (for whatever reason)? I'm trying to understand the thinking behind why one would ask for a "nerf" instead of dealing with Emerald Legionnaire actively in-game.