Pact with Nephandi starter deck revealed

Bloodartist wrote:

LivesByProxy wrote:

As someone who has not played with or against the Nephandus, I was wondering why he's considered so powerful. It's the prevent 1 damage from every source the enemy uses in combat, right?

Edit: Six Mirror Walk is also very nice.

Its not prevent. He takes less damage. This includes unpreventable damage.

The main reason is that nephandi are very cheap, grindy, and will automatically spank vampires that have no combat cards to play since they have a press. Unmasking gives them all +1 intercept.

There is no real way to interact with Antonio's ability besides rushing him to torpor. Bringing a mage with his ability is unblockable. Thats also a big issue. And there may be some nephandi in the way to prevent the rush from happening.

He just churns out mages for days with the help of some bloating mechanism or another and theres almost nothing you can do about that. They all bleed for 1. They all hit for 2 and take 1 less damage. (The precons mages bleed for 2 with computer hacking thou. Some people might wanna use mouthpiece to give the mages inf dominate for the bleed..).

I REALLY don't like that devs put this into the precons. The lack of interaction is annoying. When I was starting out, I remember fearing the nephandi excessively. Back then I had no cards to deal with them.

ps. If you want a silver bullet against a nephandus deck, run Ossian. He rushes with stealth and unmasking doesn't help against him since he is not a vampire. Uncoiling to kill unmasking would also be very good..

Well the Toreador starter has 4 entrancement, and the tzimisce one has lot of combat so I don't think the nephandi will be that overpowering compared to the other starters.

LivesByProxy wrote:

It's the prevent 1 damage from every source the enemy uses in combat, right?

Environmental inflicts full damage, so, for example, Carrion Crows will kill a Nephandus instantly (and every time I do play with these guys, I am surrounded by ANI), but generally they are very durable, especially in combat-lite environment.

Nephandi can even be used in a normal !Tre decks, since they are so versitile.

Klaital wrote:

Well the Toreador starter has 4 entrancement, and the tzimisce one has lot of combat so I don't think the nephandi will be that overpowering compared to the other starters.

Well the basic starter has only 8 nephandi, so in a game between starters it may not be that unbalanced. The entrancements are no good though because unmasking will just make them block the entrancements. If I make a nephandi deck myself gotta include 3 unmaskings at least. For same reason nephandi should destroy the !toreador deck because its actions are almost entirely at default undirected +1 stealth, which is no good vs unmasking. Having played against the breed and boon, if you torporize the first couple !toreadors out, the deck does nothing.

If you steal a nephandus and make them fight each other, guess what happens? Thats right: nothing. They cannot hurt each other. Meanwhile Antonio will dip into the decks pool of 20 or so nephandus to bring out another one..

I'm not saying nephandi are unbeatable, they just raise the barrier of entry for new decks, They are non-interactive, take little skill to play, and are super annoying. Especially once you build a dedicated nephandus deck beyond the starter. People keep talking like this precon list is the culmination of the deck...

For example my beloved ventrue vote deck that relies on mostly on default +1 stealth is more or less dead in the water once unmasking hits the table.

Bloodartist wrote:

Klaital wrote:

Well the Toreador starter has 4 entrancement, and the tzimisce one has lot of combat so I don't think the nephandi will be that overpowering compared to the other starters.

Well the basic starter has only 8 nephandi, so in a game between starters it may not be that unbalanced. The entrancements are no good though because unmasking will just make them block the entrancements. If I make a nephandi deck myself gotta include 3 unmaskings at least. For same reason nephandi should destroy the !toreador deck because its actions are almost entirely at default undirected +1 stealth, which is no good vs unmasking. Having played against the breed and boon, if you torporize the first couple !toreadors out, the deck does nothing.

If you steal a nephandus and make them fight each other, guess what happens? Thats right: nothing. They cannot hurt each other. Meanwhile Antonio will dip into the decks pool of 20 or so nephandus to bring out another one..

I'm not saying nephandi are unbeatable, they just raise the barrier of entry for new decks, They are non-interactive, take little skill to play, and are super annoying. Especially once you build a dedicated nephandus deck beyond the starter. People keep talking like this precon list is the culmination of the deck...

For example my beloved ventrue vote deck that relies on mostly on default +1 stealth is more or less dead in the water once unmasking hits the table.

Maybe you should put some cards into your deck to counter that then, like Uncoiling and Anarchist Uprising. Unmasking can only be played once per game, so Uncoiling just takes it out for good. Also No deck can beat everything, it's always rock paper scissors of what you run into, that is in no way unique to nephandus decks (or ally decks in general). Personally I find Nephandi lot less annoying than emerald Legionnaires.

Uncoiling is garbage.

Mewcat wrote:

Uncoiling is garbage.

Sure, but you more or less HAVE to play it, if your deck otherwise dies to unmasking.