Nilfgaard change suggestions

+

UMA22

Forum regular
nilfgaard cards are so cheated, it ok when it only one or two card in faction but in nilfgaard faction they are too many and it not fair
and you know what, you can play with all of those cards in the same time because they are cheap, add to them all the cards who lock or do poison and no other faction will be able to beat you.
let dress a list of them just to realise that, and i'll say how i think it should be fixed.

YENNEFER'S INVOCATION : it cost only 9 power in your deck and allow you to remove any ennemi card and put it in top of your deck so you can play it next turn
- i dont know why this card is in the nilfgaard faction all yennefer's cards are neutral, and it should cost a least 11 power .

CAHIR : every time an ennemi troop get a boost cahir got the same boost, it cost also 9 powwer and all what you need to do is to put a defender card and you will won the game, get a deffender card is also not a problem for nilfgaard if you play with ablity imposter, forfeiture or enslavement or if you have bribery or coup de grace you can get the ennemy deffender card
- this one is to strong he should get only the boost in the ennemi front line and maybe add him devotion (but that will be pradox with the story)

VINCENT VAN MOORLEHEM : destroy an ennemi with a status, it litteraly mean destroy an ennemi because most unit have a status
- this one is a vampire it should be in the monster faction or at least it should be destroy an unit with a bleeding status it make sens, at least it will finaly be intresting to use the bledding ability of van moorlehem hunter intead of locking .

VILGEFORTZ : destroy an ennemi unit and the ennemi bring the card on top of his deck in the battle, so like that u can destroy any ennemi unit without any condition but you can also ruin your ennemi strategy by bringing one of his card wich may have deployment ability that will be not played, knowing that more than half of the cards in the gme have the deploy ability
- allow the ennemi to play the card unstead of just bring it, and make a condition to destroy the unit like a statut or unit who have a strength that is a multiple of 3 .

LEO BONHART : destroy an ennemi unit with 9 power or more or destroy a ennemi witcher, i will not comment this one it obvious
- this one will be okay if the others are fixed

VANHEMAR : destroy an unit having the lock status, this card cost only 6 power and knowing there is 5 cards in nilfgaard faction who can lock adding them if you play with the faction ability lock or imposter you can lock any unit whenever you want and that mean that you can destroy an unit whenever you want too
- this one is too cheap make it at least cost 8 power

adding to this nilfgaard have to many way to lock unit, it abused, the lock status should stay for 3 or 4 turns or make it depend of the card you use to lock.
 
I'm asking myself if you have tried to play NG, because it's when you do it that you understand most of this cards aren't so shiny as they seem.
  • Yennefer's invocation: very good card in a lot of situations because of it's versatility BUT, for example, imagine your opponent is winning you because his Sea Jackal has a huge amount of points; yes, with YI you stole that card, but now you have a useless brick in your deck. This example can be extrapolated in similar cases. But, yes, maybe it could be +1 prov.
  • Cahir: I agree with you not liking this card, but not because he's overpowered but because his design. You can beat him with Curse of Corruption and, more important, not all the decks relies on boost (some of SK, SY or MO), and in this situations his a heavy brick.
  • Vincent van Moorlehem: that's the card who made me ask the begining question. There's not always a card with status; even playing NG. What happens in a short 3rd round? What will you do with a 3 body card who cost 10p? Is it useful? Yes, of course! But there are several situations where you'll wish he wasn't in your hand.
  • Vilgeforz: same as Vincent, a useful card that can gives you 5 points. How any times I've destroyed a Covenant of Steel to watch a Bear Witcher appear? Or a Griffyn? Or... etc. And, once again, yes, sometimes a Gold card appears, but you cannot count possiblities as certainties.
  • Leo Bonhart: really? I suppose you also hate Geralt of Rivia... when there are similiar cards on neutral and factions, last are, usually, slightly better.
  • Vanhemar: he has a very specific condition whoy can be very easily avoid. Raise your hands NG players who dead because you had this card in hand and no target to destroy.
All that cards are good and useful, but they aren't almighty as you can discover once you have played enough games with NG.
 
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Other than YenInvo, none of the cards mentioned are worth nerfind or changing as they are very situational, easy to brick, easy to remove/disable. Even YenInvo is not really worth it, as annoying as it can sometimes be.

Cahir can play for a lot of points, but this guy will never be meta in the first place. As soon as NG will try to push him to meta decks, other decks/factions will tech against him.

Vincent used to be very annoying back when Veil was introduced. Now I think he is among the least problematic NG cards. In fact NG right now, as a faction, is the least toxic it has ever been. I do remember the horror days when the old Lockdown leader was tier 1. The game was just extremely annoying.

Vilgefortz is a binary card. It can help you with some tall punish, but if your opponent does not play tall units, he can backfire. I enjoy playing Hyperthin recently, played against an SY player today. I used Vilg on a 5 body Cleaver only for him to pull a Bloody Good Friends.

Leo Bonhart has not seen play for a long time, same as Geralt of Rivia. And that is because not all meta decks tend to go very tall. Sure, MO goes tall now, that SK Melusine deck does too. NR's best deck goes wide rather than tall. SK Reckless Flurry goes tall but with Greatswords only. SY relies on cleaning your board rather than going tall. ST is also going wide rather than tall, with the exception of Gord who is usually the last played card. If you don't have last say, the Leo/Geralt are useless.

I can't even remember the last time Vanhemar got decent play. Very easy to brick.
 
Yennefer Invocation is a little cheap for its power and flexibility, I agree. Vincent is broken depending the meta but OK.

The cards you listed can be very frustrating but hey, it's Nilfgaard ! That's what they do ! I think they are ok and i don't even play Nilfgaard.

In fact, as a casual player, I only play midrange (meme) decks just to make them brick (basically, it does quite everything that @MikeBiazzo listed ^^). BUT I struggle against other factions decks with unstoppable avalanches of points. You can't have it all... Still, it's a pleasure to watch a poor Cahir behind a defender wait in vain for a boost, a 6 points Yennefer Invocation or, rare but supreme extasy, a 3 points Coup de Grâce.

What do you play ?
 
nilfgaard cards are so cheated, it ok when it only one or two card in faction but in nilfgaard faction they are too many and it not fair
and you know what, you can play with all of those cards in the same time because they are cheap, add to them all the cards who lock or do poison and no other faction will be able to beat you.
let dress a list of them just to realise that, and i'll say how i think it should be fixed.

YENNEFER'S INVOCATION : it cost only 9 power in your deck and allow you to remove any ennemi card and put it in top of your deck so you can play it next turn
- i dont know why this card is in the nilfgaard faction all yennefer's cards are neutral, and it should cost a least 11 power .

CAHIR : every time an ennemi troop get a boost cahir got the same boost, it cost also 9 powwer and all what you need to do is to put a defender card and you will won the game, get a deffender card is also not a problem for nilfgaard if you play with ablity imposter, forfeiture or enslavement or if you have bribery or coup de grace you can get the ennemy deffender card
- this one is to strong he should get only the boost in the ennemi front line and maybe add him devotion (but that will be pradox with the story)

VINCENT VAN MOORLEHEM : destroy an ennemi with a status, it litteraly mean destroy an ennemi because most unit have a status
- this one is a vampire it should be in the monster faction or at least it should be destroy an unit with a bleeding status it make sens, at least it will finaly be intresting to use the bledding ability of van moorlehem hunter intead of locking .

VILGEFORTZ : destroy an ennemi unit and the ennemi bring the card on top of his deck in the battle, so like that u can destroy any ennemi unit without any condition but you can also ruin your ennemi strategy by bringing one of his card wich may have deployment ability that will be not played, knowing that more than half of the cards in the gme have the deploy ability
- allow the ennemi to play the card unstead of just bring it, and make a condition to destroy the unit like a statut or unit who have a strength that is a multiple of 3 .

LEO BONHART : destroy an ennemi unit with 9 power or more or destroy a ennemi witcher, i will not comment this one it obvious
- this one will be okay if the others are fixed

VANHEMAR : destroy an unit having the lock status, this card cost only 6 power and knowing there is 5 cards in nilfgaard faction who can lock adding them if you play with the faction ability lock or imposter you can lock any unit whenever you want and that mean that you can destroy an unit whenever you want too
- this one is too cheap make it at least cost 8 power

adding to this nilfgaard have to many way to lock unit, it abused, the lock status should stay for 3 or 4 turns or make it depend of the card you use to lock.

I also disagree with much of this complaint — but before writing it off completely, I think one needs to look at the game from multiple perspectives.

I strongly believe that none of the mentioned cards are overpowered at top levels of play. But for weaker players who don’t have the skill/knowledge/experience to know how to play against them, or design decks to guard against them may legitimately feel otherwise. And some cards that I find easily countered are not easily countered by players with limited card collections. It is easy for a beginner to craft a powerful card they want to use; it is impossible to craft counters for every possible powerful card an opponent might hold.

I also believe that it is not necessary for a card to be OP for it to be bad for the game. Cards that reduce variety of decks and play encountered are bad for the game. And cards that increase the chance of matches being determined by luck rather than quality of play are bed for the game.

With that said, let me look at each card mentioned.

YENNIFER’S INVOCATION — I too find this card objectionable. Yes, it can place a brick in one’s deck; yes, it can fail to find a target; yes, it is legitimate to expect players to be able to respond to the loss of one card — any card; and yes, it is even reasonable for NG to play the opponent’s cards. It is not reasonable for one card to remove a card from the board, bypass deathwish and graveyard effects, and give that card to the other player — all in one turn, with only one card, for only nine provisions, and with no opportunity to prevent the effect. Because there are so many overly powered cards that cannot be handled except by removal, Invocation is not really unbalanced. But it does drain the fun from the game.

CAHIR — Cahir is another absolutely horrible card. It is not imbalanced in that it doesn’t in any way guarantee an NG win. But for many decks, it is a “remove or lose” card. These cards are all about luck — who has included/drawn the right answers. And it invalidates a large number of otherwise viable decks. Not only that, it is hard to answer with a limited card collection.

VINCENT VAN MOORLEHEM — I see no issues with this unit. The removal is not out of place for the provision cost and is further limited by a need to inflict a status first.

Vilgefortz — This unit is, in my opinion, just a bit too strong for a unit with its level of randomness. I have nothing against RNG in an undeveloped unit provided first that there are strategic way to favorably reduce the RNG (which Courier could do for Vilgefortz) and second, that the unit without set up provides average value below other cards, so there is discouragement to play it solely for the purpose of RNG. I am not convinced Vilgefortz meets this second condition.

LEO — This unit is very slightly better than Geralt of Rivia — which would be expectEd of a faction card. It is not a problem in any way.

VANHEMAR — I believe this card’s price reflects its value. A unit that is locked generally provides no further value — removing it is pointless unless it is very tall. And if it is used for tall remove, it is too ineffective requiring two turns to complete the task.
 
Nilfgaard has not had an OP Top of the Meta deck since before Mystic Echo was OP. If anything the only card they should change for the better is Atorious Vigo. Guy is an 8 point provision card that can drop for 4 points and is luck based in the majority of decks.

Artorious Vigo - Pick a play a bronze card from your starter deck. If chosen card is a unit set its power to 1.

for 8 points the guy should literally play any card, not a random hodgepodge of 3 choices.
 
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Only thing I really agree with is Cahir because of his design. You will find out that the rest isn't as great as you might think through playing them yourself. Or have you already done that?
 
I also think NG is the cheapest and most unfair faction but for different reasons. Most of the cards you mentioned i personally don't find broken except for Yennefer's Invocation.

If Renew is limited to 9 provision units because anything above that would be op and now Caranthir is limited to 10 for the same reason, i also think Yennefer's Invocation should have a limit.
My personal suggestion would be to make the spell 8 provision and only allow it to "steal" a unit that's 8 provision or lower. If you put it at 9 then it could steal a defender and that's too much because then the NG player would have 2 defenders. Not to mention it denies the other player his defender while most factions have to include purify cards to get rid of a defender or use Heatwave just to get rid of that.
If it's limited to 8 provisions then you can still get value out of it by stealing a Sea Jackal that got overbuffed or some other unit that reached a high point power and get value that way but at least you won't be able touch the high end cards in term of provisions.

The second thing i find very cheap is the locking mechanic. Now the locking mechanic itself isn't a problem but NG has 4 provision and 5 provision units that can totally shut down 13 provision units. That's what i find unfair. Those low provision units should have a limit to what cards they can touch. The leader abilities sure, they should be able to shut down any unit since they are leader abilities but aside from that, there should be some limitations.
 
Mehdi_Chaari if you say NG is unbeatable, try playing 10 games and see how many you win.
NG is perhaps the most difficult faction to play
 
I wonder what decks you guys are playing that you are getting stomped by Nilfgaard? They are usually a straight forward match up.
 
Oh, it's because it's so "interesting" to play. They're all real go getters. Love themselves a challenge. :smart:
Numbers don't lie. High playrate, but almost always a well balanced win-lose ratio. The thing with NG is that you often have a decent shot against most of the meta whereas there are decks like MO last season which had a lot of highly favored match-ups alongside some that were very tough to win. When playing NG you rarely feel like you can't win just because of your opponent's deck (exceptions can be swarm or unitless). Very often it's about your decisions/skill or draws.
 
Numbers don't lie. High playrate, but almost always a well balanced win-lose ratio. The thing with NG is that you often have a decent shot against most of the meta whereas there are decks like MO last season which had a lot of highly favored match-ups alongside some that were very tough to win. When playing NG you rarely feel like you can't win just because of your opponent's deck (exceptions can be swarm or unitless). Very often it's about your decisions/skill or draws.
Oh sure, numbers don't lie, but there are more that one way to interpret them. Yours is an interesting theory, but personally I think the high rate of play is caused by

-how easy it is to play: from completely brainless styles such as mill to super-consistent hyperthin, which requires zero skill to arrive at the same two cards left in deck at the end, to assimilate, which allows you to play your opponent best engines while double and triple-proccing your own engines, all at the cost of the ridiculous "penalty" of "giving" your opponent 1-point units.
-The number of ridiculously underpriced cheap removal cards, such as Yen Invo, VIlge, Vincent, etc.
-The amount of effortless pointslam from cards like the blightmaker and combos like leader+snowdrop.
-And let's not forget the warm, fuzzy feeling of annoying the hell out of your opponent.

And as for the balanced win-loss ratio, it's probably the result of mill being basically terrible but popular with griefers, and the overall lower skill level of the playerbase, resulting from the increased numbers. In other words: a lot of the swell are noobs trying to get quickly to higher levels with cheap decks.
 
On 25 games in 2 days, i faced NG 16 times ! 12 times it was imprisonment 4 times Hyperthin. I am at rank 2 and NG seems very popular. So if it's bad... why is it so popular ?
Why is it so popular? Well because it requires the most skill and planning out of all the factions of course! Do you know how hard it us to just banish your opponent's whole deck before they even play their cards? Or the opposite, add useless cards and just play 2 Kolgrims at the end and get around 50 points in 3 turns. Not to mention they struggle with their bronzes too, i mean, you think it's easy to stop 13 provision engines with 4 provision cards? Believe me, it's not! Add to that a whole other range of cards that can straight up kill anything (Vingefortz, Vincent, Yennefer's Invocation etc) and you can see that NG can only be handled by pro players.
I guess you were just unlucky and fought only pros that day.
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I forgot to mention the extremly hard to pull off comb of defender + Cahir that can shut down decks that focus around boosting their own units rather than control. They can also throw in a Letho:Kingslayer for a second Cahir just to be sure.
The legends says this combo is so hard to do that even the most veteran of players can't pull it off consistently because it takes the NG player 3 whole cards to shut down entire decks! It truly takes years of training to be able to do that!
 
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Don't want to have another one of <these>discussions here, but if one says that NG is one of, if not THE easiest faction to have success with, then I automatically become very skeptical about your knowledge regarding NG and the number of times all of you have actually played the faction these days. Can't help myself. Of course, currently there's stuff like Hyperthin around which isn't a concept that's exactly hard to understand, but NG over the last few years has almost NEVER felt like autopilot for me. I've always found NR Commandos/Witchers, SK Warriors/Witchers or MO Viy/Relicts to be a lot more straightforward.
 
I dont agree with the fact it is not the easiest faction to pilot. It can counter everything, flexible gameplan and make insane amount of points.
 
I dont agree with the fact it is not the easiest faction to pilot. It can counter everything, flexible gameplan and make insane amount of points.
If it could counter everything it would have the highest winrate by far which, at least as far as I can remember, has never been the case the whole last year. Every faction can make insane amounts of points if the set-up is there. And most NG decks need a long round to get enough Assimilate value to outpoint the meta, so I wouldn't call the faction more flexible than others.
 
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