NR is infuriating to play with - any suggestions for midrange control and points

[mazeebra]

One of the issues when I play NR is that it is so damn annoying to play with, everything gets removed too easily and get poor value, it's just a matter of tossing out cards and hoping one sticks in the end, and that the card is perhaps good enough to do something useful.

It's soo bloody annoying. And then you have the defender! NR have no way to deal with a defender, not a single useful purify card.

I've had fun recently with a MO deck, and before that SK decks, and NG, and before all those NR. Basically I think all factions can be fun to play with, except Northern Realms, which just feels terrible, annoying, frustrating and infuriating. I'm pretty convinced that all people who complain about Nilfgaard actually plays with NR, because those decks just maximise the painfulness of playing with NR. It seems the matchmaking also prefers NG decks when you play certain NR cards or deck types.

So, I'm trying a new approach to NR, playing it wide and with tutor cards like Land of a thousand fables and royal decree, to be able to purify defender with a bomb if necessary, or if not, play a range of special cards from deck and spicing it up with Natal to play warfare cards. I'm feeling a distinct lack of power from the NR cards in my deck, being too slow and not putting alot of points on the table.

I'm basically looking for the best midrange cards, and I'm having a difficult time finding them. I'm not talking about big golds, because we all know those and I cannot choose them all. I guess, any cards that aren't too painful to lose, and can get good value before being removed.

Is there an actual way to play NR which isn't annoying, frustrating, infuriating andor painful?

I'm not talking about meta decks, and I don't want to hear about them, I'm talking about ways to play NR that are outside of the norm but yet are/can be good.

 

[DRK3]

@mazeebra Your deckbuilding seems to be flawed, from the specific cards you mentioned you have on it.

You're correct when you say NR doesnt have any "offensive" purify options, but using land of thousand fables to tutor a bomb to purify is one of the worst things i've ever heard. Assuming you're using it to purify NG defender that is.

If im not mistaken that bomb does 4dmg and purifies, but NG defender has 4 armor. So that play gives a net total of 0 pts and costs 15provisions if im not mistaken. You could use either Heatwave on defender, or royal decree into pellar to purify him, they're not great options but much better than the one you're using.

Good midrange NR cards? I always use Vincent Meis, although against NG it wont see as much value as against other factions. Then there's the chariot that gives 4 bleeding. And Margarita as lock, but its incredibly dangerous to lock a damien or skellen, because those players usually have purify and then immediately trigger the order.

You said you're goin wide with NR. I love swarm decks and going wide, if you want i can share my caravan deck (it doesnt use Draug, but i can make one with it if you want)

 

[Anciluart]

"NR IS INFURIATING TO PLAY WITH" to "NG IS TOO EASY TO PLAY WITH"

using land of thousand fables to tutor a bomb to purify is one of the worst things i've ever heard

An example of how meta decks are very easy to use. He's in PRO rank with 400 games this season, yet he still uses that awful combo.
Curiously he climbed with NG

At a minimum he should use Axi and it would be purify + 10 points in favor.
Pellar could be usefull due he is human (with Draug) And I think it must be the reason why they didn't implement a "blue" unit that does the same.

Although it is also understood that the strategies of factions that are not NG seem bad, NG purifies with a unit that in addition to doing that is an engine and with an initial value of 4 .... and all for 5 provisions.
Oh wait, we have in NG another purify for 7, core value of 5, and the same card can use poison....with assimilate too, dont forget the free and unnecesary NG developers boost pack.


NR is the same as other factions except NG, you should risk to play.

The best thing for NR nowadays is to use the bronze units that do not need big setup to work, the gold units after that can be a little more flexible.
Another important thing is to do without the tutors (or th minimal amount of these cards), simply add more cards that give the deck various options, that makes it less vulnerable if the base strategy breaks.

Tridam infantry with portal, Shanni.
NR will try to use each and every one of the strategies that allow they to place several units in a turn.
Various pressure and "must be canceled" cards such as Anna and Botchling. If everything you use must be controlled at some point they will not be able to control it.

 

[Pacifixer]

You can always try old Pincer+Dandelion deck, it is usually pretty strong and might even pack some surprise value in this meta.
But don't take ma word for it I haven't played ranked in 3 weeks, after running into Ysgith Thrive twice, i realized i preffer NG infested seasonal

 

[mazeebra]

@mazeebra Your deckbuilding seems to be flawed, from the specific cards you mentioned you have on it.

You're correct when you say NR doesnt have any "offensive" purify options, but using land of thousand fables to tutor a bomb to purify is one of the worst things i've ever heard. Assuming you're using it to purify NG defender that is.

If im not mistaken that bomb does 4dmg and purifies, but NG defender has 4 armor. So that play gives a net total of 0 pts and costs 15provisions if im not mistaken. You could use either Heatwave on defender, or royal decree into pellar to purify him, they're not great options but much better than the one you're using.

Good midrange NR cards? I always use Vincent Meis, although against NG it wont see as much value as against other factions. Then there's the chariot that gives 4 bleeding. And Margarita as lock, but its incredibly dangerous to lock a damien or skellen, because those players usually have purify and then immediately trigger the order.

You said you're goin wide with NR. I love swarm decks and going wide, if you want i can share my caravan deck (it doesnt use Draug, but i can make one with it if you want)

You can call it flawed, or you can call it bypassing the annoyance of playing NR units and hoping some of them finally stick. I use tland of a thousand fables to tutor one of many special cards. It's just a completely different deck type, trying to be a midrange NR control. I have heatwave also (for Damien, Yghern etc). I use thousand fables to tutor any necessary card I need, according to the development of the game.

You might say it is a waste, and it is, but that's how the game is now. Did you have purify at hand when opponent played defender? If yes, you win, if no, you lost.. Such a binary card and annoying. I made a thread about that too. Ofcourse NG has purify, they have defender too, just to play Damien and Skellen many times.

Anyways, that's not what I'm asking. I'm not saying my NR has to be like that, I just did it like that to avoid the main annoyance with NR.

Caravan deck? Is that with Shields and King Roegner? I have some of that in my deck, but I use immortals.

I dunno, the main problem I have is that everything you play with NR gets destroyed, because every opponent is so afraid of everything you play. The units are generally low body compared to say ST.

I have a decent NR decks using Demavend, but it's prone to the same issues as all the other NR decks. I've been trying various decks to branch out from that one, but they are all annoying.

Post automatically merged: Mar 31, 2020

You can always try old Pincer+Dandelion deck, it is usually pretty strong and might even pack some surprise value in this meta.
But don't take ma word for it I haven't played ranked in 3 weeks, after running into Ysgith Thrive twice, i realized i preffer NG infested seasonal

Well, Pincer is 12 provisions. It seems a bit harsh to go that route, and yes, I have considered it. Dandelion is a card I like in various decks. I actually just have an idea in my head that I will have issues building a good deck with so few provisions. (I have in the current meta with Usurper/Lockdown decks, also a low provision leader)

NG infested seasonal? Haha. Weirdly enough I seem to always get NG on ranked mode when I play NR, way more often than when I play other factions. It's terrible. Not only NG, but the most bloody annoying meta abuse decks. Imagine that, NR against special cards. Very fun... NOT!

 

[DRK3]

@mazeebra Nah, i think you're confusing caravan vanguards with immortal cavalry. The immortal cavalry is for shield decks, for combo'ing with Roegner or other shield units.

On your initial post, you mentioned 'going wide' with NR. But that usually means distributing your points as much as possible, swarm decks are a prime example of it. Using tutoring cards is not exactly going wide. If you were going wide you wouldnt have a problem against NG's removal.

Caravan vanguard is a really good swarm unit, it has been meta to just put several units on a row quickly to turn into Revenants with Draug. But you can use them to spam a ton of points with NR and swarm really well. All you need is single caravan unit on board (and you should always play for double spawn initially), then all following ones are worth 9pts on 2 bodies.
They say an image speaks for a 1000 words, so here it goes:

 

[mazeebra]

@mazeebra Nah, i think you're confusing caravan vanguards with immortal cavalry. The immortal cavalry is for shield decks, for combo'ing with Roegner or other shield units.

On your initial post, you mentioned 'going wide' with NR. But that usually means distributing your points as much as possible, swarm decks are a prime example of it. Using tutoring cards is not exactly going wide. If you were going wide you wouldnt have a problem against NG's removal.

Caravan vanguard is a really good swarm unit, it has been meta to just put several units on a row quickly to turn into Revenants with Draug. But you can use them to spam a ton of points with NR and swarm really well. All you need is single caravan unit on board (and you should always play for double spawn initially), then all following ones are worth 9pts on 2 bodies.
They say an image speaks for a 1000 words, so here it goes:

I was going to use Caravan Vanguard too, until I realised I did not have the card. And since I have to manually scrap cards, I'm "broke", but yeah, the card seems good to play wide with. I had to go for the immortal cavalery route with shield as a casual byproduct in my deck, and a scout to copy the 6p card.

But I guess if they fix that button or auto mill cards in a good way now, then I can start crafting some new cards again. (I already did a couple of times, but it was tedious)
I find that shields help also against control decks, you play wide with shields and play control yourself (I'm trying control with dathblow).
Anyways, the deck is just experimental, due to me finding it so annoying to play with NR, I needed to play a completely different NR deck.

Draug, well, I could do that, I just consider it a bit broken coupled with all the new spawn/copy of humans. But I guess that's what's needed to win, find the most broken stuff in the game and play it

Not sure about NR, my impression is that it is the worst faction against control decks and low unit NG. I guess everyone is afraid of every single NR card, so much that they will use any means to get rid of them, even when not playing a control deck. And against pointslam NR is quite poor as well, due to it's dependency on boosting to put down big points.

Ofcourse, another route is to use the "new" 7 body units in a NR deck and their fallibor, baron etc with caretaker.

I'm just having a bad time with NR, desperately trying to come up with something else than the normal stuff. I think caravan vanguard will probably be one of the first cards I will craft after the update.

Post automatically merged: Apr 1, 2020

You can always try old Pincer+Dandelion deck, it is usually pretty strong and might even pack some surprise value in this meta.

Actually, I've started experimenting with a pincer maneuver midrange utility deck, and it seems more in line with what I wanted. I also took the time to scrap some more cards and add caravan vanguard into the deck, which is quite a good unit for a more wide approach.

I've decided not to go for anything fancy and just play midrange, so I've included the top dogs of NR in this deck and bomb heaver, xavier lemmens and caretaker as additional utilities that I can use if needed. It fits well with Pincer, which I'm not using on anything special, but more as a multi option open move depending on the match-up and how the rounds progress.

It doesn't feel frustrating to play with. Alot of things are deploy, it's quite wide, it's somewhat control oriented with bronze cards that are neither critical or valuable for the opponent to remove. So all in all, it's a bit opposite of the typical NR decks, which actually feels good, and was what I was going for.

It's thanks to you guys actually for inspiring me in a way. Keep the talk open, I might need to build some additional decks or improve on this way of playing NR.

Post automatically merged: Apr 1, 2020

You're correct when you say NR doesnt have any "offensive" purify options, but using land of thousand fables to tutor a bomb to purify is one of the worst things i've ever heard. Assuming you're using it to purify NG defender that is.

Actually, that was just my way of trying to make a multi-utility option, but Pincer Maneuver seems to work out much better for this specific purpose, being able to choose bomb heaver, xavier lemmens, caretaker or koranti heatwave at the best possible time is what I was actually looking for.

I took the time to scrap cards and craft caravan vanguard which can also be a decent target for the leader at the right time. It's a nice card indeed, but I also kept immortals to have "soldiers" as caravan aren't soldiers.

 

[DankTemplar]

I'd suggest looking at my Magic n' Missiles thread, I have a pretty solid deck there that runs off of 2 engines (siege and archers) and has lots of removal+crazy op combos like Syanna+Vernon for a 5 card turn or searching out Siege for round 3 with Pincer Maneuver.

It can be fine tuned for any specific MU you can't deal with by removing Royal Decree or whatever other pieces you feel could be modified to your liking. Hell, you could take out Siege if you really wanted...but that card is broken so I don't know if that's wise...