Vampires Devotion feel defenseless in some matchups

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What if we add this part to the Blood Scent leader ability: "If you control 3 or more Ekimmaras, Bleeding ignores you opponent's Veil."?
 
Feels excessive to ignore Veil on the matchup it arguably matters most. Monsters do have devotion options to nullify Veil (Naglfar's Taskmaster, Feast of Blood and Queen of the Night) and two of those have great bleeding synergy.
May feel excessive but the fact is they need something more as devotion, imo at least a better tall removal. Example: I played as Viy vs a Vampire deck. On round 1 I just played a single Slyzard, boosted it with Veil Stratagem, then just jammed Viy with tutors. After 4 or 5 plays he just left the game cause there was simply nothing to be done and he knew he had no chance. Even if he had purified it, one target for bleeding it's not enough to keep up with points.
 

Guest 4375874

Guest
Feels excessive to ignore Veil on the matchup it arguably matters most. Monsters do have devotion options to nullify Veil (Naglfar's Taskmaster, Feast of Blood and Queen of the Night) and two of those have great bleeding synergy.
That hardly matters. Had a match against lippy recently and the opponent put out over 40pts in two turns. Now how long do you imagine a vampire deck will take to make that difference? Mind you I had blue coin so I should have advantage but didn't. The fact is vampires take time to gain value even with unseen in hand and two other vampires on my side. He passed of course after only two turns and I essentially had to use my best golds to catch up. I forfeited at that pointy because it's pointless at that stage, I'd have nothing to counter the exact same play when he uses Lippy to do it all over again next round.
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May feel excessive but the fact is they need something more as devotion, imo at least a better tall removal. Example: I played as Viy vs a Vampire deck. On round 1 I just played a single Slyzard, boosted it with Veil Stratagem, then just jammed Viy with tutors. After 4 or 5 plays he just left the game cause there was simply nothing to be done and he knew he had no chance. Even if he had purified it, one target for bleeding it's not enough to keep up with points.
While I agree with your point, using Viy as a basis for that is questionable. Anyone would have the same problem you just mentioned not just vampire decks. Viy is a card that needs to be removed from the game and honestly I have no respect for players who use it.
 
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May feel excessive but the fact is they need something more as devotion, imo at least a better tall removal. Example: I played as Viy vs a Vampire deck. On round 1 I just played a single Slyzard, boosted it with Veil Stratagem, then just jammed Viy with tutors. After 4 or 5 plays he just left the game cause there was simply nothing to be done and he knew he had no chance. Even if he had purified it, one target for bleeding it's not enough to keep up with points.
I agree that bleeding devotion may need more support, I was only advocating that empowering a leader ability to counter their natural counter is a dangerous road to follow. Just like I have a devotion frost deck that has a very hard time going on multiple shields and armor, but frost should not overcome these attributes by itself. Likewise, I don't think vampires can rub shoulders with the best decks, but developments are being made to leverage this archetype a few inches on every card drop - as long with other archetypes.
That hardly matters. Had a match against lippy recently and the opponent put out over 40pts in two turns. Now how long do you imagine a vampire deck will take to make that difference? Mind you I had blue coin so I should have advantage but didn't. The fact is vampires take time to gain value even with unseen in hand and two other vampires on my side. He passed of course after only two turns and I essentially had to use my best golds to catch up. I forfeited at that pointy because it's pointless at that stage, I'd have nothing to counter the exact same play when he uses Lippy to do it all over again next round.
In my opinion, comparing a match against a SK Lippy deck has almost the same effect of comparing it to a Viy deck, especially now that SK discard has gotten even more love. Furthermore, SK's point-slamming nature is a great counter to engine-heavy decks, so I don't see bleeding as faulty here, I don't know if any engine-heavy deck would face a different result.
 

Guest 4375874

Guest
I agree that bleeding devotion may need more support, I was only advocating that empowering a leader ability to counter their natural counter is a dangerous road to follow. Just like I have a devotion frost deck that has a very hard time going on multiple shields and armor, but frost should not overcome these attributes by itself. Likewise, I don't think vampires can rub shoulders with the best decks, but developments are being made to leverage this archetype a few inches on every card drop - as long with other archetypes.

In my opinion, comparing a match against a SK Lippy deck has almost the same effect of comparing it to a Viy deck, especially now that SK discard has gotten even more love. Furthermore, SK's point-slamming nature is a great counter to engine-heavy decks, so I don't see bleeding as faulty here, I don't know if any engine-heavy deck would face a different result.
SK didn't "Now" get more love, It's the same deck that they had for 6 months or longer. Lippy decks have not changed much. Furthermore generating that many points in two turns wouldn't change a thing if you weren't using an engine deck, it's still two turns. Adding to that I use a Carapace deck so it's not "engine heavy" as you put it. So again, nothing would change.

But let's assume for a minute that it matters let's try another faction. NR's new strategy which is spamming left and right infantry in R1, transforming them into Kaedweni Revenants. Next Round Erland of Larvik get's upwards of 30pts from this after playing Pavetta or the classic Dun Banner. Again, these plays are often within 2 turns and no amount of bleeding will help you. The point is vampires are out of place in the current meta, it takes far too long for their effects to realize any value when compared to the rest and It's no coincidence they continue to perform poorly.
 
SK didn't "Now" get more love, It's the same deck that they had for 6 months or longer. Lippy decks have not changed much. Furthermore generating that many points in two turns wouldn't change a thing if you weren't using an engine deck, it's still two turns. Adding to that I use a Carapace deck so it's not "engine heavy" as you put it. So again, nothing would change.

But let's assume for a minute that it matters let's try another faction. NR's new strategy which is spamming left and right infantry in R1, transforming them into Kaedweni Revenants. Next Round Erland of Larvik get's upwards of 30pts from this after playing Pavetta or the classic Dun Banner. Again, these plays are often within 2 turns and no amount of bleeding will help you. The point is vampires are out of place in the current meta, it takes far too long for their effects to realize any value when compared to the rest and It's no coincidence they continue to perform poorly.
SK discard did get more attention (read my post a little more closely), but I'm not saying vampires are good, just saying that engines decks (like bleeding regardless of what leader ability you chose) tend to fare bad against point slam. But ok, you said your point, and I assume new cards will keep being released so let's wait and see. Not every debate must be turned into arm wrestling.

And putting my (or anyone else's) words between quotation marks is quite rude (just a hint). I've unfollowed this topic and wish the best for you all vampires players.
 
just saying that engines decks (like bleeding regardless of what leader ability you chose) tend to fare bad against point slam.
Isn't that backwards? Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't engine decks be strong against pointslam decks? Assuming the game was reasonably balanced (difficult to imagine, I know), wouldn't the cycle be Engine > Pointslam > Control > Engine, etc. In a long round, an engine deck should ultimately end up with far more points than a pointslam slam deck. Whereas pointslam should excel against control because they don't offer up chances to trade favorably with Locks and removal, which is why control decks should generally have an advantage against engine decks.
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
Isn't that backwards? Correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't engine decks be strong against pointslam decks? Assuming the game was reasonably balanced (difficult to imagine, I know), wouldn't the cycle be Engine > Pointslam > Control > Engine, etc. In a long round, an engine deck should ultimately end up with far more points than a pointslam slam deck. Whereas pointslam should excel against control because they don't offer up chances to trade favorably with Locks and removal, which is why control decks should generally have an advantage against engine decks.

That is correct, the 'triangle' you said, and how it applies to long rounds.

The problem is Gwent in the current state is battle for R1, then always push R2 regardless of matchup, so we usually end up with a very long R1 and shorter R2 and 3. So if an engines deck that wants a long round, fails to win R1, its basically screwed.

And vampire decks currently sit in the engine category, although in my opinion, there are even slower engine decks.
 

Guest 4375874

Guest
That is correct, the 'triangle' you said, and how it applies to long rounds.

The problem is Gwent in the current state is battle for R1, then always push R2 regardless of matchup, so we usually end up with a very long R1 and shorter R2 and 3. So if an engines deck that wants a long round, fails to win R1, its basically screwed.

And vampire decks currently sit in the engine category, although in my opinion, there are even slower engine decks.
which comes back to the tutor problem sadly. Winning R1 should put you at a disadvantage so there's a risk if you decide to push R2, this would allow decks like vampires to win a short R2 but utilize a long R3 if they lost R1. But in the current state of the game with huge carry over points and oneiro at hand, you can essentially pull off insane point swings in R2 even if you don't have card advantage. A vampire deck that loses R1 currently has very little hope of winning R2 unless it's a hybrid deck and even then it's iffy.
 
The trouble with Vampires is they're one dimensional and don't do much other than bleed, and there's only so much value you can get by applying bleeding and then more bleeding in any given round. Bleeding needs mass units on the other side to be effective and they need units without veil, and at the moment there are plenty of unitless decks and decks with lots of veiled units. Moreover the value from bleeding runs of of steam towards the ends of rounds where there is possibly more bleed applied than you'll ever get back. Who needs 4 bleed when you only have 1 or 2 cards left.

What Vampires really need is a different kind of ability, like for example bringing back units from graveyards that die from bleeding, or some kind of resurrection ability for themselves given they're generally pretty fragile.
 
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Even a single unit with Veil just completely wrecks the vampires ability to get value from their stuff since giving bleeding is the only thing the know how to do. :(
Especially since some of their effects like The Unseen Elder and Blood Moon give randomized bleeding so it just gets wasted on Veil and bam you're now losing.

I think that "Veil" should be divided into different effects like "lock immunity", "poison immunity", "bleeding immunity", "frost immunity"... and maybe some stronger units get to keep the current full Veil power.

I played Devotion Vampires (mixed in with some Wild Hunt stuff) versus Devotion Wild Hunt/Frost several times and every single game Vampires just get wrecked. Row locked units become useless versus the immense movement abilities of Wild Hunt Frost decks.
 
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