Vincent Van Moorlehem vs Veil

[Barracuda88]

At least in my experience, this is not true. I can’t speak for Syndicate as I've not played it, but SK, NR, and MO can play around defender through untargeted abilities and multiple engines that do not require interaction to trigger; NG does not have these abilities. NG does have exceptional removal ability, but most of its removal (including Vincent) requires two cards for each removal. Except for poison, the strong removal cards (Vincent, Vattier, Yennifer’s Invocation, Vilgefortz) are expensive.

Part of the strategic fun of Gwent is anticipating what your opponent might hold, and finding ways to work around it. If you predict Vincent in your opponent’s deck, you can’t directly counter it, but you can often trick it or force it to be used against a lesser target. And you can definitely avoid giving it extra targets. While Vincent can be annoying (so can Alzur’s Thunder when it destroys an important unit), I rarely find it dominating.

I don’t have experience to say that minor nerfs — such as raising provision to 12 or reducing power to 4 — would be inappropriate, but I don’t believe Vincent needs major change, and would be disappointed to see it.

Post automatically merged: Jul 14, 2020

I fully agree with this; my argument is not that NG can’t handle cards like defenders, but that it seems far more dependent upon big destruction (such as Vincent) than the other factions I have played.

Well, in my experience, I can't really understand what you're referring to here. Assimilate and spies laughs at defenders. Mill doesn't care. Poison (double) ball takes the defender out in 2 moves. Enslave/Helge destroys it with tactic cards. IF Soldiers has the same untargeted abilities you mentioned in other factions. What NG strategies Vincent is so necessary to save?

Yen Invo is another card that can not only immediately remove your defender, but use it against you a turn later, and it's most definitely NOT expensive for what it does.

I'm willing to bet a lot more "strategies" are ruined by instant defender removal (including NG's Damien/Skellen, etc) than by defender's presence.

The fact that Vincent doesn't auto-win you games and that you can play around it doesn't mean the card isn't too good at what it does. That neither it, nor Yen Invo require "two cards," is basically the whole point of this discussion (veil removal). It should require two cards, meaning only unit with "negative" status should be removable by it.

 

[Markus_Wirth]

Just again played Harald´s warrior against NG in rank 1. In the last round I lost with 2 points difference.

What happened:
- Harald has been killed by Vincent
- Yenn´s Invocation killed Dagur
- 2nd Vincent killed Greatsword activated by Harald.
- Mascerade Ball destroyed other engines
- Spy synergy created value for NG

So, one example for that a well synchronized noble-spy deck can be very competitive against the currently dominating Harald´s warrior. Nevertheless, they were still lucky. If I would have drawn either Blood Eagle or Morkvarg I would have won.

 

[Philido]

Well, in my experience, I can't really understand what you're referring to here. Assimilate and spies laughs at defenders. Mill doesn't care. Poison (double) ball takes the defender out in 2 moves. Enslave/Helge destroys it with tactic cards. IF Soldiers has the same untargeted abilities you mentioned in other factions. What NG strategies Vincent is so necessary to save?

Yen Invo is another card that can not only immediately remove your defender, but use it against you a turn later, and it's most definitely NOT expensive for what it does.

I'm willing to bet a lot more "strategies" are ruined by instant defender removal (including NG's Damien/Skellen, etc) than by defender's presence.

The fact that Vincent doesn't auto-win you games and that you can play around it doesn't mean the card isn't too good at what it does. That neither it, nor Yen Invo require "two cards," is basically the whole point of this discussion (veil removal). It should require two cards, meaning only unit with "negative" status should be removable by it.

If some other cards get equally buffed while VVM gets hard nerfed like that then I'm fine with this. If it's only the nerf and nothing else is changed it's obviously a big no, and you all know why. Winrate would drop significantly, perhaps even below 50% where no faction's best leader ability should ever be at.

 

[Celadyl]

The biggest are bad proactivity, almost no point-slam and very poor performance against swarm or anything that doesn't give targets fast enough because of the control nature.

NG is actually (potentially) very very strong against swarm lists, which have to win r1 against NG at all cost bc NG can spam tons of spying units onto the opponents board, which is a hardcounter against most, if not all, swarm lists. NG doesnt need wide punish if the opponent can only play 8 out of 10 cards. I recently had a match as NG where my opponent has had his board full at 4 cards left and just passed. needless to say, I won easily.

as for vincent, I think he's fine. when entering a match against NG, you need to have vincent in mind, maybe try to force him on round 1. if vincent could only destroy units with negative status, that you have to apply yourself, you could just as well put a 4p poison into your deck instead. plus atleast 1 purify should be standard in most decks by now anyway, so just purify your tallest unit.

 

[Philido]

NG is actually (potentially) very very strong against swarm lists, which have to win r1 against NG at all cost bc NG can spam tons of spying units onto the opponents board, which is a hardcounter against most, if not all, swarm lists. NG doesnt need wide punish if the opponent can only play 8 out of 10 cards. I recently had a match as NG where my opponent has had his board full at 4 cards left and just passed. needless to say, I won easily.

as for vincent, I think he's fine. when entering a match against NG, you need to have vincent in mind, maybe try to force him on round 1. if vincent could only destroy units with negative status, that you have to apply yourself, you could just as well put a 4p poison into your deck instead. plus atleast 1 purify should be standard in most decks by now anyway, so just purify your tallest unit.

Depends on how many spies you actually use. If it's an IF soldiers spies hybrid with Masquerade Ball you won't really be able to fill your opponent's rows that much (if it's Strategic Withdrawal on the other hand....). Fully agree with your statement about Vincent, would make his existence entirely pointless if he was nerfed that way.

 

[Payus]

I guess this will be fixed along with Assire next patch.
It's getting more ridiculous with Strategic withdrawal double Evolving card, but VVM it's making the skill brick less often, specially with the abundance of locks and poisons VVm is an almost unconditional 2x Destroy anything WITH or WITHOUT Veil, utterly broken.

I propose he is given the initiative treatment. And mabe a nerf in body.

 

[Philido]

I guess this will be fixed along with Assire next patch.
It's getting more ridiculous with Strategic withdrawal double Evolving card, but VVM it's making the skill brick less often, specially with the abundance of locks and poisons VVm is an almost unconditional 2x Destroy anything WITH or WITHOUT Veil, utterly broken.

I propose he is given the initiative treatment. And mabe a nerf in body.

This would only hurt Strategic Withdrawal which is already not a good leader, everything else will stay pretty much the same. The first thing that should be fixed immediately is that broken SK suppressing ST and SY.

 

[Payus]

This would only hurt Strategic Withdrawal which is already not a good leader, everything else will stay pretty much the same. The first thing that should be fixed immediately is that broken SK suppressing ST and SY.

They can fix both.

 

[Philido]

They can fix both.

Yeah, providing they find both of them broken/overpowered.

 

[Tyr117]

Well I played against NG right now and my Harald was killed by Vincent but I still won. To my mind, SK is heavily dominating the meta even after hot fix. And Vincent is a card being able to annoy Harald´s warrior.

Is Vincent a game breaker? Probably, he increases NG´s win chance by about 10 per cent when he kills the powerful third evolution card. Nevertheless, he has same provision cost as all evolving cards. Additionally, one should not forget that half the value of those cards is created by their powerful deploy activity (e.g. activate a warrior from your graveyard Harald). So when Vincent kills Harald this makes maybe an average value of 2 points depending on the power of the Harald based engine and the existing alternatives for elliminating Harald.

Apparently, Harald and other Similar cards, are Evolving, it means you have to wait two rounds, and have devotion, for them to get the value, that you can get without any of these with Vincent as you mentioned, not only as points, but as removal, in an instant, regardless of the round.

 

[Biggubossa]

As a design standpoint I dont feel like Vincent is that much of a bad card. Its just that its annoying that its used in conjuncture with poison decks. I like to play ST and in this new meta I put in veil stuff in my decks because poison annoys me. The problem now is that with veil I dodge poison to run into tall removal with Vincent. This kind of defeats the purpose of veil, because I feel like veil was created to counter these kinds of strategies, but now fails at it

 

[Philido]

As a design standpoint I dont feel like Vincent is that much of a bad card. Its just that its annoying that its used in conjuncture with poison decks. I like to play ST and in this new meta I put in veil stuff in my decks because poison annoys me. The problem now is that with veil I dodge poison to run into tall removal with Vincent. This kind of defeats the purpose of veil, because I feel like veil was created to counter these kinds of strategies, but now fails at it

Good point. But without Vincent (who is a single card, compare that to the amount of poison and locks we currently have), there wouldn't be any other counters to veiled engines save high provision cards like Heatwave or YenInvo and pure damage which is not that common to have multiple copies of in your deck (unless you are SK, they have a ton of that). If you ask me, there aren't sufficient ways to deal with Veil, and restricting Vincent from killing these units would just make it even harder to deal with them than it already is. It could be a fair compromise to forbid him destroying veiled units, but instead make it possible to lock Veil (which obviously doesn't make any sense considering it's an anti-status status, but oh well....).

 

[ReaperTek]

Good point. But without Vincent (who is a single card, compare that to the amount of poison and locks we currently have), there wouldn't be any other counters to veiled engines save high provision cards like Heatwave or YenInvo

NG not being able to deal with Veil.

Vilgefortz with a little risk, Leo Bonhart if the veiled unit is above 9, Yennefer Invocation, Impirial Diviner best purify bronze in the game, Cupbearer purify, assassination, tourney joust (which is also a nice counter for rupture) , bringing them into seize range for Sweers, Amnesty or Enslave or removal range for Mage Infiltrator or Coup de grace Deathblow, Peter Saar Gwynleve if it's just about removing the boosts from a veiled Unit, treason if there's a strong unit next to it, pings from hefty Helge or Impera Enforcers. Those are just the options without breaking Devotion.

 

[quintivarium]

Veil hurts NG far more than it hurts any other faction. If 1 NG card helps offset this impact, I am OK with it. Frankly, I much prefer facing Vincent than Yennifer’s Invocation, Sweers, Amnesty, or Enslave.

 

[Philido]

NG not being able to deal with Veil.

Vilgefortz with a little risk, Leo Bonhart if the veiled unit is above 9, Yennefer Invocation, Impirial Diviner best purify bronze in the game, Cupbearer purify, assassination, tourney joust (which is also a nice counter for rupture) , bringing them into seize range for Sweers, Amnesty or Enslave or removal range for Mage Infiltrator or Coup de grace Deathblow, Peter Saar Gwynleve if it's just about removing the boosts from a veiled Unit, treason if there's a strong unit next to it, pings from hefty Helge or Impera Enforcers. Those are just the options without breaking Devotion.

Thanks for that provocative first sentence. I'm pretty sure you are fully aware that at least half of the options you mentioned are a huge downtrade in terms of provisions or generally deck versatility. Enslave is a relatively bad leader at the moment and a big commitment to use, Vilgefortz to kill let's say the 7 provision engines is obviously bad considering his cost AND his negative effect, Leo is a whopping 10 provisions and very conditional. Purifying and THEN locking or removing is incredibly low tempo, Assassination doesn't fit well in most of the decks and I haven't seen this card at all outside of Enslave, Joust is only 4 damage and then you need an additional Infiltrator to finish it off (again slow af needing two cards just to shut down one, maybe even dealing too much damage to it). Or you can seize it as a low power unit which is of course really bad value for Amnesty. I could go on like this for an hour or two.

 

[ReaperTek]

I stayed away from that thread for a long time because this thread is just like someone before me said

He ALWAYS finds good targets and he can't be anything BUT imbalanced. The condition is too broad, do you think CDPR future-proofs their cards? was he designed with veil in mind?
And yeah as expected it's just another "don't nerf my card".

It's also kind of funny whenever people complain about certain NG Match-ups or Cards like Ball, Yennefer, Invocation or VVM usually the NG players respond with play around it or put in tech options but putting in tech options if VVM couldn't target Veil anymore seems to be unbearable (5p Diviner).

Whenever they introduce a new status VVM will get even more powerful, Vince killing of Defenders already felt a bit off before MM and now with Veil even more, at this point it's not even necessary to apply a status on an enemy Unit to get a decent value from Vincent, I think he should only be able to target negativ statuses, but considering the balancing they did over the last few month and the imbalanced new expansion they just released I wouldn't worry to much about a Vincent Nerf because it probably won't be happening anyway.

 

[Philido]

I stayed away from that thread for a long time because this thread is just like someone before me said

It's also kind of funny whenever people complain about certain NG Match-ups or Cards like Ball, Yennefer, Invocation or VVM usually the NG players respond with play around it or put in tech options but putting in tech options if VVM couldn't target Veil anymore seems to be unbearable (5p Diviner).

Whenever they introduce a new status VVM will get even more powerful, Vince killing of Defenders already felt a bit off before MM and now with Veil even more, at this point it's not even necessary to apply a status on an enemy Unit to get a decent value from Vincent, I think he should only be able to target negativ statuses, but considering the balancing they did over the last few month and the imbalanced new expansion they just released I wouldn't worry to much about a Vincent Nerf because it probably won't be happening anyway.

Okay, let's go over Vincent's options if he can only destroy units with negative statuses: With poison, you might as well just pack another one and don't even include him in your deck, but he might be useful as a substitute. With Bleeding and Lock you need a VM Hunter or Deithwen Arbalest. In both cases the 4 provisions card plays for 3 and VVM for whatever the destroyed unit's strength was +5. That's two cards and 14 provisions for 8 points+ the unit which necessarily has to be a high one if you don't want to get an abysmal amount of value out of the two cards. Note that needing two cards to deal with one unit is almost always a very bad situation. Spying (if that's even a negative status) is the easiest to apply, however you again need another card to help you, eg. Fergus or Mage Torturer. If you didn't draw these, that option's also gone. Again, you need your opponent to play a relatively high unit. Last but not least: Doomed. Almost no cards have this, so quite hard to plan with. Remember, all of these statuses can't be used against Veil, so an additional bunch of cards which are absolutely immune against Vincent. To sum up, does that sound like the versatility an 11 provisions card should have?

 

[DrunkHemplar]

Balanced interaction, Vincent is an 11 provision card and most of his targets are 4-5 pointers in terms of Veil. Rarely are you going to get more than a +1 off of him unless you've planned on using him to kill an engine you left running, which is smart, not broken.

 

[Actuas]

Frankly, Vincent should get the rupture treatment.

Damage the ennemy by its power. Solves the defender issue, makes using him less braindead if opponent has armor.

All in all will most likely find great value for his provision, but the opposite player has a say if he wants to play around it.

 

[Jamborinio]

Veil was designed to give you some tools to deal with poison, however, Vincent makes a mockery of Veil and therefore Veil doesn't serve its purpose in being an effective counter to NG poison decks, and that is why NG poison and Masquerade Ball is as good as it always was.

I think i'd personally like to see VVM be unable to target Veil. This would open up Veil a little more and stop the one-shotting of critical Veil cards like Auberon and the like.