Is Nekima worth it in the long run..?

[Regelridderen]

Looking at the new Nekima box, I imagine, I could get some fun out slapping some paint on them, maybe play around with a mature nephilim in my other crews.

But at first glance the nephilim seem rather lacklustre. Speed across the field, hit people, die and take the opposition down with you. Or are they more interesting than that?

[LexLock]

1 hour ago, Regelridderen said:

Looking at the new Nekima box, I imagine, I could get some fun out slapping some paint on them, maybe play around with a mature nephilim in my other crews.

But at first glance the nephilim seem rather lacklustre. Speed across the field, hit people, die and take the opposition down with you. Or are they more interesting than that?

That's pretty much what they do, there are some focus spam shenanigans with Black Blood Shamans and you can combine that with Angel Eyes and the Doppelganger to make a gunline and Hayreddin can do some summoning but mostly Nephilim are just alpha strikey.

Lelu and Lilitu would be interesting if they were less... bad. Nekima her self is pretty much a straightforward beater, she can spam the Fast Food trigger on her Hurl Corpse action to grow some Mature Nephilim but that tactic is inferior to focus spam.

[Ogid]

They can also use the mobility for other things than rushing. With a lot of models with Fly with me in the crew they are legit at scheming (in fact that's what the OOK mature I grow in some lists ends doing a lot of the time) and they can retaliate well if contested by something in their weight class. The Fly with me could also let you pull some shenanigans like reposition strong Sz 1 or 2 models like Angel Eyes well stacked with Focused, Candy or Hinamatsu. 

And that box is worth it even if you are not interested in playing keyword Nephs for the OOK potential of Nekima and BBS/Mature alone imho. Hayreddin is also an cool model and could be an interesting tech pick; he excels when backed up with a good cache and with Matures/Rider giving him some mobility, he packs a punch stonning Necrotic Deacy and can also pull off some crazy AoE damage with BBP... I think he could even be leader material, but this last bit is untested yet (I know he is in another box, but if you are getting the core, the box with the BBS is a must have).

Grow lists beyond BBSs are a trap; too unreliable and suit intensive and if you fail, you'll end with useless tots wandering around. Neither am I a fan of twins... maybe I could see 1 Lelu in some list for the ping damage and card draw. And picking Nephs for just blindly rushing... I don't think that'll that successful, declaring Nekima will force all kind of defensive tech/pick into the other crew that can make the game an uphill battle; there are better crews for dominating the center... I think Nekima will thrive in the same kind of pools than Marcus but I play mostly OOK Nephs so I guess other players could offer better advice here.

[Nagi21]

On 11/25/2020 at 6:45 AM, Regelridderen said:

Looking at the new Nekima box, I imagine, I could get some fun out slapping some paint on them, maybe play around with a mature nephilim in my other crews.

But at first glance the nephilim seem rather lacklustre. Speed across the field, hit people, die and take the opposition down with you. Or are they more interesting than that?

They used to be a bit more interesting than that but in 3e they're solely fast, fragile, and simple.  Honestly I don't like the direction so if you're looking for something other than what's on the tin, you're going to be disappointed.

[Ogid]

This got me thinking about my crew choices, I'll try to put it in words:

The Keyword has issues, but also good stuff on it. The problem is half of the keyword is bellow the curve and the master is a one trick pony, that make the lists and playstile predictable.

• Hayreddin, Young, BBS and Mature are legit models, even OOK worthy; that's the backbone of a decent Neph list.
• Lilitu, Hounds and Tots are plain bad. Lelu is niche but lilitu being as bad as she is drags his value down, Hounds lost their niche posible use with the Nekima's aura change in the errata imo.

The only model worth expending resources growing (outside of corpses generated by fighthing) is the BBS -> Mature (that yield a net 4SS gain and Focused pulses), any other grow yield 2-3SS and healing BEFORE growing; nice if happens but not something to expend resources on. I went about one idea of how make a second worthy path here:

Suggestion: Tot -> Lelu/Lilitu grow path. - The Neverborn - Wyrd Forums (themostexcellentandawesomeforumever-wyrd.com)

 

And then there is the Master. I like glass cannons, so she is a model I've used a few times. However the problem with one trick MELE glass cannons declared as leaders is... the other player knows what is coming his way, picking her as second master (what I do) with a non-rushy leader let her have some openings, still nothing guaranteed and the entire list has to be built around her.

She gives up a lot of defense (nothing to reduce the damage and bad defensive stats) and all possible utility for a theoretically very good ofense; however that good ofense needs to be enabled by the crew and the IR upgrade. A Nekima dealing min damage won't be better than Teddy. And an smart oponent could twart her agression quite well (anti-charge tech, Henchmans with damage reduction and and a good cache to put her in , H2W, long range anti-Focused tech...). When she is compared with other mele masters like Misaki (which I also play) is clear how underwhelming she is; she might work if you know what you are doing, but it takes a ton of effort to make her work to the point where it's hardly worth it tbh.

Outside hitting hard when enabled, she does nothing; the only thing that let her keep up with the crew is her master's third AP, which make her very inefficient cost-wise for anything that's not straight up combat (in this case Seamus is a good comparison, being a Master with high damage potential that needs to be enabled, not that hard tho; but way safer and with tools to be useful outside combat or Misaki again, she can also scalpel models out of existence very well but being also able to bypass H2W and defensive triggers, way better defensive options and also being everywhere to scheme or threat enemy models)

 

The above is what make me not play Nephillims in keyword and why I'm thinking about Hayreddin as a Nephillim leader. Nekima has a few good models, so I guess she might work in a few pools that force models to spread, that added to the OOK potential of some of the crew make her a worthy buy if you are commited with NVB as a faction. But don't expect her to work in every scenario, she isn't that kind of master imho.

[Regelridderen]

Seems like experience mirrors my own thoughts.

-

Then let’s look at OOK Nephilim. What’s interesting to me is the abundant Fly with Me. So how do you feel a Mature Nephilim compares to someone like the Hooded Rider or a straight up beater like Teddy?

 And since I’m running plenty of Ht1 models (Dreamer, Kade, Candy) how about the young Nephilim?

[Maniacal_cackle]

Just now, Regelridderen said:

Seems like experience mirrors my own thoughts.

-

Then let’s look at OOK Nephilim. What’s interesting to me is the abundant Fly with Me. So how do you feel a Mature Nephilim compares to someone like the Hooded Rider or a straight up beater like Teddy?

 And since I’m running plenty of Ht1 models (Dreamer, Kade, Candy) how about the young Nephilim?

One of the coolest things for mature neph is that they're minions.

One big effect of this is the Pulling the Strings action on Vasilisa so they can bonus action. This allows double fly with me, or double BBS ritual.

Lucius can also Issue Command to Mature Neph.

[Ogid]

4 hours ago, Regelridderen said:

Seems like experience mirrors my own thoughts.

Then seems both are in the right path (or are terribly wrong about it XD)

3 hours ago, Regelridderen said:

Then let’s look at OOK Nephilim. What’s interesting to me is the abundant Fly with Me. So how do you feel a Mature Nephilim compares to someone like the Hooded Rider or a straight up beater like Teddy?

For pure center brawl combat I rather the later 2; Mature Neph is relatively glassy even versus mele because most masters lack enough card draw to make good use of Combat Finesse and Black Blood make the positioning of your own models akward.

For having a mobile piece with Punch and able to give mobility to other models both Hooded an Mature are good options, Mature's kit is better for this role than for the above as it'll harder for isolated models to overpower his regeneration. I wouldn't pay 11 for a Mature OOK tho; but having the option to pay 7 for a BBS to upgrade it make it worth it if you could afford the time and resources to set it up during turn 1.

3 hours ago, Regelridderen said:

And since I’m running plenty of Ht1 models (Dreamer, Kade, Candy) how about the young Nephilim?

Ey! Dreamer has already grown up!

Young seems legit in keyword but loses versus the alternatives OOK imo. The BBS is 1 SS cheaper, is as fast as the young, can also Fly with Me those models and buffs the crew (while becoming a Mature). The Young Neph has much better ofensive than the BBS, so there could be some scenarios where a Young could be a better pick; but in general the BBS is the OOK Neph.

 

Consider also Hayreddin as a viable tech pick. He is very SS hungry but the ability to deal min damage 4 plus 1 extra damage from BB is handy or he can deal a lot of AoE damage; he can be useful in scenarios where Nekima is hard countered. In fact BBS + Hayreddin are a pretty good self sufficient duo you can send on their own and costs only 1 SS more than Nekima (but he sacrifices a lot of Wds, so you better bring a fat cache and a healer). He really benefices from the mobility the Mature gives him, having a model other than himlsef to use BBP and to make use of his auras.

[Regelridderen]

24 minutes ago, Ogid said:

Ey! Dreamer has already grown up!

Darn kids 🤬

[Domin]

I've played a lot with Nephelim Growing list and found it quite good and solid. First turn it's preety guaranteed growing of two BBS to Matures and two Tots into BBS. 

And the second cool thing is a Hayreddin's bonus action, allowing to summon Tots from killing. 

Summon a Tot from a dying model, take a pustule on him to make him kill another one - and in his own activation he will eat corpse and grow into Lelu. Take a zero action of Lelu next time - and you will get another source on black blood damage. 

I've used it on a December's part of Vassal World series - one of 3 turns - and got a first place at the end. 

[Regelridderen]

@Domin sounds like she’s working for you.

My question was more towards longevity - do your games quickly become formulaic and repetitive e.g T1 grow 2 mature, T2 ... etc. Or can you adapt and change gears?

In short, is she just a machine, or is there more to her.

[Kharnage]

I don't check the Neverborn forums for a bit and I come back to people talking mess about the God Empress Nekima. Shameful! You're all free to play as you see fit, but only peasants don't recognize the greatness.

First off, if you're asking whether or not she's fun to play, I think she is. You can boil down all the masters into some unfun sounding description if you try hard enough (so Hamelin is just a rat themed cancer engine? So Sandeep just summons element midgets? Etc.) and when it comes down to it, effective Nekima play is extremely contingent on whether or not you can play the positioning game on a high level. If you think she is simply a "apply my base to your base, check stats and see who wins" kind of playstyle you will likely not enjoy her or do well with her. You need to know what models are worth stiff arming, what models are worth risking their attacks to splash on, and what models are worth avoiding entirely. With Shove Aside being the real keyword ability between her and the Matures, and the power of Fly with Me, the mobility game is where she shines. If you want to smash bases together, play Peacekeeper Hoffman. If you want to scalpel models from play and score objectives while accepting spankings that hurt them worse than you, play the God Empress. 

Disclaimer; I enjoy peacekeeper Hoffman. 

[Maniacal_cackle]

Every time Kharnage writes about Nekima, Im sad I never picked her up.

[Domin]

19 hours ago, Regelridderen said:

@Domin sounds like she’s working for you.

My question was more towards longevity - do your games quickly become formulaic and repetitive e.g T1 grow 2 mature, T2 ... etc. Or can you adapt and change gears?

In short, is she just a machine, or is there more to her.

All plans live only first turn. Starting from the 2nd, each game is unique and full of choises.

[Mycellanious]

6 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Every time Kharnage writes about Nekima, Im sad I never picked her up.

Someday I hope someone looks at me the way I imagine Kharnage looks at his Nekima model. 

[ooshawn]

I think nekima will probably be the only master I play for about 30 games. seems like the crew needs all the card draw it can get, so I really like lelu+lilitu. I don't know how important growing is to the actual list. I think it's something that is supposed to happen to maybe the BBS on the first/second turn, and from there it feels right to me to let it happen organically.  Hooded rider seems like he just goes with every crew, I think that's probably a slight balance issue though. That's my thoughts on it. It seems like with the right balance of models you can do whatever you want

[Nagi21]

18 hours ago, Kharnage said:

I don't check the Neverborn forums for a bit and I come back to people talking mess about the God Empress Nekima. Shameful! You're all free to play as you see fit, but only peasants don't recognize the greatness.

First off, if you're asking whether or not she's fun to play, I think she is. You can boil down all the masters into some unfun sounding description if you try hard enough (so Hamelin is just a rat themed cancer engine? So Sandeep just summons element midgets? Etc.) and when it comes down to it, effective Nekima play is extremely contingent on whether or not you can play the positioning game on a high level. If you think she is simply a "apply my base to your base, check stats and see who wins" kind of playstyle you will likely not enjoy her or do well with her. You need to know what models are worth stiff arming, what models are worth risking their attacks to splash on, and what models are worth avoiding entirely. With Shove Aside being the real keyword ability between her and the Matures, and the power of Fly with Me, the mobility game is where she shines. If you want to smash bases together, play Peacekeeper Hoffman. If you want to scalpel models from play and score objectives while accepting spankings that hurt them worse than you, play the God Empress. 

Disclaimer; I enjoy peacekeeper Hoffman. 

I mean... Titania took over, Nekima took over, then the whole faction just dropped like a rock.  Seems pretty obvious the leadership is... questionable lol.  

She can be fun, but fun =/= competitive.  I mean you yourself said you had stopped playing your "God Empress" in GG1 because the only thing keeping her viable got nerfed for no reason.  The minions are fun but the crew itself is really quite underwhelming, and very one trick.  They melt into anything that can hold up to min 3 damage or out position them (Rezzers, Arcanists,  Thunders), and their only viable strategy is a BBS bomb then run around and hope they don't get killed before they can lay into something.  They have their good matchups, but they don't punch above their weight anymore because everyone thinks min 3 damage is better than it actually is.  Not to mention Nekima herself is this... hodgepodge of abilities and actions that don't at all synergize with each other.  

There was a reason Nephilim were good in 2e.  Lilith was a beatstick (a better beatstick than 3e Nekima mind you), and had defense, and had positioning tricks.  The whole kit synergized together.  Nekima is literally a heavily nerfed version.  If I wanted to play a scalpel game reliant on positioning, I'd play Lucius or Zoraida (or hell even Dreamer can do that).

[ShinChan]

13 minutes ago, Nagi21 said:

I mean... Titania took over, Nekima took over, then the whole faction just dropped like a rock.  Seems pretty obvious the leadership is... questionable lol.  

She can be fun, but fun =/= competitive.  I mean you yourself said you had stopped playing your "God Empress" in GG1 because the only thing keeping her viable got nerfed for no reason.  The minions are fun but the crew itself is really quite underwhelming, and very one trick.  They melt into anything that can hold up to min 3 damage or out position them (Rezzers, Arcanists,  Thunders), and their only viable strategy is a BBS bomb then run around and hope they don't get killed before they can lay into something.  They have their good matchups, but they don't punch above their weight anymore because everyone thinks min 3 damage is better than it actually is.  Not to mention Nekima herself is this... hodgepodge of abilities and actions that don't at all synergize with each other.  

There was a reason Nephilim were good in 2e.  Lilith was a beatstick (a better beatstick than 3e Nekima mind you), and had defense, and had positioning tricks.  The whole kit synergized together.  Nekima is literally a heavily nerfed version.  If I wanted to play a scalpel game reliant on positioning, I'd play Lucius or Zoraida (or hell even Dreamer can do that).

4 wins out of 9 game in the past 3 vassal tournaments, (and @Kharnage just won 8-2 with her in his last game this weekend, vs English Ivan).

He said that Nekima has lost some power since the FAQ and errata came into play, both from losing IR (which was abusive) and from the "Enraged by insolence" (and all the "other model" clauses). However, she's still doing her thing. After playing against Kharnage a couple of times, a well played Nekima is a master that is going to punish you even for the smallest positioning mistake, while she's going to dictate when and where the fights are going to take place. Is she as good as before? Definitely no, but she's still in a decent spot.

Now, if that's not what you want to play with Nephilim, maybe you have to try to find an equally productive playstyle or maybe they're not the keyword for you (seems like Peacekeeper Hoffman could be, lots of movement tricks, bunch of positives and people hitting 3-4 times each activation).

[Maniacal_cackle]

In regards to Nekima, I believe it is also the GG strats that are playing a large role. Both public enemies and leylines heavily punish her basic playstyle and mature nephs.

So especially in the long-term, she is likely to do some interesting stuff as GGs get updated.

Out of curiousity, has anyone been playing her in GG0 strats and schemes with the changes? Would be interesting to see just the effects of the changes vs. the changes of GG1.

[Maniacal_cackle]

12 minutes ago, ShinChan said:

4 wins out of 9 game in the past 3 vassal tournaments, (and @Kharnage just won 8-2 with her in his last game this weekend, vs English Ivan).

That's pretty good! Interested to see how English Ivan goes as well.

[Kharnage]

Speaking plainly, my return to Nekima was motivated by my giving up trying to have a tool in the kit for every problem. Explorer's Society asks questions we don't answer. I get that I just put up a big win against one of the strongest Explorer's Society masters, but there was a massive gap in familiarity between player and crew, and were I playing against an Ivan with 100+ games, I don't think I could win even 50/50. When it comes down to it, I don't think that Neverborn has many of the tools needed to shut the Society down. No marker removal, no anti heal, no real anti demise (execute 95% of the time is just a Maim trigger) and certainly not enough ranged AoE options for Cadmus. At this point, my goal as a competitive player is to be so good at a master, that clearly people don't respect, that when I lock in Nekima in a matchup, my opponent goes "well crap. Should be fine... Right?"

I'm sure it's cocky to say it, but it is not that Nekima is competitive, it is simply that I am competitive with Nekima. She's my favorite master to play and I will shamelessly soap box for her because I finally got her as a master and I don't want to watch her get DMH'd by plot, and if Nicodem teaches me anything, it's that hype saves lives. 

 

[Maniacal_cackle]

To some degree, I play Molly for similar reasons xD

Though noting for this point...

7 minutes ago, Kharnage said:

When it comes down to it, I don't think that Neverborn has many of the tools needed to shut the Society down. No marker removal, no anti heal, no real anti demise (execute 95% of the time is just a Maim trigger) and certainly not enough ranged AoE options for Cadmus.

I think sometimes people over-emphasise answering what the opponent is doing. Having your own proactive plan that wins the game unless the opponent stops you is very good, and Neverborn are pretty good at that.

Not to mention there are often techs that aren't direct counters but can be super useful (I imagine Shove Aside is a brilliant trigger against Cadmus, for example?)

[Mycellanious]

15 minutes ago, Kharnage said:

Speaking plainly, my return to Nekima was motivated by my giving up trying to have a tool in the kit for every problem. Explorer's Society asks questions we don't answer. I get that I just put up a big win against one of the strongest Explorer's Society masters, but there was a massive gap in familiarity between player and crew, and were I playing against an Ivan with 100+ games, I don't think I could win even 50/50. When it comes down to it, I don't think that Neverborn has many of the tools needed to shut the Society down. No marker removal, no anti heal, no real anti demise (execute 95% of the time is just a Maim trigger) and certainly not enough ranged AoE options for Cadmus. At this point, my goal as a competitive player is to be so good at a master, that clearly people don't respect, that when I lock in Nekima in a matchup, my opponent goes "well crap. Should be fine... Right?"

I'm sure it's cocky to say it, but it is not that Nekima is competitive, it is simply that I am competitive with Nekima. She's my favorite master to play and I will shamelessly soap box for her because I finally got her as a master and I don't want to watch her get DMH'd by plot, and if Nicodem teaches me anything, it's that hype saves lives. 

 

I get that, but at some point Lilith is going to come home....

[Kharnage]

Just now, Maniacal_cackle said:

Not to mention there are often techs that aren't direct counters but can be super useful (I imagine Shove Aside is a brilliant trigger against Cadmus, for example?)

Cadmus does force Nekima to play a hit and run game, and in that vein Shove Aside is invaluable (not to mention knocking away that cool as hell but overstatted Lion is something only Nekima hopes to do consistently) but I still wouldn't describe that matchup as even remotely favorable. I could descend into a spitting rage talking about how much the mechanics of Cadmus make me angry, and I preemptively apologize for any people who actually just like the vibe of the aesthetic of that keyword because I will be a salty boi any time that keyword is mentioned. 

[ooshawn]

Playing my first two games of third edition with nekima , I feel like her crew is very strong. I won vs mcmourning with some help from my opponent taking easy on me. Vs Jack daw, I felt pretty in control the whole game even though I lost. The keyword doesn't seem like it has any good generic scheming abilities, so I think she probably has a few hard no's on schemes and strategies, whereas a crew like collette or lucius might be auto wins. At first, I was pretty sure she was bad , though now I think that crews just aren't as good at everything as they used to be. Really seems like you need more masters in your toolbox this edition. LIke getting into deployment zones and laying markers seems like a waste of her keyword. However quadruple luring models to their death with no counter play makes stuff like this weeks strategy pretty trivial.  you can stop four lures potentially on maybe your master, but it's gonna murder your hand every turn you do it. Idk, she seems like a great start. If anything I would like to see tots get leap or something to make her crew have a little bit wider range of power, not really giving her keyword a direct upgrade. More of a side-grade. How do people utilize corrupting hounds? They seem like just walking corpse markers to me.