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How do you feel about pandora's in keyword General power level on average?


ooshawn

Where does pandora sit in overall effectiveness in keyword vs all other neverborn masters?  

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Just reread euripides card and he's like a half finished card still in beta. here's a big tubby blob master that's okay in combat , no armor, just okay defense  and movement.  that can make and move ice pillars. maybe his crew will impress me (doubt it). God I would hate to see what a ranged crew or angel eyes would do to his entire crew

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1 hour ago, ooshawn said:

I really feel like every keyword should be able to function independently for the sake of well I guess Story? I mean balance is only as important as you make it. For me I really am glad to be done with the days of completely hodge podge crews, owning ancestors without ever purchasing yan lo, completely peacemeal crews. Like I love that wyrd went hard into keywords. I just think that with some clever, gentle nudging we can inch a few of the weaker performers together. I might even start playing Euripides on Vassal exclusively for awhile since people seem to think he is bad

Yeah, I agree, I much prefer keyword crews, but unfortunately they don't always work out. That said, it's basically impossible to have this many crews and have them all be great. Really it is remarkable how many of the crews are playable, IMO.

1 hour ago, ooshawn said:

Just reread euripides card and he's like a half finished card still in beta. here's a big tubby blob master that's okay in combat , no armor, just okay defense  and movement.  that can make and move ice pillars. maybe his crew will impress me (doubt it). God I would hate to see what a ranged crew or angel eyes would do to his entire crew

Haha, yeah, Euripedes is pretty high on the list of suggested crews for an upgrade, although he did just get a new model added so we'll have to see.

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9 hours ago, ooshawn said:

stunned would be a good condition if models were still littered with things that gave extra generic AP or movement AP, but all too often bonus actions in this edition are just a hodgepodge of abilities that range from awful to amazing, but don't directly give you ability to scheme. Which makes stunned's value drop severely. 

Stun is one of the most powerful conditions in the game. Stripping your opponents of actions and giving them more choices is just one thing, but the main thing is denying them their triggers. No more Onslaughts, Crits, Execute, Ricochets and what-nots. You might say bonus actions are hodge-podge, but they’re the ‘third’ AP, and they usually do something critical for the model it can’t do in its normal actions. 

And when you Combine it with Slow, everything just grinds to a halt. 

Sorrows are great. They don’t do anything dramatically good, but they add to the grind. They can beat/outlive most minions in a straight fight. So they can work independently away from the bubble and go scheme, while their aura has quite the reach. And short of Leap, they have one of the most powerful bonus actions in the game, combining action denial with movement sheananigans (or Ping damage if preferable). They might not be fast - from a high move or a third AP - but they’re Incorporeal and in most cases they do enough by simply being present and using Glimpse of Insanity.

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Woe is probably the most economic keyword in the game. You can get the crew box and a Teddy and you’re good to go,with a crew that’ll give most opponents a decent fight. 

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And Woe is quite often very resilient. I often go to war with two soulstones and end up spending them on cards. 

The key thing is that their resilience doesn’t come from super stats or armor, but their denial. Getting Candy into the midst of the opponent, and suddenly he’s facing Stun, Slow, Manipulative and sees all his damage to the source of problems reduced by two. He is caught between ineffectual actions or wasting actions on moving. 

And Teddy with his 7pt upgrade Baby Kade becomes outright bonkers, regenerating from failed Wps, movement tricks, and dealing out a ton of extra damage. 

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9 minutes ago, Regelridderen said:

And Woe is quite often very resilient. I often go to war with two soulstones and end up spending them on cards. 

The key thing is that their resilience doesn’t come from super stats or armor, but their denial. Getting Candy into the midst of the opponent, and suddenly he’s facing Stun, Slow, Manipulative and sees all his damage to the source of problems reduced by two. He is caught between ineffectual actions or wasting actions on moving. 

And Teddy with his 7pt upgrade Baby Kade becomes outright bonkers, regenerating from failed Wps, movement tricks, and dealing out a ton of extra damage. 

Haha, I wouldn't call Kade just an upgrade. He's a little murder baby. He's squishy, but if the opponent doesn't respect him, he'll happily stab for 9 points of damage in an activation.

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5 hours ago, ooshawn said:

I really feel like every keyword should be able to function independently for the sake of well I guess Story? I mean balance is only as important as you make it. For me I really am glad to be done with the days of completely hodge podge crews, owning ancestors without ever purchasing yan lo, completely peacemeal crews. Like I love that wyrd went hard into keywords. I just think that with some clever, gentle nudging we can inch a few of the weaker performers together. I might even start playing Euripides on Vassal exclusively for awhile since people seem to think he is bad

I don't think Wyrd went as hard into keywords as you want (or it might just be me). Every Keyword can function with only models from that keyword, but that doesn't mean that it will always be its best with only keyword models. It depends on how much you are trying to push the limits and get the most possible out of a crew.

Versatile and out of keyword hires exist and should always be considered if you feel they will improve your crew. Its not the same situation as M2e where you could hire your crew, and then look at the game and decide which master you want (And even that was only practical in rare situations, although the neverborn allstars were probably the worst case of it).

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How come that no one mentions the fact that Pandora can mess with activation order of the opponent crew and how useful it is?

You have a single healer? - Why don't you activate it first so you have no way to heal your models for the rest of the turn while I beat them?

While I agree that Sorrows and Aversion don't do a lot of damage in most games (if any), both can be quite useful - with aversion winning in that space, pushing enemies away, pushing friendly manipulative models to get in place before they activate.

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3 hours ago, Maniacal_cackle said:

Haha, I wouldn't call Kade just an upgrade. He's a little murder baby. He's squishy, but if the opponent doesn't respect him, he'll happily stab for 9 points of damage in an activation.

Kade/Teddy..Kaddy?.. is phenomenal.

My most memorable activation - Kaddy is standing on a narrow bridge across a river of Lava. Kade Lures Rusty Alyce in across a Pit Trap, gives her Slow with which he pushes her into the lava. Then hits her twice with a coordinated Teddy strike.

He can do wonders without a Teddy, but healing those 2 points/model a turn, does wonders for the two. (They were great for chugging Corrupted Idols because of this.

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That said, do anyone use Kade/Teddy OOK, as you still get the discount on Teddy with Kade, they're only 18 stones, and they are phenomenal in the way that they're a very self-contained unit?

 

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1 hour ago, CzaszkaA said:

How come that no one mentions the fact that Pandora can mess with activation order of the opponent crew and how useful it is?

This ability is situationally amazing. But most oponent will play around it (which is still something  because it passively affect the game). But it can be clutch especially when an oponent beater is in your bubble and you lost the initiative. The gravy is forcing a models in candy aura to activate 😎.

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It's definitely a good ability, and one of my favorites that I used in second edition to win, many many games. Except that in this edition it's a six inch bubble , which means you won't be using it until like turn 3+ at best. So, if you look at any ranged crews, it'll be rip for your whole crew before it comes into play. Then if you are facing something like a Focused nekima, she's charging and killing two of your crew in one turn  on turn 3. And right behind her is a mature neph that is most likely gonna kill whatever I throw it at in a pandy crew. so your down like 15-20 ss, and at that point, you can hope you've scored more than your opponent and pray that the round is gonna be called soon or you'll just get deleted off the board , while the person just schemes at their leisure. That actually happened to me at the top table of adepticon because I didn't know what The little shooty gremlin Crew leader (perdita gremlin)+ the catapult was capable of. Suffice to say , Her crew was free to just score points the entire game. 

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Have you seen any of the T&G productions Pandora games on youtube? They might be useful for you. They're not necessarily competitive games, but the Pandora pilot placed pretty highly at a fairly major UK tournament pre-pandemic if I remember correctly so I would assume he kinda knows what he's doing.

 

One of those things he knows how to do is use Kade to Lure Pandora up the field Turn 1, then she just walks three times and opens the box in the middle of the enemy crew. You by no means need to wait until Turn 3 to get your bubbles on top of the opposing crew, you can comfortably engineer that situation Turn 1.

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12 hours ago, ooshawn said:

It's definitely a good ability, and one of my favorites that I used in second edition to win, many many games. Except that in this edition it's a six inch bubble , which means you won't be using it until like turn 3+ at best. So, if you look at any ranged crews, it'll be rip for your whole crew before it comes into play. Then if you are facing something like a Focused nekima, she's charging and killing two of your crew in one turn  on turn 3. And right behind her is a mature neph that is most likely gonna kill whatever I throw it at in a pandy crew. so your down like 15-20 ss, and at that point, you can hope you've scored more than your opponent and pray that the round is gonna be called soon or you'll just get deleted off the board , while the person just schemes at their leisure. That actually happened to me at the top table of adepticon because I didn't know what The little shooty gremlin Crew leader (perdita gremlin)+ the catapult was capable of. Suffice to say , Her crew was free to just score points the entire game. 

There is of course the risk of playing a crew that relies on a bubble, if your opponent can play outside that bubble you might be in trouble. Deployment is a little larger this edition, so you can get nearer faster. But if your opponent declares a shooting master, you at least have crew hiring to adapt your plan to their master. 

It's a large part of playing control well, you need to know your opponents crew well to know how to control it. Although all masters probably need at least an idea of what your opponents plans are to have a good chance to win, it's a lot rarer that you can just play your game and force the opponent to adapt to you. 

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My first game in 3e was Pandora vs Nekima so take anything said with a grain of salt. Nekima moved up turn one to destroy things turn two and Pandora dropped her to 1 wound with self loathing. The biggest problem with bringing anything big and beaty vs Pandora is having them kill themself with Dora and Candy.

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Pandora's weird because you kinda have to play her in keyword to be good, and her expensive keyword models are very good.  It's the cheaper ones that have real issues (anything under 7 stones basically).  The rework to Misery basically left those models with little use since they don't survive well and don't do much damage unless they stick around close to the enemy.

I would put her probably at the midpoint of the faction with Titania.  Woe is one of those factions where either it works extremely well, or extremely poorly, depending on what the enemy can or does bring.  I don't think I've had a game with Pandora in 3e where it wasn't a stomp one way or the other.

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Pandora for me is totally bad design. She wrecks all the condtion master like brewmaster or mcmourning making them never takes against nvb particulary in multi-master games. The keyword should work only with stunned and gain buffs elsewhere. On other hand on her own in singel master games she struggles against a lot things:

- ruthless - turns off most of her defensive tech, most crew has either manipulative or terrying for defence. As you declare master before crew selection its easy to counter Dora by most of fractions. For unkown reason the anti-ruthless aura is on a def4 totem which is priority target anyways due to his wp aura.

- most defences like dora trigger+misery, candy stun aura+her trigger dont work against shooting. Ruthless shooters like fuhatsu are very problematic

- while master has some strong abilities like mood swing, shockwave or box opens they have stupid restrictions. Moodswing or Despair's Influence are cool but there is no card draw in the whole keyword, you need to use Ancient Pacts on minions which is bit meh for card draw.  Fears given form and Box open need a 7 to go off,  again in keyword with no card draw. So you either do nothing or get rid of your hand which would be ok If you could for example spam your shockwave to drain opponents hand but for some unknown reason its restriced to once per turn. Why the shockwave needs a 7 is a mystery for me. Some totems have better shockwave then Pandora with lower card needed -compare Master Ap to Research asssiatant ap?

-I completly do not understand why both Pandora and Candy have no melee. First off both have a lot of hostile auras but opponent can just leave them without any effort. Second they both cant charge - they lose a lot of efficiency across games because of it. Candy at least has on your heels trigger on her bonus, Pandora has nothing, mv5 and no unimpendent - she needs to hire a rider each time because of it and it sucks.

Is she unplayable? I dont think so. is she cometetive? Definetly not. Why bother at all when so many things can go wrong when you can take a safe pick with either dreamer or zoraida.

The whole keyword is a missed opportunity in my opion.

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On 1/15/2021 at 6:27 AM, Passenty said:

Pandora for me is totally bad design. She wrecks all the condtion master like brewmaster or mcmourning making them never takes against nvb particulary in multi-master games. The keyword should work only with stunned and gain buffs elsewhere. On other hand on her own in singel master games she struggles against a lot things:

- ruthless - turns off most of her defensive tech, most crew has either manipulative or terrying for defence. As you declare master before crew selection its easy to counter Dora by most of fractions. For unkown reason the anti-ruthless aura is on a def4 totem which is priority target anyways due to his wp aura.

- most defences like dora trigger+misery, candy stun aura+her trigger dont work against shooting. Ruthless shooters like fuhatsu are very problematic

- while master has some strong abilities like mood swing, shockwave or box opens they have stupid restrictions. Moodswing or Despair's Influence are cool but there is no card draw in the whole keyword, you need to use Ancient Pacts on minions which is bit meh for card draw.  Fears given form and Box open need a 7 to go off,  again in keyword with no card draw. So you either do nothing or get rid of your hand which would be ok If you could for example spam your shockwave to drain opponents hand but for some unknown reason its restriced to once per turn. Why the shockwave needs a 7 is a mystery for me. Some totems have better shockwave then Pandora with lower card needed -compare Master Ap to Research asssiatant ap?

-I completly do not understand why both Pandora and Candy have no melee. First off both have a lot of hostile auras but opponent can just leave them without any effort. Second they both cant charge - they lose a lot of efficiency across games because of it. Candy at least has on your heels trigger on her bonus, Pandora has nothing, mv5 and no unimpendent - she needs to hire a rider each time because of it and it sucks.

Is she unplayable? I dont think so. is she cometetive? Definetly not. Why bother at all when so many things can go wrong when you can take a safe pick with either dreamer or zoraida.

The whole keyword is a missed opportunity in my opion.

Ruthless is an issue for the entire faction, which makes running into TT or the like miserable anyway.  Poltergeist is in a bad spot because if it gets a defensive buff it becomes stupidly good (not that stupid good totems don't exist), but without defensive buffs, the insane supporting buffs never actually get to be used in actual play.  I don't expect Wyrd to make any changes to him though with their current mindset.

Shooting is also an issue for most of the faction, that's just been life as NVB since 1e.

7 for a shockwave isn't that uncommon.  Fears given form isn't really the play you should be making with Pandora since it's just 2 damage and possibly a push.  It could be useful sometimes, but on the times you want to use it you'll almost certainly be saving a 7 for it.  Box open should have a 7 because it's a 14 wp with both damage and condition effect.  Agree on the card draw problem though, but again, that's the faction not the crew.

They have ranged options they can do regardless of being engaged, along with auras to punish, them not having melee really doesn't hurt that much, especially since charge + melee would be shorter than the 10" on self loathing.  I agree there's some wasted AP to get closer when you want to use your shorter range things like Box Opens, but that's not that bad.  Rider does help the crew alot though, usually with Candy.

I mean comparing any crew with Dreamer is just unfair since he's the only thing keeping the faction relevant (which is why most discussions about NVB competitiveness have the qualifier "without Dreamer").  Like I stated before in this thread, Pandora has very few middling matchups.  Either she's very good, or very bad, into whatever your opponent brought.  There are safer picks besides Dreamer (Zoraida and Titania have less matchups they lose hard, but much less they should run away with too), but Pandora has her place, particularly if you can read your opponents pick.  The faction needs work, and Pandora needs work as part of it.

Don't you mean a missed opportunist? XD

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17 hours ago, Nagi21 said:

Ruthless is an issue for the entire faction, which makes running into TT or the like miserable anyway.  Poltergeist is in a bad spot because if it gets a defensive buff it becomes stupidly good (not that stupid good totems don't exist), but without defensive buffs, the insane supporting buffs never actually get to be used in actual play.  I don't expect Wyrd to make any changes to him though with their current mindset.

Shooting is also an issue for most of the faction, that's just been life as NVB since 1e.

7 for a shockwave isn't that uncommon.  Fears given form isn't really the play you should be making with Pandora since it's just 2 damage and possibly a push.  It could be useful sometimes, but on the times you want to use it you'll almost certainly be saving a 7 for it.  Box open should have a 7 because it's a 14 wp with both damage and condition effect.  Agree on the card draw problem though, but again, that's the faction not the crew.

They have ranged options they can do regardless of being engaged, along with auras to punish, them not having melee really doesn't hurt that much, especially since charge + melee would be shorter than the 10" on self loathing.  I agree there's some wasted AP to get closer when you want to use your shorter range things like Box Opens, but that's not that bad.  Rider does help the crew alot though, usually with Candy.

I mean comparing any crew with Dreamer is just unfair since he's the only thing keeping the faction relevant (which is why most discussions about NVB competitiveness have the qualifier "without Dreamer").  Like I stated before in this thread, Pandora has very few middling matchups.  Either she's very good, or very bad, into whatever your opponent brought.  There are safer picks besides Dreamer (Zoraida and Titania have less matchups they lose hard, but much less they should run away with too), but Pandora has her place, particularly if you can read your opponents pick.  The faction needs work, and Pandora needs work as part of it.

Don't you mean a missed opportunist? XD

Poltergeist just shouldnt have the antiruthless aura so you dont have all your eggs in one basket. Any other keyword model should have the ability- either aversion or sorrow would get a nice buff by having it.

When fear given form is once per activation you almost never want to use it. But having an ability to use it 3/per turn would make it much better. It would work a bit like old incite.

I think you dont consider that shooting often can be bad- concealment and stuff. Would it hurt that much if self-loathing had 1" range? Its not that back breakering by itself but master loses some efficiency here and there and the sum is a bit mediocre result. 

I do see the problem with the fraction as the whole but unfortunatly i suspect wyrd just to nerf dreamer without any compensation elsewhere and just throw the fraction into oblivion. Most models lack any defensive tech "compensated" by their damage. But damage is as good as beaters in other fractions but other fractions get the defensive tech. Thats why you see Serena and hinamatsu in every list, they are durable which the fraction lacks(apart from fea but they have other problems).

Nerfing inhuman reflexes was really weird. Was it because of nekima? Even with the upgrade a would not choose her instead of dreamer. It was actually nice that a pure melee master had some play as those are usually easily outshined by support or summoner masters. Nvb need some card draw somewhere in my opinion a not by putting 2ss upg on minions that are made of paper.

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There's been a lot of chatter about Woe's issues with movement and I'm surprised the Lyssa haven't been brought up. They're a model that could certainly use a boost but they can help Pandora and Candy get around their movement shortcomings. 'Bring It' does a lot to move those two up the field, with little negative impact due to them not having a melee. The TN 12 makes that tricky but Startling one of them and ripping it off to gain a bonus does a little to get around it. Its not AP efficient but, 4 stones isn't a horrible price to pay to gain an extra Master/Henchmen movement AP.  Assuming you can place them properly.

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On 1/18/2021 at 1:29 PM, Passenty said:

I do see the problem with the fraction as the whole but unfortunatly i suspect wyrd just to nerf dreamer without any compensation elsewhere and just throw the fraction into oblivion. Most models lack any defensive tech "compensated" by their damage. But damage is as good as beaters in other fractions but other fractions get the defensive tech. Thats why you see Serena and hinamatsu in every list, they are durable which the fraction lacks(apart from fea but they have other problems).

 

In the last big tournament in Vassal (62 players), which forces you to play a different master each round, there is a player ranked as 3rd with Neverborn. I wouldn't call that "a faction thrown into oblivion".

In December's event, there was 3 neverborn players in the top 10 in one group and another group with 2 players, being one of them the winner.

November's event has a player finishing 3rd and another one 9th.

That the faction needs some adjustments? Definitely! But it's far from being "into oblivion". I actually don't think that Dreamer should get a nerf, but Zoraida really needs to be slightly nerfed (like that double obey being Swampfiend only). Same way that there are plenty of minions across multiple keywords that need a boost, starting with Eurípides.

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I think NB can be competitive. But as in many factions some keyword are just not good for competitive play...

This seem totally fine. I like what Wyrd are doing now. Instead of going hard on errata (which imo should always be a last resort) they had some new model for weak faction (the Damned will help Savage and Trex bring a real beater in the Fae keyword).

Combining that with GG adjustments and we should see slight shifts in the metagame. Top tier master will stay strong, but the option are there in NB... And if at the end of the day some master are still to weak, it's not the end of the world as long as the faction as a whole can be competitive. Well at least this is how I see things. 

To sum it up : errata for really OP thing or mistake. New models and GG adjustments to boost keyword. Cheer up, NB will be just fine.

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Zoraida is good but far from needing any adjustmemt. With gg1 obey became much worse. She is nice but folds to a lot of stuff (shooting, concealment generation and has problem with resources as her bonus is not always safe play). Far from powerhouse like colette, yan lo, von schtook, Sandeep, Sommer or dashel who are usually safe pick. Dreamer is the best nvb master period. Main reason is that nvb suck at generating resource every nvb master apart from dreamer- poor healing(serena in every list), poor durability(hinamatsu in every list), poor card draw, no soulstone generation, no summoning, no bayou two card, lack of draw for killed models,  no easy access to focus(black blood shaman is hired ook and his not realible ook). Nightmare have damage, durability and generate resource with lucid dream. Because of this he may just brute force against a lot of things(and he does have options for other play). 

As for the tournaments you mention. First example is really bad. Its not like 100pc of masters from other fractions are better then nvb. Other fractions also have bad masters which you need to use in that kind of event. I think that problem start arise when you need to beat dashels, colettes and sommers with other stuff then dreamer and zoraida. And I also think that people dont play 100pc cutthroat on those events- i dont mean they are bad but due to lack of real life games they might want more enjoyable masters then "the best", managing some crews on vassal is also very tiresome and games on vassal tend to be longer.

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2 minutes ago, Passenty said:

As for the tournaments you mention. First example is really bad. Its not like 100pc of masters from other fractions are better then nvb. Other fractions also have bad masters which you need to use in that kind of event. I think that problem start arise when you need to beat dashels, colettes and sommers with other stuff then dreamer and zoraida. And I also think that people dont play 100pc cutthroat on those events- i dont mean they are bad but due to lack of real life games they might want more enjoyable masters then "the best", managing some crews on vassal is also very tiresome and games on vassal tend to be longer.

You can inscribe to the next one and see the overall level, but thinking that these tournament are not "competitive enough" is a huge mistake. Also, games in vassal only tend to be longer during your first 5-10 games, then they're much more faster than in a real table.

My first example is actually perfect, since we're judging here factions as a whole, not 1 master vs all the other ones.

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