ktom said:

That's all very true.

I'm by no means saying that NUFG will spawn a reliably tournament winning deck, it's simply too vulnerable to cards like Hands Judgement to be consistent (and requires too much deck commitment to be splashed into another archetype). But I would still point out the fact that it's still an awesome card if you only pull a few cards with it.

Forget the 8 character super-payoff, 3 influence for 3 characters would still be a great deal.

Using one card and three incluence to turn the death of a big character into a swarm of smaller (but still good) characters is pretty **** powerful. Especially when you consider that every single Martell deck in the world runs Red Viper (usually x3), and given the fact that at least two of the Sand Snakes currently printed can justify their way into Martell decks without needing to also be combo pieces; is it really too much of a stretch to throw NUFG into your deck in the hope that it'll give you access to a mini-combo every few games (with the worst case scenario being that you just use it for its primary ability, which is basically a break-even)?

Sure, your opponent will smugly flip Valar when you perform the NUFG rush, but even that is a poor deal for them (assuming a scenario in which none of your SS's are duped). Ultimately they're wasting their reset plot on wiping out the effects of a single card. Usually nuking a swarm of characters represents wiping out several turns of an opponent's investment; but when they're using it to react to NUFG, all they're really doing is wasting Valar to counter a single event card and a 3 influence downpayment... not exactly something for them to crow about.

Long story short; I doubt that the 'Every Snake in the World, feat guest MC All of them are Wearing Duplicates, Mega-Combo' will grace big tournaments any time soon. On the other hand, I would not be remotely surprised if Martell players started running this event as a way to cheaply fetch 3 - 5 characters directly from their decks in the middle of the challenge phase; because most of them are already running decks that will be able to do that the moment they add in Obella (who is a bit of an auto, imhop) + NUFG.

Yay finally a Black Hatchling! Very happy about this card.

LoneWanderer said:

Also, look at it this way. You let RV die and whipe the table. You then NUFG and pull in your snakes. The your opponent does Valar as expected and you play Narrow Escape. Either he chucks hand or you keep your hoard, either way you come out better than when you left off.

LoneWanderer said:

But that's fine, and I expect they will see a great deal of play as Martell "weenies-of-choice" (because of the potential payoff if they come out together). What I don't expect to see is a lot of people wanting to sacrifice the Viper in order to get the Sand Snakes into play, unless they have no choice about losing the Viper. By that time, a couple of the unique Sand Snakes are likely to be in the dead pile, anyway.

So it's not the Viper, the influence, or the useful Sand Snakes that I wouldn't expect to see people play. It's NUfG that I expect not to make the cut. When I would want to use it (or at least be willing to) is too situational - and most of my decks are going to be built with an eye toward not getting into that situation in the first place.

I doubt this card will see much play, at least for the Viper aspect. If it sees play at all, it'll be primarily as the event version of Bastard Daughter. But we'll see.

ktom said:

Maybe it's just me, but the Sand Snakes seem like relatively bad characters. Until NUfG they seemed kind of useless... although they do combo well together, without all of them working together the theme seems to fall flat. Nymeria seems expensive for what she does, Tyene doesn't seem to be very good since most of the Sand Snakes already have an intrigue icon and Obara and Sarella already have Stealth. Obella is nice since I like Vengeful and most of them are missing Power icons, but I agree with ktom that they are just unique weenies, prone to being easily burned, VBed, or chomped by Shaggydog + Greywind. I don't think I'm about to start running 3x Blood of the Viper in place of other Martell attachments, and I don't think the Sand Snakes theme does a lot for Martell that they didn't already have; there are plenty of ways to give Stealth when playing Martell, and Alchemist's Shop seems like a much more reliable way to give deadly.
Like many others, I'll put together a Sand Snakes deck just to see the NUfG + Red Viper combo go off, but I don't know that the theme makes them any more competitive than an "OG" Viper deck. I also can't really justify playing with the "bad" Viper just to see if this combo goes off since that means I can't run an Agenda and it means I'm using the bad Viper !

Hooray for an awesome Black Hatchling though!

It would be interesting to see if someone could make a Sand Snake deck that really is about thinning the deck of Sand Snakes. Certainly not imagining this in a tournament, but in a casual setting, playing the nuke viper to thin your deck of Sand Snakes, your opponent Valars or Wildfires next turn, perhaps you have a NE, maybe you don't. But what you do have is a much slimmer deck to pull out some nastiness and an opponent that has burning his reset plot early and on your terms.

Could be fun. Again, definitely not something I expect to see in a tournament, but I like that they are also still printing fun cards.

I by no means think i know as much about this game as you. but in terms of the sand snakes being good enough even if you pull Obella, Nymeria, Tyene, Obara and a bastard daughter you now have 5 characters with tricons and Deadly ,Stealth and Vengeful? isnt that sort of impressive to get on the table without spending any gold or using a single marshalling?

especially if timed after a wildfire or a valar?

jack merridew said:

Any successful kill will not only remove a character, but probably weaken the ones that remain. The Sand Snakes are impressive if they are all out at the same time - provided that you keep all of them out at the same time. And I doubt it will be particularly easy to keep all of them out at the same time.

So yeah, NUfG has an impressive effect - that I don't think will get you very far in a game.

FATMOUSE said:

~Don't remind me...I haven't forgotten that I used to love this card.

However...that was in a time with a lot more control (both plot and targeted), and where there wasn't a ton of anti-kill cards. NE has fallen off my all-time favorite cards for sure. Be careful of what you ask for

I would just build a deck with the viper... get him out early and force the opponent to waste his resources trying to deal with him... and have that event as an option to just do a wtf. I think the event works better as a fallback in a viper rush deck. If you have std draw explosion + Summoning Season, Power of Blood x2... by turn 4 if he manages to stop the viper win... then you can dump sand snakes into the mix. Don't forget unlike premature ejaculating chars from hand... this is grabbed from deck, you still have the hand.