Hey fellas, here are my hot takes on the revealed NG cards so far:
There are enough cultists to get good value out of Eternal Eclipse
Well, lets see; we have 4 cultists from the start (3 revealed cultists and Prophet), plus 5 more Cultist tags (2 from Master, 2 from Deacon and 1 from Initiates deathwish) we can get throughout the game in a best case scenario. This does not include Operator shenanigans, but I think it will be enough.
The cultists are meant to be a package, not a whole archetype
So I've seen some people here complain; "why bring cultists into the faction when soldiers and spies need love as well". Well, think of the cultists and Eclipse as a ultra flexible addition to almost all existing NG packages. Since we will infuse our own cards, and golds (!) with the cultist tag we can proc the scenario with every current archetype like soldiers, assimilate, maybe even Kolgrim decks work. There are no real restrictions, just think about powerful standalone golds and then think about them proccing our scenario with 6-7 cultists already on the board.
Eclipse is a R1 scenario
Now this might sound strange at first, but I can see Eclipse beeing used as an early R1 threat, depending on the match-up. Why? Well, when we reach Chapter 1 every cultist (except graveyard ones) will get infused with a "boost by 1, or 2 if it was a cultist bronze", so you can see it as carryover points. The plan would be: give as many cultist tags into your hand and deck (two already added from Master), then play Eclipse and trigger at least Chapter 1, maybe even if you go a card down. With the infusion you have more power to distribute evenly throughout a R2 bleed or push or a short R3.
What do you think of the revealed NG cards? Any comments or ideas?
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/gwent/comments/vqjcce/my_hot_take_on_the_ng_cultists/