Rethinking Infernal Visage
I'm having second thoughts on the best way to play NT in this draft format. I saw the return of Infernal Visage as one possible way that Nekrium decks could start competing with aggressive Tempys decks. Putting the two together in the same deck seemed like a natural fit, since Tempys has a lot of high quality mobility creatures. Other players seemed to have high opinions of Visage as well but it has not delivered the results I expected.
Here's the thing about Visage...you have to invest a lot into the card. Not plays or life (well not directly), but setting up Visage does cost you flexibility. If you want to play Visage, you first have to get creatures into the sidelanes, which means ignoring what's happening in the middle lanes. And when you're ignoring what your opponent is doing, whatever you're doing has to be way better. Against slower late game decks you can do this. If they play Forge Guardian Beta plus Skyknight Glider in the middle lanes then great, you can Visage and put them under more pressure than they are putting on you. But UT decks are very good right now, better than I thought they would be after the set change. If you Visage, and they Blood Boon their Razortooth Stalker, you are the one under pressure.
You could argue that you will only play Visage when the opportunity presents itself, when you can get good value out of it. Like saving that Twinstrength until you can turn two trades with it. But despite its similarities to Twinstrength, it actually plays much differently. Most players will not willfully put their creatures in the sidelanes against Nekrium decks, so using Visage as a combat trick doesn't happen very often. It's usually an offensive move, creating two big threats. Twinstrength, on the other hand, will be played both offensively (to make threats) and defensively (to turn trades), making it a more versatile card.
You could also argue that you simply won't play Visage against super aggressive decks. That's more reasonable but when I draft Visage decks I like to draft multiples so all the side lane setup is more likely to payoff. If I decide not to play Visage against certain (fairly prevalant) decks, I'm starting with two or three dead cards in my thirty. Add that to the few inevitable don't-wanna-play cards that I picked up during the draft and the likelihood of drawing really awkward hands starts to get uncomfortable.
To sum up...for Visage to be good, it has to be more powerful than what your opponent is doing. Unfortunately, there are a lot of decks doing more powerful things.
So what should NT be doing instead? I think a better, more flexible deck would play more like an aggro-control deck. It would focus on creatures with average leveling curves (i.e. good at all levels), a couple late game finishers (Necroslime, Umbruk Glider), and quality removal spells to keep the opponent off balance. Basically, we're acknowledging that Uterra's pump is better than NT pump, so we're playing to our strengths (burn and debuff) instead of theirs. Now instead of trying to out aggro UT decks, we're playing a nimble control deck that can also hit for a lot of damage when the opportunity is there. All of the mobility combined with removal makes it hard for them to setup big plays like Razortooth Stalker or Tremorsaur or buffing lots of Dinos with Mosstodon.
I've updated the Byzerak faction primer to reflect my thoughts. NT Visage is still there, but I bumped it down a notch.