After playing with various designs like the G5RV and the Chameleon vertical, I have settled on a homebrew 20-40-80 fan dipole hung at each end at 45', I used 1/8" stainless cable for the elements and feed the down line with 8X then it changes to 213 for another 50' to the shack. This is thus far the best set up I have had. I work the East Coast easily and also work a buddy 53 miles away and a net control for the Coastal Carolina Emergency Net (Shameless plug: 3.907 daily at 1900 eastern time) at 31 miles.
I learned by studying military and ship set up that band selection is as important as antenna selection. Yeah, 10 meters is great in the morning, and 20 talks around the world during the day, but 40 and 80 will talk anytime the bands are anywhere approaching mediocre to decent.
NVIS performance with a dipole is best determined by height above ground, the lower you go giving more vertical signal. It is also highly dependent on soil conductivity to provide a suitable "backboard" to shape the RF. This can be overcome by using radials. A technique I stumbled on with radials under a dipole was to earth ground but not RF ground them. The other side of the RF is the dipole, and hooking the braid to a ground radial changes the equation of the antenna.
And yes, verticals will do NVIS. Just pull 'em over like a Humvee or Andy Griffiths squad car.