Blue-Green oversky progression

Balance Discussion
#1

So looking at many of the new cards and playing on the ladder with an old pre-oversky deck, I’ve been a bit frustrated. I like the idea of developing themes in colors and their overlaps, I don’t think it’s working as intended. One thing I’m seeing is that blue-green is value-town.

First, I’m assuming that the goal with oversky is to reward multi-color decks. So that’s fine. You want strong cards with high land requirements? Also fine.

Here’s where I see problems.

Shifting Octopus - only requires 3 lands, that’s not a lot at all - in green, this can easily be played turn 2, going first or second. It gives 5/5, 3/7 or 7/3 stats for 4, which is amazing value. Compare to the explorer cards that need 4 lands to get similar stats (with no choices at casting). Third it’s modular abilities, allowing exactly what you need for a given situation. This alone seems like a very strong ability worth perhaps 1-2 faeria alone, but it seems to be thrown in for free here.

Frog Tosser - still very strong. only comes out mid-game, but it’s strong enough to turn the balance at mid-game especially with octopus to help out with early game.

Leaping Fugu - solid collector, amazing late-game value.

Whale - very good late-game removal + ridiculous mobility + ridiculous stats for the cost all rolled into one. You get late-game removal and win-condition rolled into one. So while it’s a lot of land to cast, you don’t need to waste as much space in your deck with removal or win conditions. Your deck actually gets more consistent having this in it than it would if you were taking up space with say last nightmares/frogifies and colossi.

All of these easily fit in one deck and each easily leads into the next, allowing this style deck to dominate vs non-oversky cards at each stage in the game. There’s no point where the bg player is not getting the same or more value than other non-oversky cards. I know there are similar issues in other colors in oversky, I’m just pointing out if you’ve got a seamless progression of OPness from early to late game, there’s really no trade-off anymore. A BG whale deck does not need to trade a weak early game for a godly late game. It gets both easily. That seems bad for the meta.

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#2

As i think more about it, I’m realizing that literally every card in this deck is both extremely efficient faeria value, but also extremely efficient with cards. Frog tosser gives you a mid-range creature, removal and a collector all rolled into one cheap play. Whale gives removal and a win-condition rolled into one. Shifting Octopus gives you a defender/attacker/collector - whatever you need. There’s no extraneous cards in a blue-green deck. There’s no dud-draws. You don’t have a card sitting there just in case of one situation but useless in others. You don’t have a win condition that you’ll never get to because you have to climb back from behind. It’s all rolled into a few cards, so you’ve always got several viable plays no matter what situation.

One other thing - shifting octopus’s 3 land cost is actually better than something costing 2 green or blue in many ways. It alows it to be placed on any special land, which makes it easier to place lands without consideration for which creatures get played where.

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