Just what the title says. This isn’t jump on anyone for thinking it- I would just like to see a defense of the card.
I think it’s very clearly OP and toxic AND unfun. Agree? No?
I think that suggestion says it all.
No, I don’t.
While I think hard removal in Faeria is overcosted, Skywhale has the problem that it is an efficient removal and a solid finisher in one card. Imagine a 2/2 Frog at 2 Faeria and 4 wild lands, that has swallow, jump and cant collect. I think it would be much less of a problem.
I agree.
Hard Removal and a really strong creature in one card just doesn’t seem to work.
Also for most control decks it is Really hard to get rid of because of Charge 3 and 6/6 stats, it can just fly away if it encounters a threat.
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Make Azure Skywhale a legendary card. They could make it able to harvest again to compensate, i wouldn’t mind that.
And if they want to keep the number of legendaries the same amount, then downgrade Goki to an Epic card and make it a 2/2. Goki being an Epic is fine because it’s only useful in co-op anyways, this makes that mode more fun because your partner can make a dedicated support/healer deck with 3x Goki’s, 3x Story Tellers, 3x Intrepid Explorers, etc.
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Whale is obviously broken because:
a) Swallow itself is broken, since it has no hard counter.
b) Multi-land cards are under-costed. Games easily get to 6 lands and most to 8, given the use of land ramp. So having a 6 land cost is not a big penalty. It is a small penalty. Only the very fastest, luckiest rush decks can finish a game before 8 lands. And encouraging too many and too extreme rush is also bad for the game. Unless people like games over before they properly begin?
Solutions:
a) Remove Swallow from the game. Two cards are lost. Boo-hoo. They did it before, with Slam, which was not nearly so broken.
b) Make it possible to Swallow a Swallow card. No need to keep track of the recursion, by the way. (This was the excuse given initially.) The earlier swallowed card is considered digested. 
Bad solutions:
a) Forever trying to balance cards around Swallow. This has been going on for months and just screws up the game more.
b) Making the cards Legendary. Because Legendary cards are already bad for the game! They introduce a super-luck effect. “Oh! You drew Istanu! You win!” I would be happier if all Legendary cards disappeared.
I say this based on the fun factor. I don’t want to play dice or poker. I want to play a game where the skill of deck design and play matters.
The problem is larger than Swallow, because Faeria is a simple game with simple mechanics. It will not support a large card pool. Because you either make boring cards or ramp their power to keep people interested. And that breaks the game, like so many others before it.
If the board was bigger, games would be longer and there would be more scope for variety in movement. There could be Jump 2 and Jump 3, etc. Cards could be frozen by effects and so on. You can’t do this with a small board, because even a small change in movement is a big deal. Consider that being able to move two tiles instead of one is now a HUGE deal.
If you could act on other players’ turns, then tons of new mechanics would be opened up.
If your deck was bigger, likewise. If you could manipulate the deck, likewise. If there was a graveyard, likewise.
But the developers wanted a simple, fast, portable game. I don’t blame them at all!
But there are many inevitabilities that flow from this. The field of possibilities within the rules and structure of the game is limited. Skywhale is just one symptom of this problem.
broken because-
a) agree…sort of. things like Nightmare are pretty hard counters as they will often leave the creature freed from the whale in a spot that’s bad for the whale caster and is a one card answer, but there are VERY few things that do that. I think the reason it’s “broken” is in the fact that it’s a purely reactionary card/wincon- the whale caster does nothing but ramp too many special lands and just whales when needed and that wins the match…and can do that three times very easily.
b) disagree, sort of. the wild cost is fine and a good balancer imo- the problem is that the land ramp cards (the elementals and earthcraft) are cheap and have literally no downside. S Lands are the most important resource but are also the easiest/cheapest to ramp- that is a HUGE problem.
The elementals should all be 2/2 and cost 2 speacial lands.
Earthcraft should be 2faeria 2forest 1wild OR 2faeria 2forest but no card draw.
I also support removing swallow and have made the exact comparison to slam.
I don’t understand how you could think making the card into a legendary is a bad idea. I don’t ask this insultingly at all, but do you play at a low ladder level or are you f2p? Legendary cards are most def not bad for the game- most don’t see any play at all…limiting whales to 1 copy in a deck is the perfect solution. My biggest problem with the card is that the whale player gets 3x brainless/all powerful/reactionary wincons that are WAY harder to deal with than they are to set up.
I would be fine with a bigger board, I like long games.
I do not want “act on their turn”- it makes for a game of playing counters out of hand without end and is infinitely boring imo
I think deck size is fine, unless the board was to be come larger- then a deck increase would be needed. and I would support a graveyard- I want more interactivity.
I have played on the ladder up to God rank and have played some of the top players in the game. One or two are my friends. But this should not be used to judge the validity of my points. Will it help to say I have played about 30 CCG / TCG games from MTG on down? Some I played at national level and won international tournaments (not in MTG, though I made it to the Nationals). In another life I would have been a game designer, because I love the whole thing! As it was, I restricted myself to beta-tester. But again, my experience does not mean my opinions are any better than anyone else’s. Simply that I am not a babe in the woods.
I don’t understand how you could think making the card into a legendary is a bad idea.
It’s simple. If there’s only one card in a deck then the luck factor of drawing that card has just been elevated enormously. By more than 300%, actually, since the probability of drawing is not simply multiplicative.
Then, if we allow such cards to be more powerful, the influence of drawing that card goes through the roof.
This makes the game far more reliant on the draw than I personally like in a game of skill.
There have been games where the rare cards are not necessarily more powerful, but simply more interesting or have greater flavour. Sometimes they might be somewhat more powerful but have corresponding drawbacks unique to them. Shadowfist was an excellent example of this approach.
I sort of understand the “luck” of drawing a legendary argument- but it’s “luck” to draw ANY card
I think this is the thing that I don’t understand about what you say regarding L’s- they aren’t (on the whole) any more powerful than anything else (at least not in practical terms, most really aren’t playable) and those that are are powerful yes, but not match defining really. As I see it L’s in Faeria can be a powerful factor in a deck but often the same list would function almost unchanged with the legendary(s) removed. As it is right now Whales are strong becuase they are a 3x. Unless swallow is removed (this would be great) or (this would be sad) they nerf the card into nothingness the only real solution is to limit the number of the card allowed in a deck.
I was thinking though- would something as simple as making them 6/3 be enough? part of why I hate the card so much is that they will eat (not a swallow pun) 2 or 3 of your nerds before it dies…maybe just making it an easier trade would do the trick?
And as I said - I meant nothing by asking of your play rank. I realize that it doesn’t matter very much but I had just never heard that sort of opinion voiced about L’s and as a god tier-er myself I I don’t think of them the way you do at all.
Of course it is luck to draw any card, but how much luck do you want in a game of skill? For me… not so much. Drawing a one-of card is way luckier than drawing a card you have three of in your deck.
I am also against cards with coin flips or random effects. They might work in a longer game where the effects even out into a probability distribution. But in a short game this is not the case.
Luck cannot be evaluated in a vacuum, but only in the context of the game… deck size, card counts, draw mechanisms, etc. In Faeria, drawing a single Legendary is often a big swing.
I am curious as to why you can’t see that Legendaries are (on average) more powerful cards. (This doesn’t mean they ALL are, naturally.) The design team has even explicitly stated they are. If Whale is considered powerful and a solution is to make it Legendary, then this tacitly admits the fact that Legendaries are powerful!
I agree that it is much better to remove Swallow than to continue the process of nerfing cards. Because that is a bad solution to a problem that is not being addressed. And it just means that Swallow is distrupting the game even more.
I’m fine with the degree of luck offered by card draw when the deck is only 30 cards deep to pull the one or two “big guys” the deck might have- I’m pretty sure we’ve all played enough of these where we know that having a 1 or 2 in 30 to pull a card is actually pretty good considering how quickly decks shrink down in a game. Agree 100%- I wouldn’t keep playing if we got Hearthstone style RNG. I don’t think pulling a single L is really that big of a deal most of time- answering a single card shouldn’t be that big of a deal unless you’re already behind and if was to seal the deal for you, you were going to win anyway.
Of course L’s are stronger than other cards- I’m saying that they don’t have the impact you ascribe them.
I don’t understand how the whale is OP when you have to play subpar cards like elementals to ramp into them, i’m glad people like this are not the ones developing the game, removing legendaries? wtf? honestly, endorphin seems really salty and should probably uninstall.
“Elementals have no drawbacks” roflmao this is ridiculous honestly, their pretty much 3/3 vanilla creatures with their stats split but their always 6 stat vanilla creatures that make a land, in combat pretty much any other creature that costs 4 and a special land is better imo, like ones with combat mechanics that kill you before you ever get to play a whale.
Last night mare ~ the only way to remove the whale lol, honestly, it’s the only actual removal in the game right now even swallow isn’t proper removal since you can get your creature back! YOU NEED REMOVAL IN A GAME LIKE THIS like holy ■■■■. Last nightmare is easier to cast than a whale and you don’t need to play subpar cards for the first halve of the game to cast it.
Probability ~ have you played with 3 whales in your deck? what happens when you draw your hand and then redraw and still start with 1 or 2 whales? or any other hand that has no elementals? then u draw a whale which u cant play? meanwhile your the other player already has creatures hitting your god and you’re going to die next turn.
Without the whale there will be no point to play ramp and no point to play control the only decks that will exist are rush decks so how the fk is that fun? The whale is a typical control card, barely survive the start of the game to ramp into something that removes the last threat and acts as a finisher unless of course it itself gets removed then you lose 100%, again, Last Nightmare does this easier and cheaper… Sure, you don’t get a body with it, but the removal is unconditional and if you use it on a whale you DO get a body with it AND you get tempo.
what?
Whale invalidates pretty much all old midrange control decks, which is why we see so much Rush in the first place.
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this sounds like you haven’t played with or against whales very much…it also sounds like you haven’t played ladder, at least not at high level.
whales have pushed all other mid-range/control decks out so you are left with two choices- play WhalesRamp or go face.
Whatever you think buddy, clearly you know much more than the devs in this game, maybe you should apply for a job there so you can design the new cards? I bet you’d do great!
Took a look at their job application page and they have a section where you can recommend someone that might be perfect for a position there and i sent through a recommendation for you and endorphin! i can’t wait to see how fast people like you destroy the game by crying on forums!
This is typical “omg, the expansion wasn’t what i expected, destroyed the whole game! every new card i can’t afford is OP, this should be like that and that should be like this” crying.
Except that people bought the Skywhale when the day it came out with gold. Of course we could afford it.
And we all played with Whales, we just got absolutely sick of them.
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wow, nonsensical and childish…great input. I won’t be responding to you after this.
Are you DarkDreamer?
Take a look at Faeria monthly cup, every month you can see the best decks, there is like 40% mid range 30% rush some burn and like 5% whales sometimes there are no whales at all lol… and the whale decks never make first place…To say the whale invalidates midrange is a joke when you look at actual statistics. The only reason there were lots of whales is because they were new, everyone wanted to use the new cards, now it’s obvious to any good player that if you want to reach a good god rank you don’t really play a ramp deck, also nerfing the whale would completely remove ramp as an archetype from Faeria altogether, there would be no more point to play the deck which is already not doing so well.
Next, if you look at other games usually things that get nerfed / banned take up like 40% of the meta AKA decks like midrange in Faeria lol… The difference is the midrange decks come in different shapes and sizes, sometimes in magic the gathering there is ONE CARD that is used in 40% of decks in the standard meta, even in non TCG games like overwatch there are heroes that are MUST PICK for every single competetive team, the whale doesn’t compare to any of this so why would you cry for a nerf if it’s like not even 10% of the meta? lol. Funniest part is the whale can be used in any colored deck but it is only played in GB ramp, and the GB ramp deck on average consists of 10 cards that just ramp that you MUST draw early because if you draw whales without ramp they are dead cards. They have subpar plays in the early game and if you can’t see this you must be in gold rank. I really find it hard to believe you’re losing to a deck that does pretty much nothing for 4-6 turns (when they draw a good hand) … can i see your deck list?
The facts speak for themselves, nobody is using whales, take a look at monthly cup decks, Abrakam is trying to make ramp a viable archetype and people are insulting the idea even though they don’t want to look at actual numbers on paper. Also gooop the reason of my reply resulting the way it was is because look at what you said “it looks like, it looks like, it looks like” stop thinking and making things up and start looking at actual evidence and facts, fact is barely anybody is using the whale and you’re pissed off over nothing.
Also reasons why whale is healthy.
#1 it makes ramp an actual viable archetype even though its considerably weak according to actual statistics of monthly cups.
#2 the game needs more removal and this is still soft removal (taunt and removal + combat can kill the whale easily)
#3 it stops cards like ruunin over taking the game single handedly.
Enjoy complaining about a card that isn’t broken and in fact barely even being used, im done :).
P.S ~ gooop, you call my reply nonsensical and childish but you made this thread for no other reason but to complain and your display picture is an actual nonsensical child that looks pretty inbred, like wtf is that picture? and even your name speaks magnitudes in how little actual maturity you really have. On the contrary, i swear i remember a deranged child on a plane making noises very similar to “gooop” every 5 minutes as i tried to sleep until i arrived at destined country.
Monthly Cup is vastly different thanks to the Pantheon Format, which forces you to use three different decks that share no cards whatsoever, and as such you see different setups. Monthly Cups are not comparable to the ladder because of this entire format - Monogreen is viable in Monthly Cups if you are vulnerable to monored, for example, but on the ladder it’s just bad (thanks to Whale).
But the Pantheon Format alone makes sure no card sees above 33% usage in Monthly Cups - more than that is theoretically not possible. Also, due to the nature of Pantheon formats, there are a lot more possible good decks as your decks need to work well together, and Skywhale does not do well against Yellow (unless it’s GY Sacrifice).
Also, Skywhale is forced into one archetype that literally takes 9 other cards with it wherever it goes regardless (6 elementals and 3 Earthcraft) - it’s not splashable, which renders your entire post complete and utter moot. I am pretty sure the Magic the Gathering card did not have requirements like that (because otherwise there would be more cards in MtG with 40% usage!).
Ruunin never took over the game even before the Whale existed. Monoblue was actually a thing back then, and Ruunin regularly got Frogified. Crackthorn didn’t even carry Ruunin even after Ruunin got buffed.
If you want to know why whales declined recently - it’s simply because everybody and their mom started to run Red Rush and Yellow Rush out of sheer frustration on the ladder since December. So during January whales rapidly declined as the users of GB Ramp were noticing they got farmed all over the place by the rush bonanza.
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