My analysis of the Resource System of Faeria

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#1

Hello. I just want to put here my analysis, the way I look at the Faeria resource system, mainly inspired by Magic.

We have 2 types of resources, Faeria, and Lands, these are color specific.
You can spend Faeria unlike Lands that are just a condition needed to play a colored card.
1 land equals about 1 faeria.
But here is the thing, you get 1 land per turn (except if you draw/gain 1 Faeria from your wheel),
but you get 3 times more Faeria, even more if you harvest from Faeria wells.

That’s why a Faeria is more common than a land, and many cards cost a lot more Faeria than Land.
It’s easier to get Faeria.

Lands are a condition to play a card.
The thing is that, the first time you will play a colored card, you will normaly build your lake, desert, mountain or forest. The card will be as strong as an equivalent neutral card that needed one more faeria but no lands to be played.
But when you already have your terrain, when you will play your card that needs one land, you will not have to build another land. So the land cost of the card is “free”.
That means, it will be stronger than it was previously.
So the equivalent neutral card of your colored card will become worse.

If I take the example of Tyranax and let’s say an equivalent 4/6 creature for 6 Faerias (but no lakes needed).
Tyranax will need me to build one lake if that is the first blue card I play.
If I already played other blue cards, if I already have 1 lakes. Tyranax will not need me to build one lake since I already have one. So it will cost 1 “less” land.
If I now take my 4/6 for 6 Faerias, it will cost 6 Faerias if it is the first (neutral) card I played.
If it isn’t it will still cost Faerias.

So a colored card will cost “less” the more you play other colored cards. Since you will pay only one time the land requirement, and the other time you will accumulate extra value (except if you need to have more lands than before by playing a card that needs multiple lands).

But in the current balance of the game. 1 Faeria equals 1 land.
That means every individual neutral card is worse than every colored card, except if either the neutral card we are talking about is too strong or if the colored card is too weak for their cost.

But there is an annoying thing about this system. More you play colored card, more you will get extra value and stronger they will be compared to neutral cards.
So all of that depends of games lenght.
If you have an agressive meta, 1 land will tend to be equal to 1 Faeria. If you have a slow control meta where more cards will be played before the game ends, 1 land will tend be more valuable the slower the meta is.

That’s the thing about this system. It’s so hard to balance neutral cards compared to colored cards.
Except for the explorers cards, because they are almost colored cards.
This can be a real problem if you want to design a lot of neutral cards.

PS: I am wondering if you have plans to add colors in the future. Because with 4 colors, there is a lot of strategies that are not covered yet. I do not think you will but I need to be sure ^^

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#2

Hi! Nice post, thank you! :slight_smile:

I’d say cards is also a resource, but it is perhaps irrelevant for this type of value-analysis!

But a very important difference, if we compare it to e.g. MTG resource system, is that even if I have a lake (or even two!) I might still “need” to make an additional lake to play my Tyranax, even though it only requires 1 lake, because of strategic positioning. Having a creature in a bad position can be as bad as not having a creature at all. Because of this players keep making additional colored lands during a large portion of the game, even if they already met the requirements to simply play their cards. It has also been figured out that certain tiles are much more valuable than others (varies from deck/matchup/meta) and because of this, the land-value is also difficult to evaluate.

#3

Yes, in Faeria you also have the board aspect, and building land can be useful even after you already have enough lands required to play your cards.
So, we need to made a differenciation between lands and land cost.
Land are necessary to play a card with land cost but they are also useful for building terrain.
The Faeria gain is automatic, 3 each turn.
The fact that lands are part of the power wheel does not change the value of cards that require lands at all.
Since you get automatically Faeria, you will always spend them, they are “free”.
More you will play cards more you will accumulate extra value from the free land part of the cards (that is what I have said above).
A neutral card cannot do that.
In regards to that, the “board aspect” of the game is not implied.
There is a lot more interest in creating the first 1 or 2 lands (because most cards requires 1 or 2 lands), than creating lands after, even tough they are still useful. That is true.

But my analysis was only on the value and balance aspect. I have talked about colored cards and not the board aspect of the game and the fact a colored card can only be played on a specific land tile.
Because a land tile and a Faeria are not the same category of things.
But a land cost and a Faeria are both resources.
You cannot replace “land tile” by “land cost”.

The problem that I have figured out, is that there is a multiplicative relation that can varies with the value of colored cards (you get +X Faerias in terms of value every time you play a colored card, except the first time, sonce 1 F = 1 Land Cost).
So a colored card on its own will be as strong as an equivalent neutral card, but more you will play colored card the stronger they will be.
But the value of a neutral card is static and cannot increases.
You cannot determine precisely the value of a colored card, and so, it can only become better than a neutral one.

PS: Thanks for the reply :slight_smile:

#4

Your analysis seems a bit simplistic to me. In reality, there are at least 4 resources in this game, along with some number of “virtual” resources. The four principle resources are…

  1. Faeria
  2. Cards
  3. Life
  4. Land thresholds

…Any analysis of the resources in the game should feature a discussion of each of these resources.

#5

I’ve just analysed a problem.
In a Card Game, everything can be a resource even rarity (because some cards interact with rarities, like Magda).
But here I talk about the value aspect of the 2 mains resources, the 2 resources that are used in the card design. And I do not talk how a game is played, because even with 1000 lines I will not be able to cover everything.
I may have chosen the wrong title for my post but I just wanted to explain a problem in the card design, with the 2 “main” resources, the resources that are (directly) used while playing cards, the 2 resources that are present in each cards’ design.