New Power Wheel Ability - Purge Land

Feedback and Suggestions
#2

While I appreciate the spirit of such a suggestion, overall I think it would take away from the game by introducing unnecessary tension and frustration. To work hard to get lands into ideal positions only to have your opponent take it over with the swipe of the wheel is so off-putting to the majority of the player base (both new and experienced players) that it would severely detract from the game.

A number of years ago (2013) when the game was still in an Alpha/Beta stage, one of the mechanics included a creature that could convert enemy lands (I believe it was called “conquest”). I think the developers realized even at this early stage that such mechanics detracted from the enjoyment which comes from good planning, strategic development of land, and long-term strategy. For this to be undone through something as ordinary as a click of the wheel is a problem.

But I do appreciate the frustration which comes with playing against opponents who quickly attack your orb. You may be surprised to learn that at the more competitive levels of Faeria, rush is almost non-existent because it is such a serious risk, and with good land/creature placement, somewhat easy to nullify. If you find you are constantly defeated by rush types of decks, consider lowering the average Faeria cost of your deck, including creatures and removal which are accessible earlier. From that point you can experiment with greedier decks.

Alternatively, try decks which dominate positionally, like Yellow tempo/Pew Pew, or Blue Jump (which includes land movement packages). I hope this helps!

Cheers ~Zfox

3 Likes
#3

I honestly don’t have much issue with rush, all though I’m typically playing Red so I have a lot of ways to deal with it.

Once again, I don’t have an issue with the rush archetype. Merely that the attacker seems to have a severe advantage over the defender whether it’s rush or mid-range. If rush needs more/better tools to be competitive that’s fine.

As for full conversion, I agree that would probably be a bad idea. Throws off the balance of cards with high land requirements. My suggestion has you give up the advantages of the power wheel,and your own land advancement with it, to convert a single enemy land into a neutral plain.

The only frustrating issue I can foresee is the possibility of a tug of war over a single tile. This could be fixed by simply only allowing the action on empty tiles. Like I mentioned before this would make neutral monsters have an innate useful trait beyond their current abilities. It would also allow for the possibility of land rush tactics for green, something that could be interesting.

I mean I think you’re kinda overstating the difficulty, it can be done turn two with any of the elements in hand before your opponent can even receive the benefit of the wells without any sort of specialized rush deck.

But irregardless, you say it would lead to a frustrating moment, elaborate. Would it really be any worse than any of the strategies and abilities we currently face?

#4

Even if we take the softer version: don’t convert the land to your own control, just convert it back to a prairie.

  1. It limits design space for multi-colour decks
    Most relevant for something like Three Wishes, which has a very heavy land requirement, this kind of effect forces a player attempting to get to multi-colour thresholds to do so potentially every turn just to be able to play their cards. Decks like Crackthorn sacrifice tempo and clunky hands in order to focus on getting to the correct lands. But once they have made it, they reap the benefit of mid-late game power. The early investment is nullified by forcing your opponent to have to rebuild a key land for nothing more than pressing the wheel.

  2. High Land Requirements.
    As you mentioned, conversion throws off any player attempting to get to Dream Reaver (a whopping 7 lakes). But de-specializing accomplishes much the same thing, for a similar reason to the above. Land construction is the bottom of the list as far as priorities for wheel usage. We use it because we MUST; given a choice we would take Faeria or draw. But the board curbs that bent toward resources by forcing you to build up squares in the ocean tile, and meet thresholds. We don’t wish to eliminate entire strategies which depend on spending far longer in that stage of the game than others. Moreover, it is giving such a disruptive tool into your opponent’s hands for free.

  3. Positioning
    As I mentioned before, getting a choice land into enemy territory is often a late game strategy depended upon to close out the game. Movement tricks work on this principle, and some are directly associated with it (Desert Twister, Grovecaller especially). Since all this change would do is force a tug-of-war (as you call it) between each player, it offers no additional compelling gameplay except for broad intrusion.

  4. Modified Condition (can’t do while a creature is on it)
    Even if you softened it further to the suggestion (which you detailed) that it is not possible to convert a land which a creature is occupying, there are awkward interactions to consider. What about Flying creatures? They technically can have land built underneath them. Moreover, it would be very frustrating to be denied the opportunity to use one of the functions of the wheel (an occurrence that is rare but if you fill up tiles, possible for regular land building), especially when you could really use it.

  5. The Lake Problem
    Lakes are a unique case, and Aquatic creatures in general, which you cannot build on top of, and cannot occupy prairies, forests, deserts, or mountains. What happens if you convert a Lake to a prairie? Suddenly you may completely trap an aquatic creature. In principle of course this is fine, but practically it is unnecessarily burdensome to that Keyword, ultimately being a nerf to aquatic.

Conclusion
The biggest issue I have with it is that it too easily provides a negative form of board control, distracting from the game without genuinely improving it. It also severely punishes a person who is behind, since they are forced to use the wheel to gain Faeria, but their opponent is free to collect and use the wheel offensively to destroy their land. How would you come back from this? It is a snowball effect.

You have said that the attacker has a “severe advantage” over the defender, but this is patently false. The attacker is investing his Faeria into attacking your relatively large Health pool (20 compared to creatures). As a defender you can both harvest Faeria and clear out their creatures. It is true that they are dicatating the pace of the game, but even with a deck not particularly suited to defend rush, following solid principles of land/movement will put you ahead, using your life total as a resource to weather the storm. This kind of change would ultimately cripple rush and aggressive decks since you can force them to rebuild their main land ever turn.

I hope this is sufficient detail; again I don’t hate the innovative thinking - rather it is great to see. However, in this case, inserting such a mechanic into the core of the game (the power wheel) would not ultimately be productive.

Cheers.

4 Likes
#5

  1. Crackthorn is actually one of the three decks I’m currently playing(Combat Red, and Blue Jump as well) and I agree it can be clunky but I believe this will be something that easily changes as we get more cards in future expansions as we receive more land generation cards like the elements. Part of the issue I’ve had with the deck is that I simply don’t like Fire Elemental as he often trades inefficiently. I’ve gotten around this by focusing more on red than green in my particular deck and not worrying about forest until I draw a Wood Elemental. This problem you mentioned could be easily nullified by land generating cards that rarely see play because they’re simply not needed. The limits of the power wheel mean once per turn, if your opponent is making lands faster than you can purge them while maintaining tempo it’s probably a bad idea to keep trying. This would limit it my original intent of simply being a solution to removing potential back door hexes after defeating an aggressive push.

  2. This is a similar case as number one. They wouldn’t need to add new cards, we already have potential solutions in cards already. How often do you see Baeru? How about Seed Sowers or Wild Growth? I admit some of these cards aren’t the best but the point is that they clearly already see land generation as an established mechanic but the current meta makes the majority of them redundant. Allowing for more land interaction either via the power wheel or with new cards opens up entirely new strategies and gives new life to old cards.

  3. I’m not sure I’m following your logic on this one. Positioning would still be as important as ever. Such a mechanic would follow much of the same basic rules as land placement such as having an adjacent creature or land. It actually expands what you need to worry about and thus opens new tactics for both exploiting and defending against it. For instance say we had a game with two rather defensive players that by mid game resulted in both sides being turtled into their respective side of the map. What sort of positioning tactics do you honestly have available to you at this point that you wouldn’t under my proposed change? Under my system you would at least have the option of breaking the fortress via other means than total domination. For instance going back to the land generation cards, if I could run a dash creature up the board I could purge a land and turn it in one turn making my opponent split their focus. This would give me a chance I might not otherwise have if I was simply losing to beefier creatures.

  4. I see no none arbitrary reason for this to be an issue. It’s simple. If you wish to purge an enemy tile you need to clear it of any opposing creature first. It’s not that much different than how movement works if you think about it. Can anything currently move onto an occupied tile regardless or not if it’s flying or aquatic? Same principal.

  5. There’s already something akin to this in the game already with what happens when a flying creature is suddenly ground bound in the water. It’s a rare interaction so I forget how it works exactly, but I believe it’s a case of move back onto a land tile or be destroyed by the end of the turn. Considering that once again the game already has a system in place for this sort of event I don’t foresee it being that much of an issue. Aquatics by their nature are rather niche compared to flying in either event.

Once again I whole heartily disagree on your assessment of attackers advantage. Namely because in Faeria both the attacker and defender receive damage. The only advantage to be had is in initiative to decide the most efficient way to attack, something that is in the hands of the aggressor. It doesn’t matter if the orb has 20 health, once your orb is under attack it puts you on a time limit and they can still dictate rather to clear your creatures or hit your face. I do understand that it could negatively affect rush, but that’s why I think they should expand on the abilities that are unique to rush decks. Abilities that once again rarely, if ever, see play because why would you bother incorporating them when it’s simpler and more effective just to build straight at them? This is the crutch of my idea, you say you don’t see the merit but such a simple change could completely shake the meta up and give life to cards and strategies that never see the light of day. I mean think about how many mechanics they’ve actually put into this game that rarely see play over simple point efficiency.

#6

I would have to vote strongly against that. I feel neither solution is better or worse, and both present solid pros and cons. Nevertheless, the game we bought and played all this time is out, and it is the game we have - I see no pro strong enough to outweight breaking such a HUUUUUUGE stus quo.

Being able to land-remove would hugely swing the dynamic of the game.

#7

Well to make my point and collect a daily I threw together a deck made of random yellow cards I think are good for hitting people in the face and am taking it to ranked. To further limit my self I’ve decided not to use Flash Wind or Windstorm Charger as these are consider by some to be “OP yellow cards.”

I’ve also decided not to use any purple or legendary cards, but that’s more because I’m cheap and don’t care to spend that much to make a point. The deck I’m using is dirt cheap, all blues and greys. That being said if I was interested in improving the deck Khalim and Choking Sands would be fantastic and would greatly improve it.

The idea is simple, no matter what I’m facing or my starting hand looks like I’ll always head directly for the opponents well. I started at 10 and so far have hit a couple win steaks putting me at 7. I’ve ran into a lot of Crackthorn, a few Y/G Sac, some Blue jump, and an assortment of other random oddball decks including a three wishes deck.

So far I think Crackthorn has the best chance with it’s cheap efficient taunt monsters and removal, but it’s not a counter. I’ve still beaten it more than I’ve lost to it so far. My overall win rate has been pretty high, a few losses I can chock up to my own silly screw ups(Ignoring 2 Bone Collectors was a terrible idea), and a few to downright astronomical bad luck(Drawing 2 Deathwalkers and 2 Last Nightmares in a row early followed by cycling through 2/3rds my deck without a single Khalims Prayer.)

This is obviously just my own experience but if anyone’s interested I’ll post the deck list so you can try it yourself to see if I’m BSing or not. Like I said before it’s dirt cheap and mostly made of commons and blues so it’s not hard to make even for a cheapass like me. Considering that it could be easily improved and it’s such a simple tactic it’s amazing how easily I can beat some net deck list. So far this deck hasn’t done much to dissuade my POV on this issue seeing as it seems effective vs a wide range of player skills and decks so far with minimal decision making or tactics.

I’m willing to take arguments over how it might not be a good idea for the power wheel, but they should definitely add more forms of land control for cards besides the overpriced Meteor.

#8

Neither flash wind nor charger are considered OP in yellow Rush. They are good options, but aren’t essential. The fact that you built a yellow Rush list with no epics or legends instead particularly surprising. Khalim, like charger, is a midrange card and often doesn’t make the cut in tuned yellow Rush lists. In fact, what you seem to have discovered is that y low rush is cheap to build, a fact which I’m pretty sure everyone knows.

Yellow Rush is a good deck. But it’s not great at the moment. Crack thorn, blue jump, yellow tempo, red midrange, and green midrange all have favored matchups against the deck assuming both decks have competent pilots.

#9

Undoing land is pretty rare (Pandora, Meteor) and I think faeria could benefit from some more of it, but a power wheel action is a bit too much I think. It shouldn’t be available unless you deliberately craft it into your deck IMHO.

Possible examples:

  • A “Gift - destroy an adjacent land” creature (or similar) might work.
  • A structure with “Production - destroy a random adjacent enemy land” (and nothing else). - I might card-creator this.
  • I made a Conquistador card that’d capture an enemy land if it died on it AND was adjacent to friendly land.

It rarely becomes a face-race for me, taunt and/or sitting on their land works - although dying horribly works pretty often, too.

1 Like
#10

@Ramora - What is considered op is entirely subjective. I personally don’t mind the strength level of either card, but I’ve seen them mentioned before and they’re definitely some of the best cards you could add honestly. Also I’m not sure what you’re talking about with Khalim not making the cut. I’ve ran into several mono yellows and he appears as common as can be, along with the purple Choking Sands.

As for favorable match ups, honestly not counting mirror matches red has been the only real nuisance. Mono and Mixed. The AoE damage and spot removal is just too nasty for Yellow’s squishies. Blue jump and Mono Green not so much. Not saying I haven’t lost to them, I have, but unless they’re super lucky I wouldn’t call it a bad match up by any means. I mean if a Green player manages to draw all 3 Wood Elements early and I don’t draw a single Sand Element or removal card than yah, I’m pretty hosed. But I’ve yet to find a deck that won’t lose to that level of bad luck, lol.

@Xaxazak - I mean it might not be the best idea for the power wheel, but I originally decided on that purely so every deck would at least have an option for it. My reasoning for this is awkward board development ain’t exactly a thing unique to Yellow. Blue has its movement shenanigans and Green just has a million ways to spam it, Reds the only one that really don’t have much in this regard. Like in the above example I gave where my opponent managed to get all of their land making cards early I was kinda screwed by nothing more than the draw. I had no way to slow down, halt, or break his land lock. I think if the power wheel option was suitably weak it could co exist along side more powerful land destruction cards. In either event I’m willing to admit it might not fit there, but I still think we need options to influence land after it’s built.

Still doing good against people as high as rank 3 with the deck. Stuck at 6 currently because for some reason the only matches I’m getting are against Red and Yellow. I guess it’s just me but I just think any deck that can compete in the meta should take a bit of thought or strategy beyond the deck building phase. Currently this strategy has started to remind me of face hunter from Hearthstone. Don’t adapt or react, just spam till you win or lose.

#11

[quote=“BomberGob, post:10, topic:6797”]
managed to get all of their land making cards early
[/quote]That can suck but plenty of losses are draw-related bad luck. Sometimes you just don’t draw creatures for ages. Sometimes the opponent draws the perfect answer lots of times in a row. You need lots of games to get rid of the RNG noise. (That’s mostly why I want more & quicker games).

If it’s a really common occurrence then a fix might be needed, but I usually play 3 wishes (which is slow starting and very easy to landlock) and I rarely get landlocked without options. Dash, haste, Syland Horsemaster can often get you to the water’s edge.

Here’s my card idea:

Hydroshaft.png350×536 258 KB

#12

@Xaxazak - I like it, it’s a building so at first glance you wonder how useful that could be until you notice it’s in the one faction that can move it around.

I honestly think if they do a round of land influence cards Red should probably get the majority. It’d make up for the fact that Red lacks the land tricks of the other factions. I think it’d balance out the RvG match up, only problem is it might make the RvY worse.

#13

Hellquake.png353×628 298 KB

(Art is placeholder, can’t find license or artist)

#14

[quote=“BomberGob, post:10, topic:6797”]What is considered op is entirely subjective.[/quote] I’m simply informing you of the subjective opinion of the best players in the game

[quote]I personally don’t mind the strength level of either card, but I’ve seen them mentioned before and they’re definitely some of the best cards you could add honestly.[/quote] Flash Wind usually makes the cut in yellow Rush but is far from the best card. Charger usually doesn’t

There is a mile of difference between the typical Yellow Events list, a midrange deck popular on ladder at the moment, and Yellow Rush. Khalim always makes the cut in midrange yellow decks, it often doesn’t make the cut in top tier yellow rush lists. Choking sands is a tech card which comes in and out of top tier decks in response to fluctuations in the meta.

Card seems fine close to fine. It should have 4 or less health though to be balanced against firebomb and Imperial Command

This type of Mass Land destruction ruins games though. Basically any card that requires more than 3 lands would become strictly unplayable.

#15

@Ramora - Buddy I’m not sure how much different you really think rush and mid range is in Yellow currently. The decks I’ve been observing have almost an identical core with maybe 2-5 slots different depending on the player. If these top tier rush decks are supposedly a mile of difference as you put it than I’ve must of never seen one. I find your argument against Khalim rather weak considering it’s one of Yellows best turn 2 openings regardless of the deck type. He’s just that versatile, and a single 5F creature isn’t gonna hurt your curve to any significant degree. As for Charger, he’s just one of those cards that preforms better than his cost on average and at 3F he fits the power curve. Mid tier, event, rush, call it what you want but every yellow deck I’ve come across runs enough cheap events to make him useful. Even if you don’t I find people go out of their way to kill him since they don’t want to risk him trading for a more expensive creature. Makes him worth it all day(in my deck at least).

As for what the pros think, they’re human as anyone and can, will, and do overlook or undervalue things. Confirmation bias gets the best of us all. That’s why I think it’s important to reason things out and understand why they’re good instead of just blindly following the builds of the top players without understanding the how or why of what they take. The point wasn’t to argue the strength of the cards only to point out that I wasn’t currently using the cards that seem to form the core of so many yellow decks regardless of type. For what it’s worth I’m using em now, oddly enough I didn’t miss em much in anything but mirror matches. Not having em against other Yellow decks was becoming a pain.

@Xaxazak HellQuake Is an interesting idea, it’s a one time thing and the kickback hurts. My only issue with it is currently IMO Reds best feature is our AoE. The counter play to this card is to have a bunch of cheap baby sitter creatures like Toads or Pipers sit on your colored land. This is kinda playing right into Reds primary strength of AoE. It’d be hard for me to judge it purely off theory. It might actually be fine as the cost in Faeria would be quite high on average requiring you to give up your own tempo to play it. The face damage balances it out a bit vs rush and burn so that’s nice.

I was thinking something along of lines of a cheap taunt monster that could destroy the tile he dies upon or maybe new unique pollution mechanic that could temporarily disable lands, or possibly even a spell or ability that could increase the land cost on cards.

Underworld Sapper(2F, 1M, Creature) - 0/4. Taunt, Dash 2, Deathwish - When this creature dies the tile it occupied is destroyed.

Good potential early harvester, can also run up and be a nuisance. Perhaps dash 2 is too strong and should be toned down to dash 1. In any event he could be a liability against monster movement, haste, or burn so I feel like it shouldn’t be too abusive.

Black Smog Automaton(5F, 2M, Creature) - 4/6. Production - Enemy adjacent lands are disabled for 1 turn and do not count towards your opponents land count and cannot be summoned upon.

Basic little line minion that could really put someone on the back foot if they bunched all of their colored land in one spot or serve to cut off reinforcements from being dropped on top of you. Might be too strong in multiples, maybe should be turned into a legendary to limit it.

Industrious Industry(2F, 4M, Structure) - 0/3. As long as this structure remains on the field your opponents cards all require 1 additional colored land to play. This effect stacks.

Not sure on how well something like this might work, it’s strength would be entirely dependent on what other type of cards could interact with it. Still thought it might be an interesting concept to mull over.

1 Like
#16

My guess is you mostly haven’t been observing yellow rush. It’s unpopular at the moment though its likely still fine on ladder. Especially now that everyone is experimenting with new cards. Usually, yellow rush decks don’t play charger, colossus, soul pact, fanatic, or flash wind. Yellow rush decks usually play prayers, crusaders, followers, and monks. Its definitely possible to play charger in a yellow rush deck, but it usually doesn’t make the cut in top tier lists. Khalim is similar. You can play it and it will be fine, but if you are trying to build optimally, it really isn’t that good at rushing. Its much better at playing the midrange game.

Sorry for dragging this admittedly relatively off topic conversation on.

#17

[quote=“Ramora, post:14, topic:6797”]
This type of Mass Land destruction ruins games though. Basically any card that requires more than 3 lands would become strictly unplayable.
[/quote]As you start adding land you start increasing damage & faeria cost. Most games have a lot of land except early on, which means a huge damage hit. Say you’re 6 special (2 occupied) + 2 prairie - that’s 6 own-god damage and 7 faeria for zero enemy damage (god or creature). But yeah, perhaps its still a bit low.

If it were 2 faeria per special land perhaps it would be balanced and fair vs high-land cost decks like three wishes.

[quote=“BomberGob, post:15, topic:6797”]
This is kinda playing right into Reds primary strength of AoE
[/quote]Not sure if that’s a bad thing - other colors are a bit like this. Yellow gains from hitting gods and has the easiest time doing so. Green gains from tons of land and has the easiest time making it.

[quote=“BomberGob, post:15, topic:6797”]
Underworld Sapper
[/quote]I like. I agree dash 1 seems fairer as its position is very important. Deathwish = last words?

[quote=“BomberGob, post:15, topic:6797”]
Black Smog Automaton
[/quote]I like, but I think this would almost require additional custom graphics effects, which isn’t exactly Abrakam’s strong point.

[quote=“BomberGob, post:15, topic:6797”]
Industrious Industry
[/quote]I kinda like the general concept - name’s a bit weird though - but then lots of mine are too :slight_smile:. What exactly do you mean by 1 additional land - of any color? So can I play crackthorn with 3M/3F/1D? Or does it need 4M/4F? I’d say 4M/4F is better because otherwise cross-color decks would barely be affected. Are neutral cards unaffected?

#18

6 damage on self and no damage on enemy sounds bad and all… but consider the other side of equation:

  • Potentially land-locking enemy
  • Stealing orb spots
  • Locking faeria gathering spots
  • Sending enemy 6 turns into the past
  • Hand-locking enemy

Sure, it’s expensive and situational, but I think it’s still not pricey enough for the potential damage it can do. And if you made it more pricey, it would be even more useless. It’s one of the cards that are either overpriced or underpriced with no in-between. There is just too much gap between worst and best case scenarios, making the card unreliable and nigh useless. When it’s strong, it’s too strong - when it’s weak, it’s too weak.

#19

[quote=“Galileus, post:18, topic:6797”]
There is just too much gap between worst and best case scenarios, making the card unreliable and nigh useless. When it’s strong, it’s too strong - when it’s weak, it’s too weak.
[/quote]There are many cards that could be described like that, though. Firestorm. Meteor. Doomsday, Wavecrafter, Forbidden Library. There will be some times when it’s neither too strong or too weak, but I’ve Meteor’d 6 creatures and also had many games where no target is legitimately worth 12 faeria. Not to mention all the cards that really need to be early, like Eredon or elementals.

The majority of cards in practically any deck require 2 or less land - so if this card knocks out your Aurora’s Dream or Meteor you’re still holding a ton of cards you can play after a turn or two. If you’ve been building up to cheap Primaeval Colossi then your opponent must’ve banked a ton of faeria just to cast Hellquake.

I don’t think it’s wonderful (I made it specifically for BomberGob’s specifications) - cards that totally upend everything are often annoying, especially on the receiving end - Pandora gets like that sometimes - but I don’t think the gap between best & worst case is larger than lots of cards.

#20

Xaxazak is correct in that it’s honestly not overly more disruptive than the cards we currently have anyway. My only issue with it is I believe every card should have some form of counter play, it’s the reason I want more land influence in the first place. With this I’m not sure if it would force people into playing against one of Reds greatest strengths in AoE.

Currently the counter play to AoE is simply not to over commit. If I think my opponents running Hellquake than I want to do the opposite and summon a bunch of creatures. I feel like it could create a lose lose scenario where despite what decision you make you’re gonna be punished for it. This is obviously speculation but if this problem is overcome I feel the numbers could easily be tweaked to make it fair. The important thing is the concept its self.

One interesting take is what if it did the opposite and only blew up enemy lands occupied by an opponents creatures? This would force them to swim back to land or drown, unless they were flying or aquatic of course. This could create more interaction for both players as bad or good positioning along with card combos would greatly impact the strength of this event. If an opponent had poor positioning he could easily watch his billion health tree drown in the water. Lol

As for my ideas I indeed meant last words, I play a lot of games so I sometimes confuse game terms. As for Industry I was thinking of just simply having it add one of either color for hybrid cards as by their nature they’re pretty slow in play already. My reasoning for this is because I want the effect to stack so you could build a deck archetype around it for a new sort of strategy. It would seem somewhat unfair to require my opponent to have 8/10/12 colored lands to summon his basic hybrid creature. So basically if I wanted to summon a Crackthorn when my opponent had one Industry out I would need either 4M/3F or 3M/4F. Neutrals would of course be unaffected, I’m of the opinion that we should have more innate reasons to play neutral cards in our decks beyond the few synergies we have currently.

One more idea is a creature that would require “Herding” to use effectively and could be turned against you.

Corrosive Red Slime(4F, 2M, Creature) - 0/8. This creature cannot be moved normally. At the start of the controlling players turn this creatures moves to a random adjacent tile and converts it into a plains tile. Last Words - If this creature was destroyed in combat destroy the creature that dealt the killing blow.

#21

I’m not sure how important this is. Every special land saved is also 1 less damage and 1 (or 2, perhaps) less faeria removed from enemy. I’d just ignore it and if it’s played you’re unlikely to suffer much more than your opponent. IMHO all you really need to “counter” it is a deck that doesn’t totally rely on high-land-cost cards.

Think of it a bit like Doomsday - a kind of hail mary to escape land blocks or when you know you’ll soon get owned by Aurora’s Dream or something. It could also be used to secure or have fun with a sure win, but that doesn’t really affect the balance.

One possible cheap move would be if you can kill all enemy creatures and have a land next to their orb. You then Hellquake and wall their orb off with prairies - game over. But the game’s probably over by then anyway because you need to have lots of spare health and faeria plus clear all your opponent’s units plus a land near their orb.

[quote=“BomberGob, post:20, topic:6797”]
One more idea is a creature that would require “Herding” to use effectively
[/quote]Interesting idea.

[quote=“BomberGob, post:20, topic:6797”]
Corrosive Red Slime
[/quote]The RNG might be a bit strong - not sure. I like how it feels independent though. You might want to add “cannot collect faeria” (and perhaps can’t enable land production).