Balance Changes Overview
With what we consider to be the most significant balance patch since the release of Faeria, we’re focusing heavily on two important goals:
- We’d like to continue to minimize the impact certain movement tricks can have in the early game that often spoil the fun for the other player
- We intend to give several pushes to relatively underplayed cards with the goal of opening up new options for deck building and archetype support
In addition to these goals, we also tone down a few cards across the board that seem to be over-performing.
The “Nerf” list
Flash Wind
- Land cost changed from DD to DDD.
- Down from 3f to 2f to move an enemy creature.
Flash Wind is being pushed deeper into desert cost as part of a general plan to limit early game swings associated with certain movement cards. The prevalence of low land movement tricks puts too much of a burden on the opponent to deal with powerful threats as early as turn 3.
Moving Flash Wind to 3 deserts is significant in that it will generally prevent players from extending their land with two prairies and pushing forward with Charge on turn 3, giving the opponent far more room to comfortably maneuver.
The ability to target enemy creatures is being buffed slightly as we see it is a unique and interesting part of the card that we’d like to get more use.
Syland Horsemaster
- Land cost increased from 0 to WWW.
Just like Flash Wind, Syland Horsemaster could often dominate the early game and leave little opportunity for the opponent to develop their board. We recognize this change affects strictly neutral decks from taking advantage of Horsemaster, but since the card is generally favored in Red decks we feel this change is necessary for a better early game in these matchups.
Windstorm Charger
- Faeria cost increased from 3f to 4f.
Windstorm Charger has long been the lynch-pin of exciting “events matters” decks and more value based Yellow Tempo decks. This adjustment aims to bring Windstorm Charger more in line with other creatures in Faeria. While we had several numbers to choose from when changing this card, we felt it was important to maintain its 4 toughness to keep this creature in a place above the 3 damage removal threshhold , something many yellow creatures have a problem dealing with.
Underground Boss
- Toughness decreased from 5 to 4.
The interaction between Gift of Steel and the Underground cards is an intentionally very potent one that can often feel unfair for the other player. Although the change to Horsemaster should help alleviate much of this issue in the early game, Underground Boss has also been weakened to tone down this power more directly. With less toughness it becomes harder to get multiple combat triggers out of the Boss with Gift of Steel and easier to remove the Boss before it gets going.
Feed the Forest
- Land cost increased from FFF to FFFFF.
Feed the Forest is a powerful card that can quickly snowball out of control relatively early into the game. We’ve made it clear we don’t necessarily like seeing movement tricks create large swings too early, so it should seem appropriate to move Feed the Forest swings later into the game as well.
In Feed’s case, we have moved it much later into the game. We want multi-color decks to truly commit to this card if they’d like it in their deck, rather than feel compelled to include it as it’s relatively easy for them to access.
The “Buff” list
Volcanic Colossus
- Text changed from “Costs 1f less for each enemy creature that has died in combat (minimum cost: 7f).” to “Costs 1f less for each turn you dealt damage to your opponent. (minimum: 5f).”
- Cost changed from 12f to 11f.
Volcanic Colossus is one of three red cards being changed with the intent of helping some archetypes other than Combat decks. The cost reduction from a cumulative set of small damage pings seems like a natural fit for a ranged creature that can threaten to finish off weakened opponents.
Rakoan Reveler
- Land cost reduced from MM to M.
Rakoan Reveler is a card that benefits from out of color synergies. Due to this and its status as a collector we are reducing its land cost to a single mountain.
Lord of Terror
- Text changed from “Whenever an opposing god is dealt damage, gain that much Attack.” to “Whenever a god is dealt damage, gain that much Attack.”
- Land cost changed from MMM to MMW.
These tweaks are intended to fix two issues. The first is that Lord of Terror was too weak in its previous iteration to see play, the second was that the previous iteration was too close to the new Volcanic Colossus.
Since the new Colossus seems more interesting Lord of Terror has been moved into the Masochism archetype in a uniquely red way. The land cost changes are to help enable his play in multicolored decks.
Seed of Paradise
- Life changed from 2 to 3.
Seed of Paradise sees very little play owing largely to its interaction with Deepwood Stalker. This change is intended to make Seed of Paradise a viable alternative to more traditional ramp options without being so strong that it out shines them.
Ancient Boar
- Cost changed from 6f to 5f.
- Land cost changed from F to FWW.
The addition of wild lands to the game gives us more flexibility in balancing cards than was previously available. By using wild lands we can move ancient boar to a more attractive cost
and keep it viable in multicolor decks without allowing the pig to rampage too early.
We expect this high mobility card to embrace a new, powerful role in Faeria.
Feral Kodama
- Land cost changed from FFFF to FFW.
Green creatures have a tendency to be large and immobile. While this is quite flavorful it can often lead to less interesting game play than more mobile creatures. What that in mind Feral Kodama is being buffed to increase the number of playable mobile creatures in green based decks.
Mistral Guide
- Land cost changed from DDWW to DDW.
Mistral Guide is an exciting card that we’d like to continue to push into more games. As the first card from the core set that we’ve added Wild lands to, we cautiously kept it at four lands total in the previous adjustment. Three lands now seems like the right balance between letting Mistral Guide setup collectors while still being slow enough to be fair for the opponent.
Lord of the Wastes
- Stats changed from 7/3 to 6/4.
The distribution of stats on Lord of the Wastes is being changed to make it a more attractive option compared to other sacrifice cards with its unique selling point of being playable at full strength without a sacrifice if you have more faeria than creatures. This change is mostly also intended to help Yellow and sacrifice archetypes in Pandora by giving them a card they can draft even if they do not have any sacrifice fodder yet.
Mystic Beast
- Land cost changed from LLL to LLW.
Mystic Beast is a card that encourages aggressive play styles and tactical land building by both players. Since the card showcases many of the fun aspects of faeria we would like it to be playable in a larger variety of decks.
Triton Chef
- Land cost changed from LL to L.
Triton Chef was originally two lakes to mirror Triton Banquet’s land cost. Playing a Chef then realizing you could not play the Banquet could lead to some frustrating moments, especially for players less familiar with the card pool. Now that Banquet is one lake having Triton Chef at two lakes no longer makes sense.
Dream Keeper
- Power increased from 1 to 2.
Dream Keeper is a card that was originally printed with conservative numbers. While the card can be lots of fun to play having tools like this that are too powerful can lead to decks that are more focused on playing solitaire with their own synergies than interacting with the opponent.
We have seen occurrences of this before when failed experiment was first released and Blue Red could ramp up to Aurora’s Dream without even bothering to harvest. Having seen how Oversky developed it now seems safe to give Dream Keeper a little more power without creating the kind of power house decks we fear.
Imperial Engineer
- Power changed from 1 to 2.
This change has very similar reasoning to the Dream Keeper changed. We have no illusions that structure based decks will suddenly take the meta by storm but Imperial Engineer is in the game because sometimes people like playing this kind of fun deck, and when they do we’d like their cards to feel like they have reasonable power levels.
Thanks for reading!
Oh, one last thing.
We’d like to give special recognition to luuu90, who we took direct inspiration from to make these changes to Volcanic Colossus and Lord of Terror. Thanks for your excellent thoughts, Luu!
Update: Full Disenchant values have now been applied to today’s nerfed cards for one week.
. (Back in the day Boss was considered worse then Brigand … weird).
