Alright, I think I’ve seen enough of this game and the available cards to make this post. Having played Magic the Gathering tournaments for more than 20 years (since 1994) showed me how the color wheel gets abused within time. This happened mostly because of inexperience, which Mark Rosewater (most known dev behind Magic) did agree on in the past. I’ve never been a fan of that and hope to find some love here at Faeria.
I know that this is a very complicated subject and may be way too late to get addressed, atleast for the cards that are already there, but lets see where it goes.
What I miss is a more clear cut between the colors. As I see it, it’s as follows:
Blue has:
card draw
moving lands
change stats
transform creatures
jump & aquatic
works with faeria costs
Red has:
direct damage
damage to all (opponents) creatures
damage to a single creature or target
combat effects that increase your faeria
Green has:
creating lands
buffing creatures
taunt
life gain
growing creatures (Seedling, please more of this!)
Yellow has:
moving creatures (including charge)
drain life / power
flying
haste
sacrifice to gain something else
stuff that grows / activates when attacking a god
deathtouch
Now, all that is fine, BUT then there are those crossovers I REALLY would like to get abandoned / changed. This list contains the stuff that shouldn’t be available in mentioned colors.
Blue:
a few creatures with charge (why not jump instead? Charge should be yellow)
Ninja Toad has haste (may be a good card, but my point still stands)
Red:
Grim Guard and Ogre Battler have taunt (which should be green)
Devouring Plant (c’mon it’s even a PLANT, go green!)
Bold Bargainer, Ogre Dance and Krog got a cost reduction ability (which should be blue)
Lord of Terror (seems to be a yellow abilty, but up to now a rare one. Also Death Walker shouldn’t have it…)
Green:
Doesn’t seem to have something that belongs to other colors.
Yellow:
Oradrim Fanatic (why jump instead of charge? Jump should be blue)
Sure, I don’t know what the devs were looking for, but I came to this conclusion after browsing the cards. I can also understand that some cards got the crossover for some reason, but I’m 100% sure it could have been done differently without using an other colors specific abilty.
It would be much more fun and interesting if those abilitys / keywords would clearly belong to one or another faction instead of spreading them over to others. It would make multicolor decks more interesing, too, as you would have to include another color to gain specific abilitys and so on.
I would really like to hear what everyone else thinks of a more defined color wheel.
I somewhat agree. It would be interesting if the colors were more distinct. Clear limits would limit the possibilities in making new cards, though.
Jump could easily be a blue exclusive ability, with no charge in blue. It would be a subtle improvement in the balance between blue and yellow.
Ninja Toad having haste is a bit out of place, but blue really benefits from that card. Blue is a combo heavy color and Ninja Toad allows a lot of combos to happen. It also allows blue to make better trades, which is useful since its creatures tend to be on the weak side.
Red having taunt is okay. It helps the color to survive against rush. If taunt was made into a green exclusive keyword, red would need some buffs to remain balanced.
Lord of Terror’s deathtouch is also quite important. It’s the only way red can kill high health creatures. Red would need some hard removal if Lord of Terror’s deathtouch was removed.
Actually, the color balance might be better if yellow had no deathtouch and it was a red exclusive ability. Yellow already has Last Nightmare and Choking Sands that accomplish the same thing. Since yellow doesn’t really need it, it seems appropriate that it would be exclusive to the color that has more use for it.
It seems attractive to make some key abilities strictly exclusive to a specific color. On the other hand, this might destroy the viability of mono colored decks (like no taunts for red or no card draw for everyone except blue).
I think some overlappings are okay (2 taunts for red, way more for green, so it quite “belongs” to green).
Another way to solve this problem for mono decks are the neutral cards, though with the limitation of them being not faeria efficient due to the missing land requirement. Therefor I think the slight overlapping of themes is the better solution, as each color should be a viable choice as a stand alone.
A different way to approach colored restrictions and mixes (though not for mono colored decks) is the addition of more multicolored cards like Apex etc, but with lower land requirements. (1/1 oder 1/2 for example) Or even cards with alternative color requirements like either 1 lake or 1 desert (to express shared themes).
There should be more mixed colored cards in general, I think. Right now we only have Three Wishes and the Apex-like 3/3 endgame (!) cards for each dual-color.
Yeah, that’s what I meant about the Ninja Toad (and others aswell), the card might be needed right now, but I’m very sure you could find another way for this or other cards (Grim Guard, Lord of Terror) to fit that spot.
Regarding deathtouch, I thought that way, too. It doesn’t have to be a yellow keyword, so yeah, make it a red one instead. Death Walker doesn’t need it anyway…
More about this below.
@ Taiyodori
I agree, it may look pretty harsh for mono color decks, BUT with time come more cards and new abilities. So I don’t think this would be probelamtic in the end, they just need to work on it as early as possible.
Using the muilticolor cards for such crossovers is a great idea, too and I’m sure that we will see cheaper ones with upcoming expansions anyway.
I completely forgot to write my thoughts about the human faction, good that you mention it. I thought of it being the all color faction for a higher cost. So if red needs that taunt guy, let it be the Queen’s or King’s Guard. Yes, that would need some rebalancing, but the devs will always be in this situation, no matter what.
All of this would shake the game like hell for sure and would take a good amount of thought and time, but I think it would be very well worth it. At this moment the game works, but it still needs a good amount of work. Some cards are to good, while other are just bad, so…
