There is no problem with Azure Sky whale, it's actually good for the meta

Balance Discussion
#1

How is it unbalanced if you need to play subpar cards like elementals for the first half of the game to possibly cast one?
Elementals are vanilla creatures with 6 stats that make a land, pretty much any other 4 cost creature is better, like ones with combat procs that kill you before you even play a whale, yep.

You have nightmare, the only unconditional removal in the game, before the whale and swallow in general there was pretty much no removal unless you are playing yellow which is just ridiculous. Last Nightmare is easier to play as it doesn’t require you to use subpar cards all game to cast it and it allows you to build your lands spread much faster like oh i dont know directly into your opponants face on turn 2?

Without the whale all you will have is RUSH RUSH RUSH RUSH and that’s what really isn’t healthy for a meta, the whale is like “Torrential Gearhulk” from magic the gathering, which lately in standard was the only reason “Control” could even function, you stagger for half the game barely surviving and you drop a big body while removing something, this is literally fundamental for control to exist and in faeria you get a control card that can be used in any colored deck
 if its so OP why dont you use it? oh wait you play rush.

Just look here, all three decks kill you as fast as possible, they rush you down and look, NOT A SINGLE WHALE IN ANY DECK! I don’t get why anybody wants the whale nerfed like holy ■■■■ the whole meta would just be rush all the way from gold to god rank. Make a deck that uses 3 whales and see how good you are.

#2

Hello,
You are destroying your onw argment at the end guys. You Say that rush deck totally ■■■■ Whale deck, but you say that if there was no whales, then we will had a 100% rush meta.
Seems strange, because the only deck who can actually counter really well rush deck are all midrange decks. And the next probleme is, if you play midrange and your opponent a hardramp whales deck, you are often ■■■■ before the game start.
So, if the whale desapear, we will not have a rush meta, but a midrange meta.
Actually, i think the midrange is the more skill and fun playstyle for Faeria, and it allow you a good diversity. You must build build your midrange deck carefully because the threat of rush is still there so you don’t have to be too greedy. But you still can build greedy deck for the panthĂ©on format, to counter some archetype.

So why whale is a problem imo?
Many things have been said about it. You talk about LN who is the only true hard removal of faeria. Well, its a color identity, yellow remove, green swell, red damage and blue transform. Now you can exceed it, whatever the colors your choose. Is it normal? in wich other game you see that?
Well, now when i build a deck, i have to deal with it, and even more when i want do a tempo deck. Can i put this big colossus in my midrange deck to get some late game ? Na, because i i play vs whale, i simply loose the game when i invest in it. So, you don’t put any card 6+ cost in your deck only because of that, and its really unhealthy for the deck diversity!
Whales are not the only probleme in the current meta, there is many others, but the swallow mechaniq is truely not a good thing imo (but the baloon fish is fun !).

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#3

There would actually be less rush if whale didn’t exist. Rush is common because many other decks are too slow to beat GB Ramp. Decks like Yellow Tempo, Green Midrange and Blue Jump are played much less than before Oversky because Skywhale counters their finisher creatures so efficiently.

Only 2 out of 12 decks in that article are rush decks, or 4 if you want to count Angry Red as rush. That’s not many at all.

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#4

Am I the only one who sees that the article that he posted is from Jan 2017?! Azure Sky Whale wasn’t released yet, Oversky wasn’t released yet, heck Faeria wasn’t released yet.

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#5

Some of the problems with Whale aren’t from Whale. One of them is land ramp, which is cheap and effective, perhaps too cost-effective.

Another one is the cards used to safely build towards it consistently. Green Blue ramp can consist of things like:

  • Frogify to beat big creatures, Elderwood embrace to compensate for the elementals’ low stats,
  • Frog-tosser to beat small creatures,
  • Aurora’s creation for its flexibility,
  • The elementals and Earthcraft for consistent land ramp,
  • Feed the forest for more faeria and card draw in a pinch,
  • Living Willow for a good feed target, a good collector and a taunt creature to stall a few turns longer,
  • Thyrian Golem and Leaping Fugu as additional late-game creatures,
  • Fugoro for using the Urn of Gabria,
  • and some others I’m not thinking of.

Now let’s count the amount of cards in Green Blue Ramp that count as removal: +3 from Frogify, +3 from Elderwood Embrace, +3 from Frog-Tosser, +3 from Whale and a potential +3 from Aurora’s Creation. In total, that’s a whopping 15 removal cards in one deck! And that’s not counting any other options I didn’t think of.

There’s a reason there shouldn’t be too much removal: it ends up creating decks that have a bit too much good removal for most other decks to handle consistently.

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#6

Even if you look @ all the top decks being played and made now, pretty much no one in competetive tiers are using whale and thats because it simply isnt OP as people in low tier that don’t own the card think, if you’re talking about too much removal look at red. i feel like people just dont want to spend $20 to get the oversky cards and thus complain about it, in reality the whale isn’t anywhere near as good as people think and saying “it’s easy to ramp into lands” is just stupid, playing elementals is detrimental to you in the early game and sometimes out right impossible if your opponant knows how to play the game at all.

Show me actual evidence, for example, 30% of all decks in top tier include 3x whales, rather then trying to back up claims with your idea of balance, someone that has no idea about game design what so ever and plays the game a few hours a day or week can’t really say much about what is OP when they themself don’t play in any high tier and can’t actually back up their claims with evidence, claiming they know better than the devs etc just because one of their creatures got swallowed when they were already behind in the game.

#7

This makes no sense lol, “too slow to beat GB ramp decks” really? if you’re too slow to beat GB ramp decks how the hell do you beat rush decks when GB ramp is too slow to beat that? by the time you play a whale you’re most likely dead or you’ll have a hellfire dropped onto you.

#8

Those decks are too slow in that they can’t pressure GB Ramp fast enough. Once ramp has gotten to 8 lands, they can play cards that are way stronger than anything midrange plays. You need to pressure ramp enough that they don’t have time to benefit from all the lands they made, but only rush can do that consistently.

Midrange decks are good against rush because they can play a lot of low land requirement creatures to defend against rush early. Those creatures aren’t anywhere near as good against ramp, because ramp’s creatures are far better once they’ve made enough lands. Something like Leaping Fugu if far better than Sagami Warrior in the lategame.

That’s not the case for a lot of people. Many players with large collections have complained about Skywhale too.

There might not actually be that much GB Ramp on ladder at the moment, but that’s because many people are playing decks that are good against it, because they don’t want to lose to ramp. Which is exactly why you see so many people play rush instead of midrange these days.

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#9

My point stands, i’m versing so many different decks and i come across a whale like 1 out of 10 games and it usually doesn’t phase me as multiple cards can deal with is especially last nightmare which nets me the win

Also its BS that their playing cards much stronger, sure their abit stronger because they used weaker cards like elementals all game, this is how a card game works
 agro beats ramp mid range beats agro and ramp beats mid range
 and a whale isnt “much stronger” than a last nightmare tbh and many other cards like hellfire which can be even better than a whale AKA destroying an entire opponants board or dealing lethal at the same time.

It almost looks like people were worried the whale would be everywhere because their not used to swallow which isnt even that great of a removal which is why nobody uses the other swallow card anymore, now its settled down and nobody even uses whale, yet someone loses to a game with their opponant playing a whale (1 game in many) and they complain lol
 learn 2 lose with pride.

#10

Also you can’t say Elderwood embrace to compensate for elementals low stats lol, the amount of cards your listing wont even fit in a decent deck that can actually ramp to a whale efficiently, build this deck that u think is too good and show us the results, half ur games u will have elderwood embrace / whale / frogify and spend 3 turns doing absolultely nothing, by the time u can even cast one of those cards u might be dead
 You simply dont understand what it means to fill your deck with cards that say “do nothing unless you meet this requirement”

The real reason people are not playing whale is not because “people are playing the other 10 decks that are good against it” but its because they bought the expansion, tried it out, realised it’s not as easy as it seems to ramp into it and it’s not as effective once they’ve gotten there because their already too far behind oh and plus it can get removed itself whicch is ultimately GG for the whale player who has invested their entire game plan into playing it (not being able to advance their board because of subpar creatures) and no elderwood embrace mitigate lol imagine a hand with an elemental and elderwood embrace ur gona capture one well and sit there for 4 turns doing nothing with a 4/8 taunter if u drew the best elemental possible, one third of your deck to play a decent whale deck has to be invested into making special lands and that says a lot. I dont see how people have problems with this card at all, can i ask for people to share their deck lists so i can actually see why the hell people are bashing the whale so much? Save your removal for it and win the game jeez or simply kill the opponant before they even play it


I also cannot stress the fact that having cards with such huge requirements in order to be played is not to be under estimated, if youre stuck with a hand after swapping cards that has a whale and no elemental wtf do you do? you cant just wait 2 turns and drop your whale while most decks can wait 2 turns and play the biggest card in their deck, you need specific cards at the right times to even get to play the whale
 give it a try, i tried it and im back on my own red yellow build which im having much more success with
 i really would like for people to share what decks they play and explain why they have so much trouble with a deck that does almost nothing for the first 4-6 turns.

#11

You pick what you can fight and ignore the rest dude.
In the most anwser to you post, peoples don’t say whale is OP. They just say that they are unhealthy for the game. i don’t really know what you talking about when you talk about top elo, i don’t see your name anywhere in the ladder, but you certainly have another ingame.
Well, i can give you a little analyse i did with some friend.
What the ladder look like actually and why?
-The best deck played actually is redcombat midrange. (40-50% of game)
-Rush deck in any color, (20-30%)
-Others midrange like crack or bluejump and burn for exemple wich is not really a midrange for me (10-20%)
-Rampwhales deck (10-15%)
-Other strange things (5%)
Now, let think about the WHY ?
Mid range deck are the best answer vs rush, game in mirror work on skillcap, you are really strong vs all strange deck who don’t have whales.
Rush deck can win anything with a good hand and you can chain game to climb easy.
Other midrange deck are good option depending of the ladder of the day, always a safe option.
And the ramp deck! what to do with it? Games are really longs, you have huge chance to loose if you play vs rush but you have have the better rate vs midrange deck (Yflytempo and redcombat have decent average vs them, but whales still favorable).
So, what happen every day on the top ladder?
Usually, you test it with a rush or a mid deck. Then, after some game, if there is no rush deck, a good choice is usually to switch whales. But well, top players have usually the same reaction and that make some mirror whales games 20 minutes+, not the ebst way to climb 
 So they came back to mid or rush to try counter the counter, and play faster !

Does that means they stop play the whales deck because it is less good ? Does that means Whales is OP auto win? Na !
But if you follow the reflection, you will understand that all the choice you make in this meta when you choose tu build a deck and go on the ladder to climb is rules by the whales option.

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#12

This is just speculation, you’re taking actual facts you have found AKA, 40-50% of the meta is MIDRANGE REDCOMBAT so whales have NOT pushed midrange out of the game AT ALL. then 20-30% is rush decks which is how it is in pretty much every card game and whales are barely played, you’re taking these actual facts and then you’re warping them back and forth as if you know the psychology behind every player involved in the ladder and saying the reason the whales arent being used is because of other players using whales, seriously think about that for a second
 In every game i play even if its not a card game, the thing that gets nerfed / banned is something that is played in over 50% of all competetive games and the whale is NO WHERE NEAR that number in fact it’s almost non existant in competetive play! I just dont see why people are saying “nerf the whale” i really don’t. Again, please post your deck lists so i can see why a deck that does nothing for 4-6 turns is beating you to the point you need to vent on forums. Especially when this only happens to you like once or twice a day even if u grind 10-20 games a day
 I seriously think all the whale hate stems from when the expansion first dropped and everyone bought it, played whales and people without the expansion lost to them, now the meta has adapted to so many new oversky cards nobody really uses whales anymore


#13

Whale HAS been everywhere, that is why people play rush all the time. We actually see some more midrange lately because of rush oversaturating the ladder, and also because people are simply bored of playing GB Ramp all the time.

While I don’t think removal of the whale is necessary, it’s worth noting that if you want to reduce the amount of Rush, removing/nerfing the Whale is the place to start.

This makes no sense lol, “too slow to beat GB ramp decks” really? if you’re too slow to beat GB ramp decks how the hell do you beat rush decks when GB ramp is too slow to beat that? by the time you play a whale you’re most likely dead or you’ll have a hellfire dropped onto you.

Reath explained it in detail.

Midrange decks are still fast enough to stop Rush, but they just lose way too hard to the Skywhale. But even then, Midrange CAN lose to rush, and there are about half a dozen workable midrange decks that all have their own unique matchups against each other. And then there’s Skywhale which just stomps them all except of a Yellow Tempo with enough lucky draws. Crackthorn and GB Enchant have winconditions that require 6 lands, which isn’t that much less than Skywhale but their winconditions are just worse (cost the same amount of Faeria (or one more in the case of Apex Predator), less impact on the board). Same for Blue Jump and Red Combat who just find their winconditions Swallowed as well, and even Yellow Tempo can’t keep up with Thyrian Golem + Skywhale if it does not win early (and also their wincondition can get Swallowed)

Also, everybody that’s complaining about the Skywhale owns this card. People that play long enough had enough gold to buy them when the expansion came out, after all ^^ .

1 Like
#14

This makes no sense to me, have you any experience with games like magic the gathering? hearthstone? duelyst? I have never heard of this “The reason people play rush so much is because of (insert card) is too good” Literally i have never heard this roflmao
 if the whale was so good then the format would be TEEMING WITH IT until it was banned or nerfed, in pretty much every card game a card will reach about 40-60% inclusion in EVERY COMPETETIVE DECK and then it will be nerfed, how many decks is the whale included in? see? your argument dies to actual facts, also as the person above mentioned, he thinks 40-50% of the meta is midrange and TBH the 10 games i play a day i usually face midrange and rush i barely see whale decks and i usually stomp them anyway they literally do nothing for 4-6 turns.

“People are not playing whale because other people are playing whale and whale is too good so nobody plays it for that reason” makes ZERO SENSE. If the whale deck was OP (GB ramp) as you say, it would be the go to competetive deck, why would anyone competetive play RUSH against whale decks that DO NOT EXIST, whale MAY have been “everywhere” when the expansion first came out which is obviously expected since its a new card and one in the expansion which is actually decent, but now people have figured out its not good because it requires you to build your deck around it and play subpar cards for 4-6 turns.

If i’m going to join the 3.3 thousand dollar tournament coming up you think im gona bring a whale deck? roflmao, and you think im gona bring a rush deck because i think “this will be good against whale decks” when if i look at all the top decks there are no whales in them? seriously just think for a second.

#15

Man, all you say is just speculation too. You just reject everything. There is no debate possible. The last thing you said about the 50% of presence of one card (or else in other game) to get a nerf/ban is a huge bullshit, and i will not lost more time developing exemple. Well, have a nice day man !

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#16

I was pretty much using magic the gathering as an example and lots of other games, in magic recently you had a card called aetherworks marvel in standard and yes it was like 40-50% of the meta, u also had cards in the past like splintertwin which again were a huge part of the meta (40% +) now compare this to the whale 
 you can’t even compare it, then theres games which arent even TCG like overwatch, heroes will only get nerfed if they are literally in pretty much every single competetive team and are must picks.

I’m pretty much done with this post, “people dont play whales because other people play whales” just made me lose the plot, all you need to do is look at faeria monthly cup, every single month the best decks are posted and there is almost no whales at all sometimes there are actually zero. The only deck that plays them is GB ramp, if it was so OP it would be played in every color because it CAN be played in any color. The expansion was supposed to make new archetypes.

All nerfing the whale would accomplish as far as i can see is completely removing ramp as an archetype, an archetype that hasnt placed first in recent monthlys and is pretty much non existant in them. Why would you want to remove an archetype from the game which isnt dominant or oppressive? it’s clear it’s not oppressive because other decks are thriving, it’s funny because if you look at monthly cup decks, alot of them are midrange, for someone to say “whales have removed midrange from the game” is completely buried by actual evidence which you can gain from this very website. You can say it’s not fun to play against all you want, but i don’t find rush mirrors fun either, i actually find it fun playing against ramp in multiple TCG’s, the best part about Faeria is you can actually denie ramp in more ways than simply removing their creatures / structures, it makes it even funner to play against ramp in Faeria that you can deny their land positioning etc by forcing them to use them subparly.

Then there’s the argument of the whale costing MUCH MORE than pretty much any other creature in the game at the moment, i don’t really see another creature that takes so much investment that you need to put on average 10 cards that make special lands into your deck and actually DRAW THEM the first few turns in order for your hand to not be completely dead, again, subpar plays for early game.

Also saying having lots of removal is bad is just silly, having no removal (especially in early game) is what really lets aggro and rush decks thrive, it’s clear in every relevant TCG out there that is relevant that removal is necessary, you need GOOD removal that is on par with creatures and control / ramp decks need a package that gives them an actual pay off for ramping, its an actual joke if you expect someone to waste time and almost die ramping to 8 special lands then play a card any weaker than the whale, its not even hard to answer, you can taunt it you can kill it with last night mare you can chase it down with lots of different creatures “Caugh” ishmaru or the red dragon that pretty much destroys an entire opponants board before coming down? and whale still takes more investment then the mentioned creatures, in deck building, early game and the sheer gamble on whether the whale will be killed or not the moment it comes down or if it’s even early enough to make any impact at all. But i do infact see a reason as to why abrakam don’t want CHEAP removal and it’s because in faeria we have wells, making lands to reach wells and playing a creature to have it removed and your opponant put 2 normal lands towards your globe is a big swing, red can still do this though.

You guys can keep complaining about something that isn’t broken and in FACT barely even being used, i’m done lol.

#17

You are confusing Splashability (the magic cards) and power level.

I haven’t played magic, but I did play Rise of Mythos before, and it had quite a few extremely powerful cards even before I quit (now it’s just a P2W-party if it wasn’t already).
There were a lot of splashable cards that saw a lot of use, most notably the Ambushers and the defensive Templar, but they weren’t particularly great. They were just versatile as heck and could be put to use in any situation if you weren’t running a rush deck. But they were not gamebreaking, despite some seeing 40-50% usage or more. You knew people ran them all the time, but nobody cared about those. They were just staples for control irrespective of the ‘color’ you used (or class, in this case).
However, despite them being splashed everywhere (especially by F2P that lacked the more powerful options) there were far more powerful cards in the game, that could easily swing the game when played. But these cards were not only behind a paywall, you also often had to accomodate those in your deck because they tended to be quite slow (thus leaving you much more open towards rush decks), and as a result they were used less than the F2P staples that had lower cooldowns.

#18

Maihem, Reath, Aasgier, gooop: You can’t win an argument with a troll.

4 Likes
#19

He just swallows any other opinions.

2 Likes
#20

Alright, let’s see what’s wrong with the OP’s arguments:

  1. The linked article is from January 2017. The Oversky wasn’t out at that time, so obviously, there are no whales there. Also note that the Oversky came out in August 2017.

  2. If you always use a deck that happens to counter or at least do decently well against whales, it’s only natural that you think whales are weak.

  3. In my previous comment, I specifically said it was a list of cards that CAN be in Green Blue Ramp. In other words, not all of them need to be in the deck to make it work (though some of them are so good that you need them).

  4. If you weren’t watching streams or Monthly Cups during the Oversky’s release, it can be easy to underestimate the whale’s power level, especially in its current state. It was nerfed a few times: it used to have 8 health and it used to be able to collect faeria. The only counters to its ability to collect were either Last Nightmare, which usually ends up leaving you with very little resources afterwards, or damage-based removal, which takes away at least 2 cards and 6 faeria in the case of red (flame burst, firebomb, seifer’s wrath), yellow (wind soldier) and blue (ninja toad), thus leaving you with fewer resources than your opponent in terms of number of cards.

  5. It may look like they do nothing for a few turns, but they’re actually building towards the ability to use every card in their deck. They have elementals to ramp and collect faeria early on, frogify and/or elderwood embrace to clear anything that threatens them other than damage-based removal or hard removal, and some variants have more early-game creatures for more consistency there like shifting octopus, battle toads and some other cards I’m not thinking of.

  6. The elementals may be inefficient for their cost, and the deck itself may be a bit inconsistent because of bad draws (just like every other deck out there. What a surprise!), but the ability to play every card in the deck is more than capable of compensating for this, especially if you’ve gained enough resources thoughout the game to make use of the late-game cards. It wouldn’t be nearly as consistent at ramping to 8+ lands on turn 4-6 without 9 land ramp cards in it.

  7. If you focus primarily on the downsides of the deck while ignoring its advantages, then that’s nowhere near a perfect analysis of the deck. It’s not a perfect analysis if you focus primarily on the advantages and ignore the downsides either.

  8. If you’re too lazy to search Green Blue Ramp decks on the hub or use the search function in a way that allows you to find them easily even without their names, that’s your fault and no one else’s.

  9. It doesn’t take 50 different decks with whales in them to make whales overpowered. All it takes is one deck (and its variants) that makes an absurdly good use of it.

TL;DR : 1. Article is irrelevant. 2. Constantly using a deck deck that does well against whales obviously means whales are weak. 3. Reread the exact wording of my previous comment.
4. Streams can be a good source of information. 5. Green Blue Ramp has various tools to deal with a lot of different things. 6. Its advantages can make up for its disadvantages. 7. Learn to analyse properly. 8. Laziness is bad. 9. As I said, laziness is bad, and it’s right next to the TL;DR, so go read it.

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