I like when games provides u with utility and different playstyles are competitive, but atm I play against rank 5-15 and 9 out of 10 decks are rush decks and its getting extremly boring.
Most games starts with 2 or 3 praries down the middle path.
Rush needs to be slowed down or nerfed.
I think this would be a great idea since rush decks always seem to take the fun out of games like this. However, the rush cards still need to be viable and usually will lose their worth with nerfs. My only thought as of right now since I am so new to the game is to look at the dmg when hit minions and lower that some. Raising the cost of some of the stronger rush cards might be able to help with the issue as well. Since the more they cost the less they can pump out each turn. I am yet to get in to the ranked play though since I started when the game went f2p. I am just getting a feel for cards and making a bunch of decks to test out soon enough against other players. The two games I did play though in casual were verse rush decks. I think I did win one of them though thanks to drawing some good answers. I will be happy to add more ideas as to how this could be dealt with with some more time in game.
While I agree that some of the rush decks are a bit too strong right now, I think that part of the problem comes from unexperienced players don’t know how to deal with rush.
Faeria has a much higher skill component than most other CCGs, because of the complexity of its board.
When I started playing, I kept failing against rush and my first thoughts were as well: Boy, is this op!
However, hopefully you can improve your skills in defending vs. rush, so it doesn’t feel that frustrating. A common mistake new players make is the land placement. I suggest you read through this beginner’s guide by J0k3se: How to improve at Faeria - A guide
About in the middle of the first post you can learn something about land placement vs. rush. When I started playing, I did it all wrong. But as I started to adapt after reading the guide above, the games suddenly didn’t feel that unfair anymore. (Of course this is not an autowin strategy, but it helped me a lot)
What you need to understand, is that some deck archetypes require a different approach and adaption of playstyle, when you face them. That’s what strategy is all about. 
i consider myself a fairly decent strategy player of any game in general. multiple times now, even in unranked, i find myself having control over the entire board land wise. but in the beginning every deck is just “place land, move land, move land, move land” and so they have what 2-5 pieces of land with haste, charge, flying. the entire deck i keep seeing: card draw card draw haste haste haste card draw haste suicide suicide suicide win going face. it takes the fun out of strategy and doesn’t even make the game a strategy game anymore. you can’t keep up with drawing 3 cards a turn with suicide creatures that just deal face damage and don’t care about anything else. i thought i left hearthstone and found this game was fun. unfortunately more cancerous players are coming here too. rush decks need to be fixed severely.
“Rush is a low-skill efficient deck”, at least that’s how it appears to new players. Plus, it enables some quick and pretty reliable wins. And the Red rush is one of the cheapest efficient decks around, memoria-wise. That’s why you’ll see lots of them. However, when playing against someone who knows how to counter rush, it becomes much trickier. If you are an average rush player, your opponent will either cut your route to his orb, stopping the damage flow, or starve your faeria, and counter-attack.
Rush (and especially Yellow) is not a low-skill deck, playing haste over and over, there aren’t any low-skill deck when your opponent knows what he’s doing. Draw-RNG plays a big part in some matchups, though.
Keep in mind Faeria is tuned for high level competitive play, and at this level you don’t see many rushes, as they tend to be pretty unreliable (a rush with a perfect hand is hard to stop, but a rush with a crap hand can’t do anything at all …).
If you’re coming from HS, and consider yourself a “fairly decent strategy player”, I suggest you learn some tricks by looking for example at the guide in Taiyodori’s post, just above. Faeria is different from most card games, where you mostly play “on the curve” and hope your opponent doesn’t have an answer or RNG gods smile to him. The game mechanics are more complex, for instance you can perfectly skip a few turns in a row if the situation requires it, and you won’t necessarily be behind by doing so.
To sum up the strategy against rush : try to get the 2 land spots on each side, and if possible the land spot connected to them as well, leaving only the straight line connecting both orbs (avoid playing a land right in front of your orb). Against Yellow, try to avoid getting hit as much as possible to stop Crusader from growing. Step on his lands to stop him from summoning the haste creatures. And as soon as you have an opportunity, build double neutral lands towards your opponent, then place another land and counter-attack. You can’t win that match by playing passive (well, except for fatigue, but that should be the exception, not the norm).
As for rush, though, I don’t know if it’s in the right spot. It can be overwhelming when you’re very lucky, or worthless if you’re very unlucky. I played it to rank up last season, most of my games against God players were pretty close, so I think it’s not in a bad spot since Vampire is gone, and Ghoul isn’t free anymore. Maybe Crusader could be capped, and Death Walker could see a nerf as well (or the combo Oradrim Monk + Prayer), the decision is in the devs’ hands, though
In my opinion rush is so popular nowadays because it is actually one of the only ways to counter red burn. Red burn dealing 2dmg passively pretty much puts the opponent on a 10turn timer. Most people if they see the opponent 1st land mountain will most likely rush to face and deprive resource from the burn deck because it is a expensive deck with very few defenses. Rush doesn’t work so well against blue and green though so once more people start playing those colors I predict a decline in rush.
Have only been playing for a couple of weeks, but am likewise finding the monotony of rush (ranks 10-13) incredibly boring. Over the past couple days, it has been 8/10 matches.
It just seems like a shame for such an open-ended game to force players into a war of attrition in the zone with the least tile space (where there is the least possibility for different plays). Maybe at higher ranks the best players do not run these hyper rush decks. But it seems like the majority of players trying to climb ladder are flocking to them like crazy.
In my opinion:
First Step
Make sure longer games feel as rewarding as quicker games.
Rush decks sometimes are popular for the simple fact that they tend to end games faster - win or lose.
After rewards feel fair for all types of decks, then you can more accurately evaluate the state of the game.
Second Step
Improve hand consistency.
Rush decks in general gain an extra, “unintended” advantage due to the fact that slower decks usually depend on specific answers or combos, and rush decks are naturally less likely to get cards in the wrong order.
This makes it so that even when a rush deck and a slower deck are equally good, the rush deck may win more often simply because the slower deck is more likely to get “unlucky”.
To improve hand consistency, I suggest something like allowing players to select - in Deck Building - a specific card to always start in their Hand.
There can be various restrictions in this regard:
Somewhat agreed. The gold reward (for a win) should somewhat scale with time.
However, I assume you’d also reward a win in a longer match with more elo/ranking stars on ladder? In that case, I’d disagree, because
That’s something the devs recently commented on in this announcement.
And I kinda agree with them: It’s actually the rush player who’d be favoured by a bigger chance for “the perfect hand”.
Why is that?
Rush decks tend to be less consistent than control decks, because they usually don’t have access to all of their cards throughout a game. They still use some mid- or lategame threats (think: Firebringer; Zealous Crusader). If rush gets a “perfect start” it’s pretty much unstoppable. If they get a bad start, like say 2x Firebringer 1x Hateseed, (and the opponent has any idea of what he’s doing) it’s pretty much an auto loss for rush.
Now if you guarantee 1 or more starting cards, it seems pretty clear who is favoured:
Rush gets at least 1 card he absolutely wants to start with. And it’s always, always the same, because he’s the aggressor and he has a pretty much perfect plan in which order his cards should come. When he plays vs. control, he wants to rush the orb asap. When he plays vs. rush, he probably wants to outrush his opponent. It’s the same plan every game. Would he change his mulligan, if rush knew his opponent is control? Rush probably wouldn’t keep that Last Nightmare in order to get through the taunt. Not in a 3/30 starting cards scenario anyways.
Now take a control deck: Vs. rush, control wants some rush counter and some tempo cards. Vs another control you maybe want the cards which guarantee more board control, faster expansion, bigger plays etc. For instance, Windfall isn’t that bad if you play vs. control, as you have some time to collect great amounts of faeria. Vs. rush, it’s probably a dead card.
The problem is, you can’t possibly know beforehand, whether you play vs a fast or a slow deck. (That is, outside of a tournament’s best of 5 situation, of course.) Therefore, you can not adapt your mulligan. This wouldn’t change with a specific guaranteed card in hand. Your “perfect start” usually depends on the deck of your opponent.
Now this isn’t 100% true for any situation and/or deck. But I think the tendency still applies. So with most control decks, you probably know exactly what you definitely do not want as a start. But you don’t know what you do want as a start this game, before you know your opponent. Rush, on the other hand, knows exactly.
Actually, I have an update on my suggestion for game mechanics:
1 - Allow us to pick 1 card when Building our Deck, to always start in our hand.
The aforementioned restrictions would still apply
2 - You draw 9 cards at the beginning of the game - which includes the 1 you can choose to always appear in your hand - then mulligan 6 to 9 of them, as you can only keep 3.
3 - Less important, but still worth giving it some thought, everytime you draw at the start of a turn, you’d draw 3 cards, keep 1, and place the other 2 back in the deck.
I don’t really think it goes exactly as you said, though.
Every deck knows what they want to start their hand with, if they could choose.
The thing is, rush decks are all about overwhelming, while other decks have many different pieces to the puzzle.
Imagine getting buffs but not the creatures you want to buff.
Imagine having your “end game” cards without the setup.
I believe the answer is actually making all types of decks more reliable, as it allows you to truly balance rush decks.
Sure, proper deck building is all about making a deck that tries to beat the odds.
However, Luck is fickle, and:
1 - If a “perfect opening” becomes popular, a “perfect counter” will arise, so ultimately there will never be a perfect opening.
2 - The only matches that suck to play are the ones where you couldn’t even play your strategy, because you simply got everything in the worst possible order.
3 - Between Faeria, Duelyst and Hearthstone, I consider Faeria to have a considerably higher potential for competitive play.
This game takes many steps in the right direction - pooling of Faeria across turns, lower RNG in cards, etc - but the more solid its various mechanics are, the worse RNG feels when you get on the wrong side of it.
Games shouldn’t be ruled too much by what cards you got in the first 3 turns.
Plus, I think having starting hands range between “good and perfect” is a lot better than between “bad and perfect”.
I have the feeling that you want to take out the randomness of the game to make it a pure skill battle. To make things more extreme, why not picking your draw among all your cards each turn ? 
Now, I don’t despise skill battles, I play Prismata, which is a non-RNG skill only game, but I feel it’s refreshing to be able to blame draw-RNG for your losses sometimes
More seriously, what you propose is a serious buff of rush, or even worse, combo. You don’t seem to understand that the strongest decks are the ones which rely on draw-RNG the most, in other words : the less consistent decks are often the strongest when they get a perfect hand. But they’re not consistent, so you can’t rely on them to win tournaments, that keeps them in check. Now, get them the cards they want and they’ll steamroll you over and over.
What else ? It’s boring to watch, if not to play, if each player can develop his perfect strategy each time, without having to adapt to their cards like they currently do.
Sure, sometimes it’s frustrating to loose to draw-RNG, but would you really enjoy playing the exact same match over and over ?
I quite like the Duelyst solution: allow the player to Replace one card in their hand (with a guaranteed-to-be-different card) every turn. Keeps things fresh and moving, but doesn’t give too much advantage to the rush or combo players. Definitely the kind of draw-engineering Nurvus describes would rapidly devolve into an RPS of perfectly calculated moves that would have games decided (even if far from over) in the first 3 turns. #NotMyFaeria
Yes, that’s why I liked with Duelyst : the possibility to tech many cards that would be dead cards to some matchups, but strong in others without being disadvantaged if you drew them in the wrong matchup, as you could replace it
The advantage to rush or combo players you are speaking of, only happens, because the game is designed around it, or rather, designed to ignore it.
Currently, rush decks stomp slower decks that don’t draw their answers early enough.
Even if the rush deck doesn’t draw perfectly, the opponent may still not draw the answer soon enough.
So assuming equally “strong” decks, rush decks end up having a better average win rate simply because they have lower curve and indirectly more reliable draws since they don’t depend on drawing that specific answer.
If card draws were to be more reliable for everyone, naturally the developers would be able to better tune all sorts of decks, and this “advantage” you speak of wouldn’t exist.
Bad Starting Hands are the single greatest enemy of Fun in these kinds of games.
My suggestion doesn’t remove randomness from the game, nor does it ensure perfect draws.
It merely tries to eliminate 2 toxic elements from the game:
1 - losing before the game begins
2 - not even being able to play out your deck’s strategy
This has not at all been my experience. I find that the fragility of Rush creatures means it’s rather easy for almost any other deck to defend themselves using whatever creatures they would normally use for harvesting Faeria, and because the rush player is foregoing such harvesting and generally runs no draw mechanics, it’s fairly trivial for the non-Rush player to run them out of cards and/or Faeria long before they reach the point where they’re risking death.
Seriously, it takes 2 damage from any source to kill an Air Elemental, a Wind Wisp, or a Demon Wing. 3 to kill a Skyguard or an Oblivion Knight. Max, you’ll need 4 points to kill a Drake. If you have to wait that long to draw a 2 or 3 damage “answer”, the problem is in your deckbuilding, not the rush game.
People don’t use those creatures in rush decks in the higher rankings, though. Rush decks that use creatures like Wind Wisp and Oblivion Knight are easy to beat, but you don’t see those later anymore. Dune Drake is the only one of the creatures you mentioned that’s used, and a 4/4 with good mobility isn’t that easy to answer on turn 3.
There are much harder to answer creatures. Steamforge Enforcer is a 6/5 that can be played on turn 2. King’s Faithful has protection and can be played on turn 1 if you go second.
You basically need to draw the exact right cards within the first few turns or you won’t be able to kill your opponent’s creatures fast enough. If you can’t kill them in the first few turns, they’ll deal lots of damage. They can also step on your land to make an offensive land next to your orb, making it hard to defend yourself from future creatures they summon.
Spot on.
I think my suggestions - obviously not perfect - would constitute a really solid playfield for all types of decks.
I want all types of decks to be fun and viable, and make your playtime feel worthwhile win or lose.
I don’t really want to participate in this thread, as it seems to be the same old “aggro is evil” nonsense from every card game ever. I will say that the more you decrease draw RNG, the more combo becomes totally overpowered. At present, I’m capable of piloting an all-in-combo SuperToad deck to around a 1.5 W/L ratio. If you smooth my draws, even at all, I doubt I would have any bad matchups.
I haven’t played for a few months. But when returning, i saw that 2 key cards in my anti-rush deck nerfed (ruunin’s shrine and ruunin’s avenger), and my rush deck remained more or less the same (shaytan vampires changed and deathwalkers mild nerf). so im guessing rush is even better now. i dont think yellow cards should be nerfed, but instead anti-rush cards should be buffed.
i think the general philosophy is that its better to climb ladder as rush because the games last less, so you will just on average climb faster if you’re a better player. then switch out colors when you start to see anti-rush decks or other variants.
I’m new to Faeria, but already get to rank 7-8, and I’m pretty bored with rush decks. It feels like 80% is playing rush because it’s pretty effective. Mostly it’s yellow/ any color, so I hate this small creatures and the sister they always have mana to play them, and utility of rush cards is amazing - they draw a card, they got other cards in hand, they just getting mana etc…
I think the problem is in crazy utility of rush deck cards, they always get what they need, and it’s very rare I win them. Even when I built a deck vs rush - I loose 50% of a time.
The worst of this story is that game gets really boring sitting in defense vs them and trying to do something (useless)))
I think if it goes like this - a lot of players will turn to play rush decks, or will leave the game.
