Green faction and land acceleration

Balance Discussion
#1

First i would like to say, awesome job on the game, and the newly released expansion is really awesome with plenty of new cards to shake the meta a bit.

But 1 thing i honestly don’t understand about the new cards that has been released so far is: Why does the green faction seem like the only faction with decent land acceleration? as far as i can see, there’s atleast 8 cards that can either give a color of choice, or extra forests, i feel this needs to get balanced out, since imo it makes the deck building extremely stale, especially when you’re adding a lot of multi color cards and high wild cost creatures like the sky whales.

I fx. enjoy yellow, red and blue factions a lot, but the only cards i can use to accelerate lands, is 1 card for each color (the elementals), i honestly think that’s bordering on favouritism for the green faction being the go to color for the expansion. I’m aware that all the new cards haven’t been released yet, but i’m not expecting to see 9 cards solely for land progression for non-green colors. So i can’t see how this will be healthy for the meta, and the game in general.

I’m not trying to be salty since i’ve played this game for atleast 8 months now, and it’s imo the best digital card game i’ve ever had the pleasure of playing and supporting. But i feel this is an elephant in the room, than no one seems to address or even comment on. Just my 2 cents and keep up the awesome work.

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#2
  • All the factions have elementals for land acceleration.
  • Green has “create a forest” cards to support their Forest-spam archetype (for everbloom, oak, primeval).
  • Green has the 3 creation cards, it’s meant to be splashed at 1 forest.

Creating lots of lands is part of greens identity, for several reasons, it fits the growth theme, it suits greens lack of movement and ranged capabilities, and green was built with cards designed to build off of it. Giving lots of land acceleration to other colours is possible but it can make things harder to balance, it will be harder to predict and counter-play, and make the colours more similar rather than unique. For now it’s a green thing, but maybe that will change in the future.

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#3

Thanks for your reply, but i have to say that i don’t agree with most of what you said sorry.
Also sorry for the wall of text, i hope you can be arsed to read it :stuck_out_tongue:

It being a part of the green archetype because of 3 cards, should not be part of the green ‘identity’ because they’re already the faction with most buffs, heals, most units with taunt, + they have the beefiest units, and they also patched up one of greens biggest weakness’ (removal) with the spiders, + all the new neutrals like crystal flower, whales, emperors verdict and so on… and they have more mobility than red (they have grovecaller and they even have creatures with jump, red only has a bit of flying).

So i don’t see any reason why they should also be the best faction at land progression/acceleration, if i compare red to green fx. red has a lot of dmg spells, and removals like bomb slinger and garudan, and thats about it.

Ranged hasn’t been a thing for the whole time i’ve played, (which as i said is more than 8 months) and 3 unit cards doesn’t justify 8 different types of land acceleration in the same faction, compared to all other colors who only has 1.

It’s true that some of the acceleraton cards are meant to be splashed, but being forced to play green to be able to ‘splash’ is not fun imo, especially if like me, you don’t enjoy playing the green faction in any dccg.

And finally, if i take your statement about it making “the colors more similar rather than unique” then i would think that green is the biggest wrench in that reasoning: they have removal, buffs, acceleration, mobility, taunt, heals, big and small units, they even have 2 units with flying (3 if you count soul eater) - the only thing they dont have is haste, ranged, deathtouch, combat and transformations (but only blue has that afaik)

#4

Green is not that amazing, it has different abilities, but so do all the colours, every colour has flying dragons and faeries, every colour has big and small creatures.

Green and red are the two slower land-dependent colours (not much jump, flying, aquatic, or charge). Reds biggest archetype/synergy is direct orb damage, it also has a lot of creatures and events that damage from a distance (including ranged), and Oversky is giving it teleporting attack. Red doesn’t need to get close to win while Green does. Green has more of a theme of lumbering giants that move from tile to tile.

Theme wise, the idea of forests spreading, lands growing, fits Green. It’s also practical because land creation works with the cards in Green as well as in multi-colour decks. It makes more sense in Green.

You see one colour has land creation and you want it in your colours, but each colour has its own cards, they shouldn’t have everything. It’s reasonable to find itt frustrating, land-building is a challenge and they all want multi-colour support.

Would making Earthcraft Wild be better? Maybe, some people/decks will like that and others won’t, it’s subjective. If earthcraft was Wild it might end up in every multi-colour deck which is a big design problem. Either way, they have elementals for a good reason, each one is unique and involves putting a unit on the board.

#5

Yeah I don’t understand either. Just like I don’t understand why whale and swallow was designed to be so OP. ^^;; Not much I can do about that…

I guess Green has creatures with high land requirement: Thyrian Golem and Primeval Colossus. But Blue has Dream Reaver and Yellow has Windstorm Champion…

#6

I have to agree with you part way on this reply nicon, and again, thanks for not being hostile in your replies (like people often are on forums when they don’t agree :P). I agree that forest spreading fits green, but i would still like to see atleast SOME options for the other factions, besides adding elementals, thats my whole problem.

It’s not about green being able to progress a little quicker than others, it’s about being forced to play/splash a colour i don’t like, just to be able to stand a chance in this new multi-colour meta. And earthcraft being a wild card would not fix anything since it’s faction based card acceleration thats needed.

Fx yellow has a last words and sacrifice theme that’s prevalent in their cards, then why make a card for green which would have fit in with the yellow theme a lot more? (im talking about seed of paradise, which is basically a last words effect) And speaking of last words, green also has the most last words keywords of any faction, which kind of forces you to splash green if you want to use the sacrifice theme proper. (especially because of soul eater)

But i personally would love to see more red last words cards like i’ve seen in most other dccg’s for that specific faction. (sorry i got a little off topic, but it’s kind of the same thing really)

Also i don’t think it would be impossible to make mechanics for land specific cards that actually feels unique for each faction: desert could have something like the pandora card that changes a hostile land into a friendly desert (yeah i know it would require a lot of balancing, but it fits the ‘desert’ theme), red is kind of a fire theme, then why not make something thats anti land progression, like something that burns a land into a neutral?, and blue already has a kind of ‘flood’ mechanic with baeru, so why not make some mechanic thats similar? - of course these are just examples from the top of my head, im not saying balancing it would be easy, but atleast it’s an idea.

#7

I don’t disagree, those are some interesting concepts they could add to the game, but removing /stealing /flooding enemy lands isn’t really helping with land acceleration, if anything that will make things harder for land-heavy decks (that might be the reason why they don’t add them).

What Green can do isn’t important, other colours don’t need something because Green has it. If other multi-colour decks can’t keep up (too weak/slow) then that’s a good argument, we want many decks to be viable.

That doesn’t seem like it will be a problem though, I don’t know how things will balance out in the future, but multi-colour decks seem like they will be powerful both with or without Earthcraftian cards. The fact that you might splash Green for different cards/synergies is a hassle but it also adds more depth to deck-building.

Isn’t this discussion about getting more cards that can easily build lands? Earthcraft is pure land-creation, that’s as direct as it can get. The elementals the fill the indirect role pretty well.

We all have different experiences and different things we want. I’m not that keen on land creation and high land costs to begin with. You want more land creation for all the colours, I don’t think it’s a bad idea, I just felt the need to bring up some counter-points and concerns.

#8

I’m a scrub at posting on forums, so i don’t know how to make fancy quote boxes, so i’ll answer the old school style.
Another wall of text sorry :slight_smile:

You have some sound arguements, and i mostly agree but 2 things i have to make my own counter arguement for: “other colours don’t need something because green has it” i could say the same for any of the keywords i wrote in my last reply, why should green have jump when thats clearly a blue thing?

And no matter how you spin it, land placement and progression is a huge part of the strategy in faeria, you can land block, take up a defensive position vs rush, set up collection spots faster, and you can progress faster if your deck is rush focused. You’re also able to play bigger cards faster if you have all your required colours, so you can double plains to get even more map dominance.

So a faction which has a HUGE advantage on that front, automatically has a huge advantage vs any non green deck. Especially since there is no counter play when it comes to land placement (there’s only the pandora card i mentioned).

fx. yellow has kind of had a history of rush decks and you could say that it’s a bit of a ‘theme’ for them, since most of their cards have high attack and low health. But green can efficiently rush faster than any non-green based rush deck (except perhaps blue, but it’s been a long time since i’ve seen blue rush), since they can have atleast 4 (5 if you +1 and play a earthcraft or seed of paradise, and potentially 6 if you have an explore for the +2 faeria for another earthcraft/seed) colour lands, by turn 2, thats twice the amount any other colour can make, and this is only by turn 2.

Another example: If you decide to rush up middle as fx yellow, you would have to make double plains to get to the orb faster/get an aggresive land, but if green is able to easily counter rush by turn 2 by blocking any aggressive land position, that kind of makes it hard for a rush deck to finish the game quick enough, before green spits out a huge creature.

I missread your statement about earthcraft, yes making earthcraft a neutral would help alot imo, and people have been asking for a neutral elemental for a long time afaik.

#9

Land generation was part of green’s color identity. It was balanced for that. It has lots of land generation synergies.

Unfortunately, having a color with increased land generation doesn’t fit well with wild lands.

IMHO, as the game was pretty well balanced beforehand, the problem is with wild lands and the cards that use them, and they should be fixed, not green - not least because those land synergies still exist.

There’s another major balance issue with wild lands - it really disadvantages mono decks. Mono decks used to be often able to get away with 2 or 3 special lands. They were balanced - the downside was a less flexible deck.

They have said that things may change rapidly as islands are released - I hope they consider changing the whole concept of wild lands as IMHO it’s currently a negative - although it’s being amplified by the OP new cards.

A few ideas - none are really satisfying though:

  • The entire wild land cost must come from a single color. (huge swing, now mono decks get the advantage, not sure if it’s much better).
  • Only lands created from the power wheel contribute to wild lands. These might look a bit different. (really complex).
  • Just go back to regular land costs. (need to redesign the costs of all wild land cards).
  • Wild land costs increase by 1 for every land color you have used (amount of each land type is irrelevant). (doesn’t address the issue with green usually having more lands).
  • Count prairies as wild lands (and adjust wild costs accordingly).
  • Attempt to address the issues purely on the wild land cards. (the hardest part will be addressing the synergies with multicolor and green land decks).
  • Add another mechanic that counters the issues.

Why should yellow have heal (Soul Drain, Malevolent Spirit) when it’s clearly a green thing? It’s all about quantity. Blue has a ton of jump, green has a tiny bit.

I do think you’re right about green having more diversity though - especially as green got some identity-breaking cards recently IMHO (Grovecaller and Deepwood Stalker). But I’d say the two wrongs don’t make a right saying applies here. And they could be fixed / tweaked in the future to make them less identity-breaking.

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#10

I don’t think rush decks use earthcraftian cards. When you play an elemental you get a 3 cost creature and a special land for 4 mana. When you play earthcraft you just get a special land for 2 mana. Earthcraft has a bigger tempo loss than the elementals, a special land costs 2 in earthcraft and 1 with the elementals. On the otherhand earthcraft is great for event decks because it is flexible at land-building, and the saved mana (instead of building a 3 cost creature) can go into more powerful late-game options like whales.

Would you also be happy if they removed the Earthcraftian cards from Green? A lot of your complaint seems to be that you don’t like Green and think it’s unfair. Your argument isn’t really focused on balance.

Land placement is important in Faeria, but all the colours are trying to balance their own respective strategies, so the better question is whether decks like Blue-Yellow are too weak because they play too slowly? Then I’ll hop on board the Wild Earthcraft train. But I think for now we just need to wait and see, the Oversky is a huge balance change to Faeria, they are even talking about changing Three Wishes because the new Wild and multi-colour cards might be strong enough to support the deck themselves. They did nerf Greens Wild Growth (create 2 forest) card so Green couldn’t get wild cards as quickly, so we can tell they are keeping an eye on land creation.

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