The funny thing about the whale is it actually got a huge nerf pre-release and the consensus is it’s still op. The design that was originally previewed had 6 health + the health of whatever it swallowed. Although, back then swallowception was still allowed, so at least it had a counter then.
Now that I think about it, it seems like the real miscalculation was just how strong “immune to swallow” really is. And since it was a relatively last minute change they didn’t give themselves a get a chance to properly test it.
Immune to swallow is completely besides the point. You should never need a new mechanic to defeat a new mechanic. That’s just power creep which will kill the game. The fact of the mater is that the Whale needs to be completely defeatable by already established mechanics although not by every color exactly. The whale can be slotted into basically every deck with no problems and supercharges decks that were already in the top X. That versatility means it needs hard counters.
Yeah, I agree with that. Immunity to Swallow won’t solve anything.
You can definately introduce cards that give Swallow a hard time though - creatures that damage structures upon summon other than Groundshaker, for example, helps with the Crystal Flowers. It probably needs to be Blue or Neutral to also deal with the monoblue mirror matchup, though, as that depends a bit too much on library RNG.
adding new cards to counter things also doesn’t really help…again that winds up creating power creep, since it makes older cards useless. There are already ways to damage structures - which are expensive and rare, so new structures shouldn’t have that much life, so they’ll still be vulnerable to those. Similarly there are ways to deal with big creatures, but they’re expensive. These would balance whale, if whale wasn’t so undercosted/overpowered. There’s a few inefficient ways to hose a deck that rellies heavily on land (land blocking and meteor), so the natural counter to a land-ramp meta is something that doesn’t really exist in the game yet. If there were easy ways to destroy lands, then I think that would effectively balance cards like whale and they’d be generally useful (hopefully not overpowered against non-land-ramp decks).
I think the issue is that it should be reasonably defeatable by existing cards. If you need new cards to counter it then it is creep (of a kind) regardless of what the new cards actually are.
The problem is that if you have 1 card that is OP against everything but a handful of new cards then it’s going to be used to make OP decks until those new cards become so common that they curb the use of the original problem card. So you’ve just added a small number of cards that are now immensely common simply because of a somewhat exclusive predatory relationship with another very common card - which ends up making a very boring homogeneous static meta.
However, if you introduce a multitude of soft counters, I think Crystal will definately suffer (ie; Boisterous Pirate, but we also already have Groundshaker, Emperor’s Command, Flame Burst and Haste creatures as it is).
The Whale is a whole different matter, and I definately agree. Relying on Punishment alone is just silly.
Not just that - the new counter cards, for example cards that easily damage structures: they also affect old cards. The older cards were balanced on the assumption that it’s difficult to damage structures from across the board. So when you add new powerful structures and anti-structure cards, you’ve essentially nerfed Forbidden Library, Imperial Drain, Steam Forge, Kobold Barracks, etc. Again, lots of interesting cards/decks get ditched in favor of one stupid back and forth dynamic.
Yes, which is why such a card needs to be added carefully, and I also think such a card needs to deal 2 damage and not 3/4 so it hits the Library (which can use a nerf) while most other structures survive it.
Emporer’s command is that card…and it should make people regret playing crystal flower the same way it makes people regret playing library. The fact that it doesn’t tells us that flower needs fixing.
Emperor’s command makes flower only last for 4 turns instead of 7.
Any deck that relies on big minions in the late game is completely stomped by swallow at the moment. You can’t hold midgame against frogs and once late game is here any of your threat gets swallowed.
yup, but it’s only a 1 faeria loss and usually worth it. Library is balanced by its life cost and land cost. Removal shuts it down, but the real counter to library is doubling down on the cost of losing life with some bursty face damage. So there’s actually two general classes of counters: 1 soft counter by inefficiently killing libraries, 2 hard counter by using burn cards or a rush strategy.
maybe the devs miscalculated and think ,hey it’s just 5 turns. neglecting the fact that creature can’t move after it’s been released.As for colossus.the impact is ever bigger it can’t threaten orb after it’s out may even not be able to collect after it gets out .so sometimes it’s a 9-10 turn removal with flower.the whale can double collect and just starve the opponents,and considering the pace of the game.i’d call it almost permanent removal.
maybe the devs miscalculated and think ,hey it’s just 5 turns. neglecting the fact that creature can’t move after it’s been released.As for colossus.the impact is ever bigger it can’t threaten orb after it’s out may even not be able to collect after it gets out .so sometimes it’s a 9-10 turn removal with flower.the whale can double collect and just starve the opponents,and considering the pace of the game.i’d call it almost permanent removal.
This. five turns of a missed collection means a loss of 5 fearia and even more if the creature is double collecting. Swallowing a 6 cost creature with a 3 cost building for 5 turns and having it on the wrong field afterwards means that you have a huge temporary fearia disadvantage and in a fast game like fearia this is too much. The other removal spells cost far more for practically the same value. Last nightmare costs twice as much as this flower for only one land cost less.
Also there is no spell in the game which can do a cost efficient removal of the flower. There is not even a spell in the game which can do a consistant inefficient removal of the flower at 5 health aside from meteor and doomsday and both are high cost spells with a lot of collateral damage and not suited for every situaution. The best way to destroy these flowers is having high mobility creatures like blue and yellow do, but for green and red (and especially red) these flowers and whales are a nightmare. Also one hard difference between the flower and the library in regards to emperor’s command is that the library is actually dead after using the command, although it still is not the best trade. Before the new cards blue dream reaver was super strong and only overshadowed by green because of the ridiculous Ruunin buff. But compared to 200% cost efficient whales neither Ruunin nor the library are a problem anymore.
Swallow need a resonable restriction. For example the size may not be larger than the size of the swallowing creature. If they get bigger, the swallowed creature destroys the swallower from inside. A metric for size could be the fearia cost divided by 2 and rounded up, which finally would also give a counter to cost reduction.
after the nerfs, I think swallow is in a better spot - I still think swallowed creatures need to be able to act when released. This is especially important for whale, since the opponent can just play keepaway with fatties even if you have the right answers to their whales.
I also think they need to be summoned adjacent to the swallowed creature. A teleport across the board is incredibly powerful by itself in a lot of situations and provides massive tempo with little strategic thought required. Faeria has this spatial strategic element and whales/flowers ignore it too easily.
This. Faeria has really become a game of who draws the most flowers. The tempo you lose trying to break an opponent’s flower, and then waiting another turn for the swallowed unit to be able to act again is just too punishing. I would absolutely make swallow an adjacent hex only ability as well. Well…in fact I would also personally not have chosen a powerful neutral single target removal ability to be the flagship keyword of my first expansion. Yeah it gets a lot of play, but it gets put in EVERY deck. When yellow rush plays 3 copies of a control removal card that costs 4 special lands, it’s clearly overpowered.
Shouldn’t flower have been a blue card?
Still new but you need to be blind not to see what’s going on here.
I just started but I really hope they keep on balancing to not end in a spot like Hearthstone where devs pretend everything is fine for month until finally doing something that just makes the card which were supposed to be fine totally unplayable instead.
The one advantage a card game like this has is it’s ability to change cards whenever necessary.
I think they want to wait until after the Monthly Cup before making any big changes. Seeing what the ‘best’ players do in the game and abuse will give the developers some pointers for next update. We just have to accept that today’s MC will be a huge mess.
(To be fair, even if the patch was balanced today’s Monthly Cup would be a mess simply because there are no perfected decks yet.)
