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Faeria Economy - Part 1

Posted by AcidFox on 22/05/2017

Difficulty
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What makes a deck good enough to be competitive? how can i determine the quality of a card by itself and how can i understand synergy between cards?

In this guide i'll try to explain and invite to an open debate about the creation of indicators that make clear for all of us what determine the quality of a card, deck and why the meta is well... the meta.

Read the deck linked to this guide
  • 5 3 Khalim, Sky Prodigy 1
  • 4 1 Drakkar Skycaptain 3
  • 5 5 Windborne Champion 3
  • 2 2 Celestial Tower 2
  • 2 2 Soul Drain 3
  • 1 Time of Legends 1
  • 2 2 Iona's Smile 3
  • 6 3 Last Nightmare 2
  • 3 2 Windborne Emissary 3
  • 2 2 Sunsilk Faerie 3
  • 2 2 Golden Aviary 2
  • 4 2 Choking Sand 1
  • 4 2 Mistral Guide 3

Economy in faeria

Greetings/Disclaimer*

I´m starting this guide trying to explain what is economy, tempo & quality of cards in faeria, this is going to be a long way but i promise to update this guide with new findings and feedback from the community ASAP but you can check when was last updated so you can see the progress on this guide. sorry about grammar errors english isn´t my mother tongue.

Last update 2017-06-08 01:39:17 Thursday

Faeria is a deeply economic game basically ´cause you, from start to end, are continuosly making choices of investment, taking risk and trying to controlling it to your side of the balance. The main idea of this guide is to shed light on the Quality or Tier of each card, analyzing all it´s parameters like faeria cost,land requirements,power,life,card attributtes and risk. My work consist of giving community a better tool to understand the game´s meta/balance witch can help players in the task of building better decks and improving tactics & strategy; by the other hand also helping developers creating a common language between them and players about meta and cards itself.

i´ve noticed other guides talking a little bit about the faeria cost of cards and other relevant topics but i want to be exhaustive as possible with this guide and describe some guidelines to really understand how you are transforming 1,2, etc faeria into something else on the board that makes grow your economy and eventually winning the game.

Understanding Units "Faeria = Money"

First i would like to introduce some values for you, some of you may disagreee with the weight i´m giving to each of the items but trust me i´ll be more than happy to hear your feedback and arguments about the topic. The units i take for card attributes are based on reviewing its cost trough all cards (neutral & colored) trying to be the less arbitrary as possible. some units are easy to calculate as power or life with 0.5f / value or +2 life to player with 1f / value however taunt, charge dash, deathtouch and other attributes are a little bit tricky but i´m taking the same approach of comparing is value on differrent cards to find patterns of value.

Power wheel

  • +1 Faeria = 1f
  • Draw = 1f
  • Y,G,B,R land = 1f
  • Neutral land = 0.5f

Card attributes

  • Flying = 1f (every step you make above ocean count as 1f as you can use the power wheel for draw or haverst 1f)
  • Aquatic = 1f(same as flying)
  • Jump = 1f
  • Ranged = 1f
  • Haste = 1f
  • Charge = 1f/per box (starts from Charge{2})
  • Dash = 1f/per box (starts from Dash{2})
  • Move = 1f + 1f extra if charge/jump creature(i.e flash wind)
  • +1 player´s Life = 0.5f(i.e life+2 equals 1f)
  • +1 power = 0.5f
  • +1 life = 0.5f
    • so +2 power or +2 life = 1f (i.e campfire +1/+1 equals 1f)
  • deathtouch = 2f( but it depends of the faeria cost of sacrificed creature, cheaper sacrifices are more f )
  • protection = 3f
  • Taunt = 1f
  • 1 Damage to (creature,structure or player) = 0.5f
    • so 2 damage = 1f

What´s Quality or Tier? "a very complex formula"

we have a better aproach right now just for purposes of let you know earlier attempts i´ll leave the earlier versions here, if you want to know the actual formula just scroll down.

In faeria we have a lot of variables that can determine what is a good move and with time players have learn some valuable things about how improve it´s ingame investing decisions but ¿what does this really means?

invest/risk/reward

We have 3 important decisions per turn ingame on faeria:

  1. How to use the power wheel
  2. How much faeria spend this turn on cards (and yes! that includes asking what cards use)
  3. Where to place that particular card on the board.

This guide could shed light on this questions but in it´s core this is not a guide about strategy & tactics but card quality before being played on the board this doesn´t means i´m not touching those topics or taking them into account meaning that i´ll divide the guide on 2 main topics: one before board refering to card´s economy/quality itself and another refering to how putting a card on an especific place of the board can affect it´s economy/quality.

Invest This is easy in faeria you invest... well faeria and only faeria, no matter what kind of deck you are using it´s heavily influenced on how efective the faeria you invest on every card on your deck transforms into more faeria (i hope you noticed in the units chapter that damage to an enemy can be measured in yes! faeria 10f to be accurate) so the main goal of faeria is invest faeria in damage to your enemy // i´ll talk more about this later.


Risk We all know it´s not easy just to invest on a card that automatically drains all life from enemy in one turn and let you win the game. BUT this illustrates what risk is. Risk is all that can happen between your invest of faeria and receiving your reward wich in this case is victory.

So the ideal case in faeria is as follows: that you have 30 of the same card (lets say "X" card) that cost 0f/ it has no land requirements,event (so you don´t have to put it on the board) and its card attribute is gift "set your enemy´s life to 0" then you going first play this "X" card wich drain full life of your enemy and you won a very boring game.

so where is risk? let me split this for you.

  1. obtain card from your deck (less risk or max probability being 3/30 = 10% to more risk or min probability being 1/30 = 3.33%).
  2. pay the card´s cost of faeria (risk increases as turn/time passes risk decreases as you control faeria wells wich translates on less turn/time required or cards that let you obtain more faeria per turn)
  3. have land requirements specified on card (risk increases as more lands are required witch is translated in more turns/time and risk decreases as you build lands)
  4. time you need to obtain card attribute (gift,haste,production,attack a god,end of turn or enemy turn etc this risk increases as more time/turns is needed to obtain the benefit and risk decreases as you received the benefit earlier)
  5. where you put a card on the board(risk increases as you put it on a place where the card cannot obtain extra faeria that is to say collect from a well, trade with another card and as a result you obtain more faeria than your oponent, or attack a god wich is to say it transforms attack on faeria; decreases as you do the opposite) See Reward Please.

Reward This can be explained as simple as "win more faeria than my opponent and translate this extra faeria on damage to the opponent´s orb faster than my enemy" i.e. I can have 20f invested on creatures all around the board and obtaining extra faeria per turn but if my opponent manage to invest 10f on creatures and obtain 10f extra from damage to my orb their 20f will be more rewarding than my 30f or 40f and yeah losing on tears my game.

Tier Formula "or i want free faeria"

Here you´ll have some aproximations to meassure the quality of a card by itself with its strenghts and weakneses and the current formula at the end.

Tier formula v 1.0

Tier(T) = ({power+life}/faeriaCost)+cardAttributes

this first version tend to exagerate some statistics and cannot determine value for 0 faeria cost cards, also it gives a value around 2 as a standart wich is problematic... old days fortunately.

Werezerg Tier formula v 1.0

Tier(T) = {power+life+cardAttributes}/faeriaCost+{0.5*landRequirements}+1f

Werezerg suggest a new formula that tries to integrate the land requirements and other things but this one have 3 main issues 1.units are not normalized, 2. the +1f/ at the end of the formula to avoid the 0 divide error just besmirch the formula also being innecesary and 3. the total number this formula gives is not as transparent as my formula basically ´cause my formula explicits how much extra faeria you are obtaining while werezerg´s formula don´t. even though im leaving his idea here in case someone sees something useful.

Tier formula V2.0(current)

I´ve been thinking about how to improve the formula as result of not being capable of calculate the events with 0 faeria cost cards and other attributes that just make the formula broke because you cannot divide by 0 so the solution i came up whith is this one, i´ll try to explain some things that i think may be confusing (i´ll try to be as clear as posible) about the units and how i assume its value in faeria. so lets go:

v1.0 baby steps... Tier(T) = ({power+life}/faeriaCost)+cardAttributes

Werezerg v 1.5 trying is to be brave... Tier(T) = {power+life+cardAttributes}/faeriaCost+{0.5*landRequirements}+1f


v2.0 now we´re talking... T(x) = ({[p + l] * 0.5} - F) + C

where X is a card, T = card tier, p = card power, l = card life, 0.5 adjust each p & l unit to their real cost of faeria, F = card´s faeria cost, C = card attributes.

for dummies:

Tier(card) = ({[power + life] * 0.5} - Faeria_cost) + Card_Attributes

before using it let me explain some points.

  1. This formula lets you know how much extra faeria a card is giving you above the faeria cost. (i.e a card with 3 faeria cost and 3 power / 3 life, no card attributes is equal to 0, you are paying for what you are receving period).
  2. this formula does not includes land requirements but i'm working on a risk indicator to add to this formula that not only includes land requirements but also includes specific conditions like attacking a god, be patiente i´ll make it public as soon as i can so we can improve it together .
  3. i´m also working on a synergy indicator to add to the formula wich basically attempt to generate clear relationships between cards through some labels, same as risk indicator wait for it.

Ok let's apply this new formular with the windstorm charger previous example.

example 1 - windstorm charger

Windstorm Charger

v2.0 Tier(T) = ({[power+life]*0.5} - Faeria cost) + cardAttributes

case 1: play 3 events.

windstormCharger(T) = ({[2+4]0.5} - 3f) + chargeX2 (1f) + gain+2/+0* (3f).

windstormCharger(T) = ({[6]0.5} - 3f) + chargeX2 (1f) + gain+2/+0* (3f).

windstormCharger(T) = ({3f} - 3f) + chargeX2 (21) + gain+2/+0 (3f).

windstormCharger(T) = (0f) + chargeX2 (1f) + gain+2/+0 (3f).

windstormCharger(T) = 0f + 1f + 3f.

windstormCharger(T) = 4f (maximum value playing 3 events)

vs minimum windstorm charger

case 2: play 0 events

windstormCharger(T) = (0f) + chargeX2 (1f) + gain+2/+0 (0f).

windstormCharger(T) = 1f (minimum value playing 0 events)

windstormCharger 3 events T = 4f extra & windstormCharger 0 events T = 1f extra ... and thats why you can lose so easily against a well played windstorm charger as it is capable of obtain faeria cost for free ´cause of its attributes. While an enemy have to spend 3 faeria to obtain the +6/+0 extra damage and 2 faeria to obtain the charge you can have this for free with certain amount of risk or synergy requirements (remember this risk & synergy indicator is being developt rigth now)

example 2 - flash wind (0 faeria cost cards)

flash wind

v2.0 Tier(T) = ({[power+life]*0.5} - Faeria cost) + cardAttributes

case 1: move ally

flashWind(T) = ({[0+0]*0.5} - 0) + move (1f)

flashWind(T) = ({0} - 0) + move (1f)

flashWind(T) = 0f + 1f

flashWind(T) = 1f

case 2: move enemy

flashWind(T) = ({[0+0]*0.5} - 3f) + move (1f)

flashWind(T) = ({0} - 3f) + move (1f)

flashWind(T) = -3f + 1f

flashWind(T) = -2f

Note: the case 2 is pretty interesting cause it depends strongly on how you use the card to make it valuable e.g if you have a creature taunting (1f) an ally creature and also this enemy card is close to harvest faeria (1f). if you manage to move away the enemy from the faeria well while untaunting your creature then you'll gain the plus 2F and make the card worth its faeria cost, even better if your creature can harvest as a result of the flash wind (1f). Try to think about similar circumstances for case 1.

So as you can see this new formula seems to do the job so much better than the previous one giving you a clearer indicator of how much faeria you are gaining and also letting you calculate the card's real value even in cards with 0f cost.

Hope you enjoy this intro to the guide and use the formula to build better decks. if you want to see a practical example of a deck build with the formula you can take a look at my Y Flying mid-range/control, i´ve introduce the charger to a flying control deck to take advantage of charger quality. but you can also make use of sunsilk faeria economy to win easily through the high risk high reward investment.

Have fun!!!

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