Balance Patch

Three Wishes

Cost reduction on cards received reduced from 3 to 1.

We’ve discussed at length how we see the current state of Three Wishes, and we are indeed moving ahead by toning down its power level. In order to get the full return of value from Three Wishes, you’ll now need to play all three cards you receive.

Azure Skywhale

Stats reduced from 6/8 to 6/6

Can no longer harvest Faeria

Skywhale is one of the signature cards of the Oversky, and is intended to be an incredibly powerful return on investing into a large amount of special lands. There are several aspects of Skywhale that work to make it extremely strong. Most obviously, it removes a creature from play, preventing potential harvesting from the opponent. While the opponent gears up for its removal, the Skywhale is often used to harvest Faeria easily between two wells by charging back and forth, further increasing its value if not removed right away. Lastly, it’s often able to attempt to ‘drown’ its victims by positioning itself over ocean tiles and force the opponent to make a difficult decision on whether or not to remove the Skywhale or wait until it’s closer to land. These features of the card all add up to a powerhouse that is easy to play, but tricky to play against. These are often the most dangerous cards in Faeria, as shown previously with Frog Tosser. We want to do our best to keep this card at a powerful spot that doesn’t feel so smothering to play against. By removing its ability to harvest, we dramatically cut the potential value this card can appreciate into the late game, and further our design goal of having this creature threaten game-ending damage to the opponent orb instead of merely fly around and harvest. We’re also lowering its health by 2, which means the opponent should have many more potential answers, but will still have to find some source of 6 damage to remove this 6 cost unit - if hard removal is not readily available. The player of the Skywhale should still often come out ahead in value, without making the opponent feel so helpless.

Crystal Flower

Now loses life at the end of turn instead of during the Production phase.

This change is significant for two reasons. First, it’s an effective nerf of one health to the structure. Secondly, and we believe more importantly, it improves the general gameplay this card provides. By making the damage occur at the end of a player’s turn instead of the beginning, the owner of the Flower will no longer have the first action after the swallowed creature is released by this ability. This means the owner of the creature will have at least one guaranteed action with their creature instead of falling victim to another potential form of removal or value trade immediately after it is released.

Golden Aviary

Cost reduced from 3f to 2f

Damage increase reduced from +2 to +1

This change may catch you off guard, especially if you’re reading this before the rest of today’s cards are released. To put it simply, we found ourselves releasing a heavy amount of powerful flying creatures in the Oversky that simply became too strong when included in decks that use Aviary, a card that has been somewhat of an anchor for flyer decks in the past. We had a choice between releasing weak flyer cards in general, or reducing the strength of one particular card that becomes problematic for certain designs. Annoying Gnat, for example, has made use of Aviary in several of our Monthly Cups, creating a field of 3/1 flyers that end up trading for an unstoppable amount of value. Aviary is frequently difficult to play against as you’re often unable to reach the structures easily in the early game, making them effectively global permanent enchantments. All of that said, we are generally reluctant to nerf cards in the core set unless they severely limit our design space for the future. In this case, we’ve decided that it’s necessary.

Forbidden Library

Lake cost increased from 4 to 5.

This adjustment is not necessarily Oversky related, but is the product of our own observations and player feedback. Too often, Blue players are able to play this card so early in the game that the opponent simply has no method available for dealing with it, causing it to rapidly snowball out of hand and deliver a feeling of helplessness. With this change, we simply want to delay its appearance in games by at least 1 turn to allow the opponent to develop more potential answers.

Bug Fixes