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dkirschner's Faeria (PC)
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| [December 4, 2019 01:39:32 PM]
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This was a surprise! I have had two card F2P card games in my backlog since I quit Hearthstone. I booted up Faeria last week, then one day when the servers were down, I tried the other, Duelyst. I made it through Duelyst's tutorials and screwed around a bit, but it didn't captivate me like Faeria did. But after an all-night binge last night, I think it is best for me to set this aside, after gushing about it first.
Faeria combines elements of Hearthstone, Magic, and Catan, Hearthstone being the most familiar to me. You build 30-card decks with mixtures of creatures, structures (immobile and give passive bonuses), and events (aka spells). You mulligan like normal and gain faeria (mana) each turn like normal that you spend to play cards.
The hybridization comes in because Faeria has a, as the promo goes, "living board." You don't just play cards on your side of the table. Rather, each player has a "god" and builds lands emanating from the god. Each turn you can build two regular lands or one elemental land (and if you don't want to do that, you can opt to draw a card or gain a faeria). You can only build lands adjacent to lands you already have or adjacent to your creatures. The default board is all water, and while some (blue, "aquatic") creatures can actually swim through it, everything else needs some kind of land.
So, the strategy is not only in building your deck, but in building the board each game. Stronger cards will require, say, 4 fire lands before you can play them, and some cards require multiple kinds of land. In addition to the land, there are "faeria pools" that generate one faeria each turn. If you place a creature next to one, you get that bonus faeria. So you also want to maintain control of as many of those as you can because you will be able to play more and stronger cards. It's a balancing act because you can't just go straight for the faeria pools. They are on the corners of the board, and if you build outward, your enemy may start building straight down the middle and rush your god. But I found that generally having control of more faeria pools led to victory because you simply out-spend your opponent.
I've established that the mechanics are complex and a whole lot of fun. So what is there to do? There are a ton of "mission packs," typically with 8 or 9 scenarios and little bosses at the end. These serve as tutorials, challenges, and practice against AI, while allowing you to unlock rewards like cards packs, lore book entries, and the in-game currencies. Some are "puzzles" with the goal of defeating the enemy in one turn with a specific board state. As you complete missions and level up your account, you gain access to more stuff, including a single-player or co-op campaign, online casual and ranked modes, and Pandora, which is a draft mode.
My favorite thing in Hearthstone was Arena, so I went straight to draft mode as soon as I could. In Faeria, you have to wager card packs or currency for entry, which I suppose is like paying 100 gold in Hearthstone. You either lose it spectacularly or do well enough to make it back plus rewards.
I FULLY expected to get crushed in Pandora. I'm still learning the game, I've never seen most of the cards, total noob playing against experienced players, right? Well...I had a near perfect run and went 6-1 (and somehow got the achievement for going 6-0!), earning the top prize of 5 card packs and a lot of currency. While this was awesome, and I stayed up until 5am doing it, there is no way in hell that someone who has played a competitive collectible card game for just a few hours should be able to stomp everyone in draft mode. Like, that could say a lot about the player base or design. Is everyone else a noob too? Is there no one playing (queue times averaged probably 3 minutes)? Did I just get lucky and draft awesome cards (I don't think so)? Is the game SO well-balanced that skill doesn't affect outcomes as much as in other games (probably not)? What a weird positive-negative feeling.
Since I basically achieved the pinnacle of CCGs for me, winning a draft mode, I decided to retire at the top of my game. I still have about half the mission packs to complete and after that there are randomized "wild" packs so you have something to do forever. There is still the campaign mode, which I dabbled in and didn't find especially interesting. And there are puzzle modes, infinite card backs and things to buy, daily quests, and etc., etc. In short, if I wanted to commit to another CCG, I would spend more time here. But as much as I enjoyed Faeria, I don't want to get sucked in. I hope the game stays afloat because it's worth attention!
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dkirschner's Faeria (PC)
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Current Status: Stopped playing - Got Bored
GameLog started on: Sunday 1 December, 2019
GameLog closed on: Wednesday 4 December, 2019 |
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