MArcomage

I am having trouble competing with the low cost, highly effective, and easily summoned rare nature cards. These cards are:

Ancient Sage - The conditionals are easily met for +18 stock and +1 random fac (Legend effect)
Earthquake - Massive damage potential for a relatively low gem price with help of Lake Fairy
Forest Dragon - Half the cost of Orc Regiment and able to do twice as much damage as Orc Reg
Volcano - No complaints

Sorry for comparing an uncommon card to a rare.

Possible solutions: Changing the nature keyword, creating anti nature cards, or a redesign of said cards (last resort).

Your thoughts?

I already noticed, but I would prefer not to adjust these cards, but rather the Nature keyword itself. How about adding a limitation: "summons rare nature card only if there is no nature card in hand"?

Creating a specific keyword counter is a bad idea. You'd have to waste card slots for cards that are only really good against one type of deck.
Redesign isn't necessary, you can do more meaningful things with minor balance tweaks in price etc. if it's really necessary.
If it's really the effect of Nature that would need change, I'd suggest a stock penalty on trigger.

As for your comparison for forest dragon, it doing more damage then Orc regiment is highly unlikely. I think it's balanced as it is.
I haven't seen the new Earthquake in action yet, so I can't really say anything about that.

Edit: Mojkos solution would be very, very sad for Forest Dragon.

I find it weird that you would think Forest Dragon is overpowered. Sure, it can do a lot of damage (even in the incredibly rare best case scenario though, it's not double orc regiment...), but you can't usually rely on your opponent having nature cards in his hand. If he does have a Spring Wood or something, he'll probably discard it when he sees you get Forest Dragon. A more realistic expected damage for the card is something like 50-80, which is reasonable for the cost and rarity.

If we were going to revamp the nature keyword effect, I'd suggest maybe having it upgrade the rarity of a random nature card in your hand. That seems in keeping with the general flavour of the keyword (growth and all that).

I think that the recent change in Earthquake made the Nature set the ultimate power. In the past, Earthquake used to be some kind of a "stopper" for the nature triggers because it damaged your tower and wall also. Now, once you start playing nature, there's no stopping!

Anti-keyword cards or keywords would be the most interesting and make the game more intriguing, not only for nature cards... but I admit that this is the most difficult course to take.

Nature keyword is indead powerfull.
But owerpowerd i dont know ?
I have cuple of nature cards in almost all of my decks so i can use its awesome triger efect.
But nature decks are particularly vornable to charge cards and tower atack cards.
As for the rare cards they also have their weaknesses like:

Ancient Sage - you are wright abouth ancient sage but when you subtract its cost the maximum gain (for normal facilities) is 8 stock and +1 random fac (Legend effect)(not 18)
Forest Dragon - to be realy dangerus you have to have lots of nature cards but then again if you are playing a nature deck it can be used (and your cards) against you just as easily.
Earthquake - i agre with you its price is too low.

I do feel Forest Dragon is the main cause for concern. Similar cost rare attack cards are weaker by comparison. Given it requires you to have a lot of nature cards in game but that is not hard to accomplish. Compare it to other rare dragons cards cost per attack, Forest Dragon's attack potential is out of control.

I am easily being hit for 80 or more damage with Forest Dragon if i recall correctly, is there a way to tell how much it hits for on average without going through and reviewing games?

planegray wrote:
I am easily being hit for 80 or more damage with Forest Dragon if i recall correctly, is there a way to tell how much it hits for on average without going through and reviewing games?

No there isn't. Forest dragon is better than a lot of rare dragons, but that's mostly because the majority of dragon cards in this game suck, to put it delicately.

If you're easily being hit for more than 80 damage, maybe you should take some of those nature cards out of your deck :P

I don't think nerfing Forest Dragon's coefficient to 8 or something would be unreasonable, but I also don't think it's ridiculously overpowered or anything.

I agree with Demetris. The only balancing Nature might need is to restore Earthquake as a crappy rare in order to downgrade the power of Nature keyword.

If a restriction needs to be made on Nature keyword though I would suggest it to be: "Summon rare Nature not already in hand (except if it's Earthquake)" (and that is if Earthquake is restored to its old effect)

Going off of Mojko's suggestion, what if the keyword effect draws a Rare Nature not if there isn't another Nature in hand, but if there is not already a Rare (Nature or perhaps any at all) in hand?

Let me rephrase, since that sentence ended up being a bit of a mess. If a Nature is played after a non-Common Nature and there is not already a Rare in hand, the next card will be a Rare nature.

Last game I played against a Nature deck, my opponent was drawing several Rares by use of Uncommon Nature cards costing only gems followed by Lake Fairy to discard keywordless cards. He easily filled his hand with Natures while building recruits and finished me with Volcano and Forest Dragon. All I could do was build until his resources caught up to me.

Edit: I see Lord Ornlu had a similar idea and got it in while I was posting. ;)

How about: Nature keyword remains unchanged, Earthquake affects both players, and Forest Dragon N=# of non-common nature cards in game.

Forest Dragon is good as it is, since its damage is dependant on number of Nature cards in game, so unless you are playing full nature, it's not a good card in Dragon decks. Besides don't forget, there are a lot of cards like this and if we start going on about all of them then we'll have to nerf all of the best killer cards (e.g. Phoenix, Crugg the Barbarian, Beastmaster, Rainbow Dragon etc.). The point of killer cards is they can kill in one strike, that's why we have cards such as Great Wall of China, Mountain Sentry, Dwarven Fortress etc., in order to build high walls and be protected. Furthermore, there are cards like Lich or Word of Power, which enable you to discard the killer cards from opponent's hand and even turn them against him. In addition you can always devise strategies that enable you to take out your opponent fast or keep him low on resources so that they can not play their killer cards.

Forest Dragon as it is, is a bit powerful, I agree. But it's only powerful if accompanied with Nature cards and if summoned in Dragon decks then it's a crappy dragon. Also the fact that you know when your opponent manages to summon rare Natures enables you to discard them easily or allows you to see what kind of resource they are trying to get up and keep it low.

I could agree with a general raise-of-cost for all rare Nature cards, since they can be played very easily when summoning Ancient Sage or with the help of any stock-gain cards.

I for one have been playing plentiful of nature deck (well not since the change of earthquake but apart from that it have the weakness most decks have, that it can be fairly easily nuked as you "summon" cards a lot and its not always easy or desirable NOT to summon cards.

The true power of the nature deck lies in Lake fairy, a card that's seemingly not that strong but when put into context truly overpowered and since it stays on hand you can almost always rely on it.

After further analysis I propose these changes:

Ancient Sage - lower limit to 5 from 6, remove Alliance keyword
Earthquake - raise cost to 28G from 24G
Forest Dragon - raise cost to 38R from 30R
Lake fairy - add gems gain limit max 4

Nature keyword effect:

if a non-common Nature card is played after playing a different, non-common Nature card, upgrades rarity of highest rarity Nature card in hand (rare Nature cards are not considered targets for upgrade).

Mojko wrote:
Ancient Sage - lower limit to 5 from 6, remove Alliance keyword

Why remove Alliance keyword? It's also good card to alliance deck..and there's no possibility to summon a rare card easily like in nature deck...

Too many changes...

I believe changing Earthquake to even 30G and capping Lake Fairy and maybe changing the nature keyword (the proposed change to keyword is quite strict) will be sufficient. I think Ancient Sage and Forest Dragon are good as it is now.

Even without Lake Fairy, Conjurer is also as strong with the only difference that only gems are increased, but that's not a big problem if you just play it once in order to summon rares. I still don't think we should change the keyword but I agree with increasing the cost of rares. Also I believe Earthquake should be returned to its former effect. As it is now, it's the second strongest Nature rare card and it has gone from being the downside of Nature keyword into powering up Nature a lot.

many of you already proposed good changes to the cards and also to the keyword, so I want to propose an alternative way to solve the problem:
let's add more nature rares.
e.g.: give nature keyword to catastrophe and micramix (maybe changing their names). they are not bade rares, but they totally ruins nature stategy.
also it could be useful adding a combo braker card that can be used also in other ways (Chaos jester)

btw I like your suggestions more than mine.

I agree with Fithz. More rare nature cards would help. We don't have to make them terrible, but it would prevent how often Ancient sage comes up...

I have ben playing with nature cards in my decks for cuple of months (long before Earthquake change) and in that time very few people played nature decks and no one had any complaints of nature being too powerful.
It is only afther Earthquake change that more people started playing nature and the complaints started about it being too powerfull.
Since the change only Earthquake has become too powerfull and cheap especially compared to Citadel of Myr which costs 38 gams and only raizes tower x2 while Earthquake destroys tower and wall by half for only 24 gems.

Like i said before nature decks are particulary varnauble to tower and charge atacks and like Noak said it can be fairly easily nuked as you "summon" cards.
The thing abouth rare nature cards is that in order for them to be realy powerfull you have to have lots of nature cards in your hand otherwise most of them are useless.
And the more nature cards you have in your hand the more varnauble to you are becouse nature cards cant build your tower are realy poor defensive cards.

Changing the keyword effect would make nature decks too weeak.