To begin this thread with a little story, my first HC gaming was actually one with Foltest. I created a nice engine deck for him with a lot of bronze engines with orders and when I used Foltest ingame on those bronze engines only to notice that it didn't feel that good, because the extra value I got from those engines was far too low to be worth using Foltest on them. Afterwards I switched to Demavend because he seemed to be much better for engine decks with charges.
By now, I know what I did wrong and that Foltest normally isn't used on bronze cards at all (with some small exceptions) and instead used only for the highest provision order cards in your deck, to get a lot of instant value out of them, without creating any further synergies or interactions and just for high value plays, which I find pretty sad.
Now, the reason why I created this thread is because I believe Foltest is limitting the design space far too much. If we look at what cards are often included in Foltest decks for his Zeal, we usually see Gaunter, Seltkirk, Ocvist and Eyck, of which 3 are neutrals. And to be honest, I haven't seen Gaunter and Seltkirk even once outside of a Foltest deck, because they are not worth it without him. Any neutral or NR order card offering a huge instant value with their order, will be a lot better with Foltest, probably up to a point that when balanced around Foltest, they will become useless for other decks, like with Gaunter and Seltkirk. Another example is Regis: Higher Vampire. When he was deemed as too strong and therefore changed to an order, he got his base stats increased by 3, which means that for Foltest he is basically a stronger version of his old form, while for most other decks it is a high risk to get any value out of him.
Therefore, I believe Foltest would be a lot healthier for the game, if he was given an Emhyr treatment and become restricted in some way. This means either restricting him only to NR cards, such that the design space for Neutral cards becomes wider, or otherwise which would be my preference to restrict him to bronze only. The reason for the latter one is that bronze cards have a lot lower variance in particular as there would currently only be 5 and 6 provision cards available for him, and furthermore that bronze cards should be the backbone of a deck not the golds.
If he gets restricted in such a way, of course he needs some kind of compensation to balance it out and I can see 3 possibilities:
A) just increasing his provisions
B) increasing his charges to 4
C) giving affected units additonally a charge such that he interacts better with charge engines
D) changing his effect to giving a unit Formations and increasing his charges to 5 and his provision costs a bit too.
By now, I know what I did wrong and that Foltest normally isn't used on bronze cards at all (with some small exceptions) and instead used only for the highest provision order cards in your deck, to get a lot of instant value out of them, without creating any further synergies or interactions and just for high value plays, which I find pretty sad.
Now, the reason why I created this thread is because I believe Foltest is limitting the design space far too much. If we look at what cards are often included in Foltest decks for his Zeal, we usually see Gaunter, Seltkirk, Ocvist and Eyck, of which 3 are neutrals. And to be honest, I haven't seen Gaunter and Seltkirk even once outside of a Foltest deck, because they are not worth it without him. Any neutral or NR order card offering a huge instant value with their order, will be a lot better with Foltest, probably up to a point that when balanced around Foltest, they will become useless for other decks, like with Gaunter and Seltkirk. Another example is Regis: Higher Vampire. When he was deemed as too strong and therefore changed to an order, he got his base stats increased by 3, which means that for Foltest he is basically a stronger version of his old form, while for most other decks it is a high risk to get any value out of him.
Therefore, I believe Foltest would be a lot healthier for the game, if he was given an Emhyr treatment and become restricted in some way. This means either restricting him only to NR cards, such that the design space for Neutral cards becomes wider, or otherwise which would be my preference to restrict him to bronze only. The reason for the latter one is that bronze cards have a lot lower variance in particular as there would currently only be 5 and 6 provision cards available for him, and furthermore that bronze cards should be the backbone of a deck not the golds.
If he gets restricted in such a way, of course he needs some kind of compensation to balance it out and I can see 3 possibilities:
A) just increasing his provisions
B) increasing his charges to 4
C) giving affected units additonally a charge such that he interacts better with charge engines
D) changing his effect to giving a unit Formations and increasing his charges to 5 and his provision costs a bit too.
