Hooktusk and the depth of HS character design

The HS-original pirates are an eccentric bunch. Skycap'n Kragg comes in flying a giant parrot, wielding a lance with a hook on the end, and cramming a few extra 'r's in the charge keyword (kicking off a trend that continues in pirate cards to this day). Then Patches the Pirate gets fired as a cannon ball onto the field, wearing more eye patches than most organisms have eyes, and originally having another eye pun in his attack voiceline. Both are perfect examples of HS whimsy done right. Indeed, Kragg's appearance in the TGT trailer was practically the original statement that HS no longer follows WoW lore closely. (The irony of course being that he was later made canon in WoW.)

Captain Hooktusk's eccentricities are a bit more subtle, and aren't defining features so much as clues to her personality. Between her portable cannon, her ridiculous belt anchor beneath a shark emblem, her obnoxiously elaborate and bright pink hair, and of course, the hooks on her tusks, we immediately know she's not interested in hiding in the shadows like most rogue characters. She's here to be noticed, with enough flair to overshadow her contemporaries in RR - which is impressive given the set's whole theme was showmanship.

She's also flexing pretty hard that she can carry a cast iron cannon with one hand while the other juggles a cannonball like its nothing. Coupled with that grin, it's a really disconcerting mix of playful and threatening. Finally, she's happy with a low cut shirt revealing cleavage. Unlike Jaina, I get the feeling Hooktusk would actually seek to exploit that feature, and if you told her to cover up she's gladly fire that cannon at you.

Luckily, RR gave us a couple of images of Hooktusk in action too. She's swinging around in Cannon Barrage and rappelling with her crew in Raiding Party. Again, there's no stealth here. It's all show and would be a joy to watch… so long as she isn't coming for you.

When we factor in her various voicelines, she goes from an awesome deign to an instantly lovable character. Consider her entrance voiceline: “Cheatin’?! I never fight fair!” This is not some generic “For the Horde”-esque entrance. No. She’s clearly just been accused of cheating and says the “Cheatin’?!” as though insulted. Not because it isn’t true - she immediately admits she always cheats - but because she’s amazed they even needed to point it out.

Add in her Rumble Run voicelines, and we develop her cheating ways further: as the fight starts she says “I’ll fight fair. Dis time. Promise.”… She doesn't. Obviously. Her responses to her shrine dying add to her little mind games. While everyone else gets cross or worries how to proceed, she says things like "Ya think that's a good idea?", making poor Rikkar (the player's character) question whether he made a terrible mistake. Other times she'll just pass it off with "Eh. It was just a distraction anyways." Whether she actually thinks that or not is entirely unclear to us, and there's nothing more dangerous than an enemy you don't understand.

A personal favourite is when you threaten her, and she replies with "Bwa-haha. Oh… you were serious?" She's just having fun mocking you. But she knows to be serious when she needs to be. Emote her in Tamsin's chapter of the Book of Mercs and she'll reply with "Loose lips sink ships." Which demonstrates her playful demeanor is a facade hiding a mind that knows exactly what she's doing. Kind of like a more playful Jack Sparrow, which is high praise.

To top it off, her voice actress does a stellar job. Writing quotes down is one thing, but you really need to listen to them to truly appreciate them.

New card, new promotion, and new look. Kind of. Pirate Admiral Hooktusk looks mostly the same with significantly bulkier arms. Presumably since she's been swimming a lot more lately. Admittedly the extra bulk made it more plausible she was going to be a warrior card, which would have sucked for me personally. I'm glad that didn't happen.

There are more subtle changes that are probably more important: her ponytail now ends with a shark tail like shape; and when she's underwater (see the Sunken City trailer and the minion art, but not art for the Plunder options) she has light blue stripes (likely representing gills) on her arms and a dorsal fin like shape behind her head. I suspect these are visual representations of Gral's power letting her swim fast and breathe underwater. If so, that's a pretty cool bit of character progression.

Her eyes might also have white goggle-like barriers over them underwater. That's what it looks like in the trailer, but I haven't seen a high enough resolution image of the card to tell there.

Her first card, Captain Hooktusk, won me a lot of games (yes, despite it being an 8-mana card in an aggessive deck), and I get the flavour: her opponent thinks she's alone for a fair fight, only to get jumped by her crew. So she's cheating thematically, but mechanically… not so much. She turned up at a time recruit was still in Standard, so it felt well within the rules of the game, and hence took me a while to work out what the flavour was.

The new Pirate Admiral Hooktusk is much clearer on the matter. Two of her options were utterly ruled out in the early days of HS, and even if a couple of similar effects have existed since, it is absolutely going to feel like cheating when it is done to you. But it's flavourful cheating. She's always stealing something. She's boarded your ship, tied up the crew, and is making off with the goods. Furthermore, they actually call back to her Treasure from Below shrine in Rumble Run, which is just so fitting here.

The art depicts this story beautifully, using the option 'cards' to go beyond the power pose of the base minion and show what happened after she burst into Faelin's ship. It didn't go well for him, Finley or Ini (I think that's the name of the female mecha gnome). Poor Ini is faced with Hooktusk pointing the cannon at her and juggling a cannonball, calling back the the original RR card and showing she actually does that outside of a photo shoot.

I don't think any other card has been able to tell the story surrounding the base artwork so well, especially not in so self-contained a way. I hope they find ways to do this sort of thing again in future. There must be so many little stories to tell this way that we'd never know if we only get single snapshots.