Infuse The Situation - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread

MenacingBagel - Welcome back :D Being not-dead is good, right? Anyway, in regards to your card, unfortunately while I find it amusing I don't think it's good. Switching from restoring Health to dealing damage is a nice twist - Circus Medic had a flexibility that was handy - but the Infuse cost is massive. If you plan on throwing a bunch of people to their deaths to Infuse someone, why not just go all-out with Sire Denathrius? He gives you the damage *and* the healing :(

AeroJulwin - I could see this winning the comp and I'm jealous of you vis-a-vie its existence. I can't think of anything to nitpick at the moment.

Wailor - I think Vampiric Awakening has better flavor than the minion, but that doesn't mean I think it should be allowed to exist lol. Resurrect Priest pisses off enough people already, and that card in that particular deck is a scary thought. Redeemer of Sins is neat, but I think it needs to say "Infuse (1): Gain "Battlecry: Resurrect…" because right now the Infuse isn't "attached" to anything as a modifier. See: Stoneborn Accuser. I think with all the Imps around Lysa would be annoying to deal with, because there's a bunch of obvious cheap minions to throw away for the Infuse (and the steal). It would be like Tickatus, in my opinion; you'd never play it before Corrupting/Infusing anyway.

Demonxz95 - Party Greeter has great art: unless I'm missing something obvious, it looks like it came straight from the game. I don't think "Costs" should be plural like that, though. I like it more than Spectral Split. Spectral Split is a fine card, but the Infuse is pretty high and the best use-case for it - when there's a board full of enemy minions - doesn't correlate into a good situation for the player to be casting the spell ('cause you're spending Mana not-clearing said minions). If you want to go with the Priest spell, maybe up the Cost and the effect, but leave the Infuse alone: like a 5/6-Mana "Summon a 3/3 copy…Infuse (5): 5/5 copies." Now you're getting a big bang for the buck, and are more likely to be building bigger minions than your opponent; i.e: an actual threat that can't be ignored like the 1/1s or the 3/3s.

Jealous Shade looks pretty solid, although the name is a bit weird.

I think Well Fed is pretty good. I reckon the second version will probably win more people over.

I think the reason we never saw a card like Redeemer of Sins is because it's too difficult to play properly. You can kinda see this in the existing cards that they avoid Infuse effects that are dependent on specific minions dying (Sinfueled Golem being a minor exception, and also incredibly terrible). That's not to say that the card is bad or anything. In fact, I think it's quite fine and it's likely to do pretty well, but Link is correct in that it needs to reed 'Gain "Battlecry:…'

Vampiric Awakening should be best avoided. Regardless of its balance, resurrection cards in Priest tend to get a visceral reaction out of people unless they're designed in a specific way that encourages a playstyle other than just walling with big minions. This will probably affect the voting.

Lysa Sinsong may be okay, or it may not be. The steal effect is incredibly powerful (although it's not entirely clear that it's random), and Warlock has a ton of ways to throw small insignificant minions out to help get the Infuse counter up. I do like the fact the base version can be used on minions with bad effects to give them to your opponent like Treachery, although the Infuse ends up hurting that as you can't fully control when it upgrades.

You have some pretty good ideas that could just use a little bit of extra touches.

I'm not exactly sure why the "instead" is italicized. You should fix that when you get the chance. I think the name is a bit too bloated as well. Maybe get rid of "Pestilence" and just call it "Purger Paul" or you could then even replace "Paul" with something a little bit more pizzazz-y.

Even though dealing 7 damage is obviously a lot stronger than restoring 7 Health, I'm not really a big fan of the effect that the effect is technically a sidegrade and not a strict upgrade, although this is entirely personal preference on my part.

Congrats on your win last week. I look forward to what you have for next week's competition.

First thing is first. Do not make Infuse cards for expansions other MaCN. The competition may say that you can, but that doesn't mean that you should. I admire the creativity, but it will cause you to lose some point from a few voters. Myself included particularly. I am quite vocal about the fact that I penalize cards for breaking the game's continuity like this. This was a problem that I had with Nash when it won last week, but it seemed that voting the card on other merits ended up making up for the penalties you may have had.

If you do decide to use the card anyway though, then the card seems fairly okay, but it should have Stoneborn Accuser wording and say Infuse: Gain "Battlecry: Add 3 different Spare Parts to your hand."

To answer your question about Party Greeter, it is intended to draw two minions that you can afford to play regardless of whether or not you can afford both of them right now. You may only be able to play one of them this turn and the other on the next turn, but you will still be able to afford either of them to play now. This isn't too relevant though as I've already submitted Spectral Split.

Both of these card share many of the same problems. Namely the fact that they both need Stoneborn Accuser wording and say Infuse: Gain "Battlecry…". They also also don't really do anything if they aren't Infused, which just makes them extremely terrible if they don't have any infusions. Most Infuse cards do something if they aren't Infused, and the very few that don't are pretty terrible cards. I also think that both of these cards have a bloated textbox. I think you could cut the first Infuse on both of these cards which will improve their balance and clean their textbox.

Dcheming Deckhand appears to have a typo, so it's good to have that changed. It also appears to be a worse Bootstrap Sunkeneer which we just saw in the previous set. Fishing Deckhand looks better, but it does still have the problem of not being from Murder at Castle Nathria.

Grave Horror has a problem in that its name is both not suitable for a Legendary minion, and is already taken by a card in the game also called Grave Horror (which is a Rare, emphasizing my point about the name not being Legendary). The upgrade from Infuse 3 to Infuse 6 is also very insignificant a lot of the time. Rogue has immediate access to Flik Skyshiv which can do the same thing for 1 less mana and no infusing necessary, and its effect to destroy all copies of whatever it destroys has varying levels of relevance where it's sometimes quite strong and sometimes does basically nothing. This however didn't stop the fact that it was still a 6 mana 4/4 minion that came with a free hard removal and was a good target for Rogue tricks. The card also compares quite unfavorably to Insatiable Devourer which has the same effect do devour and gain stats without any infusing necessary, and a bonus effect that is more relevant and powerful in most situations and it also easier to achieve.

Angela Ziegler has an effect that is very obvious, but is still perfectly serviceable and may give you a high score if the card is refined a bit better. I think the added flavor text of "Heros never die!" is unnecessary, but if you decided to keep it anyway, they it shouldn't be bolded. Instead, it should be italicized. The card shouldn't have an Angel tribe tag as it's not a minion type in Hearthstone, and the card also shouldn't use the Classic watermark either. I assume this is mostly to show off a proof of concept rather than a finished idea, but it's never a bad reminder to have if you decide to go with this idea as your submission. I do also think that taking a character from another media universe and making it into a card is probably going to hurt your score pretty significantly unless the competition is specifically based around doing this, so that's something to keep in mind.

EDIT: Anesthesia Shooter is an okay idea (if possibly weak given that Maiev Shadowsong is a card), but the artwork doesn't belong in Hearthstone.

I think I prefer the alternate form of Val'kyr Soulkeeper personally, and I think it's good that this version has a Battlecry effect at baseline. It is perhaps a little bit weird that the card has anti-synergy with the second copy of itself because of the 1/1 Soul, but I feel like this is probably just unavoidable with this type of design.

Your Epic Val'kyr Soulkeeper is more flashy, which might do better. I'm really not so sure how to proceed forward with the card actually.

Wow, I really like Shrewd Broker. It's fairly simple, but it's elegant Relic DH support. I say great job!

Conspicuous Conspirator has great flavor, but I'm not as big of a fan of the effect as I am with Shrewd Broker. I do agree that it steps on the toes of Sketchy Stranger a bit too much, and it also falls into a design that I'm not personally a huge fan of which are Secrets that reveal themselves to the other player since that completely removes the secretive aspect of the Secret.

I say definitely go with Shrewd Broker.