Raid Leader, A Custom Hearthtsone Format.

Welcome to the Raid Leader Format! In Raid Leader, you will have unique deck building challenges to face, along with new strategies in regards to in how you use your Hero Power, and with what cards you will have access to. Think of it as the Commander Format from MTG.

This Format is a sub-format of Standard.

Let's look at the Hero Tray (that's what I'm calling it) so it'll be easier for you to follow along.

In Raid Leader, you only have access to ONE Legendary card and it's Minion who will take the role of being the Raid Leader. After that you will construct a deck with no other Legendary cards. Firemancer Flurgl is a Shaman card, so he will have access to the Standard set of Shaman and Neutral cards when deckbuilding. As you may have noticed Flurgl, along with every other Raid Leader, has 50 health. What you don't see is that Flurgl, as well as every other Raid Leader, starts with 50 cards in the deck. I'll address the Hero Power timer below.

Some of you may have noticed that Flurgl's Hero Power is his passive effect on his card, this is where the uniqueness of Raid Leader comes into play. The Raid Leader's Hero Power will be some slight variation of there base card. Flurgl has to wait at least two turn before he can use his Hero Power, when he does use it, it goes on cooldown for two turns before he can use it again. Each Hero Power Timer is different based on the the Raid Leader, the time to wait is correlated with the base card's cost. Flurgl costs 2 mana, therefore he has to wait two turns before he can use his Hero Power. The Hero Power doesn't cost any mana, which I'm still on the fence as to whether or not that's a good call, I will definitely need OoC's feedback on this one. Earlier when I said there'll be new strategies in regards to your Hero Power, this is what I meant.

Below is a list of Raid Leaders I've pulled from each Standard expansion thus far.

Forged in the Barrens

United in Stormwind

Fractured in Alterac

Voyage to the Sunken City

Murder at Castle Nathria

Neutral

Some of you may have noticed that some of the Hero Powers are Passive, again that only becomes active once the timer runs out. What's different for the Passives is that once, they're active, they're always active. A special exception has to be made for Prince Renathal.

Now to address the elephant in the room, the neutrals. The neutral Raid Leaders have special access to all the cards in the (Standard) game, BUT they can only have ONE card per class in their deck. so their decks will consist of 10 class cards (one from each class) and 40 Neutral cards.

I acknowledge that some of these may be over powered or useless, but hey it's a custom concept.

Now will Team 5 ever put something like this into the game? Nope, because they can't sell a Battle Pass with it.

If you all have any criticisms please let me know below.

As always, thank you for reading

-Grif

This seems really cool! The only issue I have is that it doesn't seem clear what exactly the goal of the mode is and how it would offer different deckbuilding opportunities that aren't already offered by gamemodes like Duels (a variant of most of these Hero Powers could find their way into Duels, and Duels already gives players the ability to play with synergies/passives/hero powers that change how each class plays). The timers and 50 health difference do kind of change things, but it isn't clear why that would feel very different to play (other than that with 50 Health aggro decks don't work as well). Restricting a deck to one legendary also isn't really that interesting in Hearthstone since it basically stops you from playing good control minions and has almost no impact on Aggro decks. I think you need to consider what unique types of gameplay this mode could encourage and go more wacky with the deckbuilding and gameplay rules. Here's a few examples of what that could look like that I've brainstormed:

1. Dual-class but with no neutrals, this is also somewhat similar to duels though so maybe not that unique.

2. Heros create their own cross-class classes, for example Flurgl could have "you may put Murlocs and cards that mention murlocs from any class into your deck," and Antonidas could have "You may put any Fire spells and mage minions into your deck when deckbuilding."

3. You create a lineup of 2 (or maybe 3) Heros each with their own deck for each combat and battle them against your opponent with Pokemon rules (when one of your heroes dies you pick another one to play, and get a new hand, deck, and life total, until you defeat all of your opponent's Heroes). 

4. You could play into the idea of Raid Bosses more and give each Hero "phases" that unlock based on either dropping below a certain health total, reaching a certain turn number, or fulfilling a Quest requirement (sort of like Questlines but hopefully more fun).

Overall, I think the idea of adding a Raid Leader mode to Hearthstone would be really cool, and I think if you iterate more and focus on what gameplay dreams are most exciting to you, you'll make something interesting and engaging that feels totally unique from what Hearthstone currently has to offer.