Hearthstone
Naxx Out? - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Submitted 1 year, 1 month ago by
Demonxz95
Competition Theme: Naxx Out?
Some felt a bit disappointed that Return to Naxxramas didn't have that much representation from actual Naxxramas in it. Let's do something about that.
- You must make a card out of the mobs, bosses, or locations from Naxxramas.
- Whether that's taking something that's currently unrepresented in constructed Hearthstone or simply giving one of the bosses a better card for the modern-day environment, is entirely up to you.
BloodMefist wants us to return to Naxxramas (no, not the recent mini-set) to make some cards out of what we can find there. Get out here, Purator, this for things that were actually in Naxxramas.
As always, we can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.
Competition Phases
Here are the phases of this card design competition
- Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, Feb 20 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Sat, Feb 25 17:00 EST (GMT -0500)
- Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Feb 25 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Sun, Feb 26 16:00 EST (GMT -0500)
- Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Feb 26 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Mon, Feb 27 17:00 EST (GMT -0500)
- Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.
Discussion Thread Rules
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Competition Theme: Naxx Out?
Some felt a bit disappointed that Return to Naxxramas didn't have that much representation from actual Naxxramas in it. Let's do something about that.
BloodMefist wants us to return to Naxxramas (no, not the recent mini-set) to make some cards out of what we can find there. Get out here, Purator, this for things that were actually in Naxxramas.
As always, we can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.
Competition Phases
Here are the phases of this card design competition
Discussion Thread Rules
No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.
I went a little...Spidery this time:
They are both based on Maexxna's raid ability, Web Spray, which stuns the entire raid of players like once every 40 seconds. Going Dormant is essentially a Freeze + a temporary removal of Taunt and start/end of turn effects. Web up their board and go face!
Now, you probably knew this already, but I made the Instructor Razuvious card from the last comp; kind of last-minute and without much feedback. Well, he could function here in this one, too, but I would like some opinions about making him potentially more appealing. I already think he should cost 5 - that was a mistake I meant to fix before submitting. Edit: I could go for maximum raid-flavor (and maximum meme) with this second iteration of him.
I want to focus on regular mobs, but I've been struggling to find good artworks for many of them, so I finally decided to go for Nerubians.
The renewable Stealth is supposed to represent the Crypt Fiends ability to burrow underground, while also supporting the minor Deathrattle theme Rogue had in MotLK.
I kinda want to keep it as a 4/4 because Nerubians usually have that statline, but I might change it because it collides a bit with Scourge Illusionist.
I'd also like to know if it'd be okay to simply call it Crypt Fiend (which seems to be the generic name of Undead Nerubians) instead of Crypt Reaver (a specific mob found in Naxx).
There are more characters already in the game than I'd have thought. Heigan has an interesting ability according to Wowpedia though, so here's my first idea:
I notice I am confused. Something I believe isn't true. How do I know what I think I know?
Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, hpmor.com
My first three attempts, with which I am probably the happiest with the first Sapphiron.
I ended up making a Mage version of Sapphiron, because of his connection with Kel'thuzad.
It was really hard to fit all of the text on Maexxna, so I ended up cutting the part that enabled your other beasts to have rush, too.
Either way, thanks for the feedback!
With Mind Blast that's 15 damage to their face on turns 10+, plus a 5/5 body. Not saying that's a deal-breaker, but it is a lot of damage from "nowhere". This is also a class-specific, Legendary-only check on Wildheart Guff, which is not something I'm a fan of.
@Wailor - I think "Crypt Reaver" sounds cooler, but I don't see why you can't use "Crypt Fiend". Surprised it hasn't been used by Hearthstone already. Also, a card like Crypt Lord would beg to differ about the stat-line lol. The 4/4 Nerubians are all tokens. If you want to change it to avoid butting heads with Scourge Illusionist, I say 'go for it'.
Did you know that Fleshshaper depicts Grobbulus? That's so lame. Let's make him into a proper Legendary card. He starts off as a small AoE that can keep growing into a bigger AoE. It's easy to play around, but if your opponent's strategy is largely centered around small minions, then it can be quite a problem.
Skeletal Smith is an attempt to push a weapon synergy for Death Knight since the class doesn't feature anything like it yet, but it fits right at home in the class. In some type of Blood/Frost deck, turn 1 Bone Breaker into turn 2 Skeletal Smith can be a pretty strong curve. Alternatively, it also works with Blood's handbuffing cards.
I really wanted to make a third card, but I couldn't think of anything good at the moment.
The Death Knight version of Sapphiron is probably the best of the three, I agree. It is thankfully an 8-Mana "do nothing", more or less, because it plays extremely well with Frost Queen Sindragosa from the turn before.
Everyone keeps adding to the thread while I'm busy typing up feedback for previous posts >_> Picked the wrong time to do this, evidently.
I like Skeletal Smith more than Grobbulus. Grobb is quite slow and needs everything to line up well to chain his effect. That being said, the Smith would be one of the cheapest "summon a copy of this" cards out there, so hitting that perfect 1-2 punch might feel extra bad for opponents.
I was thinking it would have been cool if we'd gotten a cycle of "Quarter" cards in the miniset for each quarter, so here's two ideas I had on how to represent the Military quarter. Which one do you think is a better design?
Feedback
Anything is definitely an improvement over the current version of Maexxna. I am slightly worried about how strong it is to bounce since Rogue definitely has the means of bouncing and playing this a bunch to lock down your opponent's board for several turns at a time, although sine this will eat up quite a bit of resources and they need a good board presence to be able to use that strategy, I guess it might be fine.
Arachnid Quarter is fine, though it does kinda strike as just a Freeze for Rogue, which I realize is the intention, but it might feel a bit weird to some people. Maexxna is definitely the most flashy card of the two.
As for Instructor Razuvious, if you do decide to go with him, do go with the first version. It might possibly come off as a bit lazy to reuse the same exact card for two competitions in a row to some people, but it's still a pretty solid card.
The Death Knight version of Sapphiron, Tomb Guardian has an effect that's kinda neat, although damaging Frozen enemy minions usually defeats the point of Freezing them in the first place unless the effect is quite strong. And even though this is quite strong, it does result in it playing a bit awkwardly especially since it costs so much mana.
The Mage version is kinda cool. I like the flavor of summon a Frozen copy of a thing. The AoE Infuse effect is quite a cool upgrade (even though only 4 is quite small for this amount of upgrade), but it won't really help you if you don't have a way to deal with the board on the same turn that you play it. The Infuse (4) is also missing the brackets around the 4.
Maexxna, Broodmother seems hard to make good use of since it wants you to have a lot of Beasts die meaning you're probably spamming Beasts and then hold it in your hand for a significant amount of time which somewhat goes against the nature of spamming Beasts in the first place. It seems like most of the time, it would be better to just play a Timber Wolf instead. That said, I admire the creativity of the Infuse stipulation.
I definitely prefer the second version.
My problem with the first version is that it's a location that actively encourages you to not use it since you want to keep playing Taunt minions to pump its damage while it just sits on the board and does nothing until you decide to use it at the time you need to.
The second one is mostly just "play it and use it", which is what I feel most locations should be like. Maybe you might wait for a better time to use it, but it still wants you to use it.
First batch of feedback:
About Razuvious, I kinda prefer the second one because of how dumb it is (in a good way), but it'd probably work better as a Neutral or as part of a core/initiate set, as it's kinda basic for an expansion legendary.
I think your two options are:
I believe the card you're looking for is called Mor'shan Elite.
This is what not playing Hearthstone for years does to a mf xd
Feedback:
Linkblade91: I think that your anti-Taunt Razuvius concept is the most interesting and unique of the designs, though I think it would be a little less highrolly if the text were changed to "This can only attack Taunt minions. Battlecry: Give an enemy minion Taunt," with the implication being that Death Knight would get an Anti-Taunt archetype with cards that support Razuvius by giving enemy minions Taunt and maybe other minions that benefit from Taunted enemies. If that seems too weak you could made Razuvius also Freeze the minion so it can't trade with something else and leave him stranded. I know you can only design 1 card but if you include the archetype in the description I think people would still factor that into their assessment of the card.
Wailor: Your design seems a bit too weak as is, maybe give it Stealth on the card itself?
Anchorm4n: I agree with the others that Heigan seems a bit too powerful, maybe make it a battlecry where on the next turn the opponent takes damage for playing cards/spending mana? Would make him similar to Loatheb from OG Naxxramas
DolphinSlayer: I like the DK Saphiron best, though I would add "Battlecry: Freeze an enemy" to it to make it more self-sufficient if there weren't card text space issues with that. You could probably remove the corpse spending condition to do add that.
Demonxz95: I initially thought Grobulus would be broken, but after thinking about it for a bit it's actually quite balanced and leads to cool gameplay decisions.
Also, I was thinking about my design more and came up with another idea that I think is cooler:
Refresh is not meant to be its own Keyword but Hearthcards bolds it so I can't change that. We haven't seen refreshing locations yet but it seems like an obvious mechanic since refreshing hero powers already exists. I think that this card manages to be balanced because it's a low amount of damage on Turn 3, requires you to be playing lots of Taunt minions, and is most often only really going to activate once per turn. Plus I like Taunt warrior so I want it to be good. It's also weak to opposing Taunts.
Thanks for the feedback; I like the idea of giving an enemy Taunt so he can target it. Will see about changing him :)
As for your card, you can remove the bold by including some formatting inside the word, like "Refr[b][/b]esh" and it will stop doing that. That said, refreshing a location seems interesting, and I love Taunt Warrior, so I approve of the card. I wonder if you could combine your ideas, buffing Taunts with the refresh, or would that take up too much space on the card? The damage makes me think people will just abuse it with Enrage, which is not ideal.
Thanks for the feedback! I was worried that making it buff Taunts on Refresh might be a bit too highrolly with cheap Taunts and I wanted to keep the card as an anti-aggro control warrior card, so instead I changed the effect to this to deal with the issue of Enrage warrior:
My main concern now is with whether this is balanced or not, I reduced the Durability to 4 but it's still a lot of damage to pack into one card. The one thing that makes me think it might be balanced though is that on turn 3 it's a pretty weak boardclear, and then if you play a Taunt turn 4 it's a delayed Consecration, which still isn't great. Having another 2 charges after that or being able to set it up to unleash later makes it pretty powerful though so I don't know if the downsides offset that. What do you think? Should I reduce the durability further or is it balanced as-is?
Just here to remind everyone of their 24 hour warning. That's how long you have left to submit.
And we have.... 8 total people who have submitted so far. :(
I like this, especially for my beloved Fire Plume's Heart. Sometimes you need a way to clear out all the small shit so the Sulfuras Hero Power doesn't whiff, and you're loaded to the brim with Taunt minions anyway. It has a lot of value-over-time, but the individual moments are small so it doesn't feel too overwhelming (I think). And if people play Target Dummy for the refresh...so what? They included an otherwise-bad card in their deck for a cheap trigger lol.
In my opinion, you're good to go.
Good luck to our finalists! There are seven entries again due to a tie for the final spot.
Good luck to everyone! Some cool designs this time round.
Wow, Demon is obliterating the competition this Season >_> Too bad you and I don't count for the "top winner gets a prize" thing...probably. I don't think we mentioned such a scenario but it seems wrong if we do lol
Congrats to Demon!
I disagree with you in this case linkblade. The two of you do us all a service by organising these competitions, but that doesn't change that you're still regular competitors and should earn the big prize if you can accumulate enough wins.
I notice I am confused. Something I believe isn't true. How do I know what I think I know?
Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, hpmor.com