Hearthstone
Death Was Merely A Set Back - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Submitted 1 year, 9 months ago by
Demonxz95
Competition Theme: Death Was Merely A Set Back
Death Knight was only added into the game a few months ago, in a game that has 9 years of history under its belt. It has a lot of catching up to do.
- Design a Death Knight card for an expansion before March of the Lich King.
- The card should fit the set mechanically. No Rush before The Witchwood, or spell school effects before Forged in the Barrens, etc.
- Exception: You are allowed to use Reborn in any set from Saviors of Uldum onwards, but you are not allowed to use it for any set before then.
- You are still allowed to utilize various attributes exclusive to the class (such as Corpses or Runes) regardless of what set it is in.
- Be mindful of rarity adjudications in the old adventures: they never had any class Epics or Legendaries.
- The card should fit the set mechanically. No Rush before The Witchwood, or spell school effects before Forged in the Barrens, etc.
Demonxz95 has asked us to dig up the past, amidst the several piles of corpses lying on the ground, in search for Death Knights from way back when.
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, Mar 6 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Sat, Mar 11 17:00 EST (GMT -0500)
- Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Mar 11 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Sun, Mar 12 16:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
- Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Mar 12 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Mon, Mar 13 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
- Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.
Discussion Thread Rules
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Competition Theme: Death Was Merely A Set Back
Death Knight was only added into the game a few months ago, in a game that has 9 years of history under its belt. It has a lot of catching up to do.
Demonxz95 has asked us to dig up the past, amidst the several piles of corpses lying on the ground, in search for Death Knights from way back when.
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.
My hunger, never-ending. My will, everlasting!
Pretty happy with this. The Battlecry functions as you might expect, adding their Health to your hero. That's why it's not enemy-only: it would be blatantly better than the Priest's Galakrond...although they arguably have the better Hero Power, so maybe it would balance out. Like most of the Galakronds, it upgrades from 1 to 2 to 4 random minions eaten.
I'm really excited to see what in particular you all come up with.
Little note is that despite the fact that Ghoul Charge states that the Ghoul dies at the end of "turn", the Frail Ghoul itself states that it dies at the end of "your turn" and the effects of Deathrider Strik reflects this. Under normal circumstances, this doesn't mean anything currently, but with Strik's effect applying on Deathrattle, it becomes pretty important.
Defiling Accusation is a bit of an obvious design, but I think it works pretty well as part of the Accusation cycle. Not sure if it works better as a Blood card (I think it makes more sense mechanically) or as an Unholy one (works better with the flavor of defiling).
Recycling Bin is probably my favorite of the two, but I struggle to find a power level that doesn't feel neither too weak for today nor too strong for GvG. It's always a difficult task to balance cards from vintage expansions.
First idea:
I was trying to find art that screams DK and a specific expansion which is quite hard actually. I like ho this one turned out though.
Edit: Well, fuck. I've just been told Deliverance exists.
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
Oh hey, look I get to use this art I didn't use a couple competitions ago again.
Rastakhan's Rumble just had such strong class identity, even if the archetypes weren't always the strongest. I imagine the rest of the set (i.e., the spirit and the champion) having to deal with 1 health rush/charge minions to help the strategy alongside their Loa. either way, the hero power alone allows you to just start destroying minions and gaining a little health, which is nice.
Early feedback:
Regarding your other cards, both are pretty good, but I'm not sure which one I prefer. I'd probably slap an Unholy Rune or two to Strik, as its power level seems a bit strong for TGT.
Now I'm curious to know what would the Spirit of the Spider do haha
Feedback, will update as more come in:
C'thun's Envoy also feels very flavorful, and like it fits right into Old Gods as well, so great work there too.
The thing I would say about Deathrider Strik is that a couple of the rune archetypes that struggle to get as many corpses as Unholy normally gets would love to have this card available to them for easy corpse generation, as this thing really puts in work in that department. I would think that it should get 1 or 2 unholy runes on it just so Triple blood or Triple frost couldn't run it. Otherwise, I feel like it feels great in Unholy decks.
That being said, I struggle to see where the Recycling Bin would be run. This feels like an eternal problem for GvG cards, but they don't really push to a particular archetype very well. I think it fits the theme and flavor of a GvG Death Knight card nicely, so this is probably more of a problem with power level than it is with the design.
Kel'thuzad, Master of Frost should have a wording change; he should read something along the lines of "Battlecry: Recast each Frost spell you've cast this game, targeting enemy minions if possible," to be consistent with other similar cards, as Frost spells like Cold Case don't target anything. That being said, Dual-class cards definitely weren't a part of Fractured in Alterac Valley, and neither was Kelthu'zad, so this feels weird to include it there. I think this would have been better as a Scholomance card, but even then Kelthu'zad already had a spot there, so this one is just difficult overall. It's a shame, because Kel'thuzad would be an awesome dual Mage/DK card as he fits both classes very well.
It's very funny to me how every competition these days has to have a Razuvius submission. Either way, I think mechanically this would be a nightmare. If they did do something like this for a card, I think it would be more likely to read something along the lines of "Battlecry: This equips a random weapon from your hand." Or something along those lines. Repeatedly doing an effect like that seems kinda impossible to balance really, not to mention the U.I. implementation of choosing when you cast it "Is this being equipped to you or a minion? Okay, which minion?" Probably just too much of a headache to be worth it.
Grim Harvest feels like a good option, but kind of weak. I think that's mainly because Overkill is weak though, and not because of any fault of the card's. Overall, not a bad option either.
I thought it would be fun to create an Un'Goro quest for Death Knight, so here's my design!
I'm worried that it's a bit weak, but the implication behind this design is that Death Knight would get a whole set of Ice Elementals that makes this effect powerful (like a card that makes Frozen enemies take more damage).
I also really like Dual-class cards, so here are a couple I thought would be interesting:
To clarify how fencing instructor razuvius would work, the minion would get the extra attack and card text of the weapon on your turns, and whenever it attacked the durability of the weapon would be reduced. If the minion died before the weapon ran out of durability, the weapon would be returned to your hand (retaining its current durability, so that a Fiery War Axe that a minion used once would become a 3/1 Weapon). I really like the idea of this mechanic so I was thinking it might be cool to make it a start of game effect, but I wonder if that would be too powerful.
I had a lot of fun designing for this prompt, let me know which design y'all like best!
I'll get aboard the Early Feedback Train as well. And by popular demand (and by that I mean "peer pressure", and by that I mean "no one asked, but I feel guilty for not doing it anyway"), I will start separating out my feedback like everyone else instead of lumping it all together lazily lol.
I like the idea behind the Quest the most: focusing on another minion type can be a fun way to open up a class to new experiences. I do it in my custom work with stuff like Dragon Demon Hunter, Mech Shaman, etc. That being said, a couple things need to be addressed:
I like this card a lot because it implies an archetype - 1 Health minions - while still being functional by itself (or at least, with the Hero Power). The better loas - Gonk, the Raptor, Jan'alai, the Dragonhawk, etc. - were similar. Nice work!
I have to agree with the others about it being too close to Deliverance. Sorry :(
I want to like Recycling Bin more because I have a soft spot for Mechs and Spare Parts, but…yeah. Defiling Accusation is just better.
(I skipped Demon because we already talked about our cards together; I'm not a meanie)
Hey, this thread is actually moving along a bit.
Feedback time.
Tiny little footnote: I'm not sure why the card says "spend any Corpse" when it could just be "a Corpse" instead.
That said, if the common consensus is that the card is too similar, then you should probably go with a different card anyway.
I think the idea of the Quest in a vacuum is alright, but if DK did get a Quest, then I think it should definitely be Runeless. The Reward feels like it would be hard to use properly, but as Link said, the requirement is a piece of cake. Fire Fly and Igneous Elemental were why The Caverns Below was so easy to complete, and they make this Quest even easier. I think the flavor is also very questionable since Un'Goro is a huge jungle with a volcano in it and it seems really far-fetched to try to freeze over the entire place. Everything Link said also applies.
Kel'Thuzad, Master of Frost is a cool way to tie KT to both Mage and Death Knight with a common mechanic, but I have a big problem with the fact that dual-class cards don't exist in Fractured in Alterac Valley. In my opinion, it should just be Death Knight.
Fencing Instructor Razuvius (his name is misspelled, it should be "Razuvious") has a similar problem. It's in the correct set for dual-class cards to occur, but since the dual-class structure of Scholomance operates on a "wheel", it's intentionally very particular about the way the pairings are designed and adding a Death Knight dual-class pairing to it breaks the wheel entirely. As for the design, many people try to make this exact design, and it never works because of a few weapons (Gorehowl in particular being one of the most egregious examples) that have very questionable interactions as to how they would work if put on minions.
Corpse Conjurer weaves DK into Scholomance and functions as an alternate method of generating corpses that does not require huge numbers of minions. Grim Harvest functions as a powerful early board control tool, much like Plague Strike, but also requires you to have a pre-established board to get full value.
Missed the early feedback train, but I will endeavor to get some feedback in on my elusive day off.
Thanks for all the feedback, I’ll incorporate it into my design and submit!
linkblade: I like the Galakrond but the ability seems a little too close to Priest, maybe something resurrecting minions or stealing health from all enemies could be cool.
Demonxz95: I vote Snowblower, very cool design
Wailor: I like accusation best, though I think you could reduce the rune requirement or drop it completely.
Anchorm4n: I dislike honorable kill in general but this card uses it well.
Dolphin slayer: I like Shadra a lot, but I think the rune requirement could be a lot lower so it’s opened up to more decks.
BloodMeFist: Corpse Grinder is my favorite, though I think it could be more viable as a 1 Mana 2/2 since gaining corpses isn’t that powerful and most Death Knight decks don’t both run super high cost spells and care about corpse total
It seems I'm the only one who prefers Recycling Bin over Defiling Accusation, so I'll go with the later card applying all feedback you guys gave me. Thanks everybody!
Feedback for the two people that didn't receive it:
Besides this, I'd also change its name to Bring the Ice Age or something like that, as this would reflect the "prehistoric" feel of Journey to Un'goro better.
Off of feedback, I have given a single Unholy Rune to Deathrider Strik. My other two cards are still perfectly on the table.
Sorry for the radio silence, I have to admit I tend to be quite disappointed when I accidently create cards that already exist, especially when I put a lot of effort into it. Anyway, here's some feedback:
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
At this point, you have 24 hours left to submit.
In case anyone forgot/didn't know, "Spring Forward" was today for the server, so the clock moved ahead an hour and thus people have a little less time to vote this go-around. I almost forgot myself lol D:
You have just about an hour left to vote!
Good luck to the finalists!
Congrats to Wailor again!
It seems that I have some competition, haha.
Great job, Wailor.
Wow thanks!
Congrats to Wailor! A very deserved win.
I feel a little bad for BloodMefist, that was a very cool card as well who almost reached a rating of 4.0 in the first round only to brutally fail in the finals. Would have clearly made my personal second place.
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