Words of Power - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread

I have two keywords I made for the custom Alchemist class and for a wild west expansion.

Transmute is a pretty handy keyword that allows you to get rid of cards you don't need to draw cards that you want. I'm not 100% on it, because such a small effect feels better as a Class keyword instead of an expansion one.

Other Transmute cards

Gunslinger is like MTG's First Strike. It's kinda like a Divine Shield that only works for trading, but it also has some appliances that can't be done with that keyword, as shown by all three showcased cards.

Other Gunslinger cards

I can't seem to log into Heartcards anymore. Whenever I press the 'sign in' button, it doesn't respond. I've tried it on different devices as well as the mobile version of the site. Even the 'change password' button has the same issue. Does anyone know what might be the cause?

This keyword is inspired by how absolutely terrible discard works as a game mechanic. It has never lived up to its full potential. That would change with the introduction of Scrap. Scrap is the user-friendly evolution of discard that lets you choose between (only) two cards to discard and gives you the option to keep both of those cards, but lose the effect in return.

First attempt. Intended to work like rebound from mtg, although able to function with minions it's printed with too. The replayed minions would trigger their battlecries again, too.

Not too sold on it, might go with something else. We'll see!

Edit 1: The duplicate effect is supposed to trigger whether or not the minion survives, which is why they're costed higher than they otherwise probably would be. I had a third minion that I kind of scrapped that would summon a couple of "Spell Damage +1" bodies, as a combo enabler on a future turn. But then, if you couldn't remove the original board, you'd end up pretty consistently with Spell Damage +6 and it was just too much.

Here's my entry: Harmony!

Harmony effects can be naturally activated by running two copies of the card in the deck, but also through copy effects such as Moonlit Guidance, Cold Storage, Shadowstep, Selective Breeder and so on.

• I really like how all numbers on the cards are the same, it makes for a great harmony overall.
• Ballad of the Hawk is my favorite card among the three, I like the "call upon the spirits" flavor of the Druid. I didn't find satisfying art for the token, but it would be an Undead/Beast, strengthening Beast Druid synergy.
• Pogo-Hip-Hopper is obviously a callback to Pogo-Hopper. It has Echo because it's harder to do this type of combo in current year Hearthstone, but also because its pogo-microphone isn't well configured! Rogue has a lot of bounce effects, so it can easily activate powerful Harmonies.
• I wanted to make a Harmony Legendary, just because you really have to find an unnatural way of playing this card multiple times to benefit from this effect. In return, the effect is pretty powerful, devastating all of the crowd with her songs. She's on fire!

I also created this bonus card, but I didn't play enough on the Harmony side and it just felt like a Battlecry, so I didn't include it.

Show Spoiler

Also, it was supposed to be a guitarist with a loop pedal to create more and more harmonies as time passes.

Fatal Flaw: Until a condition is met, this minion cannot take damage or die on your opponent's turn.

Fatal Flaw: Until a condition is met, this minion cannot take damage or die on your opponent's turn.

This Mechanic was inspired by the myth of Achilles, in that he is an invincible Hero who has one fatal flaw that brings him down (The Holy Smite mimics Apollo guiding the arrow to pierce Achille's Heel). I thought that there were a lot of interesting ways to use this mechanic to make units stickier without making them uninteractable. Fatal Flaw is also different from immune in that the opponent can still target the minion with things like Silences and Debuffs.

Peerless Hero was based on Achilles specifically, and though he may seem too powerful at first glance, his battlecry gives the opponent a way to immediately kill him for 1 Mana, so essentially you are spending 2 Mana and a card to force the opponent to spend 1 Mana and also get a Holy Smite. Aside from the cool flavor, I think this card could be playable in a Holy deck or a deck wanting some extra removal.

Millhouse the UNSTOPPABLE! was just a fun idea I had for a way to play on Millhouse's obsession with getting to 10 Mana crystals, although in this case his plan blows up in his face. Millhouse exemplifies Fatal Flaw in that he can stick on the board for a while and give you spell damage, but if you or your opponent cast enough spells he returns to being a 1/3 Spell Damage +1 minion, which is not that powerful in modern Hearthstone. Millhouse can also be played on turn 2 and expect to stick around unlike other spell damage cards, which I also like about him.

Boom's Flawless Creation's flavor is that Dr. Boom built an invincible mech but then gave it a self-destruct button (the opponent's Hero Power). As a 2/4 Magnetic I would expect this card to be fairly good already, and it has the chance to force the opponent to play sub-optimally to damage it, which is an added bonus.

So what do y'all think? Are there issues any of these designs/the Keyword itself?

Early feedback, will update more as they come in.

Quote From anchorm4n

Feedback time!

Dolphinslyaer

While the keyword isn't super exiting, I really like what you did with it. Especially the Priest card is super cool! Two concerns: 1) If Duplicate really replays the whole card, wouldn't that create an infinite loop, even if the tooltip says "one more time"? 2) You're missing a third card ;-)

The intended way for this to work would be like twinspell, where it duplicates exactly once, and then the summoned copy would not have Duplicate. And yeah, I'm not too sold on the keyword anyways, I was working on a few third options that never came to me. I'll probably come around with another keyword soon.

 

Thank you all for the feedback! I think I got too carried away on the idea of making minions that stuck around and had a mini-quest attached to them that I ended up making an overly complex keyword. Here's my next idea that should be a lot simpler:

Maddened: This can't attack on your turn. At the start of the opponent's turn, they choose a valid target for this to attack.

I think that Maddened as a mechanic is pretty cool because of how it encourages counterplay and can be used as both a buff and a debuff. Maddened minions attack at the start of the next turn, which essentially gives them a worse version of Rush (or charge if the opponent's board is empty, similarly to how Gnome Muncher works). However, the opponent can play around this by playing either small minions to waste the Maddened attacks or large minions to make unfavorable trades for you. This mechanic would be introduced in an expansion centered around the Old Gods and the forces fighting against them, this time with more of a focus on the elements of mind corruption, which maddened plays into very well. Yogg-Saron, Lord of Insanity exemplifies this theme through giving you Mad Whispers to either drive your own minions insane for a pseudo-rush effect, or giving enemy minions Maddened to force their next attack to target what you want it to (making it a pseudo-silence). My worry is that the card effect might be too weak and that Yogg'Saron itself isn't very flashy, so let me know if you have ideas to fix that problem without using too much card text. Corrupted Ogre is another play on the Maddened mechanic in that it serves as a sticky board-control tool that forces your opponent to trade it into their minions since it can't go face (but it also becomes useless if the opponent has no minions). Maddened Outcast uses the mechanic mainly as a debuff to lock down threatening enemy minions as long as you can keep a few tokens around. He can also be played on an empty board as a 3/2 with pseudo-charge.

What do y'all think of this design? I think it's a lot simpler but it is still somewhat complex and unprecedented since it forces an action on your opponent's turn, but I think it's a plausible keyword in modern Hearthstone and is relatively intuitive (basically the opponent is in charge of the minion's attacks, not you).

Also, I'll give feedback later today when I have time :)

I'm still not sure which keyword I'll go with, but I've updated Deputy Instructor to fit the criteria, as you guys pointed out.

Feedback + tooltips for those who don't have one:

Hello after a long time. I wanted to use one of my former keyword Bleed (x) with with a change.

I changed it to Infect(X) since we have the actual effect in the game right now for Death Knight. So here it comes;

Infect(x) isn't a keyword only for death knights tho. You can see that on Shaman, Rogue, Demon Hunter, Warlock and Druid too. Shamans and Druids can use it with their nature magic, Rogues can reach that word with their oils for their weapon and Warlocks and Demon Hunters can use fel to infect their opponents.

I edited the existing cards Alexandros Mograine and Blood Boil like this;

but they won't be my entries since it would not be creative. Here my entries come;

Information on Plague Sprout ; it can only increase once. I mean it won't deal 3 damage after it increases to 2. Using the spell twice deals 1 damage and then other 1 damage and when it is increased, 2 damage and then 2 damage like how fatigue damage deals in an order. Using the spell twice in a turn won't make it increase on 4 turns instead of 8 turns and using the spell twice won't increase the damage to 3 by that what i mean is, each spell's damage is its own. if you use one on turn 4 and the other on turn 12 for example, first one will deal 2 damage and the second will deal 1 damage until it increases in 8 turns.

Edit: Changed the wording on Apocalypse.

Edit 2: I've created more cards to show how it can be on other type of cards like minions, weapons, spells and locations. Help me decide to choose for competition please. :)

Edit: 3: Added runes to Fink Ployd.

Quote From Dolphinslayer

The way that a lot of the cards are worded, would the "third" option of the two be to decide not to scrap a card?

Yes. I mentioned it in the text, but that's easy to miss in the absolute textwall that this week's thread has become. I was planning on either adding it to the tooltip or mentioning it in the description.

Quote From anchorm4n

I have only one thing to criticize: I don't like the third option. It's a very cool effect, but I think the power level should be toned down a bit by forcing the player to discard one of the two cards. That way, it's still better than most current discard effects, but it's still a little risky to play them.

That's fair. Scrap doesn't quite have the risk of discarding random cards, unless you really need that extra effect like the second destroy from Unstable Void. But I personally really like the versatility of it. It creates a bit of strategy, which I always love to see on cards. Besides, otherwise it wouldn't really warrant bring a full keyword anymore.

Feedback:

Quote From AeroJulwin

Almaniarra

Infect should probably exclude heroes the same way poisonous does, because you're severely limiting your own design space here. The cards you made for it are interesting, but I'm not sure how well they would perform, since you generally don't want to wait a turn for a minion to die. Blood Boil is the only card like this they printed so far and that one functions more as an AOE where if the surviving targets attack your hero that will simply guarantee your hero will get some health back.

And keep in mind that Blightfang, which is half of the existing infect cards, has its infection effect trigger when the targets die.

Well, actually i have something like these in my mind too but i didn't add them just because of the rules since they don't have the actual keyword.

(I had to do this. :) )

Feedback:

I'll probably go with Gunslinger, as it's the generally preferred option. People seem to be very divided regarding its flavor, so here are two alternate names for it:

Quick Draw is a middle ground that keeps some wild west flavor while also being more generic than Gunslinger.

Swift, on the other hand, goes all the way in the flavor-agnostic direction.

Keep in mind I still plan for all the cards to be wild west themed (I designed it as an expansion exclusive keyword, after all)

Based on feedback, I've changed the Maddened Keyword to:

Maddened: When this attacks, the opponent chooses the target at the start of their turn.

The major mechnical difference is that this version of Maddened does not give the minion pseudo-rush, freezing a Maddened character stops it from attacking, and the player in control of the Maddened character can choose whether or not to make it attack (when you attack with a Maddened character you choose the target, then the minion stops mid-attack and the opponent chooses the target at the start of their turn before drawing a card or taking any actions).

I redesigned Yogg-Saron to not need tokens, I think it's a cool design but I'm on the fence about whether it is worth including. Vicious Basilisk are a play on a corrupted version of Stoneskin Basilisk and Ogre Magi, like how Whispers of the Old Gods had corrupted versions of older cards. Xal'atath was my idea for a Maddened Weapon, in this case it gives Shadow Priest a lot of healing and damage, but the opponent can play around it by keeping small minions on the board to force Xal'atath to attack into. I worry that Maddened might make it a bit weak but I think with 2 or 3 Attack it becomes worth it just for incremental board control and healing. Flavor-wise Chromie provides an alternate version of the Anachronos effect as she is a time dragon corrupted by the Old Gods, while Samuro has the same stats as the original Samuro (with the same handbuff synergy) but is much weaker and more balanced because the opponent can make it hit only 2 minions.

Which 3 of these cards do you think make the best use of the keyword? Any balance changes I should make?

I ended up going with Gunslinger. Sadly, I couldn't implement most of the feedback you guys gave, as I don't have much time this week.

Hey everyone, i'm super late this week D:

A new keyword for hunter! Lean in more in the Hunter fantasy by gaining bonuses for successfully hunting something in a turn!

• Reptile Fetcher - Functionally a 2 mana 4/3 if you can activate Predator. Of course you can hit something else of higher priority other than the Crocolisk. The purpose of the card is to also offer you something to hunt in the case the enemy has no minions. The crocolisk is just the vanilla 2/3 one, hope it's clear enough that it doesn't need a token.
• Night Hunt - Hit and track your prey! A little less efficient damage/mana value but the Rush carries over to the next turn allowing you to play a Beast and attack right away to trigger another Predator next turn.
• Cobraptor - Very proud of the name first of all lol. But the card is similar in that it promotes beast play and hunting fantasy. You select your mark and sick your pet onto it next turn, hopefully killing it for Predator. If you are already in a chain of kills you can make killing the cobraptor super hard with stealth. He's beefy enough to benefit from Night Hunt too, possibly taking down 2 to 3 targets even.

Congrats, Wassculaire!