So, do you guys think its a good idea to submit my Loatheb concept from the last competition? It has (5) attack and has a choose one effect, good for both Untapped Potential and Jungle Giants. Or maybe i should think in another card?
I personally wouldn't ever recommend repeating a card submission, but it's not against the rules to submit an old idea so it's up to you. As long as it didn't win, of course; repeating a winner would be against the rules lol
So, do you guys think its a good idea to submit my Loatheb concept from the last competition? It has (5) attack and has a choose one effect, good for both Untapped Potential and Jungle Giants. Or maybe i should think in another card?
Carlos has always been a cool character that's never been put into Hearthstone. I've always tried giving him ideas of stealing stuff from your opponent so I tried something else, play a card that can either give you a great card or a ton of value. This card is also flexible because you can choose to play this first so you don't overdraw in the early game, and instead get 1 legendary to finish the quest after a Clever Disguise and Pilfer, while the combo makes the entire cavern quest much easier with all the legendaries you want to take for it. Thoughts?
Here are my two ideas; the Warrior cards are basically the same thing, just a question of balance and/or how you prefer the description to play out:
While it does not directly support The Last Kaleidosaur, Wraith Knight is a minion you want to cast spells on. When the Reborn kicks in, all of the spells you've played on it come back, rebuilding the minion.
Tauren Horncaller fully explains the effect, giving you a Tauren Warrior.
Baine Bloodhoof does not explain the effect, and I included a Battlecry because I felt the effect wasn't enough for a Legendary. Might be a little OP, but it's just a first draft :P I edited in the updated version, based on Pokeniner's feedback.
...Since this comes up, and its not really a straight-forward process. If anyone has a better explanation let me know and I will edit; if any Moderator could sticky this thread it would be appreciated.
In the menu section, click on "Deckbuilder" (between "Decks" and "Expansions")
On the far right, find the "Import" button. Paste your deck code into the adjacent field and click "Import".
After a short pause, your deck should come up. At the bottom, give it a Name and an Archetype and click "Save".
On that page, find the "Copy BBCode" button and click it. The code will automatically be copied to your clipboard.
In your forum post, paste your clipboard's new contents into your post. (Alternatively, if you remember the number from the URL of your deck's page, you can manually type it out then highlight it and click the "Runeterra Deck" button to make the code on-the-fly.)
While you're writing the post it should look something like this except with square brackets instead of squiggly brackets:
{runedeck}537{/runedeck}
However when people view your post it will look like this:
I will try to be more lenient with watermark scoring this time around. Although your card logically should come from Saviors of Uldum or later as it's supposed to support a Quest there, I will try not to penalize you for this as long as the card still makes context within the set.
Also, the easiest classes to do this for would be Hunter or Mage. Any card that works for Open the Waygate also works with Raid the Sky Temple, as the requirement for the latter is simply just a less restrictive version of the former. The Marsh Queen and Unseal the Vault are in the same camp, as any card that works for the former also works for the latter. This is an easy way to go about this competition, although choosing the other classes will force you to get more creative.
I think she upgrades current available guys and not just gives you all minions on new tier...
correct its Bob's minions. Its similar to the refresh tavern for 0 cost which in theory is still better.
No actually these hero power is somewhat better, because you have control of when to flip it somewhat... if you get bunch of 3 star minions you can decide to upgrade then to get bunch of 4 stars if you are searching for them, same for 5 stars (especially 5 stars because of how many of them are impactful) you can even somewhat reliably force out 6 stars. Though it being 5 times only instead of every turn does limit you a bit too...
You're not imagining anything: if you go to our page on Unseal the Vault, you can see the original iteration of Unseal the Vault. Plus if you hover over the Hero Power, you'll see it's still called "Ramkahen Roar" (it takes time to update). No idea why they changed it; I liked the old name more.
Edit: Apparently it was changed back in March, and no one noticed (or bothered to say anything) lol
The reward for this quest used to be called Ramkahen Roar didn't it or am I just dreaming that? Now apparently its called Pharaoh's Warmask in my collection. Not any functional changes to the card but I never saw this mentioned in any patch notes ever.
The article was written to highlight the fact that the card game genre has problems that Riot is solving. The largest person in the space right now is Hearthstone and they have dropped the ball which is why they were used as the comparison. They also happen to have a mobile game when Magic and other titles do not which makes the 1:1 comparison easier, as does myself following Hearthstone since the game was announced at PAX East.
Now that's not to say things have been total garbage with Hearthstone -they have gotten a LOT better over the past year and the start of this year is the most exciting moment for the game since they fixed a lot of problems. The biggest issue though is they stagnated hard with the game for so many years, possibly because they needed to get rid of the old team, but maybe just because papa Blizzard wasn't letting them touch the goldmine for fear it would harm revenue until it ran out. I've spent a lot of time giving my personal opinions on Hearthstone and lately it has been a lot more positive than in the past. This just happens to be one of those times where Hearthstone has really, really screwed up.
I'd like to address several parts of your well-put-together post. Before I do though, I just wanted to say I appreciate your clear passion for the game and your willingness to talk about it.
I don't believe I've undercut myself when I stated that Blizzard is doing a poor job with patching. Yes, the last round of nerfs did happen server-side and that was cool. They have not addressed publicly though if this was something they were actually going to do going forward with reactive balance patching which is why I wouldn't consider it a standard just yet. Also, it isn't exactly a perfect process since this only applies to cards seen in-game and those in the collection manager itself lack the technology to show the updates which can create confusion. A large chunk of players are very casual and aren't checking the latest updates on sites. Imagine going into game, creating a deck with some cards you just opened up and then finding out that they are worse than they had appeared. That's a bad experience. Now, they did end up releasing an actual game data patch that rectified that within 24 hours, but mobile users still got that patch late which is the entire preface of the article - mobile users are treated worse than those on Battle.net's app.
Yes, I agree that the Shudderwock change was quite minor in comparison to even other changes made in Hearthstone, but it still feels like a bad excuse from Blizzard to not give him full refund status. It doesn't cost them anything to do so, and the majority of people playing with him weren't likely to disenchant it anyway since the card remained amazing. I can see this type of thing doing more harm than good when they choose to not refund it. You aren't going to make anyone angry by offering refunds, but you will make someone angry by not. Blizzard has had the (paraphrased) viewpoint of "your cards should feel physical, we don't want to make changes to them because that would hurt that experience" which is the whole reason why the offer refunds on changes. The hardcore version of this philosophy greatly hurt the game when they refused to balance anything. Thankfully, we are past that now and although I believe they still want stuff to feel physical and like we own the cards since they are willing to give us refunds, but it just feels weird otherwise. Riot has never gone on the record saying they want their game to feel physical, they're quite the opposite and have said they want to use the benefits of going digital to their advantage by being able to play with the game as they desire. It also doesn't really help things though when they have just come out of Beta which is the time where huge changes are most likely to occur. It will be interesting to see how many major changeups to cards we'll see in the future.
Now, botting and the gold cap. I can't agree that the reason is to prevent botting and if that really is the reason behind it, its a really shitty one. Yes, when you really look at it, not a whole lot of players even come close to reaching the limit each day, but why penalize the people that do love to actually grind the game every day? Or what if I'm one of those players that one or two days a week play all day and hit that cap regularly. If they're afraid of bots, then they should work on banning them. That would improve the player experience twice since we're actively getting rid of scum and the gold cap could be removed and not worried about. As you mentioned about Riot being a business with the goal of making money, yeah, and so is Blizzard which is the more likely reason why the gold cap exists. Let people grind to a cap, obtaining at most a set number of packs per week, and then have people pay for the rest when it ends up being a crazy grind. Riot monetized cosmetics with Runeterra and honestly, Blizzard should have gone more hardcore with that with Hearthstone.
Riot has been very open and honest about their monetization plans with the game, and they're actively discussing stuff with community members throughout the entire Beta and launch experience. Riot is multiple times more transparent than Blizzard is. I can't really say the same about Hearthstone when they are more likely to be active only when they're promoting a new expansion. Admittedly, Blizzard has gotten a bit better with this recently, but I'm interested to see if it continues being the case. Riot on the other hand, when looking at the amount of communication they do with League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics, it is incredible to see what happens when developers are allowed to talk. Huge props to Dean Ayala though for being the leading force in engaging with the Hearthstone community as of late.
No company is perfect, especially with the bro culture that Riot has been in the press for over the past couple of years, but that transparency and that desire to create something that everyone can enjoy from the free to play side of things and only charging for cosmetics is what made them a titan in the MOBA genre. I don't have an issue calling Blizzard out on the bullshit when I see it just as I don't have a problem giving them props when they deserve it even at the risk of sounding like a "fanboy".
I'm sorry you weren't a fan of the article and for a lot of it, yeah, we're going to need to wait and see how Riot handles everything once the card pool expands. For now though, the game is more accessible than Hearthstone was when it first started. That would actually be a very interesting piece of content to work on, comparing all the card games and looking at their first era of digital. Magic certainly has been an interesting case on that side of things.
I love Ashe/Frostbite decks so I'm very intrigued by the last one on the list, even if she's not the focus. I also like the MF/Quinn deck: seems like a natural combination. Don't have either champion, though, so if I'm gonna craft it might be easier to stick with what I have and do the Ashe deck.
The rumor is June 10th, which seems more and more likely as we fail to hear anything about the Adventure. It might have been delayed because of the coronavirus, but they could have said as much at some point :(
More Librams: I just really like the Libram package and would love to see it get some new tools in the next expansion. Specially, I'd love a Libram that has card draw (e.g. "Libram of Focus: 4 mana - Draw 2 cards"), and minion that discovers a Libram (e.g. "Aldor Librarian: 1 mana 1/1 - Battlecry: Discover a Libram.").
More Handbuff: This one is personal. I adore Handbuff and have since Mean Streets and I want more (e.g. "Lead By Example: 3 mana - Give a minion and all minions in your hand +2/+2").
More AoE: I'm sick of using Wild Pyromancer and want some AoE that doesn't depend on 2 card combos (e.g. "Righteous Purge: 6 mana - Lifesteal. Deal 3 damage to all enemy minions.")
A Control Win Condition: I'm super flexible on what exactly this is, but Paladin needs something it can do to reliably close the game in a control matchup. Should it be burst damage/OTK? Should it be an infinite-value generator? Should it be a big 10-mana minion? Idk, but Paladin needs something.
In your first suggestion you hit on something people often miss: spells that deal damage are not part of Paladin class identity (in fact I don't think they have had a single one since Classic), and that alone motivates a bit of a rework of the core sets. The same goes for destroy effects, which are almost non-existent in the class.
This observation also goes some way towards answering your 4th suggestion: 1-card AoE requires dealing damage to kill things, which the class just does not do. Its version is to debuff minions (e.g. Equality, Libram of Justice and Shrink Ray), which of course leads to 2-card AoEs if you actually want to kill the minions. This design angle makes Paladin unique and I hope they don't give the class any conventional AoE beyond Consecration.
Regarding your 5th suggestion, I don't think it would be good for the class to have great value generation. It's mix of great healing and value would then look a bit too much like priest. Instead I want its control tools to deal better with aggro from the start, while leaning into what pally does well: minions. It should have more things like Benevolent Djinn as proactive control tools rather than the reactive tools of priest. Sure you might still usually lose to more value-heavy control decks, but it gives you the choice to try to go midrange to win those instead of waiting to lose to value.
Totally fair points. I completely agree that direct damage and single-target damage (aside from weapons if you count those) isn't really a part of Paladin's class identity. I do like that the class uses mass debuffs as it's AoE, I think my frustration is that they always seem to rely on Wild Pyromancer or Consecration to actually clear anything. I think Libram of Justice is a great example of the kind of AoE I want more of for the class, since it equips the 1/4 weapon so you can by default remove at least one thing without combining it with something else.
I would personally be fine with Paladin being positioned as the "midrange" class and tries to win games that way, I just think it needs a little bit more support (such as the proactive control tools or sturdy minions) to get there.
I haven't tried it, though it is the sort of janky deck I would normally put together.
I suspect it is the sort of thing that will always feel clunky in rogue, since it is a class with no affinity for board flooding (murlocs) or big slow minions (dragons). Indeed it is notable that the only class cards in your deck are card draw and rogue's only dragon, and Flik who's presumably just there because she's generally great but not really pushing the game-plan.
Since you find the deck fun then just play it for that. If you want to refine it however, I would probably just switch class to paladin which has more going for it with both murlocs and dragons, and direct menagerie synergy in Scalelord. Or if that's a little too competitive/mainstream you could try to make a murloc/dragon druid since that class is known for both wide boards and big minions, so at least there's a bunch of class cards to choose from when refining.
Two Quests Are Better Than One - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
I personally wouldn't ever recommend repeating a card submission, but it's not against the rules to submit an old idea so it's up to you. As long as it didn't win, of course; repeating a winner would be against the rules lol
May 12's Hearthstone Patch Adds Three new Heroes and a New Minion for Battlegrounds! Deck Reordering Also Joins the Party
These new BG Heroes seem pretty interesting. And that Tier1 beast that scales from the early game can be interesting as well.
Two Quests Are Better Than One - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
So, do you guys think its a good idea to submit my Loatheb concept from the last competition? It has (5) attack and has a choose one effect, good for both Untapped Potential and Jungle Giants. Or maybe i should think in another card?
Two Quests Are Better Than One - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Carlos has always been a cool character that's never been put into Hearthstone. I've always tried giving him ideas of stealing stuff from your opponent so I tried something else, play a card that can either give you a great card or a ton of value. This card is also flexible because you can choose to play this first so you don't overdraw in the early game, and instead get 1 legendary to finish the quest after a Clever Disguise and Pilfer, while the combo makes the entire cavern quest much easier with all the legendaries you want to take for it.
Thoughts?
Two Quests Are Better Than One - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Here are my two ideas; the Warrior cards are basically the same thing, just a question of balance and/or how you prefer the description to play out:
Classically Trained - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
congrats on linkblade making wcdc history of being our first 3 time champ you surely know what your doing
Here's some art, make a card! [Legacy Game]
Next: A dragon from Un'Goro.
How to Embed a Deck List into a OutOf.Cards Forum Post
...Since this comes up, and its not really a straight-forward process. If anyone has a better explanation let me know and I will edit; if any Moderator could sticky this thread it would be appreciated.
While you're writing the post it should look something like this except with square brackets instead of squiggly brackets:
{runedeck}537{/runedeck}
However when people view your post it will look like this:
Again, that's the best way I know. If anyone knows a simpler way I'd love to hear it.
Two Quests Are Better Than One - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
I will try to be more lenient with watermark scoring this time around. Although your card logically should come from Saviors of Uldum or later as it's supposed to support a Quest there, I will try not to penalize you for this as long as the card still makes context within the set.
Also, the easiest classes to do this for would be Hunter or Mage. Any card that works for Open the Waygate also works with Raid the Sky Temple, as the requirement for the latter is simply just a less restrictive version of the former. The Marsh Queen and Unseal the Vault are in the same camp, as any card that works for the former also works for the latter. This is an easy way to go about this competition, although choosing the other classes will force you to get more creative.
Two Quests Are Better Than One - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Kudos to whomever thought this theme up - it makes for an interesting puzzle. Should make for a lot of creative submissions!
Classically Trained - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Oh cool, I'm the winner of my own prompt! The meme lives on: all of my wins come with Paladin cards :D
May 12's Hearthstone Patch Adds Three new Heroes and a New Minion for Battlegrounds! Deck Reordering Also Joins the Party
No actually these hero power is somewhat better, because you have control of when to flip it somewhat... if you get bunch of 3 star minions you can decide to upgrade then to get bunch of 4 stars if you are searching for them, same for 5 stars (especially 5 stars because of how many of them are impactful) you can even somewhat reliably force out 6 stars. Though it being 5 times only instead of every turn does limit you a bit too...
Two Quests Are Better Than One - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Competition Theme: Two Quests Are Better Than One
We're going on a quest this week!
We're specifically looking for synergy with the Quests, not the Sidequests.
DestroyerR has a quest for us this week; to improve the options for both Quests a class has access to!
As always, I 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.
Unseal the Vault Reward Name Change?
You're not imagining anything: if you go to our page on Unseal the Vault, you can see the original iteration of Unseal the Vault. Plus if you hover over the Hero Power, you'll see it's still called "Ramkahen Roar" (it takes time to update). No idea why they changed it; I liked the old name more.
Edit: Apparently it was changed back in March, and no one noticed (or bothered to say anything) lol
May 12's Hearthstone Patch Adds Three new Heroes and a New Minion for Battlegrounds! Deck Reordering Also Joins the Party
Let me remind you that we did get extra slots! It used to be 9 only. Rejoice!
Unseal the Vault Reward Name Change?
The reward for this quest used to be called Ramkahen Roar didn't it or am I just dreaming that? Now apparently its called Pharaoh's Warmask in my collection. Not any functional changes to the card but I never saw this mentioned in any patch notes ever.
May 12's Hearthstone Patch Adds Three new Heroes and a New Minion for Battlegrounds! Deck Reordering Also Joins the Party
I too haven't touched BG since Uldum. I don't because they don't give any reward.
I honestly think that MMR rating doesn't do anything (even when it's F2P).
It'll be very different outcome if they add some kind of rewards.
Legends of Runeterra Patches Move Away From Treating Mobile Players Like Second-Class Citizens Unlike its Competitor Hearthstone
The article was written to highlight the fact that the card game genre has problems that Riot is solving. The largest person in the space right now is Hearthstone and they have dropped the ball which is why they were used as the comparison. They also happen to have a mobile game when Magic and other titles do not which makes the 1:1 comparison easier, as does myself following Hearthstone since the game was announced at PAX East.
Now that's not to say things have been total garbage with Hearthstone -they have gotten a LOT better over the past year and the start of this year is the most exciting moment for the game since they fixed a lot of problems. The biggest issue though is they stagnated hard with the game for so many years, possibly because they needed to get rid of the old team, but maybe just because papa Blizzard wasn't letting them touch the goldmine for fear it would harm revenue until it ran out. I've spent a lot of time giving my personal opinions on Hearthstone and lately it has been a lot more positive than in the past. This just happens to be one of those times where Hearthstone has really, really screwed up.
I'd like to address several parts of your well-put-together post. Before I do though, I just wanted to say I appreciate your clear passion for the game and your willingness to talk about it.
I don't believe I've undercut myself when I stated that Blizzard is doing a poor job with patching. Yes, the last round of nerfs did happen server-side and that was cool. They have not addressed publicly though if this was something they were actually going to do going forward with reactive balance patching which is why I wouldn't consider it a standard just yet. Also, it isn't exactly a perfect process since this only applies to cards seen in-game and those in the collection manager itself lack the technology to show the updates which can create confusion. A large chunk of players are very casual and aren't checking the latest updates on sites. Imagine going into game, creating a deck with some cards you just opened up and then finding out that they are worse than they had appeared. That's a bad experience. Now, they did end up releasing an actual game data patch that rectified that within 24 hours, but mobile users still got that patch late which is the entire preface of the article - mobile users are treated worse than those on Battle.net's app.
Yes, I agree that the Shudderwock change was quite minor in comparison to even other changes made in Hearthstone, but it still feels like a bad excuse from Blizzard to not give him full refund status. It doesn't cost them anything to do so, and the majority of people playing with him weren't likely to disenchant it anyway since the card remained amazing. I can see this type of thing doing more harm than good when they choose to not refund it. You aren't going to make anyone angry by offering refunds, but you will make someone angry by not. Blizzard has had the (paraphrased) viewpoint of "your cards should feel physical, we don't want to make changes to them because that would hurt that experience" which is the whole reason why the offer refunds on changes. The hardcore version of this philosophy greatly hurt the game when they refused to balance anything. Thankfully, we are past that now and although I believe they still want stuff to feel physical and like we own the cards since they are willing to give us refunds, but it just feels weird otherwise. Riot has never gone on the record saying they want their game to feel physical, they're quite the opposite and have said they want to use the benefits of going digital to their advantage by being able to play with the game as they desire. It also doesn't really help things though when they have just come out of Beta which is the time where huge changes are most likely to occur. It will be interesting to see how many major changeups to cards we'll see in the future.
Now, botting and the gold cap. I can't agree that the reason is to prevent botting and if that really is the reason behind it, its a really shitty one. Yes, when you really look at it, not a whole lot of players even come close to reaching the limit each day, but why penalize the people that do love to actually grind the game every day? Or what if I'm one of those players that one or two days a week play all day and hit that cap regularly. If they're afraid of bots, then they should work on banning them. That would improve the player experience twice since we're actively getting rid of scum and the gold cap could be removed and not worried about. As you mentioned about Riot being a business with the goal of making money, yeah, and so is Blizzard which is the more likely reason why the gold cap exists. Let people grind to a cap, obtaining at most a set number of packs per week, and then have people pay for the rest when it ends up being a crazy grind. Riot monetized cosmetics with Runeterra and honestly, Blizzard should have gone more hardcore with that with Hearthstone.
Riot has been very open and honest about their monetization plans with the game, and they're actively discussing stuff with community members throughout the entire Beta and launch experience. Riot is multiple times more transparent than Blizzard is. I can't really say the same about Hearthstone when they are more likely to be active only when they're promoting a new expansion. Admittedly, Blizzard has gotten a bit better with this recently, but I'm interested to see if it continues being the case. Riot on the other hand, when looking at the amount of communication they do with League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics, it is incredible to see what happens when developers are allowed to talk. Huge props to Dean Ayala though for being the leading force in engaging with the Hearthstone community as of late.
No company is perfect, especially with the bro culture that Riot has been in the press for over the past couple of years, but that transparency and that desire to create something that everyone can enjoy from the free to play side of things and only charging for cosmetics is what made them a titan in the MOBA genre. I don't have an issue calling Blizzard out on the bullshit when I see it just as I don't have a problem giving them props when they deserve it even at the risk of sounding like a "fanboy".
I'm sorry you weren't a fan of the article and for a lot of it, yeah, we're going to need to wait and see how Riot handles everything once the card pool expands. For now though, the game is more accessible than Hearthstone was when it first started. That would actually be a very interesting piece of content to work on, comparing all the card games and looking at their first era of digital. Magic certainly has been an interesting case on that side of things.
May 12's Hearthstone Patch Adds Three new Heroes and a New Minion for Battlegrounds! Deck Reordering Also Joins the Party
correct its Bob's minions. Its similar to the refresh tavern for 0 cost which in theory is still better.
Outstanding Miss Fortune Decks for Runeterra's Rising Tides Expansion
Been waiting for this one :D
I love Ashe/Frostbite decks so I'm very intrigued by the last one on the list, even if she's not the focus. I also like the MF/Quinn deck: seems like a natural combination. Don't have either champion, though, so if I'm gonna craft it might be easier to stick with what I have and do the Ashe deck.
Classically Trained - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Agreed! This is a very impressive group of finalists!
May 12's Hearthstone Patch Adds Three new Heroes and a New Minion for Battlegrounds! Deck Reordering Also Joins the Party
The rumor is June 10th, which seems more and more likely as we fail to hear anything about the Adventure. It might have been delayed because of the coronavirus, but they could have said as much at some point :(
Classically Trained - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread
Super stoked that I made the finals. Hoping to win but all of the cards are legit. Best of luck to everyone!
What is your Paladin Wish List?
Totally fair points. I completely agree that direct damage and single-target damage (aside from weapons if you count those) isn't really a part of Paladin's class identity. I do like that the class uses mass debuffs as it's AoE, I think my frustration is that they always seem to rely on Wild Pyromancer or Consecration to actually clear anything. I think Libram of Justice is a great example of the kind of AoE I want more of for the class, since it equips the 1/4 weapon so you can by default remove at least one thing without combining it with something else.
I would personally be fine with Paladin being positioned as the "midrange" class and tries to win games that way, I just think it needs a little bit more support (such as the proactive control tools or sturdy minions) to get there.
Dragon-Murloc Rogue?
I haven't tried it, though it is the sort of janky deck I would normally put together.
I suspect it is the sort of thing that will always feel clunky in rogue, since it is a class with no affinity for board flooding (murlocs) or big slow minions (dragons). Indeed it is notable that the only class cards in your deck are card draw and rogue's only dragon, and Flik who's presumably just there because she's generally great but not really pushing the game-plan.
Since you find the deck fun then just play it for that. If you want to refine it however, I would probably just switch class to paladin which has more going for it with both murlocs and dragons, and direct menagerie synergy in Scalelord. Or if that's a little too competitive/mainstream you could try to make a murloc/dragon druid since that class is known for both wide boards and big minions, so at least there's a bunch of class cards to choose from when refining.
Good luck!