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Gotta appreciate Dead Man's Hand flavor text

"I got two pair. Rags and Armorsmiths. What you got?"

As a poker enthusiast and Hearthstone connoisseur this flavor text made me extremely happy. I've always known it to be A8 (ace eight), just like "snowmen" are 88, "doyle brunson" is T2 (ten deuce) and "king crabbler" is K3. There are tons of cool names in poker, but this one is a legend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_man%27s_hand. In our case Armorsmith represents an Ace, and Ragnaross (8/8) represents an eight.

Anyone else recognized anything like that from (sort of) obscure areas?


  • Puffin

    Posted 8 years, 3 months ago (Source)

    I find a lot of flavor texts to be extremely well crafted and very funny. One of the first things that I do after every expansion is I go into my collection and I read flavor texts of newly released cards =) couple it with a joint or two, and you've got yourself an entertaining evening.

    Haha, yeah I helped write that. Thanks for noticing!

    I'm a huge poker enthusiast (I play in a regular game almost every week). I wanted to capture the Aces and the 8s and thought Armorsmiths and Rags were a good choice since there are two Armorsmiths (regular and Alley) and two Rags (Firelord and Lightlord) in Hearthstone, so they were like natural pairs. The A for Armorsmith and all of the 8s on the Rags were also quite fitting. :)

  • Puffin

    Posted 8 years, 3 months ago (Source)

    Ha! Interesting point. I just assumed you had 4 aces and 4 eights in the deck. If your deck is not a regular card deck, then we need to revisit the strength of the hands, haha! Anyways, thanks for this flavor text, I really liked it =)

    Edit: out of curiosity, how something like that happens? Do you get to submit flavor text for any card you choose to (and there is voting), or there is something like a gentlemen agreement being made while talking with producers near water cooler?

    A call to action goes out asking for flavor text and people submit their ideas for them to the set leads who decide which ones go in. We try to have fun with them and make them memorable or funny or some reference that some people will get but not everyone. There's a lot of different types of flavor text and some are harder to right than others but we have some really great creative writers on the team. :)

  • Puffin

    Posted 8 years, 3 months ago (Source)

    some are harder to right than others

    I can see what you mean here (I'm joking, I like the flavour text!)

    Fixed. It's late over here. >.<

  • Puffin

    Posted 8 years, 3 months ago (Source)

    So is the name already set and then they ask for flavor text? Or do they just say what the card does and you invent all the name, picture and flavor?

    Usually flavor text is one of the last things to be done. If art and name change for some reason and the flavor text doesn't make sense anymore then we'll change it so it does again.




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