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(1/2) This card design came out of a discussion focused on how Unholy Death Knights should feel like an endless army of minions. Their minions should feel easily killable, but where one falls, more would take its place. #BehindTheCards https://t.co/cAr2fbbVyL

(1/2) This card design came out of a discussion focused on how Unholy Death Knights should feel like an endless army of minions. Their minions should feel easily killable, but where one falls, more would take its place. #BehindTheCards https://t.co/cAr2fbbVyL

  • Chadd Nervigg
    Posted 3 years ago (Source)
    (1/2) This card design came out of a discussion focused on how Unholy Death Knights should feel like an endless army of minions. Their minions should feel easily killable, but where one falls, more would take its place. #BehindTheCards https://t.co/cAr2fbbVyL

    • Chadd Nervigg
      Posted 3 years ago (Source)
      (2/2) With that sort of mindset, your minions are seen as disposable, and we thought, what if you didn’t even need to play them in order to get that Corpse value.

      • ChaosOS_59
        Posted 3 years ago (Source)
        @Celestalon Ok but where's our siege engine that flings corpses at the enemy. I do enjoy how this captures the wc3 flavor!

        • Chadd Nervigg
          Posted 3 years ago (Source)
          @ChaosOS_59 We had that! But we moved the Corpses->Damage powers over to Frost, and it became Marrow Manipulator instead.

    • Alex_Marcy
      Posted 3 years ago (Source)
      @Celestalon So did you guys design the set cards for Death Knight as the 70-ish Death Knight class cards and then break it into Path, Core and MotLK? Or were they designed separately?

      • Chadd Nervigg
        Posted 3 years ago (Source)
        @Alex_Marcy Yeah, designed them all together, then broke them up into Core/Path/MotLK. It would have been nice to know which were MotLK ahead of time so that we could make their art Silvermoony, but that was impossible with the way we developed the different sets and Rune system.

    • cero0uno1dos2
      Posted 3 years ago (Source)
      @Celestalon I never understood why this card even exists...it's supposed to build corpses but the overhead cost is MASSIVE. Milling a minion you purposely chose to include in your deck for 3 corpses isn't worth anything, it's detrimental. This could be a 4/4 and still be bad tbh

      • cero0uno1dos2
        Posted 3 years ago (Source)
        @Celestalon The thing is, minions are not disposable, hero power is. If anything, this could be good if it "prevented your next hero power use", so it's like, taking your zombie and munching it, since you have unlimited hero powers anyway. But a minion? For 3 corpses only? When grain gives4+

        • cero0uno1dos2
          Posted 3 years ago (Source)
          @Celestalon Plus the crates that summon 2/2 that add more https://t.co/SJGwSos8Ql could also work by adding first, a zombie minion in deck like "wretched cadaver", 1 mana 1/1 charge deathrattle draw a card, and cards that add those to your deck so you can munch on em and keep rolling

          • DipalmaDevin
            Posted 3 years ago (Source)
            @cero0uno1dos2 @Celestalon this is the first batch of death knight cards and they can release new ones later that synergize with this

            • cero0uno1dos2
              Posted 3 years ago (Source)
              @DipalmaDevin @Celestalon Sure, but the effect itself is the weak part I mean. 3 coprses really isn't worth much of anything, and the exchange is a Prince Renathal in stats (weak) and sacrificing a minion you put in deck? (unlike randomly generated, that are normally lower quality than drafted ones) https://t.co/98ucSGEENV

              • Chadd Nervigg
                Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                @cero0uno1dos2 @DipalmaDevin 3 Corpses, early, can be important. Sacrificing a minion in your deck costs nearly nothing. Think of it like burning the bottom card of your deck. It only matters if you go to fatigue, which that deck almost definitely isn't.

                • cero0uno1dos2
                  Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                  @Celestalon @DipalmaDevin That's an incorrect take that also Regis uses to defend discarding as "not important". Plus, bottom of the deck? Dredge! Discarding from your deck matters a lot, especially when it's just "minions" for a deck like Unholy, with very key and few minions ._. (1/?)

                  • cero0uno1dos2
                    Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                    @Celestalon @DipalmaDevin People tend to say "imagine you're discarding Renathal" yeah but also, imagine you're discarding Lord Marrogwar, or Sylvanas, or Denathrius, or a Vizzir. All the minions you put in your deck are valuable and fit a role: discarding means the odds of their draw drop to 0 (2/?)

                    • cero0uno1dos2
                      Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                      @Celestalon @DipalmaDevin You're Gnomeferatu'ing yourself for what, 3 corpses? No tempo gain, no value generated, just the promise of in a future, get that tempo back through your corpses. But for 3 mana, you may as well play desert hare, 3 mana 3 1/1, aka, 3 corpses, almost same stats and no self discard https://t.co/pRvXvlTQPs

                      • twh1018
                        Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                        @cero0uno1dos2 @Celestalon @DipalmaDevin Bad comparison. This is 4 corpses if you count the minion itself, and a 3/4 body is worlds better than 3 1/1s and the whole point is that you get your corpses early so you can play your other corpse cards on curve and you dont have to worry about having minions die

                        • cero0uno1dos2
                          Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                          @twh1018 @Celestalon @DipalmaDevin "don't have to worry about" good riddance, but your minions have to die at the moment, or you have a threatening board, you win-win. Again, you're not counting the cost of opportunity, in what you lose having more minions dying, a minion from deck surviving, no rune requirement+

                          • twh1018
                            Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                            @cero0uno1dos2 @Celestalon @DipalmaDevin If you are running this minion in a deck, you do not care about losing a minion in your deck. You are playing it to have enough corpses ready for either Tomb Guardians or Malignant Horror.

                            • cero0uno1dos2
                              Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                              @twh1018 @Celestalon @DipalmaDevin That take is absurd. You do care .-. your corpse spenders are minions too, like Lord Marrogwar. Your deck isn't 10 cards big...it's 30-40, unless you play "spell deck" which doesn't exist for DK, but then again, you'd eat your own shredder that way

                              • twh1018
                                Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                                @cero0uno1dos2 @Celestalon @DipalmaDevin You wouldnt put this in a deck where you are trying to get a big payoff like Marrowgar, you are putting it in an aggro deck where your whole goal is overwhelm and take over the board fast.

                                • cero0uno1dos2
                                  Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                                  @twh1018 @Celestalon @DipalmaDevin Oh aggro you say? Aggro...that deck that ALWAYS runs minions no matter what... and all their minions have to be useful to race down the enemy... or you're saying bc of these 2 cards, it's okay to gutter good minions you put in your deck? BTW this can be shredded too lol https://t.co/vfIyMSOEuD

                                  • cero0uno1dos2
                                    Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                                    @twh1018 and 5 corpses? this krap only gives 3, so you're still short....if only this thing were to give 5 corpses, then maybe it'd be self sufficient for a curve play, but alas, it's not.

                                    • Chadd Nervigg
                                      Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                                      @cero0uno1dos2 @twh1018 I think the core point that you're missing is that shredding a minion in your deck doesn't lower the quality of the minions in your deck. Once you understand that central tenant, you can realize that the 'downside' here is near-nothing.

                                      • cero0uno1dos2
                                        Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                                        @Celestalon @twh1018 And the reward is minimal if we take 3 corpses' value into consideration. Can't use board buff (since this is a 3 mana play that does nothing for the board by itself), can't draw (this improves draw cards, but with a 3 mana tax that draws nothing).

                                        • Saor17614198
                                          Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                                          @cero0uno1dos2 @Celestalon @twh1018 Curious how perspectives can differ. My main takeaway from Death Knight Showmatch was "hmm, generating an awful lot of Corpses quickly seems to be very easy", as each competitor usually sat on a ton of them. As such, I also don't expect this card to matter much at this point.

                                          • Chadd Nervigg
                                            Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                                            @Saor17614198 @cero0uno1dos2 @twh1018 Something you can do to help balance your corpses on a DK deck is to estimate the net impact on corpses of each card, positive or negative, and sum that all up. If you check each of the DK Showmatch decks that way, you'll see that they're all grossly positive on corpses.

                                            • Chadd Nervigg
                                              Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                                              @Saor17614198 @cero0uno1dos2 @twh1018 You probably want that number to be somewhat positive, to give you some slush room, but here's a couple examples. They just left tons of unused resources on the table. Any of the corpse generators would have been guaranteed active any time they want. https://t.co/fY4YO0HBFT

                                              • Chadd Nervigg
                                                Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                                                @Saor17614198 @cero0uno1dos2 @twh1018 (And that's all ignoring the corpses you can get from the hero power, which pushes it a little more positive.)

                                              • cero0uno1dos2
                                                Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                                                @Celestalon @Saor17614198 @twh1018 the spreadsheet is somewhat inaccurate. You count "battlefield necromancer" as -2 corpses, when the necros themselves are corpses, as seen with Brann that you count its body as a corpse. Also, Tomb Guardians both cost and can generate, meaning it's not "always net 0"

                                                • Chadd Nervigg
                                                  Posted 3 years ago (Source)
                                                  @cero0uno1dos2 @Saor17614198 @twh1018 Battlefield Necromancer is -1 if you estimate that it can trigger twice, which is a fairly good estimate. Tomb Guardians generates 4 and spends 4, for a net of 0 usually.
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