The Arbiter - A Card with an Algorithm
So, I'm working on this expansion; a whole year of expansions actually. And I just happened to create a card that, in my humble opinion, captures the thematic essence of a certain WoW character. I wanted to share this as a standalone card …
So, I'm working on this expansion; a whole year of expansions actually. And I just happened to create a card that, in my humble opinion, captures the thematic essence of a certain WoW character. I wanted to share this as a standalone card rather than with a whole batch of cards. Would love to hear your thoughts too. I'll also be giving brief information about the card and how it works since it's a little complex than most Hearthstone cards, perhaps comparable to Zephrys the Great in that it requires a specific algorythm.
Wow! Some of those effects are damn flashy and perhaps even too harsh. But the text of Arbiter is too cryptic. How am I supposed to understand what's going on? How can I determine what Realm The Arbiter chooses? Here's the catch:
The Arbiter simply takes note of certain actions the enemy player does while playing the game. Each realm has 4 actions that count towards it. Sometimes those may overlap, and in rare cases that some realms completely even themselves out, The Arbiter simply praises Yogg and yoinks the enemy into a random realm.
The concept itself is pretty straightforward and perhaps a copy-paste of what The Arbiter does and what each realm of Shadowlands stands for in WoW lore. But I found it hard to explain it in words (cards!) without turning it into a Yu-Gi-Oh tier mess.
Now I want to open up more about the design of each realm for those that may be unfamiliar with WoW lore (trust me, while it's getting butchered recently, it's intriguing enough to make me, a person who only played for a year to still follow it) while also giving insight about the way I designed some aspects of this card.
Recently, they added afterlife to WoW, called Shadowlands. There are 5 main realms in it, as you can see above.
-Ardenweald is basically Druid stuff but blue; as such the effect is about Mana.
-Bastion is a realm where people like Uther, loyal and honorable men of duty, went to after death, so there's a touch of Paladin and other "good guy" stuff.
-Maldraxxus is the "I CRUSH YOU ME STRONG WARRIOR" realm with a twist; they're all skeletons and it has a green, nasty color scheme. The requirements for The Arbiter to put your opponent in Maldraxxus are basically all Warrior stuff, and that's by design.
-Revendreth is the one I had fun the most while designing around it; it's a realm that prideful and jaded souls go to after they die; I tried to make a connection with Control style decks and Control players' attitude (I'm a control player myself btw), hence the effect and its prequisites.
-The Maw is Hell. It's for the worst of the worst. In my initial design, the effect was a lot more harsher (It also destroyed Mana Crystals) and I had a prequisite related to Demons that made it look like I had a hate boner for DH (shockingly, I don't). The thing is, I wanted The Maw to punish aggro players because it's just a thematic fit that the most aggresive and reckless players would get the worst punishment of all. But as you already realized, by turn 10 it isn't important whether you've destroyed their deck or not, if you've came that far vs aggro you already won. So it's kind of bugging me that something that makes sense on paper won't ever fulfill it's meaning if it's implemented in the actual game. Perhaps this needs more work? idk.
All in all, I had fun brainstorming and coming up with designs that I think are interesting while making this card. I would love to hear your thoughts about it. Hopefully I'll be able to share more custom cards in the future. And if you've read that far, cheers to you man!
