People say that "words hurt", and this week is where we use our words to hurt our opponent.
Design a new keyword and three (3) cards that use that keyword. Your submission must include those three cards and a description of what that keyword is. A fourth card slot is open for submissions and you can use this to place your keyword tooltip in your submission.
Your cards must specifically use the mechanic to count. In other words, cards that merely interact with the mechanic (like Crowd Favorite or Journey Below) will not count unless they also use the mechanic itself (like Stonehill Defender).
You will need a HearthCards account to make a keyword tooltip. If you don't want to make an account, you will be allowed to write what your keyword does in the description box of your submission.
Wailor is asking for us to use some bold words in this competition. Something inspiring that invokesdiscovery if you catch what I mean.
As always, we 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
Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, Mar 13 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sat, Mar 18 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Mar 18 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sun, Mar 19 16:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Mar 19 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Mon, Mar 20 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.
Discussion Thread Rules
No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.
Some of you might not be aware of how to make a keyword tooltip on the new version of HearthCards yet.
To start, click the "Custom" cog button.
This will take you to this menu:
Custom menu
Click the "Create" button and that will take you here:
Create button menu
You will need an account to access that menu. If you don't have one, it'll tell you that "You need to be logged in to make emblems". Click on the tooltip and that will take you here:
If you're also noticing that this competition is up an hour earlier that usual, the answer to that is because Daylight Savings Time started yesterday. Events on the site are run based on the website's clock which uses EST time. For those in areas which have started using it, the competitions are going up on the exact same clock time that they have normally gone up on, but if your area hasn't started Daylight Savings Time yet (or doesn't use it at all), it will appear as if the competitions are going up an hour earlier than their normal time. Just, be sure to be mindful of that as we go forward.
And after all of those notes, here is my first keyword submission.
(The submission wouldn't actually use the stylized method of presentation. It's just here because I already had it.)
Objectives are basically Sidequests with requirements and rewards that scale. You can choose an easier requirement in exchange for a lesser reward, a harder requirement in exchange for a greater reward, or meet in the middle.
I also have a fourth one here. If you prefer this one over any of the others, do let me know.
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.
This might bite me in the butt come tomorrow's reveal, but I thought I would ride the groove of the teaser with Encore!
Let's say you played these three minions on curve; this is what would happen:
Incessant Drummer would cast Ancestral Spirit on itself, but you haven't played an Encore card before this so that's all it does.
Electric Soloist would do its thing, then also cast Ancestral Spirit on itself, as that's what your previous Encore said.
Encore E.T.C. would do its thing, then cast the Nature spell because that is now your most-recent Encore effect.
Side-note: I don't believe there's a single keyword in the game with a tooltip greater than two lines of text. It's probably okay if yours is a little more than that, but it shouldn't take a paragraph to explain what's happening.
Side-note: I don't believe there's a single keyword in the game with a tooltip greater than two lines of text. It's probably okay if yours is a little more than that, but it shouldn't take a paragraph to explain what's happening.
This is also a result of a quirk with new HearthCards and the difference in text sizes on the tooltips between versions. Old HearthCards would try to shrink your text down to 2 lines if it would normally go over that with the normal text size, up to a certain point and then it will finally go down to a third line.
New HearthCards on the other hand uses larger text than tooltips on old HearthCards, and also keeps the text the exact same size regardless of how much text you type. I think Transmute and Gunslinger would be both 2 lines of text on the old version of HearthCards.
What you said is definitely something that everyone should be mindful of regardless though, especially on new HearthCards where it's very easy to accidentally overtype and write a huge tooltip.
I really like Gunslinger, but you have to be careful: according to the rules, this card would not count because it doesn't have Gunslinger itself. I don't agree with this, but that's how they're worded.
anchorm4nThe Cake Is A Lie 17802071 PostsJoined 03/13/2019
Posted 6 months, 1 week ago
Wow, what a bold theme! I love it!
I'll start out with the keyword and cards from the custom expansion I've never finished. Thanks to Demon and linkblade for providing help for creating the tooltips!
Some background info:
I picture this keyword and those cards arriving in an expansion called "The Great Air Race" which takes place in the Jade Forest on Pandaria and revolves around the Order of the Cloud Serpent, so prepare for Dragons, Pandaren and first and foremost... Mounts! Every class gets a Legendary Mount card to help them win the race. With the exception of Druid I used their WoW class mounts for these. I’m really surprised Blizzard hasn’t walked down this path a long time ago. They are so cool! Winning "The Great Air Race" will not only be a matter of speed, but also of endurance. And that's where my custom keyword comes in - Stamina (x). It activates when a minion survives (x) turns on the battlefield as a start of turn effect. To help identifying minions with this effect, they would be flagged with a little hour glass at their bottom, similar to the lightning bolt for other effects. The counting of turns would work just like it does with Dormant minions.
I notice I am confused. Something I believe isn't true. How do I know what I think I know? Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, hpmor.com
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.
Not to monopolize the page with my ideas, but I have another one: Launch! Coming from an outer space/rocketry sort of flavor, Launch is the opposite of the new Finale, giving you a bonus if it's the first card you play in a turn.
Krazzel always has some scheme goin' on, so he's never in a place for long. By playing him first you get a lot of card draw, but he's A. hard to tutor for, B. technically inefficient over time, paying 2 mana for 1 card, and C. creates no board presence whatsoever if you continue to Launch him.
Blowback Punch is like the Warrior version of Lightning Breath, but can be trickier to use since the target needs to survive long enough.
Booster Rocket is like Life Sentence, but they'll come back should you choose to attack with it (or have your weapon destroyed some other way). In that sense, it's a single-target Anachronos effect without a set timer. It is cheaper than Life Sentence because you can really only ever use it once if you plan to leave that minion gone forever; otherwise, you're gonna have to deal with it eventually.
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?
Someone needs to give feedback or this competition is never going anywhere. I guess that'll be me.
Linkblade91
I feel like Launch is probably your best bet as far as card context is concerned since what you said about Legacy and Trials apply, and I feel like Encore is mostly undercut by the theme of Festival of Legends. I don't think Storm is entirely redundant because of Manathirst since they both have different design spaces.
Wailor
I'm not really sure how much design space Transmute has, but it's a good mechanic and I don't think it has less design space than something like Overkill or Honorable Kill, so I think it's fine.
Gunslinger seems like an okay idea for a mechanic, but as you noted, I feel like the idea is mostly taken by Divine Shield even if they're not exactly the same mechanic. This isn't really that important as far as the context of the competition is concerned, but I feel like the name doesn't really have much flavor diversity compared to "First Strike" (or "Quick Attack" which is what LoR uses for this mechanic) which can be applied to basically whatever you want it to. As Link noted, Deputy Instructor also wouldn't count since it doesn't use the mechanic itself.
Anchorm4n
First off, I think the idea of an air-racing expansion is fucking awesome and you should absolutely do it if you feel you're up to it.
I'm not exactly sure how Stamina works since the tooltip and your description just specifies "a minion" and not the Stamina minion itself. If I play a Stamina card when I've already had a minion on board for multiple turns, will it retroactively keep track of how many turns that minion has been alive and take that into account for the total? Does it get the effect right away if the minion in question happens to already meet the Stamina requirement when you play the Stamina card?
AeroJulwin
Scrap is a good mechanic. In a world where Hearthstone didn't originally have discard, it having Scrap instead would be astronomically better.
But as much as I do like the mechanic, it might be difficult for people to look past it as "just discard" but slightly different.
Dolphinslayer
Duplicate is okay. From the way Auchenai Echopriest is designed though, I actually can't tell if the minion needs to survive for the Duplicate to trigger. If it doesn't, that's cool. If it does, then its application on minions is a bit questionable for the same reason Overkill (and to a lesser extent, Honorable Kill as well) didn't fare too well. With a few exceptions, relying on minions to stay alive is a strategy that is unreliable and one that you don't really want to run.
Matthieu
Hey, welcome aboard. Glad to see you here. I say this to everyone joining these comps for the first time, but I do hope you have fun and don't hesitate to ask us any questions if you need to. For future reference, it's better to post your idea in the Discussion Topic first to get some feedback to see how the entries can be tweaked and then post your submission.
I feel like Harmony with the way its applied flavorfully might be a bit undercut by the theme of Festival of Legends, which might dock some points from some voters, but then again… it might not. Harmony is a good mechanic and I think it has some cool design space to explore.
The balance of the cards seem a bit questionable. Ballad of the Hawk receives a pretty massive upgrade for the second (and later if you happen to get them) copies. Pogo-Hip-Hopper is a cute reference to [Hearthstone Card (Pogo Hopper) Not Found], but the combination of Echo and Harmony doesn't strike me the right way since Echo is specifically a Witchwood mechanic (except for SN1P-SN4P). Doremi, Lead Singer is a really cool idea, although I feel like Mage is a bit of a weird class to put it in since it doesn't have that many ways to copy minions unless you put it in a set where its gimmick is allowing Mage to do that.
CursedParrot
Fatal Flaw feels very… weird. Very ambitious and very bizarre and I'm not sure how to feel about it.
I don't like Millhouse the UNSTOPPABLE! since he's basically invincible. You play it on basically any turn and it's pretty much guaranteed to live. It's especially troubling if it's played on turn 2 since he'll stick there for multiple turns at a turn and you can freely cast spells with the bonus damage with no penalty while also keeping board presence. Even if your opponent were to spend all their mana next turn on spells, then you spend all of your mana on spells, and then they spend all of theirs again next turn, it would still be alive (since either 8 or 10 mana has just been played at that point). It just stays alive too reliably while also being too threatening to be fair.
anchorm4nThe Cake Is A Lie 17802071 PostsJoined 03/13/2019
Posted 6 months, 1 week ago
Feedback time!
CursedParrot
I respect the creativity, but I feel like the mechanic is inherently OP. Also the art is a little all over the place, there's no common ground recognizable for me. Overall not my cup of tea, I'm sorry. (This would translate to 2 stars since all cards are well executed.)
Matthieu
Hey there, welcome to this part of the site! I like your keyword, it's pretty flavorful. That said, I'd like to echo Demon's concerns about the power level of the cards and also invite you to wait a bit longer for feedback before submitting in the future. With the help of a few other contestants you might have found ways to further improve your cards and thus bolster your chances at winning the competition.
linkblade91
I agree with Demon, Launch is the coolest Keyword of yours. All the cards look fun to play and like a great fit for the keyword. The only thing I'd like to question is if Booster Rocket should really be a Paladin card - other than the Anachronos similarity I don't see much support for that argument. I'd prefer it in Rogue where you have to weigh its effect against using other weapons and your Hero Power. Valeera also has stuff like Sap and Vanish which are kinda related.
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 ;-)
AeroJulwin
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.
Wailor
I very much prefer Gunslinger, it's the most flavorful keyword I've seen so far. If you add a last little bit of polish, you're gonna be my favorite for this week's competition :-) linkblade already pointed out that the Paladin card wouldn't qualify and I have some small flavor issues with the Warrior card. A shotgun typically deals smaller shrapnel AOE damage which doesn't fit the current statline and effect very well. Might easily be solved by changing the name.
Demonxz95
I'm a little torn here. While I really like the flexibility your keyword adds by the scaling effects, it's still pretty close to what sidequests do already. A drawback of the scaling effects is that your cards are packed with numbers which doesn't look very nice to me when you see them side by side. Might be better if you see them among other cards of the class without this keyword, but that's unfortunately not the way we'll see them when we vote. Finally, I would go with the initial three and skip the Priest card because it's too close to Priest's Galakrond for my taste.
On another note, thanks for your feedback! I'm a little surprised "Stamina" caused confusion. The way it's meant to work is that the effect triggers when the minion with the keyword survives (x) turns, so when The Prismatic Disc survives 2 turns, it gains Spell Damage +2 for example. How do you think could I word the tooltip to make this more clear?
I notice I am confused. Something I believe isn't true. How do I know what I think I know? Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, hpmor.com
On another note, thanks for your feedback! I'm a little surprised "Stamina" caused confusion. The way it's meant to work is that the effect triggers when the minion with the keyword survives (x) turns, so when The Prismatic Disc survives 2 turns, it gains Spell Damage +2 for example. How do you think could I word the tooltip to make this more clear?
Just phrase the tooltip as "this minion" instead of "a minion".
With the knowledge that the minion itself has to survive that many turns, the keyword itself feels like it's probably weak for the same reason I said Duplicate was also weak. Relying on minions to survive in Hearthstone typically doesn't work out too well. As soon as you play The Prismatic Disc for example, your opponent is just going to kill it as soon as they can and you'll rarely get the Spell Damage from it.
Legacy is an interesting keyword, though I don't know how interesting the design space of the keyword itself would be rather than just whatever weapon it's attached to. I actually think Legacy being a keyword that meant "This always keeps enchantments" could be more interesting if done right, although there's a chance that that ends up being kind of same-y and repetitive too.
Storm is probably the most interesting of the three keywords of your first batch. I think it sets itself apart from manathirst in a really interesting way, as evidenced by rain of arrows. I don't think rain of arrows simply having "Manathirst (7)" would be anywhere near balanced, so I think there is definitely room to explore this space.
Burden does not feel distinct enough from Quests in my opinion. Quests are already designed in a way that including them in your deck/activating them comes at a cost (or, at least the good ones are *cough* stormwind *cough*). That cost being including the card in your deck, having no turn 1 play, and most importantly, filling your deck with OTHER cards that probably wouldn't be there if they weren't included to complete the quest consistently. Burden certainly is different, making the quest essentially "complete" early in the game and dealing with the downside for the remainder of the game instead of for the first part of the game, but that develops different problems. Either the downside is so punishing that you would never want to play the Reward in the first place, or it's meaningless and you just played a 1 mana spell (that I assume starts in your opening hand like a quest? although I could be wrong) that just turns the game into a 1-sided slaughter from turn 1. TL;DR, not unworkable, but I think it would be better to just stick with Quests.
Encore is cool, and very flavorful for a Shaman keyword. A lot of Shaman's "repeat your last/other battlecries this game" cards are really, really good, and sometimes so prohibitively powerful that they limit future design space. We all know which card(s) I'm talking about here LOL. However, Encore is a really nice fix to this problem by limiting which Battlecries can be affected by this new strong but balanced keyword. Nice!
Launch is also very nice, but I think it would be (I don't want to say better, but maybe more interesting) if it was the EXACT opposite of Finale, as in you have to play it and still have remaining mana left in your turn. That way, the bonus effect comes at the cost of disrupting your curve. Otherwise, a lot of these cards don't really feel like the Launch condition is a bonus, it just feels like an extra good card that slots right into your curve. Overall, still an interesting keyword too.
Half of the text in my feedback this week is going to be addressing your keywords! Haha. I love it though, so feel free to keep it coming.
Demonxz95
Objective feels to me like Sidequest with extra steps. I also feel like with how complicated explaining both the setup and the reward are, it's going to be really limited to keep finding interesting/new ways of setting up objectives in only four lines of text on the card. I'm actually impressed by how much you managed to fit on there as is lol.
wailor
Transmute is really good, as we've already seen how popular the Tradeable keyword is, and this is very unique from that at the same time. I think in most cases, this is straight up better than Tradeable too, considering this trades other cards, not just itself. I think there is a lot of design space to explore here, good job.
Gunslinger is also awesome, and as you've said, different than just Divine Shield. I was wondering how Hearthstone would be able to incorporate a "First-strike" like keyword that is different than just "Immune while attacking" and this is a very concise and efficient way of describing exactly that. I do think the keyword, if implemented into Hearthstone, would probably be something less explicitly gun-related (which is a shame, because the flavor on some of your cards is great), but other than that I really like the keyword, especially on The Phantom Ranger.
anchorm4n
That expansion also does sound really badass, not gonna lie lol.
Stamina is pretty interesting for sure, but I think the design space here needs to be pretty specific. Specifically, I think these minions need to have ways of surviving or protecting themselves. As is, for example, The Prismatic Disc has exactly a 0% chance of ever surviving enough turns to get the bonus, as any deck you're up against is immediately going to assume you're a combo deck and use every resource available to kill it, probably. That being said, I do really like the other two Stamina (1) minions, as surviving for 1 turn is a lot more likely. It's just a little complicated, because it would be very boring for every Stamina card to be printed with Stamina (1). Only other thing I can think off the top of my head is I'm pretty sure that the Lunarwing Owl would be worded "Cast 'Moonfire' on each enemy minion." or "on all enemy minions," but yeah, I do like the keyword.
AeroJulwin
Scrap is exactly what you said it is, a much better version of the Discard keyword. 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? (Looking at Law of Equivalent Exchange, it seems that the "Scrap a card to draw another" line implies that you could choose NOT to and only get the first effect). If so, that seems even better. I honestly wish that this was the way that Discard worked in Hearthstone, I'd give Discolock a try.
Matthieu
Harmony is interesting for sure. That being said, I think both of the first two cards with it are really, really pushed, and the third one seems unplayable unless like Demon said, Mage's set mechanic is being able to get copies of cards in hand. In that case, it feels like the effect is extremely overpowered if mage is able to do that consistantly. Either way, this keyword definitely has potential, and as an eternal Value Mage player, I would LOVE to see some Harmony cards printed for mage.
CursedParrot
Fatal Flaw seems really cool, if used in moderation. I think it's one of those keywords that should become maybe a rarely used evergreen keyword, like Immune. I disagree with the thought that Millhouse is too powerful. Maybe he's a little under-costed for such a sticky minion, but I love that the effect is symmetrical for both players. Either way, Spell Damage +1 is not a game breaking effect to have for a few turns, unless possibly it's just that you have it so early in the game.
Maybe Fatal Flaw should instead work so that they can be brought down to 1 health but not killed, or maybe so they should die as soon as their Fatal Flaw is met. Either way, probably needs some work, but I like the direction it's headed.
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.
Competition Theme: Words of Power
People say that "words hurt", and this week is where we use our words to hurt our opponent.
Wailor is asking for us to use some bold words in this competition. Something inspiring that invokes discovery if you catch what I mean.
As always, we 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.
I have made three Keywords in the past, but I can't really use them to their fullest.
Pretty upset about this, not gonna lie.
Some of you might not be aware of how to make a keyword tooltip on the new version of HearthCards yet.
To start, click the "Custom" cog button.
This will take you to this menu:
Click the "Create" button and that will take you here:
You will need an account to access that menu. If you don't have one, it'll tell you that "You need to be logged in to make emblems". Click on the tooltip and that will take you here:
From there, just make the tooltip and save it.
If you're also noticing that this competition is up an hour earlier that usual, the answer to that is because Daylight Savings Time started yesterday. Events on the site are run based on the website's clock which uses EST time. For those in areas which have started using it, the competitions are going up on the exact same clock time that they have normally gone up on, but if your area hasn't started Daylight Savings Time yet (or doesn't use it at all), it will appear as if the competitions are going up an hour earlier than their normal time. Just, be sure to be mindful of that as we go forward.
And after all of those notes, here is my first keyword submission.
(The submission wouldn't actually use the stylized method of presentation. It's just here because I already had it.)
Objectives are basically Sidequests with requirements and rewards that scale. You can choose an easier requirement in exchange for a lesser reward, a harder requirement in exchange for a greater reward, or meet in the middle.
I also have a fourth one here. If you prefer this one over any of the others, do let me know.
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.
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.
This might bite me in the butt come tomorrow's reveal, but I thought I would ride the groove of the teaser with Encore!
Let's say you played these three minions on curve; this is what would happen:
Side-note: I don't believe there's a single keyword in the game with a tooltip greater than two lines of text. It's probably okay if yours is a little more than that, but it shouldn't take a paragraph to explain what's happening.
This is also a result of a quirk with new HearthCards and the difference in text sizes on the tooltips between versions. Old HearthCards would try to shrink your text down to 2 lines if it would normally go over that with the normal text size, up to a certain point and then it will finally go down to a third line.
New HearthCards on the other hand uses larger text than tooltips on old HearthCards, and also keeps the text the exact same size regardless of how much text you type. I think Transmute and Gunslinger would be both 2 lines of text on the old version of HearthCards.
What you said is definitely something that everyone should be mindful of regardless though, especially on new HearthCards where it's very easy to accidentally overtype and write a huge tooltip.
I really like Gunslinger, but you have to be careful: according to the rules, this card would not count because it doesn't have Gunslinger itself. I don't agree with this, but that's how they're worded.
Wow, what a bold theme! I love it!
I'll start out with the keyword and cards from the custom expansion I've never finished. Thanks to Demon and linkblade for providing help for creating the tooltips!
Some background info:
I picture this keyword and those cards arriving in an expansion called "The Great Air Race" which takes place in the Jade Forest on Pandaria and revolves around the Order of the Cloud Serpent, so prepare for Dragons, Pandaren and first and foremost... Mounts! Every class gets a Legendary Mount card to help them win the race. With the exception of Druid I used their WoW class mounts for these. I’m really surprised Blizzard hasn’t walked down this path a long time ago. They are so cool! Winning "The Great Air Race" will not only be a matter of speed, but also of endurance. And that's where my custom keyword comes in - Stamina (x). It activates when a minion survives (x) turns on the battlefield as a start of turn effect. To help identifying minions with this effect, they would be flagged with a little hour glass at their bottom, similar to the lightning bolt for other effects. The counting of turns would work just like it does with Dormant minions.
I notice I am confused. Something I believe isn't true. How do I know what I think I know?
Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, hpmor.com
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.
Not to monopolize the page with my ideas, but I have another one: Launch! Coming from an outer space/rocketry sort of flavor, Launch is the opposite of the new Finale, giving you a bonus if it's the first card you play in a turn.
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 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.
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?
Someone needs to give feedback or this competition is never going anywhere. I guess that'll be me.
I'm not really sure how much design space Transmute has, but it's a good mechanic and I don't think it has less design space than something like Overkill or Honorable Kill, so I think it's fine.
Gunslinger seems like an okay idea for a mechanic, but as you noted, I feel like the idea is mostly taken by Divine Shield even if they're not exactly the same mechanic. This isn't really that important as far as the context of the competition is concerned, but I feel like the name doesn't really have much flavor diversity compared to "First Strike" (or "Quick Attack" which is what LoR uses for this mechanic) which can be applied to basically whatever you want it to. As Link noted, Deputy Instructor also wouldn't count since it doesn't use the mechanic itself.
First off, I think the idea of an air-racing expansion is fucking awesome and you should absolutely do it if you feel you're up to it.
I'm not exactly sure how Stamina works since the tooltip and your description just specifies "a minion" and not the Stamina minion itself. If I play a Stamina card when I've already had a minion on board for multiple turns, will it retroactively keep track of how many turns that minion has been alive and take that into account for the total? Does it get the effect right away if the minion in question happens to already meet the Stamina requirement when you play the Stamina card?
Scrap is a good mechanic. In a world where Hearthstone didn't originally have discard, it having Scrap instead would be astronomically better.
But as much as I do like the mechanic, it might be difficult for people to look past it as "just discard" but slightly different.
Hey, welcome aboard. Glad to see you here. I say this to everyone joining these comps for the first time, but I do hope you have fun and don't hesitate to ask us any questions if you need to. For future reference, it's better to post your idea in the Discussion Topic first to get some feedback to see how the entries can be tweaked and then post your submission.
I feel like Harmony with the way its applied flavorfully might be a bit undercut by the theme of Festival of Legends, which might dock some points from some voters, but then again… it might not. Harmony is a good mechanic and I think it has some cool design space to explore.
The balance of the cards seem a bit questionable. Ballad of the Hawk receives a pretty massive upgrade for the second (and later if you happen to get them) copies. Pogo-Hip-Hopper is a cute reference to [Hearthstone Card (Pogo Hopper) Not Found], but the combination of Echo and Harmony doesn't strike me the right way since Echo is specifically a Witchwood mechanic (except for SN1P-SN4P). Doremi, Lead Singer is a really cool idea, although I feel like Mage is a bit of a weird class to put it in since it doesn't have that many ways to copy minions unless you put it in a set where its gimmick is allowing Mage to do that.
Fatal Flaw feels very… weird. Very ambitious and very bizarre and I'm not sure how to feel about it.
I don't like Millhouse the UNSTOPPABLE! since he's basically invincible. You play it on basically any turn and it's pretty much guaranteed to live. It's especially troubling if it's played on turn 2 since he'll stick there for multiple turns at a turn and you can freely cast spells with the bonus damage with no penalty while also keeping board presence. Even if your opponent were to spend all their mana next turn on spells, then you spend all of your mana on spells, and then they spend all of theirs again next turn, it would still be alive (since either 8 or 10 mana has just been played at that point). It just stays alive too reliably while also being too threatening to be fair.
Feedback time!
On another note, thanks for your feedback! I'm a little surprised "Stamina" caused confusion. The way it's meant to work is that the effect triggers when the minion with the keyword survives (x) turns, so when The Prismatic Disc survives 2 turns, it gains Spell Damage +2 for example. How do you think could I word the tooltip to make this more clear?
I notice I am confused. Something I believe isn't true. How do I know what I think I know?
Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, hpmor.com
Just phrase the tooltip as "this minion" instead of "a minion".
With the knowledge that the minion itself has to survive that many turns, the keyword itself feels like it's probably weak for the same reason I said Duplicate was also weak. Relying on minions to survive in Hearthstone typically doesn't work out too well. As soon as you play The Prismatic Disc for example, your opponent is just going to kill it as soon as they can and you'll rarely get the Spell Damage from it.
Early feedback, will update more as they come in.
Legacy is an interesting keyword, though I don't know how interesting the design space of the keyword itself would be rather than just whatever weapon it's attached to. I actually think Legacy being a keyword that meant "This always keeps enchantments" could be more interesting if done right, although there's a chance that that ends up being kind of same-y and repetitive too.
Storm is probably the most interesting of the three keywords of your first batch. I think it sets itself apart from manathirst in a really interesting way, as evidenced by rain of arrows. I don't think rain of arrows simply having "Manathirst (7)" would be anywhere near balanced, so I think there is definitely room to explore this space.
Burden does not feel distinct enough from Quests in my opinion. Quests are already designed in a way that including them in your deck/activating them comes at a cost (or, at least the good ones are *cough* stormwind *cough*). That cost being including the card in your deck, having no turn 1 play, and most importantly, filling your deck with OTHER cards that probably wouldn't be there if they weren't included to complete the quest consistently. Burden certainly is different, making the quest essentially "complete" early in the game and dealing with the downside for the remainder of the game instead of for the first part of the game, but that develops different problems. Either the downside is so punishing that you would never want to play the Reward in the first place, or it's meaningless and you just played a 1 mana spell (that I assume starts in your opening hand like a quest? although I could be wrong) that just turns the game into a 1-sided slaughter from turn 1.
TL;DR, not unworkable, but I think it would be better to just stick with Quests.
Encore is cool, and very flavorful for a Shaman keyword. A lot of Shaman's "repeat your last/other battlecries this game" cards are really, really good, and sometimes so prohibitively powerful that they limit future design space. We all know which card(s) I'm talking about here LOL. However, Encore is a really nice fix to this problem by limiting which Battlecries can be affected by this new strong but balanced keyword. Nice!
Launch is also very nice, but I think it would be (I don't want to say better, but maybe more interesting) if it was the EXACT opposite of Finale, as in you have to play it and still have remaining mana left in your turn. That way, the bonus effect comes at the cost of disrupting your curve. Otherwise, a lot of these cards don't really feel like the Launch condition is a bonus, it just feels like an extra good card that slots right into your curve. Overall, still an interesting keyword too.
Half of the text in my feedback this week is going to be addressing your keywords! Haha. I love it though, so feel free to keep it coming.
Objective feels to me like Sidequest with extra steps. I also feel like with how complicated explaining both the setup and the reward are, it's going to be really limited to keep finding interesting/new ways of setting up objectives in only four lines of text on the card. I'm actually impressed by how much you managed to fit on there as is lol.
Transmute is really good, as we've already seen how popular the Tradeable keyword is, and this is very unique from that at the same time. I think in most cases, this is straight up better than Tradeable too, considering this trades other cards, not just itself. I think there is a lot of design space to explore here, good job.
Gunslinger is also awesome, and as you've said, different than just Divine Shield. I was wondering how Hearthstone would be able to incorporate a "First-strike" like keyword that is different than just "Immune while attacking" and this is a very concise and efficient way of describing exactly that. I do think the keyword, if implemented into Hearthstone, would probably be something less explicitly gun-related (which is a shame, because the flavor on some of your cards is great), but other than that I really like the keyword, especially on The Phantom Ranger.
That expansion also does sound really badass, not gonna lie lol.
Stamina is pretty interesting for sure, but I think the design space here needs to be pretty specific. Specifically, I think these minions need to have ways of surviving or protecting themselves. As is, for example, The Prismatic Disc has exactly a 0% chance of ever surviving enough turns to get the bonus, as any deck you're up against is immediately going to assume you're a combo deck and use every resource available to kill it, probably. That being said, I do really like the other two Stamina (1) minions, as surviving for 1 turn is a lot more likely. It's just a little complicated, because it would be very boring for every Stamina card to be printed with Stamina (1). Only other thing I can think off the top of my head is I'm pretty sure that the Lunarwing Owl would be worded "Cast 'Moonfire' on each enemy minion." or "on all enemy minions," but yeah, I do like the keyword.
Scrap is exactly what you said it is, a much better version of the Discard keyword. 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? (Looking at Law of Equivalent Exchange, it seems that the "Scrap a card to draw another" line implies that you could choose NOT to and only get the first effect). If so, that seems even better. I honestly wish that this was the way that Discard worked in Hearthstone, I'd give Discolock a try.
Harmony is interesting for sure. That being said, I think both of the first two cards with it are really, really pushed, and the third one seems unplayable unless like Demon said, Mage's set mechanic is being able to get copies of cards in hand. In that case, it feels like the effect is extremely overpowered if mage is able to do that consistantly. Either way, this keyword definitely has potential, and as an eternal Value Mage player, I would LOVE to see some Harmony cards printed for mage.
Fatal Flaw seems really cool, if used in moderation. I think it's one of those keywords that should become maybe a rarely used evergreen keyword, like Immune. I disagree with the thought that Millhouse is too powerful. Maybe he's a little under-costed for such a sticky minion, but I love that the effect is symmetrical for both players. Either way, Spell Damage +1 is not a game breaking effect to have for a few turns, unless possibly it's just that you have it so early in the game.
Maybe Fatal Flaw should instead work so that they can be brought down to 1 health but not killed, or maybe so they should die as soon as their Fatal Flaw is met. Either way, probably needs some work, but I like the direction it's headed.