Words of Power - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread

Thank you all for the feedback! I think I got too carried away on the idea of making minions that stuck around and had a mini-quest attached to them that I ended up making an overly complex keyword. Here's my next idea that should be a lot simpler:

Maddened: This can't attack on your turn. At the start of the opponent's turn, they choose a valid target for this to attack.

I think that Maddened as a mechanic is pretty cool because of how it encourages counterplay and can be used as both a buff and a debuff. Maddened minions attack at the start of the next turn, which essentially gives them a worse version of Rush (or charge if the opponent's board is empty, similarly to how Gnome Muncher works). However, the opponent can play around this by playing either small minions to waste the Maddened attacks or large minions to make unfavorable trades for you. This mechanic would be introduced in an expansion centered around the Old Gods and the forces fighting against them, this time with more of a focus on the elements of mind corruption, which maddened plays into very well. Yogg-Saron, Lord of Insanity exemplifies this theme through giving you Mad Whispers to either drive your own minions insane for a pseudo-rush effect, or giving enemy minions Maddened to force their next attack to target what you want it to (making it a pseudo-silence). My worry is that the card effect might be too weak and that Yogg'Saron itself isn't very flashy, so let me know if you have ideas to fix that problem without using too much card text. Corrupted Ogre is another play on the Maddened mechanic in that it serves as a sticky board-control tool that forces your opponent to trade it into their minions since it can't go face (but it also becomes useless if the opponent has no minions). Maddened Outcast uses the mechanic mainly as a debuff to lock down threatening enemy minions as long as you can keep a few tokens around. He can also be played on an empty board as a 3/2 with pseudo-charge.

What do y'all think of this design? I think it's a lot simpler but it is still somewhat complex and unprecedented since it forces an action on your opponent's turn, but I think it's a plausible keyword in modern Hearthstone and is relatively intuitive (basically the opponent is in charge of the minion's attacks, not you).

Also, I'll give feedback later today when I have time :)

I'm still not sure which keyword I'll go with, but I've updated Deputy Instructor to fit the criteria, as you guys pointed out.

Feedback + tooltips for those who don't have one:

Hello after a long time. I wanted to use one of my former keyword Bleed (x) with with a change.

I changed it to Infect(X) since we have the actual effect in the game right now for Death Knight. So here it comes;

Infect(x) isn't a keyword only for death knights tho. You can see that on Shaman, Rogue, Demon Hunter, Warlock and Druid too. Shamans and Druids can use it with their nature magic, Rogues can reach that word with their oils for their weapon and Warlocks and Demon Hunters can use fel to infect their opponents.

I edited the existing cards Alexandros Mograine and Blood Boil like this;

but they won't be my entries since it would not be creative. Here my entries come;

Information on Plague Sprout ; it can only increase once. I mean it won't deal 3 damage after it increases to 2. Using the spell twice deals 1 damage and then other 1 damage and when it is increased, 2 damage and then 2 damage like how fatigue damage deals in an order. Using the spell twice in a turn won't make it increase on 4 turns instead of 8 turns and using the spell twice won't increase the damage to 3 by that what i mean is, each spell's damage is its own. if you use one on turn 4 and the other on turn 12 for example, first one will deal 2 damage and the second will deal 1 damage until it increases in 8 turns.

Edit: Changed the wording on Apocalypse.

Edit 2: I've created more cards to show how it can be on other type of cards like minions, weapons, spells and locations. Help me decide to choose for competition please. :)

Edit: 3: Added runes to Fink Ployd.

Quote From Dolphinslayer

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?

Yes. I mentioned it in the text, but that's easy to miss in the absolute textwall that this week's thread has become. I was planning on either adding it to the tooltip or mentioning it in the description.

Quote From anchorm4n

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.

That's fair. Scrap doesn't quite have the risk of discarding random cards, unless you really need that extra effect like the second destroy from Unstable Void. But I personally really like the versatility of it. It creates a bit of strategy, which I always love to see on cards. Besides, otherwise it wouldn't really warrant bring a full keyword anymore.

Feedback:

Quote From AeroJulwin

Almaniarra

Infect should probably exclude heroes the same way poisonous does, because you're severely limiting your own design space here. The cards you made for it are interesting, but I'm not sure how well they would perform, since you generally don't want to wait a turn for a minion to die. Blood Boil is the only card like this they printed so far and that one functions more as an AOE where if the surviving targets attack your hero that will simply guarantee your hero will get some health back.

And keep in mind that Blightfang, which is half of the existing infect cards, has its infection effect trigger when the targets die.

Well, actually i have something like these in my mind too but i didn't add them just because of the rules since they don't have the actual keyword.

(I had to do this. :) )

Feedback:

I'll probably go with Gunslinger, as it's the generally preferred option. People seem to be very divided regarding its flavor, so here are two alternate names for it:

Quick Draw is a middle ground that keeps some wild west flavor while also being more generic than Gunslinger.

Swift, on the other hand, goes all the way in the flavor-agnostic direction.

Keep in mind I still plan for all the cards to be wild west themed (I designed it as an expansion exclusive keyword, after all)

Based on feedback, I've changed the Maddened Keyword to:

Maddened: When this attacks, the opponent chooses the target at the start of their turn.

The major mechnical difference is that this version of Maddened does not give the minion pseudo-rush, freezing a Maddened character stops it from attacking, and the player in control of the Maddened character can choose whether or not to make it attack (when you attack with a Maddened character you choose the target, then the minion stops mid-attack and the opponent chooses the target at the start of their turn before drawing a card or taking any actions).

I redesigned Yogg-Saron to not need tokens, I think it's a cool design but I'm on the fence about whether it is worth including. Vicious Basilisk are a play on a corrupted version of Stoneskin Basilisk and Ogre Magi, like how Whispers of the Old Gods had corrupted versions of older cards. Xal'atath was my idea for a Maddened Weapon, in this case it gives Shadow Priest a lot of healing and damage, but the opponent can play around it by keeping small minions on the board to force Xal'atath to attack into. I worry that Maddened might make it a bit weak but I think with 2 or 3 Attack it becomes worth it just for incremental board control and healing. Flavor-wise Chromie provides an alternate version of the Anachronos effect as she is a time dragon corrupted by the Old Gods, while Samuro has the same stats as the original Samuro (with the same handbuff synergy) but is much weaker and more balanced because the opponent can make it hit only 2 minions.

Which 3 of these cards do you think make the best use of the keyword? Any balance changes I should make?

I ended up going with Gunslinger. Sadly, I couldn't implement most of the feedback you guys gave, as I don't have much time this week.

Hey everyone, i'm super late this week D:

A new keyword for hunter! Lean in more in the Hunter fantasy by gaining bonuses for successfully hunting something in a turn!

• Reptile Fetcher - Functionally a 2 mana 4/3 if you can activate Predator. Of course you can hit something else of higher priority other than the Crocolisk. The purpose of the card is to also offer you something to hunt in the case the enemy has no minions. The crocolisk is just the vanilla 2/3 one, hope it's clear enough that it doesn't need a token.
• Night Hunt - Hit and track your prey! A little less efficient damage/mana value but the Rush carries over to the next turn allowing you to play a Beast and attack right away to trigger another Predator next turn.
• Cobraptor - Very proud of the name first of all lol. But the card is similar in that it promotes beast play and hunting fantasy. You select your mark and sick your pet onto it next turn, hopefully killing it for Predator. If you are already in a chain of kills you can make killing the cobraptor super hard with stealth. He's beefy enough to benefit from Night Hunt too, possibly taking down 2 to 3 targets even.

Congrats, Wassculaire!