Thank you, that's great feedback. I honestly haven't thought about Cabalist's Tome. So two lessons learned already with my first entry: be sure the art isn't already in use and doublecheck for similar cards in the game.
What do you think about the rarity? The tome being an epic makes me feel like I got that aspect wrong, too...
Another first time participant here :-) I'm really excited! Could someone please explain to me how to add images to this thread, though? What am I to enter into the "source" field?
Edit: Since it's my first try, feedback would be really appreciated. Here are some of my thoughts about the card: I'm currently enjoying JambaJooze's Wild Aggro Quest Mage. That made me want to create a cheap Mage spell generator which obviously screams RENO!! in the Year of the Dragon narrative. "Genius" is a reference to Reno ;-) Twinspell further helps completing the quest, so that was my keyword. There was a cool piece of art with Reno holding the Gatling Gun, but I decided against it in favor of the scrolls because the generated spells are added to your hand and not cast. The hardest part was balancing the card. Arcane Intellect draws 2 for 3, but those are not random. So I went with Tome of Intellect for reference and extrapolated. The downside of the spells being random was heavy enough for me to not increase the cost of the card by 1 for the twinspell-tag, but that surely is debateable. In the end, this card heavily supports Open the Waygate, Raid the Sky Temple and Learn Draconic. It also gives Casino Mage one more toy for the early game.
Edit 2: Oh dear. I have never played Raid the Sky Temple and wasn't aware of the fact that I used its art for my card. Just randomly got it from an art site. I'll just show myself out.
I just dm'ed Iioo, asking him to come back to us and see if someone got it right. I suggest if he doesn't do so within the next 24 hours, anyone with a good idea can post the next riddle.
"Rised" could be refering to Rise of Shadows. When that expansion was released, Ungoro, Frozen Throne and Kobolds rotated, so it could be any card from those. Then there's the HoF'ing of Divine Favor, Doomguard and Naturalize. Since the riddle is written from a first person view and there's only one minion card among the HoF'ed candidates, I go with Doomguard.
@DestroyeR: are you still updating the leaderboard in the original post? I could help with a quick count.
Is it Brightwing? "Unpredictable" means were looking for a RNG card. This could give you Scargil or Baku the Mooneater (in wild)... not sure about the glowing part though. That sounds like the card has a conditional effect which makes it glow in your hand when it's fulfilled.
This deck is nuts. Didn't lose a single game between 10 and 6, went against Secret Mage, Even Shaman, Cube Lock, some sort of Control Shaman... you name it.
One question though: I'm missing Luna and currently play Chenvaala in her place. It's a golden copy I got from a pack and I don't see any other use for it. What do you think... dust and replace?
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I don't see the need for HoFing anything right now. I do have some sympathy for people wanting to see Leeroy Jenkins, Divine Favor or Malygos gone and I understand their reasoning well enough. I like those cards and their flavor though and my foremost concern is the question what they would be replaced with. I found the last round of substitutes quite awful and I would hate to see such iconic cards swapped with something like those. Imagine Blizzard HoFing Maly and giving us Brightwing instead...
tl;dr: I don't see the necessity but won't argue as long as there are good substitutes.
To hell with rationality, I will craft Unseal the Vault, Halazzi, the Lynx and Boommaster Flark tonight and create that quest hunter deck. Nevermind I already had pulled them all from packs once and dusted them. Someone stop me please?
I feel you. Imho, this is a result of the new Blizzard politics - they're less careful with the balancing of new cards and compensate by nerfing faster. It's a good thing they keep things shifting and evolving these days, so the game doesn't get stale too fast. Remember when Rastakhan's came out and nobody played 90% of the cards because they just weren't strong enough? At least that's how it felt for me at the time. That was the old politics, they were too careful and released majorly bad cards if you compare them to the new ones.
As you pointed out, the risk of releasing something as powerful as DoD is huge powercreep... but that will surely result in a huge meta shift once the year of the dragon rotates out next year.
Anyway... I've been thinking along those very lines these days because I had been planing to go through my collection and dust what I don't need and create what I want to try out for literally weeks. I haven't tried out embiggen druid yet, I'd like to try quest hunter but miss the quest, halazzi and flark because I dusted them months ago... the point is, I don't have the time to do more than the daily quests and play another 2 or 3 games each day, if that. So I concluded to quit standard for good. I like how Blizzard comes across more quickly with nerfs and the events in between expansions, but the meta has gotten too fast for me while I have less and less time to play. I do regularly preorder expansions so I do have the ressources to keep up with the game in theory, but I don't feel like it's worth it anymore. The value of my cards is much higher in wild.
tl;dr: you're right. I'm switching to wild for good.
I'm a little skeptical on two points, though. Maybe you can explain your thoughts on those some more?
1) "Your table" Match-making / duration of games Say I create my own table. It then ends up in a potentially reeeeeeeeally long list of tables until someone chooses to play with me. Next my opponent has to fully grasp my rules and build a deck which meets those rules. So between creating or even publishing my table and actually starting a game quite some time will pass... like... 5-10 minutes or something? That doesn't sound healthy for the game mode. The bright side is that this shouldn't be a problem for the other modes. But "your table" sure as hell looks veeeeery sexy in concept and might end up being really annoying because of the points I tried to make.
2) New rewards I don't really get the point of the new rewards. A pack token is nothing else than 100 gold which can't be spent for entry fees. And while pack sleeves look like something one could really be excited about (I mean who DOESN'T hate pack rng?), I fear it could tip the scales too far in a pay2win direction (obviously dependend of how they were to be obtained). The point is, you might end up enlarging the gap between f2p-players and p2w-players. Right now, everybody can climb the ladder and get bigger rewards. If you hide those new rewards behind an entry fee, you lower the accessability to the probably best rewards in the game. I don't have an easy solution for this, but maybe we might avoid the problem by just simply sticking to the usual rewards of cards / dust / gold / packs and increasing their volume according to the players achievements. (Side note: that's why european soccer is so boring. The big guys always go to the Champions League and then earn the big money which helps them securing their claims the next season. The only way to avoid this is to outrun the market by flooding the competition with money like the English Premierleague does. I very much prefer the Americans drafting systems and salary caps but don't see how they could be implemented in soccer or HS.)
I think the Yeti-line refers to a minion which costs 4 and has worse stats than Chillwind Yeti. My first guess is Arathi Weaponsmith, although the line about the draft might imply that it's a neutral card so everybody can draft it.
Edit: We're also probably looking for a common, since the effect is "commonly" used. Edit 2: If you're okay with that, I'd like to add Dark Iron Dwarf as my neutral guess.
Thanks for the list! I've never deleted my bomb warrior from before DoD because I had the feeling it was still competetive. Those upgrades look great! I'll give it a try this weekend.
- 1-1: Most of the times: no. I play for fun (on ladder nevertheless) and if I happen to like a T1 deck I see how far I can get with it. But no more try-hard-grinding after that one-time legend goal was achieved. - 1-2: Dumpster Legend. - 1-3: Rank 3.
- 2-1: Blackrock Mountain. - 2-2: No.
- 3-1: No. - 3-2: -
- 4-1: -
Standard
- 1-1: Yes. - 1-2: Yes. - 1-3: No.
- 2-1: Don't know, I don't play there. - 2-2: Yes. - 2-3: I feel like the game is harder, that is my opponents are better at the beginning of the month. That doesn't necessarily mean all of them are rushing for legend, though. I would rather say yes than no if you need a straight answer. - 2-4: I don't know, I don't play there.
- 3-1: I play HS to have fun. For me this usually stops at rank 5. I don't like the grind that follows that floor. - 3-2: Better rewards. Wouldn't it be fitting to reward a legendary for reaching legend? They could even make it a specific one for each month.
- 4-1: I have no idea what needs highly competetive players have. I guess making no difference between high legend and dumpster legend between months is very frustrating, though. - 4-2: Haha, no way. - 4-3: Apart from lacking skill? Time.
- 5-1: No. - 5-2: - - 5-3: - - 5-4: Yes. I once participated in a private tournament, I liked that.
- 6-1: Yes. - 6-2: The ranked floors improoved the experience a lot. For me, there is a clean line between fun-oriented people and really competetive players which is rank 5. It's easier to enjoy the game when you know what to expect.
-7-1: (Re-?) Establish win streaks between 5 and legend to make it less of a grind.
Grandmaster, a new competitive format.
- 1-1: No. - 1-2: No. - 1-3: No. - 1-4: No. (A major part of the format is the fact that you lose ranks when you don't play. I can't afford huge amounts of time to play every day and therefor I probably wouldn't play the format.)
- 2-1: 500. - 2-2: 5 Euros.
- 3-1: Yes, if everybody had access to all of the cards. No if that was not the case. - 3-2: Yes because meta shake-ups and killing OP decks is a good thing. No because that would feel extremely unfair to f2p players.
- 4-1: Yes. - 4-2: They should be better than standard rewards, but not exceedingly so. Like standard gets normal cards, Grandmaster gets golden cards is okay, but rewarding hero skins other players could not obtain by other means would not be okay. A free ticket for next month if you finish above average would be nice, too.
- 5-1: Different laddering, I guess. Another cardpool would probably be not interesting enough. - 5-2: Yes. Maybe like Arena without the drafting? Whoever loses a game gets eliminated and you can only play against opponents with the same number of victories. To adress lopsided matchups, opponents have to play best of three with three different decks and can't use any of them twice.
- 6-1: NO. (I'm not good enough.)
- 7-1: I find it really hard to come up with something genuienly new. Then there are a million different ways to play the game and interests which attract or don't attract the player base and potential new players. You've set yourself a real challenge here. My respect for that. Thanks for trying to make the game better!
That was actually the first thing I thought about when Reno transformed. Well played!
Thank you, that's great feedback. I honestly haven't thought about Cabalist's Tome. So two lessons learned already with my first entry: be sure the art isn't already in use and doublecheck for similar cards in the game.
What do you think about the rarity? The tome being an epic makes me feel like I got that aspect wrong, too...
Time's up, the next round is up for grabs. Who has an idea?
Another first time participant here :-) I'm really excited! Could someone please explain to me how to add images to this thread, though? What am I to enter into the "source" field?
Edit: Since it's my first try, feedback would be really appreciated. Here are some of my thoughts about the card: I'm currently enjoying JambaJooze's Wild Aggro Quest Mage. That made me want to create a cheap Mage spell generator which obviously screams RENO!! in the Year of the Dragon narrative. "Genius" is a reference to Reno ;-) Twinspell further helps completing the quest, so that was my keyword. There was a cool piece of art with Reno holding the Gatling Gun, but I decided against it in favor of the scrolls because the generated spells are added to your hand and not cast. The hardest part was balancing the card. Arcane Intellect draws 2 for 3, but those are not random. So I went with Tome of Intellect for reference and extrapolated. The downside of the spells being random was heavy enough for me to not increase the cost of the card by 1 for the twinspell-tag, but that surely is debateable. In the end, this card heavily supports Open the Waygate, Raid the Sky Temple and Learn Draconic. It also gives Casino Mage one more toy for the early game.
Edit 2: Oh dear. I have never played Raid the Sky Temple and wasn't aware of the fact that I used its art for my card. Just randomly got it from an art site. I'll just show myself out.
I just dm'ed Iioo, asking him to come back to us and see if someone got it right. I suggest if he doesn't do so within the next 24 hours, anyone with a good idea can post the next riddle.
"Rised" could be refering to Rise of Shadows. When that expansion was released, Ungoro, Frozen Throne and Kobolds rotated, so it could be any card from those. Then there's the HoF'ing of Divine Favor, Doomguard and Naturalize. Since the riddle is written from a first person view and there's only one minion card among the HoF'ed candidates, I go with Doomguard.
@DestroyeR: are you still updating the leaderboard in the original post? I could help with a quick count.
Could it be as simple as Plague of Murlocs? Random, murloc, 3 mana. I don't see how it fits the other clues, though :/
Is it Brightwing? "Unpredictable" means were looking for a RNG card. This could give you Scargil or Baku the Mooneater (in wild)... not sure about the glowing part though. That sounds like the card has a conditional effect which makes it glow in your hand when it's fulfilled.
This deck is nuts. Didn't lose a single game between 10 and 6, went against Secret Mage, Even Shaman, Cube Lock, some sort of Control Shaman... you name it.
One question though: I'm missing Luna and currently play Chenvaala in her place. It's a golden copy I got from a pack and I don't see any other use for it. What do you think... dust and replace?
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I don't see the need for HoFing anything right now. I do have some sympathy for people wanting to see Leeroy Jenkins, Divine Favor or Malygos gone and I understand their reasoning well enough. I like those cards and their flavor though and my foremost concern is the question what they would be replaced with. I found the last round of substitutes quite awful and I would hate to see such iconic cards swapped with something like those. Imagine Blizzard HoFing Maly and giving us Brightwing instead...
tl;dr: I don't see the necessity but won't argue as long as there are good substitutes.
To hell with rationality, I will craft Unseal the Vault, Halazzi, the Lynx and Boommaster Flark tonight and create that quest hunter deck. Nevermind I already had pulled them all from packs once and dusted them. Someone stop me please?
I feel you. Imho, this is a result of the new Blizzard politics - they're less careful with the balancing of new cards and compensate by nerfing faster. It's a good thing they keep things shifting and evolving these days, so the game doesn't get stale too fast. Remember when Rastakhan's came out and nobody played 90% of the cards because they just weren't strong enough? At least that's how it felt for me at the time. That was the old politics, they were too careful and released majorly bad cards if you compare them to the new ones.
As you pointed out, the risk of releasing something as powerful as DoD is huge powercreep... but that will surely result in a huge meta shift once the year of the dragon rotates out next year.
Anyway... I've been thinking along those very lines these days because I had been planing to go through my collection and dust what I don't need and create what I want to try out for literally weeks. I haven't tried out embiggen druid yet, I'd like to try quest hunter but miss the quest, halazzi and flark because I dusted them months ago... the point is, I don't have the time to do more than the daily quests and play another 2 or 3 games each day, if that. So I concluded to quit standard for good. I like how Blizzard comes across more quickly with nerfs and the events in between expansions, but the meta has gotten too fast for me while I have less and less time to play. I do regularly preorder expansions so I do have the ressources to keep up with the game in theory, but I don't feel like it's worth it anymore. The value of my cards is much higher in wild.
tl;dr: you're right. I'm switching to wild for good.
Really great concept, I like it a lot!
I'm a little skeptical on two points, though. Maybe you can explain your thoughts on those some more?
1) "Your table" Match-making / duration of games
Say I create my own table. It then ends up in a potentially reeeeeeeeally long list of tables until someone chooses to play with me. Next my opponent has to fully grasp my rules and build a deck which meets those rules. So between creating or even publishing my table and actually starting a game quite some time will pass... like... 5-10 minutes or something? That doesn't sound healthy for the game mode. The bright side is that this shouldn't be a problem for the other modes. But "your table" sure as hell looks veeeeery sexy in concept and might end up being really annoying because of the points I tried to make.
2) New rewards
I don't really get the point of the new rewards. A pack token is nothing else than 100 gold which can't be spent for entry fees. And while pack sleeves look like something one could really be excited about (I mean who DOESN'T hate pack rng?), I fear it could tip the scales too far in a pay2win direction (obviously dependend of how they were to be obtained). The point is, you might end up enlarging the gap between f2p-players and p2w-players. Right now, everybody can climb the ladder and get bigger rewards. If you hide those new rewards behind an entry fee, you lower the accessability to the probably best rewards in the game. I don't have an easy solution for this, but maybe we might avoid the problem by just simply sticking to the usual rewards of cards / dust / gold / packs and increasing their volume according to the players achievements.
(Side note: that's why european soccer is so boring. The big guys always go to the Champions League and then earn the big money which helps them securing their claims the next season. The only way to avoid this is to outrun the market by flooding the competition with money like the English Premierleague does. I very much prefer the Americans drafting systems and salary caps but don't see how they could be implemented in soccer or HS.)
Thanks for your efforts, this truely great work!
Sorry ArngrimUndying, I actually thought of Mischief Maker but had no time to look up the name of the card or create a new riddle so I didn't answer.
So an unpredictable, versatile, odd-costed card... Shudderwock?
Waxadred it is, well done!
Wrong guess, though most of your reasoning is correct.
I descent on silent wings
I am one and many things
Fear my flame and fear my breath
Ignoring me will be your death
I think the Yeti-line refers to a minion which costs 4 and has worse stats than Chillwind Yeti. My first guess is Arathi Weaponsmith, although the line about the draft might imply that it's a neutral card so everybody can draft it.
Edit: We're also probably looking for a common, since the effect is "commonly" used.
Edit 2: If you're okay with that, I'd like to add Dark Iron Dwarf as my neutral guess.
Thanks for the list! I've never deleted my bomb warrior from before DoD because I had the feeling it was still competetive. Those upgrades look great! I'll give it a try this weekend.
Player History
- 1-1: Most of the times: no. I play for fun (on ladder nevertheless) and if I happen to like a T1 deck I see how far I can get with it. But no more try-hard-grinding after that one-time legend goal was achieved.
- 1-2: Dumpster Legend.
- 1-3: Rank 3.
- 2-1: Blackrock Mountain.
- 2-2: No.
- 3-1: No.
- 3-2: -
- 4-1: -
Standard
- 1-1: Yes.
- 1-2: Yes.
- 1-3: No.
- 2-1: Don't know, I don't play there.
- 2-2: Yes.
- 2-3: I feel like the game is harder, that is my opponents are better at the beginning of the month. That doesn't necessarily mean all of them are rushing for legend, though. I would rather say yes than no if you need a straight answer.
- 2-4: I don't know, I don't play there.
- 3-1: I play HS to have fun. For me this usually stops at rank 5. I don't like the grind that follows that floor.
- 3-2: Better rewards. Wouldn't it be fitting to reward a legendary for reaching legend? They could even make it a specific one for each month.
- 4-1: I have no idea what needs highly competetive players have. I guess making no difference between high legend and dumpster legend between months is very frustrating, though.
- 4-2: Haha, no way.
- 4-3: Apart from lacking skill? Time.
- 5-1: No.
- 5-2: -
- 5-3: -
- 5-4: Yes. I once participated in a private tournament, I liked that.
- 6-1: Yes.
- 6-2: The ranked floors improoved the experience a lot. For me, there is a clean line between fun-oriented people and really competetive players which is rank 5. It's easier to enjoy the game when you know what to expect.
-7-1: (Re-?) Establish win streaks between 5 and legend to make it less of a grind.
Grandmaster, a new competitive format.
- 1-1: No.
- 1-2: No.
- 1-3: No.
- 1-4: No. (A major part of the format is the fact that you lose ranks when you don't play. I can't afford huge amounts of time to play every day and therefor I probably wouldn't play the format.)
- 2-1: 500.
- 2-2: 5 Euros.
- 3-1: Yes, if everybody had access to all of the cards. No if that was not the case.
- 3-2: Yes because meta shake-ups and killing OP decks is a good thing. No because that would feel extremely unfair to f2p players.
- 4-1: Yes.
- 4-2: They should be better than standard rewards, but not exceedingly so. Like standard gets normal cards, Grandmaster gets golden cards is okay, but rewarding hero skins other players could not obtain by other means would not be okay. A free ticket for next month if you finish above average would be nice, too.
- 5-1: Different laddering, I guess. Another cardpool would probably be not interesting enough.
- 5-2: Yes. Maybe like Arena without the drafting? Whoever loses a game gets eliminated and you can only play against opponents with the same number of victories. To adress lopsided matchups, opponents have to play best of three with three different decks and can't use any of them twice.
- 6-1: NO. (I'm not good enough.)
- 7-1: I find it really hard to come up with something genuienly new. Then there are a million different ways to play the game and interests which attract or don't attract the player base and potential new players. You've set yourself a real challenge here. My respect for that. Thanks for trying to make the game better!