Very cool idea, I love this! What would you think about additionally taking one or two cards that haven't done so well and explain the mistakes that were made or ways to improve them? Do you think people might take that badly?
Okay guys, last try for this week. What would you say if Embiggen and Baku the Mooneater had a baby? It's quite hard to balance since it will usually effect all of our minions but on average only half of the opponent's. That's why I felt better reducing the buff to +1/+1. Is this any good?
This beauty got me 7 downvotes in less than an hour on imgur. I see this in a Control Mage deck as a disruption tool. Probably very polarising and the art would be hard to find, so here's another card:
The discover hits our own deck because a gambler usually knows the stacks, but not the outcome. I wanted it to have an immediate impact so the swapped card gets added to hand. Here starts the trouble: I'm not sure about the wording. 1) Should it be a "random" card from my opponent's deck? 2)Is it okay to add "it" to your hand, meaning the card from the opponent's deck? For the stats I used Hench-Clan Burglar as a reference. I was also toying around with something cost-related like reducing the cost of the swapped card by 1 or pulling a card from the opponent that costs 1 more than my own, but there's only so much space there. It could work out if the card doesn't get added to hand, though.
Too bad, but thanks for letting me know this early in the competition. Back to the drawing board it is.
@Dermostatic: That's a nice idea with great flavor. If you find the place for it, you could make it shuffle a worthless imp into their deck like in Impbalming. The cost is fine.
@KANSAS: The new name and the new art fit your card a lot better. Well done!
@Demon: Both of your new cards look good. Wildfire would be way more playable in a competitive sense. The card is pretty strong so I feel better with 4 mana.
Thank you! I think the easiest way to improve it would be to lower the cost. At 6 mana, maybe even 5, it would be way stronger. But at that power level I could as well change my mind and submit the legendary :D How do you like that one?
As for the effects, I didn't want to do the obvious and shuffle stuff in their deck that negates the highlander benefits. Instead I tried to find solid effects that go along with the class identity. The point is, those cards already are useful against highlander decks AND regular decks, because every deck eventually becomes a highlander deck if the game goes on long enough. So what I'm trying to do actually is pushing Control Demon Hunter as an archetype with a strong late game card which has a huge benefit if you should happen to face a highlander deck.
Okay forget about recycling my old card, I had a new idea! I want to turn the highlander condition around and check if my opponent has no duplicates in his deck. This will certainly happen at some point in (almost) every match, so the effect won't be useless if your opponent doesn't go highlander. But you will benefit from it way earlier if he does!
The first idea that came to my mind was a Demon Hunter Card granting your Demons Lifesteal. I went with buffing Demons in hand and making the card itself expansive to prevent a buffed Demon to be played on the same turn. I could switch it to buff minions on board, but that would be totally OP in my eyes. What do you think?
Edit: I would be very grateful if one of the staff could confirm or deny that checking for duplicates is enough interaction with the opponent's deck to qualify for this competition. No need to be happy about a cool idea if it's bound to be disqualified. ;-)
After some consideration I figured Alandien's effect is probably too strong for such a weak restriction. I will make her a Highlander Card herself and store her away for future competitions.
I want to keep the mechanic, though, so here's my alternative card:
Feedback would be very welcome and pretty pretty please somebody tell me the effect qualifies!
Okay forget about recycling my old card, I had a new idea! I want to turn the highlander condition around and check if my opponent has no duplicates in his deck. This will certainly happen at some point in (almost) every match, so the effect won't be useless if your opponent doesn't go highlander. But you will benefit from it way earlier if he does!
The first idea that came to my mind was a Demon Hunter Card granting your Demons Lifesteal. I went with buffing Demons in hand and making the card itself expansive to prevent a buffed Demon to be played on the same turn. I could switch it to buff minions on board, but that would be totally OP in my eyes. What do you think?
Edit: I would be very grateful if one of the staff could confirm or deny that checking for duplicates is enough interaction with the opponent's deck to qualify for this competition. No need to be happy about a cool idea if it's bound to be disqualified. ;-)
I like this idea, it would sure see play in most highlander decks in wild. The only reason I can think of for not giving 5 stars is that's a tech card. Well done!
Xarkkal:
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I can't put my finger on the reason for this, but I don't like Xavius. Maybe the issue is that only half of the decks are corrupted, which makes the game basically dependend on who is lucky enough to draw non-corrupted cards. I see potential to toy around with this by using mana cheating mechanics like Darkest Hour or Skull, but somehow I don't like it (yet). Could you add some info about the lore? Is corruption something Xavius is known for?
Destroyer:
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I prefer Silmother Siqara. I dislike Go'thol because I don't want a mechanic in HS that reveals so much info about my deck to my opponent AND grants them influence to what I (don't) draw next. I don't like Anaxxis either, this could feel horrible if played against an empty handed opponent. Siqara works well with Fal'dorei Strider or The Darkness. Those were both part of Kobolds and Catacombs, so maybe you could place it there, though I understand the using a custom watermark is always a safe bet. The flavor fits Rogue pretty well.
KANSAS:
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While I generally dislike those "put it at the bottom of their deck" cards, yours looks fair because it targets minions who are already in play. It feels familiar to Entomb, which brings me to my one question / problem: why is this a warlock card? I'll go art hunting myself later and will let you know if I stumble upon something fitting.
Conduit:
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Nicely done, that was my fallback idea if reworking my card wasn't okay with a majority of you people. Balancing these effects is hard, but I was even thinking about shuffling any minion into the opponents deck, so you can use it as removal against enemy minions. If that's too strong for you, I would go with shuffling at least two copies as a counter to highlander decks.
Pokeniner:
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I get your reasoning for the effect, but I don't feel it. As far as I know, the "casts when drawn" effect usually makes you draw another card and I would expect your token to work similarly. That way, you don't gain enough to make the effort worth it.
Hordaki:
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As I already told KANSAS, I usually dislike those cards which let you look at the opponen'ts deck and mess with their order. But your idea looks fair enough, it doesn't reveal too much and the influence you gain is somewhat restricted, too. I'm not sure if the stats aren't too strong, but I'm no expert on this at all. Well done!
thepowrofcheese:
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Nice idea, this is veeeery versatile. Really cool card!
Wailor:
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Haha, that's a fun idea. I don't like the artwork of the token, but the stats look fine. You should consider KANSAS' feedback, shuffling 3 cards that summon a doomsayer for your opponent (that is, you) sounds like a cool idea.
shaveyou:
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I prefer Roaring Inferno. A minor issue though: the artwork of the token doesn't fit the main card very well, it is rather yellowish while Inferno is mainly red. I get where the other's feedback is coming from, though, so maybe it's too strong.
Demonxz95:
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Eeeeevil! I would certainly play it myself, but hate it to be played against me. I'm not sure if this is balanced, Bomb Warrior was already good without it.
linkblade91:
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Burning Chainwhip is quite a risky card, I would be reluctant to play it. Shouldn't there be a red border around the text, if it's meant to be a Warrior card? Toxic Longtongue has a lot of flavor, it's my favorite of your suggestions. The one thing that's a bit off is the fact that it doesn't attack the minion it pulls. You could get lucky and draw something small and then remove something big. The flavor would suggest the toad to kill what it pulled with its tongue.
Neoguli:
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Sorry, but I'm not sold. The use for this card is very restricted and I would hate to draw this from a pack.
This was my submission for CDC 1.03 ("Do you copy?"). I really liked it and almost made it to the finals. It fits this week's theme pretty well so I'd like to rework it. Two things came to my mind:
1) Looking for a different character/art and tweaking the stats
Or
2) Reducing the rarity and make it cast only one spell.
What do you think? How can I make this better?
Will add feedback later, really cool ideas so far!
Man, I thought for sure my card would make it to the finals :(
oh well, GL to the finalists!
Maybe it looked too scary. If you play this late in the game when your opponent has a small hand, it comes close to being a 3 mana Time Warp. Of course the board isn't affected, but anyway... at least to my eyes it looks scary and a bit outlandish. I mean, having unplayable cards in hand because of an effect isn't something we're used to right now. Is there an example for this in the game? I can only imagine it might look like corrupted cards from that warlock watcher minion.
Good luck to all the finalists! And fingers crossed for my favorite this week, Counter Shot. Saving Grace should have made it, too, it was really a fair Ice Block with paladin flavor.
I agree, most of the Rogue secrets don't appeal to me either. My favorites are Counter Shot, Saving Grace and Maternal Instinct in that order, they all got 5 stars from me.
I'm not sure what to do about the "go dormant for 2 turns" issue. I will definitely give them all the same rating since I don't know if one of them knew of the others and I don't see any major differences between them (no spelling mistakes, art looks good on all of them, ...). I would initially have given 4 stars, maybe even 5, but that doesn't feel right anymore with three identical entries. I reduced my votes to 3 stars for the moment but I will think some more about it till the deadline tonight. It's a hard decision for me. Is someone willing to discuss how they are rating these cards and why?
I try to rate it like this: 1 star for balance, 1 star for aesthetics (perfect formatting, fitting art), 1 for creativity, and 1 star to be docked when one of those criteria is a spectacular fail (like horrible formatting and/or art, or blatantly OP/UP). That way, I can always keep a sense of fair rating without being overly harsh over a detail I dislike. How about you?
That's an impressive system and I think I will adapt my future evaluations accordingly because it looks very fair. I'm new to CDCs and so I instinctively did the following until now:
1) Checking for spelling mistakes, wording, stuff like that. I really don't like that, a card has to be outstanding in everything else to get 4 stars if there's something wrong with this point. Usually they end up between 1 and 3 stars.
2) Is the card balanced?
3) Flavor. Is the card fitting the class identity, the expansion, how are art and effect working together?
4) Creativity. Can I see the spark of something unique without the borders of traditional Hearthstone completely being torn down? That usually makes the difference between giving 4 or 5 stars for me.
5) What helps are things I think Xarkkal and linkblade mentioned: what could I do with this card, which scenarios are there to benefit from it or suffer because of it and last but not least: would I be happy to pull this from a pack (especially if it's an epic or a legendary)?
Thanks everybody for explaining how you rate cards, that was very insightful for me and I learned something today. I will now have another look at those entries. Good luck to you all!
Thanks a lot for that Pirate Galakrond Warrior list! That's exactly what I was looking for! I just love Deathwing, Mad Aspect and it's entry animation (CATACLYSM!!) and call me stupid but I'm also a huge fan of the Deathwing alternate Warrior hero but didn't feel comfortable playing a classic Pirate Warrior list with him. The flavor just wasn't there for me. That's fixed I guess :-)))
I agree, most of the Rogue secrets don't appeal to me either. My favorites are Counter Shot, Saving Grace and Maternal Instinct in that order, they all got 5 stars from me.
I'm not sure what to do about the "go dormant for 2 turns" issue. I will definitely give them all the same rating since I don't know if one of them knew of the others and I don't see any major differences between them (no spelling mistakes, art looks good on all of them, ...). I would initially have given 4 stars, maybe even 5, but that doesn't feel right anymore with three identical entries. I reduced my votes to 3 stars for the moment but I will think some more about it till the deadline tonight. It's a hard decision for me. Is someone willing to discuss how they are rating these cards and why?
I just lost an Arena match against a Mage who was dead on his feet and managed an incredible turn around. It started with Dune Sculptor into freezing my board, which gave him Kalecgos. Of course he pulled Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron from him. At that point I had already despaired. The box gave him not one but two Nagrand Slam and perfectly Shadowflameed my board. I still got him down to 1 HP and top decked a Frost Nova but of course he had some heal in hand, froze my last remaining minions and killed me the next turn, happily emoting "Thank you". Thank you indeed, RNG-esus.
Unfortunately no, we do not allow people to edit or remove their cards after submitting :( We always suggest people come here first if they want feedback on their ideas.
I can understand not making the card editable, but what about the description below it? Say you make a typo in it? Also totally missed this thread before I submitted my entry. Used to posting in a forum submission thread and all that. Guess the HearthPwn version of the competition I always played in needs to phase out of my head.
What I made (might help someone avoid making a copy):
While I really like this idea, there's already one submission which is nearly identical (minion goes dormant when played) and Elfensilver showed us another version of it 8 posts above of yours (hunter version, though). You can check the already submitted entries on your voting page. As I have no idea who had the idea first, I would give all of you the same raiting, but that's only my view and I wanted to let you know that there are similar cards around.
Thank you all for giving feedback! I decided to stick to the Freezing Mage Secret but added the 1 damage AOE as Wailor suggested. I figured it woud become half a blizzard that way, which makes for nice flavor. Linkblade's critic was very helpful, too - I tried to explain worries along your line of thoughts away in the card description. Finally, thanks to Almaniarra for helping me out with the name!
Here's more feedback:
@Lemushki
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The idea, the art and the name are cool, but in all else I have to agree with linkblade. Sorry :/
@Elfensilver
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I would go with the Hunter Secret but the reduce the number of dormant turns as Demon suggested. I feel you, finding art is my biggest obstacle, too. Often enough I pick the art first and then design all the rest around it because it is so frustrating if you have a cool idea but can't find art that fits it. Most of the time, I find my stuff here: www.artstation.com Search for Hearthstone but be very careful to check if the art is already in the game. Usually you have to scroll down a bit until you find fan art. Please let me know if you find another page like this!
@thepowrofcheese
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The power level of both iterations of Tricks of Trade is quite high because of the Discover effect. I would suggest to tune it down by casting a random secret from another class. City Watch would be a powerful addition to Mech Paladin, I like that one too.
@MenacingBagel
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I would suggest to check the wording with already existing cards, I'm pretty sure it should say "At the start of your turn". The rest of it is fine, it would be interesting to try this out. Nice synergies with lackeys, Pogo Hoppers and Battlecry minions in general.
@Wailor
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Haha, I like the flavour of the rabid dog. I used the art and the same concept in the CDC 1.08, "The price of power". It was called Rabid Track Hound and had Battlecry: Draw 2 cards and Deathrattle: Deal 5 damage to your hero. I didn't make it to the finals with it, but maybe your idea will be better received. From your other cards, I liked the explanation and the flavor of Squid Tactics a lot, but I'm not sure if the card isn't too strong.
@Wendeee
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I like both of them. As was already pointed out, Another Card to Play might be too situational, so Self Harm would be my choice. Maybe you could find a better name for it… what about Masochism? :D For the art problem, look at my feedback for Elfensilver.
Just want to say while I like to play with Highlander decks sometimes I hate to play against Zephyr.
Being Highlander is not that much trouble. And it's really horrible to be at the o tj er side of Zephyr when your opponent draws lethal out of hat (or actually Zephyr) as he have answers for everything. Board clear, direct damage, remove taunt.
And even more frustrating is when you play vs non Highlander decks and they still use bith Zephyr and Alexstrasa.
This. I won't go so far as not using him myself so you can rightfully call me a hypocrit, but I hated the card with all my heart ever since it was announced. This has nothing to do with playing well or even RNGesus smiling on you; this is just cheating.
Very cool idea, I love this! What would you think about additionally taking one or two cards that haven't done so well and explain the mistakes that were made or ways to improve them? Do you think people might take that badly?
Nice! I'm gonna see if I can scratch some dust together to craft Umbra and try both of those Deathrattle decks. Thanks for showcasing them!
Okay guys, last try for this week. What would you say if Embiggen and Baku the Mooneater had a baby? It's quite hard to balance since it will usually effect all of our minions but on average only half of the opponent's. That's why I felt better reducing the buff to +1/+1. Is this any good?
New day, new ideas!
This beauty got me 7 downvotes in less than an hour on imgur. I see this in a Control Mage deck as a disruption tool. Probably very polarising and the art would be hard to find, so here's another card:
The discover hits our own deck because a gambler usually knows the stacks, but not the outcome. I wanted it to have an immediate impact so the swapped card gets added to hand. Here starts the trouble: I'm not sure about the wording.
1) Should it be a "random" card from my opponent's deck?
2)Is it okay to add "it" to your hand, meaning the card from the opponent's deck?
For the stats I used Hench-Clan Burglar as a reference.
I was also toying around with something cost-related like reducing the cost of the swapped card by 1 or pulling a card from the opponent that costs 1 more than my own, but there's only so much space there. It could work out if the card doesn't get added to hand, though.
Feedback would be very welcome!
Too bad, but thanks for letting me know this early in the competition. Back to the drawing board it is.
@Dermostatic: That's a nice idea with great flavor. If you find the place for it, you could make it shuffle a worthless imp into their deck like in Impbalming. The cost is fine.
@KANSAS: The new name and the new art fit your card a lot better. Well done!
@Demon: Both of your new cards look good. Wildfire would be way more playable in a competitive sense. The card is pretty strong so I feel better with 4 mana.
Thank you! I think the easiest way to improve it would be to lower the cost. At 6 mana, maybe even 5, it would be way stronger. But at that power level I could as well change my mind and submit the legendary :D How do you like that one?
As for the effects, I didn't want to do the obvious and shuffle stuff in their deck that negates the highlander benefits. Instead I tried to find solid effects that go along with the class identity. The point is, those cards already are useful against highlander decks AND regular decks, because every deck eventually becomes a highlander deck if the game goes on long enough. So what I'm trying to do actually is pushing Control Demon Hunter as an archetype with a strong late game card which has a huge benefit if you should happen to face a highlander deck.
After some consideration I figured Alandien's effect is probably too strong for such a weak restriction. I will make her a Highlander Card herself and store her away for future competitions.
I want to keep the mechanic, though, so here's my alternative card:
Feedback would be very welcome and pretty pretty please somebody tell me the effect qualifies!
Okay forget about recycling my old card, I had a new idea! I want to turn the highlander condition around and check if my opponent has no duplicates in his deck. This will certainly happen at some point in (almost) every match, so the effect won't be useless if your opponent doesn't go highlander. But you will benefit from it way earlier if he does!
The first idea that came to my mind was a Demon Hunter Card granting your Demons Lifesteal. I went with buffing Demons in hand and making the card itself expansive to prevent a buffed Demon to be played on the same turn. I could switch it to buff minions on board, but that would be totally OP in my eyes. What do you think?
Edit: I would be very grateful if one of the staff could confirm or deny that checking for duplicates is enough interaction with the opponent's deck to qualify for this competition. No need to be happy about a cool idea if it's bound to be disqualified. ;-)
Feedback time!
grumpymonk:
Xarkkal:
Destroyer:
KANSAS:
Conduit:
Pokeniner:
Hordaki:
thepowrofcheese:
Wailor:
shaveyou:
Demonxz95:
linkblade91:
Neoguli:
Congrats linkblade!
This was my submission for CDC 1.03 ("Do you copy?"). I really liked it and almost made it to the finals. It fits this week's theme pretty well so I'd like to rework it. Two things came to my mind:
1) Looking for a different character/art and tweaking the stats
Or
2) Reducing the rarity and make it cast only one spell.
What do you think? How can I make this better?
Will add feedback later, really cool ideas so far!
Maybe it looked too scary. If you play this late in the game when your opponent has a small hand, it comes close to being a 3 mana Time Warp. Of course the board isn't affected, but anyway... at least to my eyes it looks scary and a bit outlandish. I mean, having unplayable cards in hand because of an effect isn't something we're used to right now. Is there an example for this in the game? I can only imagine it might look like corrupted cards from that warlock watcher minion.
Good luck to all the finalists! And fingers crossed for my favorite this week, Counter Shot. Saving Grace should have made it, too, it was really a fair Ice Block with paladin flavor.
That's an impressive system and I think I will adapt my future evaluations accordingly because it looks very fair. I'm new to CDCs and so I instinctively did the following until now:
1) Checking for spelling mistakes, wording, stuff like that. I really don't like that, a card has to be outstanding in everything else to get 4 stars if there's something wrong with this point. Usually they end up between 1 and 3 stars.
2) Is the card balanced?
3) Flavor. Is the card fitting the class identity, the expansion, how are art and effect working together?
4) Creativity. Can I see the spark of something unique without the borders of traditional Hearthstone completely being torn down? That usually makes the difference between giving 4 or 5 stars for me.
5) What helps are things I think Xarkkal and linkblade mentioned: what could I do with this card, which scenarios are there to benefit from it or suffer because of it and last but not least: would I be happy to pull this from a pack (especially if it's an epic or a legendary)?
Thanks everybody for explaining how you rate cards, that was very insightful for me and I learned something today. I will now have another look at those entries. Good luck to you all!
Thanks a lot for that Pirate Galakrond Warrior list! That's exactly what I was looking for! I just love Deathwing, Mad Aspect and it's entry animation (CATACLYSM!!) and call me stupid but I'm also a huge fan of the Deathwing alternate Warrior hero but didn't feel comfortable playing a classic Pirate Warrior list with him. The flavor just wasn't there for me. That's fixed I guess :-)))
I agree, most of the Rogue secrets don't appeal to me either. My favorites are Counter Shot, Saving Grace and Maternal Instinct in that order, they all got 5 stars from me.
I'm not sure what to do about the "go dormant for 2 turns" issue. I will definitely give them all the same rating since I don't know if one of them knew of the others and I don't see any major differences between them (no spelling mistakes, art looks good on all of them, ...). I would initially have given 4 stars, maybe even 5, but that doesn't feel right anymore with three identical entries. I reduced my votes to 3 stars for the moment but I will think some more about it till the deadline tonight. It's a hard decision for me. Is someone willing to discuss how they are rating these cards and why?
I just lost an Arena match against a Mage who was dead on his feet and managed an incredible turn around. It started with Dune Sculptor into freezing my board, which gave him Kalecgos. Of course he pulled Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron from him. At that point I had already despaired. The box gave him not one but two Nagrand Slam and perfectly Shadowflameed my board. I still got him down to 1 HP and top decked a Frost Nova but of course he had some heal in hand, froze my last remaining minions and killed me the next turn, happily emoting "Thank you". Thank you indeed, RNG-esus.
That should be Darkest Hour which was nerfed this week and thus became risky to play.
While I really like this idea, there's already one submission which is nearly identical (minion goes dormant when played) and Elfensilver showed us another version of it 8 posts above of yours (hunter version, though). You can check the already submitted entries on your voting page. As I have no idea who had the idea first, I would give all of you the same raiting, but that's only my view and I wanted to let you know that there are similar cards around.
Thank you all for giving feedback! I decided to stick to the Freezing Mage Secret but added the 1 damage AOE as Wailor suggested. I figured it woud become half a blizzard that way, which makes for nice flavor. Linkblade's critic was very helpful, too - I tried to explain worries along your line of thoughts away in the card description. Finally, thanks to Almaniarra for helping me out with the name!
Here's more feedback:
@Lemushki
@Elfensilver
@thepowrofcheese
@MenacingBagel
@Wailor
@Wendeee
This. I won't go so far as not using him myself so you can rightfully call me a hypocrit, but I hated the card with all my heart ever since it was announced. This has nothing to do with playing well or even RNGesus smiling on you; this is just cheating.