Okay we haven't heard anything from the riddle-poster in a week at this point - I'm voting to call it and open the round back up for whoever wants it. Agree/Dissent?
Thanks again for your feedback. Do you think the card is better when it is a Battlecry, Or when it is a continual effect like on the first rendition of the card? I think the continual effect fits the theme of the card better, but I think the Battlecry is easier to balance.
No problem I have literally nothing to do today so lurking here while watching the new season of Castlevania lol.
I think it works much better as a battlecry - easier to balance and also more useful in a normal game scenario. i.e. say you played it between two Bomb Wranglers - as a battlecry you would get 4 bombs out of it and would likely kill one of the two Wranglers unless you rolled perfectly to do 2 dmg each. That seems fair. Or if you played it next to a Frothing Berserker, at 4 dmg you could either pump it up by 3 dmg or kill it if you low-roll. Again, seems fair.
Thank you everyone for your feedback, this is now what the card looks like:
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I also had another idea for a similar card:
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This card has a bit more flavor to it. He is a strong warrior who will protect your minions, but first they have to pay him.
what do you think?
I like Hired Hand more just because Enrage Warrior is still a good/fun archetype that's getting some love with Bomb Wrangler so would be very "playable" in an existing deck. 2 notes on that one though:
1. I would however keep the Short-Tempered Brute name because it fits what the card actually does - hit its fellow minions. He's not really "getting paid" by punching people standing next to him (unless he's paid in blood? In which case it would make sense to make him a Vampire/Demon, but then he'd make more sense as a Warlock card but that wouldn't be good since Enrage Warlock isn't a thing. Don't go down that long and winding road...)
Thanks for the feedback KANSAS & Anchorm4n - two revised ideas: one that's basically just a more controllable Deadly Shot on a Tribal stick and one that's got some big clearance potential with Stargazer Luna feeling. Which do people think is better?
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I'm a fan of simplicity, so I support the first. The stats don't look right yet, but I suck at balancing cards. My feeling says 4 or even 3 mana 3/2, but surely someone else is able to give solid advice on that matter.
Thanks for the opinions. I'd be interested to hear others' thought on stats - I made it 4 mana 2/2 since Deadly Shot is 3 mana with no minion and untargetable - so I feel like 1 more mana for a 2/2 body and at least some control over target is fair, especial given it's a mech so if you play in later turns you could easily Magnetize a stronger minion to it for survival after the battlecry if you so choose.
@KANSAS – I like the idea but I do worry about power level in classes that thrive on single big minions (like Priest) where there might not be adjacent minions to hit. I might suggest making it a Warrior (or other class-specific) card rather than Neutral? Also sorry to be a pedant, but you should have a hyphen in “Short-Tempered” since it’s a compound adjective.
I thought about this as well but I don't think it is an issue. If you haven't played any minions then getting a beefy 4-drop isn't the end of the world. I feel like you will either be playing a board centric strategy and the downside is relevant, or you aren't playing a board centric strategy and you aren't interested in a pile of stats.
Also, don't be sorry about being a pedant. I want my card to look professional, so I am glad that you pointed out that little mistake.
That's a fair point I just saw the card and thought how perfectly it would fit for Priest, especially Silence Priest (with undercosted/overstated minions designed for friendly Silencing) which sadly never took off despite the new additions this year.
Thanks for the feedback KANSAS & Anchorm4n - two revised ideas: one that's basically just a more controllable Deadly Shot on a Tribal stick and one that's got some big clearance potential with Stargazer Luna feeling. Which do people think is better?
@Demonx95 – seems strong, but my minor quibble is that the name/art doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Dragons so not sure the effect “fits the card” if that makes sense? You could rename it idk “Draconic Judge” or try to find art that works? Again random thing but I always thought cards like Nightbane Templar were weird for not having any connection to their effects.
@Hordaki – I like that a lot – strong but not OP and definitely has good value. Would absolutely add to my Wild Quest Taunt Warrior deck.
@MurlocAggro – sorry but I think that card is bad. With the Treachery nonsense you have control over what you’re giving to activate specific combo – this as an end-of-turn effect would really only be useful as a Mill card when your opponent had 9 cards. I just can’t image a situation where it would be more useful than a different big Demon card for example.
@Linkblade91 – I like your handbuff idea better than the watchtower, but definitely the second one that just hits the right-most. Paladin has enough draw and big minions that hitting all of them on the right (which could be up to 5 minions) would be absolutely broken at even 10 mana, let alone 6 mana with a 5/4 body behind it.
@Nirast – I like the idea but think you need to tweak the wording to be more clear re: your clarification because as now it reads like ANY deathrattle minion that was next to it would count, not just those at the time of play.
@Thepowrofcheese – I like the first version with the shuffle more; I think the discard would get complicated for certain minions/cards.
@Fedrion – I would at least make it Legendary. To your exact point, you can already play 2 in a turn with Shadowstep on turn 10. Add to that some Daring Escape and the various shuffle cards? Overall Rogue has so many “bounce back to your hand” and “shuffle copies into your deck” cards even with that being legendary you’d still get a lot of use out of it.
@DescentOfDragonsOp – That card is just Shadowmourne but half the cost since you don’t have to play DK Garrosh AND you can have 2. Raise the cost (6 or 7) or maybe lower the stats to 3/2?
@KANSAS – I like the idea but I do worry about power level in classes that thrive on single big minions (like Priest) where there might not be adjacent minions to hit. I might suggest making it a Warrior (or other class-specific) card rather than Neutral? Also sorry to be a pedant, but you should have a hyphen in “Short-Tempered” since it’s a compound adjective.
The idea being it would be a good tech card since the left-most minion would often be one your opponent held during mulligan so could be a good "plan-disrupter". It would give an "attack the hand" card to a class other than Warlock with Chaos Gazer, and I went for Hunter since it would both 1) fit the Mech Hunter archetype and 2) the class identity of strong, single-target removals.
I guess my main concern is cost vs stats - should the cost/stats be dropped a bit so it can be played earlier/cheaper (thinking 3 mana 1/2) or is it already strong and should be raised (so maybe 5 mana 2/4)?
Also random trivia time re: the name of the card - for those who were not tasked with studying Latin for years, "sinister" originally just meant "left" - it only took on the negative connotations during late antiquity/the early middle ages when the Catholic church began associating "left" with evil and "right" with good based on a handful of biblical passages. So in case any nuns ever beat the left-handedness out of you in school, now you know why.
Well besides the awful art any other changes I should do?
You also want to clarify the second line as "Deal double its ORIGINAL mana cost as damage to your hero." As written, you're dealing double the cost of 0, which is obviously 0 so no downside there.
There's always a pack opening thread right after new expansion for people to gloat/complain/commiserate, so I was curious if anyone else who's as data-driven as I am bothers to track their progress over the course of an expansion? Usually about a month out from the new expansion I stop buying packs at a "final" legendary and start hoarding gold for the next one, and I got that final Legendary today (Bandersmosh btw...cool...) so since I'm done getting DoD packs I thought I'd dump my stats here and if anyone else wants to chime in, get on in here:
233 DoD Packs opened
11 Legendaries - so Avg. 1 per 21.4 packs. Shortest time between pulls was 4 packs (which was NOT the one from your first 10 - that one came at pack 9...), longest was 37. 1 was Golden.
58 Epics - so Avg. 1 per 4.0 packs. Only 2 were Golden.
133 "40 Dust-er" packs - so 57.1% of all packs were the bare minimum.
Overall I'm fairly pleased with this expansion. I seemed to be right around the generally-believed "averages" on openings. Only dark spots were 1) that most of the Legendaries I got were ones I haven't found good use for (yet?), so most of the Dust generated this expansion went to crafting the good Legendaries. 2) I know the "end Epic duplicates" has been discussed to death, but despite my getting 58 Epics - which could have given 2 copies each of every single Epic (54 card) and I'd still have 4 "extras" - I'm still missing 13 Epic copies (and that's also after crafting a handful). So it's kind of crazy to see in stark terms that ~30% of the Epics I opened were duplicates.
I wanted to create a corrupted version of Lorewalker Cho but couldn't come up with an alternative mechanic that involved copying spells. This one adds minions to the other players hand instead and can be used to irritate the opponent or for hand disruption. In WotoG, Warlock could combo this with Forbidden Ritual to clogg your opponents hand with useless tentacles, for example. The stats are a problem since I didn't want to go too far away from the original Cho but wasn't content with 0 attack either. The art is okayish I guess, I couldn't find a good corrupted Pandarian.
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My second idea was to create something fun out of Yogg's insanity and the Thief Priest archetype. Assuming our opponent's spell are not entirely garbage and given the fact that we at the very least learn what cards they are running, this is quite powerful. That's why I tuned down the stats.
Please help me choose my card for this week and feel free to give feedback on both of them. I'm also curious where you guys get your art. I'm not really happy with what I used this week but couldn't find any better on artstation.com - do you have other recommendations?
Bump. More feedback please?
How many times do we have to shout PRAISE YOGG at you before it sinks in?! :)
In seriousness though Thief Priest is a good archetype and that card would be both fun and useful. Think about how many people use Lorewalker Cho vs how many mages will throw out a Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron? Exactly. My only suggestions would be 1) lower the cost to 6 (7 is bit high even for something like that) and 2) make Legendary - I think having 2 could be too much. With Yogg or the puzzle box, the spells are random. With this you're pulling spells from the opponent's deck, so the chances of getting something terrible (or even non-useful) is much lower than purely random.
I hate that you put this bad juju out into the universe, and I hate even more that it makes sense.
I play Wild as much or more than Standard, and good lord do the two not need to mix. The Doom in the Tomb meta in October was terrible - I was (and am) still a believer in the conspiracy that they designed that meta to be so oppressively stale because they wanted to drive people into trying Batlegrounds..
But yeah between the obvious connotations of "Phoenix = Rebirth/Return" and them giving the "old + new" a try with Doom in the Tomb, I can see this happening and I will be sad if it does.
I just had another idea of a direction I could take the deathrattle on it:
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The deathrattle options I am debating:
Add a copy of it to your hand that costs (1). - too overpowered
Add a 1/1 copy of it to your hand that costs (1). - more balanced, but I feel 1/1 copy ruins a lot of potential in the card. For example, if you use this card to kill a Taunt minion, all you get in return is a 1/1 Taunt. It's effect is only powerful on Battlecry and Deathrattle minions.
Add a copy of it to your hand that costs (2) less. - I'm thinking this might be a good middle ground between the 2. Not overly powerful (1) cost minions, but still a reduced cost minion that won't leave you with a potentially useless 1/1 token.
Any thoughts/opinions on these 3 deathrattle options?
I like the option you have currently - the 1/1 thing I think would end up useless. How much do you see people play Jepetto Joybuzz or Anka, the Buried? And on the rare occasions someone does play it, its in some Combo deck they designed to work around those cards - you'd not have that control over your opponent's deck.
Fedrion: The concept is cool, but I think the weapon should be equipped. Otherwise it's a 6 mana do nothing.
Yeah... I thought the same.
The main problem I see with this is the chance of getting Gorehowl + Arcanite Reaper and being able to deal 12 face damage right away and a total of 36 damage in 3 turns... It's op as hell IMO.
Maybe change the cost to 8?
My issue is the shuffle a copy - what would the copy cost? To your example, that weapon - if fused in all aspects including cost - would have a cost of 12 and thus be unplayable.
To the point about crazy face dmg, there are 35 weapons currently in Standard so even with Discover I think the likelihood of double-highroll would be low. You could also change it from Discover to just fuse 2 random weapons?
Nope but you've got the idea. The "green but different" is important
Here's one that's THREE cards that all have a common link
A & B are green (but different) & Wild
B & C fiddle with the future
A & C are unnatural
All three have a 3
Communism E.V.I.L. is just a Red Herring!
Okay we haven't heard anything from the riddle-poster in a week at this point - I'm voting to call it and open the round back up for whoever wants it. Agree/Dissent?
No problem I have literally nothing to do today so lurking here while watching the new season of Castlevania lol.
I think it works much better as a battlecry - easier to balance and also more useful in a normal game scenario. i.e. say you played it between two Bomb Wranglers - as a battlecry you would get 4 bombs out of it and would likely kill one of the two Wranglers unless you rolled perfectly to do 2 dmg each. That seems fair. Or if you played it next to a Frothing Berserker, at 4 dmg you could either pump it up by 3 dmg or kill it if you low-roll. Again, seems fair.
I like Hired Hand more just because Enrage Warrior is still a good/fun archetype that's getting some love with Bomb Wrangler so would be very "playable" in an existing deck. 2 notes on that one though:
1. I would however keep the Short-Tempered Brute name because it fits what the card actually does - hit its fellow minions. He's not really "getting paid" by punching people standing next to him (unless he's paid in blood? In which case it would make sense to make him a Vampire/Demon, but then he'd make more sense as a Warlock card but that wouldn't be good since Enrage Warlock isn't a thing. Don't go down that long and winding road...)
2. Again minor quibble but it should be "split among adjacent minions" not "to" to be consistent with past cards' wording (for example, Loose Specimen, Reno the Relicologist, Spreading Madness, etc.)
Second request for another hint here - I think we're all stumped (at least I sure am).
Thanks for the opinions. I'd be interested to hear others' thought on stats - I made it 4 mana 2/2 since Deadly Shot is 3 mana with no minion and untargetable - so I feel like 1 more mana for a 2/2 body and at least some control over target is fair, especial given it's a mech so if you play in later turns you could easily Magnetize a stronger minion to it for survival after the battlecry if you so choose.
That's a fair point I just saw the card and thought how perfectly it would fit for Priest, especially Silence Priest (with undercosted/overstated minions designed for friendly Silencing) which sadly never took off despite the new additions this year.
Thanks for the feedback KANSAS & Anchorm4n - two revised ideas: one that's basically just a more controllable Deadly Shot on a Tribal stick and one that's got some big clearance potential with Stargazer Luna feeling. Which do people think is better?
My two cents here so far:
@Demonx95 – seems strong, but my minor quibble is that the name/art doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Dragons so not sure the effect “fits the card” if that makes sense? You could rename it idk “Draconic Judge” or try to find art that works? Again random thing but I always thought cards like Nightbane Templar were weird for not having any connection to their effects.
@Hordaki – I like that a lot – strong but not OP and definitely has good value. Would absolutely add to my Wild Quest Taunt Warrior deck.
@MurlocAggro – sorry but I think that card is bad. With the Treachery nonsense you have control over what you’re giving to activate specific combo – this as an end-of-turn effect would really only be useful as a Mill card when your opponent had 9 cards. I just can’t image a situation where it would be more useful than a different big Demon card for example.
@Linkblade91 – I like your handbuff idea better than the watchtower, but definitely the second one that just hits the right-most. Paladin has enough draw and big minions that hitting all of them on the right (which could be up to 5 minions) would be absolutely broken at even 10 mana, let alone 6 mana with a 5/4 body behind it.
@Nirast – I like the idea but think you need to tweak the wording to be more clear re: your clarification because as now it reads like ANY deathrattle minion that was next to it would count, not just those at the time of play.
@Thepowrofcheese – I like the first version with the shuffle more; I think the discard would get complicated for certain minions/cards.
@Fedrion – I would at least make it Legendary. To your exact point, you can already play 2 in a turn with Shadowstep on turn 10. Add to that some Daring Escape and the various shuffle cards? Overall Rogue has so many “bounce back to your hand” and “shuffle copies into your deck” cards even with that being legendary you’d still get a lot of use out of it.
@DescentOfDragonsOp – That card is just Shadowmourne but half the cost since you don’t have to play DK Garrosh AND you can have 2. Raise the cost (6 or 7) or maybe lower the stats to 3/2?
@KANSAS – I like the idea but I do worry about power level in classes that thrive on single big minions (like Priest) where there might not be adjacent minions to hit. I might suggest making it a Warrior (or other class-specific) card rather than Neutral? Also sorry to be a pedant, but you should have a hyphen in “Short-Tempered” since it’s a compound adjective.
Thoughts on this?
The idea being it would be a good tech card since the left-most minion would often be one your opponent held during mulligan so could be a good "plan-disrupter". It would give an "attack the hand" card to a class other than Warlock with Chaos Gazer, and I went for Hunter since it would both 1) fit the Mech Hunter archetype and 2) the class identity of strong, single-target removals.
I guess my main concern is cost vs stats - should the cost/stats be dropped a bit so it can be played earlier/cheaper (thinking 3 mana 1/2) or is it already strong and should be raised (so maybe 5 mana 2/4)?
Also random trivia time re: the name of the card - for those who were not tasked with studying Latin for years, "sinister" originally just meant "left" - it only took on the negative connotations during late antiquity/the early middle ages when the Catholic church began associating "left" with evil and "right" with good based on a handful of biblical passages. So in case any nuns ever beat the left-handedness out of you in school, now you know why.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sinister-left-dexter-right-history
Amani War Bear?
Arena = Gurubashi = RR
Not trundling/ambling = has rush
Has Taunt
You also want to clarify the second line as "Deal double its ORIGINAL mana cost as damage to your hero." As written, you're dealing double the cost of 0, which is obviously 0 so no downside there.
There's always a pack opening thread right after new expansion for people to gloat/complain/commiserate, so I was curious if anyone else who's as data-driven as I am bothers to track their progress over the course of an expansion? Usually about a month out from the new expansion I stop buying packs at a "final" legendary and start hoarding gold for the next one, and I got that final Legendary today (Bandersmosh btw...cool...) so since I'm done getting DoD packs I thought I'd dump my stats here and if anyone else wants to chime in, get on in here:
233 DoD Packs opened
11 Legendaries - so Avg. 1 per 21.4 packs. Shortest time between pulls was 4 packs (which was NOT the one from your first 10 - that one came at pack 9...), longest was 37. 1 was Golden.
58 Epics - so Avg. 1 per 4.0 packs. Only 2 were Golden.
133 "40 Dust-er" packs - so 57.1% of all packs were the bare minimum.
Overall I'm fairly pleased with this expansion. I seemed to be right around the generally-believed "averages" on openings. Only dark spots were 1) that most of the Legendaries I got were ones I haven't found good use for (yet?), so most of the Dust generated this expansion went to crafting the good Legendaries. 2) I know the "end Epic duplicates" has been discussed to death, but despite my getting 58 Epics - which could have given 2 copies each of every single Epic (54 card) and I'd still have 4 "extras" - I'm still missing 13 Epic copies (and that's also after crafting a handful). So it's kind of crazy to see in stark terms that ~30% of the Epics I opened were duplicates.
Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron?
Puzzle box is a game
Yogg obvious a very famous card, plus the awesome/terrible luck videos (I assume) get good views on various channels
RNG is taking a chance
You dance with death because you can suicide with particularly bad luck
How many times do we have to shout PRAISE YOGG at you before it sinks in?! :)
In seriousness though Thief Priest is a good archetype and that card would be both fun and useful. Think about how many people use Lorewalker Cho vs how many mages will throw out a Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron? Exactly. My only suggestions would be 1) lower the cost to 6 (7 is bit high even for something like that) and 2) make Legendary - I think having 2 could be too much. With Yogg or the puzzle box, the spells are random. With this you're pulling spells from the opponent's deck, so the chances of getting something terrible (or even non-useful) is much lower than purely random.
I hate that you put this bad juju out into the universe, and I hate even more that it makes sense.
I play Wild as much or more than Standard, and good lord do the two not need to mix. The Doom in the Tomb meta in October was terrible - I was (and am) still a believer in the conspiracy that they designed that meta to be so oppressively stale because they wanted to drive people into trying Batlegrounds..
But yeah between the obvious connotations of "Phoenix = Rebirth/Return" and them giving the "old + new" a try with Doom in the Tomb, I can see this happening and I will be sad if it does.
I like the option you have currently - the 1/1 thing I think would end up useless. How much do you see people play Jepetto Joybuzz or Anka, the Buried? And on the rare occasions someone does play it, its in some Combo deck they designed to work around those cards - you'd not have that control over your opponent's deck.
My issue is the shuffle a copy - what would the copy cost? To your example, that weapon - if fused in all aspects including cost - would have a cost of 12 and thus be unplayable.
To the point about crazy face dmg, there are 35 weapons currently in Standard so even with Discover I think the likelihood of double-highroll would be low. You could also change it from Discover to just fuse 2 random weapons?