In terms of balance, I made the Coin token into Delicious Meal:
This version is a little more balanced at 2 Mana and also giving a slight heal, which helps keep Tahm Kench alive longer to trigger his support effect more. I could also remove the Toss, but I wanted it to help Maokai decks.
For some reason it won't let me upload more images, but "Coin" would be a token spell that is 1 Mana Burst Speed with the text "Toss 1 to draw 1." I chose Greed as the Sin for the Shadow Isles because SI already has a theme of destroying their own units for power, which seems similar to Greed.
Also, Jump Start might be better as 5 Mana Slow “Discard your hand to summon an Illegal contraption” so that it could be used with Jinx in order to empty your hand. As it is right now, it doesn’t seem very powerful, since a discard deck usually wants to deal direct damage rather than summon a medium size unit in the late game.
For Irwa, I would actually suggest making her specify 3 or less Cost Spells, so that she’s more likely to give you playable Spells. Also, you could make her “Play: Create a random spell in hand for each Piltover card in the top 5 cards of your deck. Grant them Fleeting” to make her effect more consistent than Allieganc.
Envious Glare is very over costed. As shown by pilfered goods and Chempunk pickpocket, cards from the enemy deck are worse than cards from your deck. Given that it also grants Fleeting, it becomes worth even less. At 5 Mana, you would expect to draw 2-3 cards, not 1. You can also compare this to Fading Memories in order to see that it does not need to be 5 Mana. If I were you, I would either reduce the cost to 0, or make it copy 3 Spells. Since they are granted Fleeting, it is unlikely that you’ll be able to play many of them anyway, so 3 Fleeting spells will realistically be more like 2 Spells.
I personally believe that Dazzik will be fine, given that many people are submitting alternate versions of their Boss and Hearthstone itself often makes very strange, non-canon versions of characters (like Ragnaros Lightlord)
However, if you want to be more sure of Dazzik counting for the competition, you could replace him with another copying boss like the Face Collector. Also, you could just use another form of Rafaam.
I know I've already posted way too many ideas so far, but here's one final design:
This version is the simplest of the ones I've come up with, acting as a nice anti-secret tech card. Because it specifies the top secrets and not random secrets, it is guaranteed to mess with Mage's secret draw and cost reduction cards, and it is also less able to be abused by Paladin Secret decks to upgrade their Secrets. It also somewhat keeps the potential use as a Bazaar Burglary quest support card.
The purpose of this version of Whirt would to be run in either a Secret Rogue deck to generate cheap secrets to trigger Hanar, or in a Bazaar Burglary deck to make your Secrets count towards your quest. It can also be run in order to counter Secret Mage or another Secret deck by causing the first 3 Secrets they draw to be likely worse and less synergistic. It also makes cards like Kabal Lackey and Kirin Tor Mage worse by making the cost reduction they give lower if used on a Secret made by Crystal Ball.
Is 3 a good number of Secrets for it to transform? I wanted it to be enough to allow for synergies and disrupt Secret Mage, but not so high as to make cards like Mad Scientist and Ancient Mysteries not work. Would 5 be better?
Edit:
Do you all think this version of Crystal Ball would be better? I was scared that the Paladin Secret option might be too powerful as 2 Spell triggers for 1 Mana, to the point that it could be run in lots of Spell synergy decks. This version would also make it even more powerful of a tech against Secret Mage. I could also just remove the cost reduction and keep it at 1 Mana, but I want it to not be a huge punish to Secret decks, and potentially included in some Secret Decks (just not Wild Secret Mage).
This version would make Whirt good in a Secret Rogue deck (especially with Hanar) but bad in a Secret Mage deck, since when you play Mage the secrets shuffled will be 1 or 2 cost. Also, it could work as a counter to Secrets, since it counts enemy Secrets too.
I like your Nefarian design, but I fear that as a 9 Mana minion without taunt or Rush he’ll be too slow for a Bazaar Rogue. He does synergize with Anka, but I don’t know if he would fit into deathrattle rogue. You could fix that by either giving him Rush/Taunt, or by reducing his cost (potentially replacing the art with his human form, so that it seems less weird that he isn’t 9 Mana).
The idea behind this card would be to either run it in a secret deck to make more use out of the secrets than your opponent, or to run it in a draw heavy deck in order to draw more secrets than the opponent. Do you all think that shuffling 8 secrets is too much? Should he be buffed to 5 attack?
Nice idea, I have felt like LoR has been missing custom card creation. I think it’s perfectly valid to make non-LoL champions into LoR champions, since LoR is outpacing LoL in terms of champion creation, so it’ll become an inevitability at once point anyway.
Also, it would make Ephemeral units synergize with Yasuo, which would be a fun little synergy that could make a Shadow Isles Ionia Stun deck hypothetically possible.
In Legends of Runeterra, Ephemeral units have the problem of being great on offense, but only playable on defense to prevent an Attack. In order to make them better on Defense and more interesting to play with and against, the Keyword Ephemeral could be changed to:
"This unit dies when it strikes. When the round ends, recall it"
This would open up a lot of new lines of play, since you could play something like the 5/5 Lifesteal Ephemeral on defense and then your opponent is forced to choose between giving you card advantage by not attacking or board advantage by attacking and having one of their units trade with an Ephemeral. Also, as the player playing Ephemeral units you would also have to think more about whether or not to block or attack with them. This change would be mostly a buff, but it would also make it so that on-death triggers wouldn't happen with ephemeral units unless you attack or block with them, which makes combos with cards like Phantom Prankster or Neverglade Collector require attacks.
Great changes all around! The one thing I’m surprised about is the nerf to Legion Rearguard and not the actual burn cards, I was sure that they were going to nerf another burn card (like the Demolitionist or the Used Cask Salesman). This change should make it a lot easier to remove the Aggro/Burn units though, so hopefully it will be enough to bring Burn/Aggro’s winrate and playrate down.
My rework of Vi would be to change her text to "I have +2|+0 for each Fleeting card you've played this game (max +8|+0)."
This would make her good in a deck built specifically around her, while making her weak without support cards. There would still be many ways to use her, such as with Bilgewater or Ionia or cards like Mechanist Zevi, but she could no longer be slotted into decks like Bannerman or Corina control that use her a just a big challenger unit.
Good ideas! The only things that I think could be different is that I think Unyielding Spirit might become Fast (so there’s more counterplay) and Loyal Badgerbear will probably either not be nerfed or gain some kind of text to make up for it losing stats (like it could be a 3 Mana 3/4 with “I have +1|+0 while you have a Demacian Ally”).
In terms of my ideal changes, I would also like Vi to be changed to be a little more synergistic, like maybe “Whenever you play a card that didn’t start in your deck or has Fleeting, grant me +1|+0 wherever I am.” This would make her good in something like a shuffle deck, a fleeting deck, or a Pursuit of Perfection deck, instead of making her amazing in every deck.
That seems like a cool idea, but also like it could be a little too good and consistent. What if Avalanche became 4 Mana Slow "Deal 2 to all units. For each unit that dies, Frostbite the Strongest ally and enemy"? This way, the combo would be a lot less consistent but still fairly powerful, especially if you set it up correctly. Also, it fits the flavor of an Avalanche, because the Avalanche destroys the weak units and then snowballs further to bury the strong ones.
My goal for the Shadow Isles cards was to support 3 Main Archetypes:
1. Ephemerals
2. Destroying Allies (for Tahm Kench, Neverglade Collector, The Undying, and They Who Endure)
3. Maokai Toss and Sea Monsters
There are also several other minor archetypes that these cards could support, such as Spell Decks or Twisted Fate draw decks.
I updated the cards to be based around Gluttony instead of Greed, changed several cards, and added some new ones!
Here's the link again:
https://imgur.com/a/JkRp8yc
In terms of balance, I made the Coin token into Delicious Meal:
This version is a little more balanced at 2 Mana and also giving a slight heal, which helps keep Tahm Kench alive longer to trigger his support effect more. I could also remove the Toss, but I wanted it to help Maokai decks.
Shivershine hasn't messaged me back about it yet, but if I could design the Shadow Isles Cards this is what they'd be:
https://imgur.com/a/JkRp8yc
For some reason it won't let me upload more images, but "Coin" would be a token spell that is 1 Mana Burst Speed with the text "Toss 1 to draw 1." I chose Greed as the Sin for the Shadow Isles because SI already has a theme of destroying their own units for power, which seems similar to Greed.
For LoR card maker I just zoom out so that it shows the download button, then I download it and host the image on imugr.
Also, Jump Start might be better as 5 Mana Slow “Discard your hand to summon an Illegal contraption” so that it could be used with Jinx in order to empty your hand. As it is right now, it doesn’t seem very powerful, since a discard deck usually wants to deal direct damage rather than summon a medium size unit in the late game.
For Irwa, I would actually suggest making her specify 3 or less Cost Spells, so that she’s more likely to give you playable Spells. Also, you could make her “Play: Create a random spell in hand for each Piltover card in the top 5 cards of your deck. Grant them Fleeting” to make her effect more consistent than Allieganc.
Envious Glare is very over costed. As shown by pilfered goods and Chempunk pickpocket, cards from the enemy deck are worse than cards from your deck. Given that it also grants Fleeting, it becomes worth even less. At 5 Mana, you would expect to draw 2-3 cards, not 1. You can also compare this to Fading Memories in order to see that it does not need to be 5 Mana. If I were you, I would either reduce the cost to 0, or make it copy 3 Spells. Since they are granted Fleeting, it is unlikely that you’ll be able to play many of them anyway, so 3 Fleeting spells will realistically be more like 2 Spells.
I personally believe that Dazzik will be fine, given that many people are submitting alternate versions of their Boss and Hearthstone itself often makes very strange, non-canon versions of characters (like Ragnaros Lightlord)
However, if you want to be more sure of Dazzik counting for the competition, you could replace him with another copying boss like the Face Collector. Also, you could just use another form of Rafaam.
I know I've already posted way too many ideas so far, but here's one final design:
This version is the simplest of the ones I've come up with, acting as a nice anti-secret tech card. Because it specifies the top secrets and not random secrets, it is guaranteed to mess with Mage's secret draw and cost reduction cards, and it is also less able to be abused by Paladin Secret decks to upgrade their Secrets. It also somewhat keeps the potential use as a Bazaar Burglary quest support card.
Which design do you all think is the best?
The purpose of this version of Whirt would to be run in either a Secret Rogue deck to generate cheap secrets to trigger Hanar, or in a Bazaar Burglary deck to make your Secrets count towards your quest. It can also be run in order to counter Secret Mage or another Secret deck by causing the first 3 Secrets they draw to be likely worse and less synergistic. It also makes cards like Kabal Lackey and Kirin Tor Mage worse by making the cost reduction they give lower if used on a Secret made by Crystal Ball.
Is 3 a good number of Secrets for it to transform? I wanted it to be enough to allow for synergies and disrupt Secret Mage, but not so high as to make cards like Mad Scientist and Ancient Mysteries not work. Would 5 be better?
Edit:
Do you all think this version of Crystal Ball would be better? I was scared that the Paladin Secret option might be too powerful as 2 Spell triggers for 1 Mana, to the point that it could be run in lots of Spell synergy decks. This version would also make it even more powerful of a tech against Secret Mage. I could also just remove the cost reduction and keep it at 1 Mana, but I want it to not be a huge punish to Secret decks, and potentially included in some Secret Decks (just not Wild Secret Mage).
This version would make Whirt good in a Secret Rogue deck (especially with Hanar) but bad in a Secret Mage deck, since when you play Mage the secrets shuffled will be 1 or 2 cost. Also, it could work as a counter to Secrets, since it counts enemy Secrets too.
I like your Nefarian design, but I fear that as a 9 Mana minion without taunt or Rush he’ll be too slow for a Bazaar Rogue. He does synergize with Anka, but I don’t know if he would fit into deathrattle rogue. You could fix that by either giving him Rush/Taunt, or by reducing his cost (potentially replacing the art with his human form, so that it seems less weird that he isn’t 9 Mana).
The idea behind this card would be to either run it in a secret deck to make more use out of the secrets than your opponent, or to run it in a draw heavy deck in order to draw more secrets than the opponent. Do you all think that shuffling 8 secrets is too much? Should he be buffed to 5 attack?
Nice idea, I have felt like LoR has been missing custom card creation. I think it’s perfectly valid to make non-LoL champions into LoR champions, since LoR is outpacing LoL in terms of champion creation, so it’ll become an inevitability at once point anyway.
Also, it would make Ephemeral units synergize with Yasuo, which would be a fun little synergy that could make a Shadow Isles Ionia Stun deck hypothetically possible.
In Legends of Runeterra, Ephemeral units have the problem of being great on offense, but only playable on defense to prevent an Attack. In order to make them better on Defense and more interesting to play with and against, the Keyword Ephemeral could be changed to:
"This unit dies when it strikes. When the round ends, recall it"
This would open up a lot of new lines of play, since you could play something like the 5/5 Lifesteal Ephemeral on defense and then your opponent is forced to choose between giving you card advantage by not attacking or board advantage by attacking and having one of their units trade with an Ephemeral. Also, as the player playing Ephemeral units you would also have to think more about whether or not to block or attack with them. This change would be mostly a buff, but it would also make it so that on-death triggers wouldn't happen with ephemeral units unless you attack or block with them, which makes combos with cards like Phantom Prankster or Neverglade Collector require attacks.
Great changes all around! The one thing I’m surprised about is the nerf to Legion Rearguard and not the actual burn cards, I was sure that they were going to nerf another burn card (like the Demolitionist or the Used Cask Salesman). This change should make it a lot easier to remove the Aggro/Burn units though, so hopefully it will be enough to bring Burn/Aggro’s winrate and playrate down.
My rework of Vi would be to change her text to "I have +2|+0 for each Fleeting card you've played this game (max +8|+0)."
This would make her good in a deck built specifically around her, while making her weak without support cards. There would still be many ways to use her, such as with Bilgewater or Ionia or cards like Mechanist Zevi, but she could no longer be slotted into decks like Bannerman or Corina control that use her a just a big challenger unit.
Good ideas! The only things that I think could be different is that I think Unyielding Spirit might become Fast (so there’s more counterplay) and Loyal Badgerbear will probably either not be nerfed or gain some kind of text to make up for it losing stats (like it could be a 3 Mana 3/4 with “I have +1|+0 while you have a Demacian Ally”).
In terms of my ideal changes, I would also like Vi to be changed to be a little more synergistic, like maybe “Whenever you play a card that didn’t start in your deck or has Fleeting, grant me +1|+0 wherever I am.” This would make her good in something like a shuffle deck, a fleeting deck, or a Pursuit of Perfection deck, instead of making her amazing in every deck.
That seems like a cool idea, but also like it could be a little too good and consistent. What if Avalanche became 4 Mana Slow "Deal 2 to all units. For each unit that dies, Frostbite the Strongest ally and enemy"? This way, the combo would be a lot less consistent but still fairly powerful, especially if you set it up correctly. Also, it fits the flavor of an Avalanche, because the Avalanche destroys the weak units and then snowballs further to bury the strong ones.