I'm going to agree with Anchorm4n. I think the pun is simply too abstract to be effective.
MrRhapsody
Blood Empowerment is a really funky removal for Blood. It's a bit on the weird side, but I kinda like it. It could be a Shadow spell when you look at Blood Boil, Corpse Explosion, or Blood Tap. Then again, Death Strike, Obliterate, and Vampiric Blood are typeless, so it doesn't really matter. There's Team 5 being inconsistent again!
I'm afraid I don't really like Construct Quarters too much. Pure Unholy generally doesn't have that much trouble generating more Corpses than they know what to do with, and I don't think there would be much of a point in running this. If you were to do something with this, I would suggest the card do something else in addition to gaining Corpses, but I personally prefer Blood Empowerment.
NerdyMcNerd
An interesting idea. I'm not exactly sure where it would go, but it's certainly thought-provoking. Though I'd probably simplify the wording to "Battlecry: If your deck only contains Runed cards, all minions give you a Corpse this game."
Nobudy
I think all three of these cards are pretty good. I'd say either Death's Advance or Coldtusk Fisherman would be the way to go since they look the most solidly un-OP, whereas Raise Undead might feel that way to some people.
Alfi
I don't really like this too much. The effect being on a Rare feels very weird since the effect itself feels Legendary (the fact that it stacks with each usage further contributes to this feeling). Unholy probably doesn't have that much trouble keeping this thing afloat.
If you were to tweak this design though, you should capitalize Corpse.
Machadogps
I like the infinite drawing potential of the card. It's hard to say if it would see play since Frost can already draw fairly well (and from playing the deck, I know that it rarely runs into the problem of not having things to play), but I do really like the creativity and you'll probably get some good points for that.
We are currently aware of the fact that Death Knight is not currently an option to choose for when submitting cards, and also that Path of Arthas and March of the Lich King can't be submitted as sets the card belongs to either.
We'll let you know when we've got that all situated.
The competition seems to be running slowly (although I have methods of combating this season and you'll see one soon enough), so here's some early feedback.
Linkblade91
I think this card is really cool (get it? Because it's a Frost card). I am a bit afraid that a cheap of source of Spell Damage may end up getting a volatile reaction from some people, but I think this card is finely balanced as is. I say thumbs up.
Neoguli
I think the card in concept is fine, even though Death Knight 6, 8, or 10-Cost spells, so I'm not sure what would happen if you tried to play the card with that many Corpses. Additionally, its only 7-Cost spell is Frostwyrm's Fury and its only 9-Cost spell is The Scourge, and it's very unlikely for Death Knight to ever have a spell of every Cost from 0 to 10 in Standard rotation at any point. I would say making it Discover any Death Knight card could fix it, but then it becomes a fairly consistent way of generating extra copies of strong minions.
Also, I'm not sure what's up with that name, but you should change it.
Moondreamer
I like the effect, and I like the usage of the Duels character into Constructed Hearthstone. That's thinking smarter, not harder!
My only little gripe is that later down the line, and it may even be relatively soon, building an FFF deck that doesn't use weapons may not be that difficult (unless there happens to be a new weapon that they for some reason absolutely need to run) which would end up circumnavigating the downside entirely.
Anchorm4n
Good use of character, and good effect.
I personally prefer the minion version myself because I think it's a bit more original than applying to spells, and also because it seems stronger to me.
Dolphinslayer
The first thing I want to say is, welcome aboard! We're glad to have new faces around, and we know that it might be a bit intimidating for some people to get into, so please do not hesitate to ask me or Link or anyone else here any questions if you feel the need to. As for your card…
I'm someone who plays FFF Death Knight pretty regularly, I can definitely tell you that it doesn't need this amount of mass spell-generation. Generating enough spells for my deck is generally not a problem. Frost Strike and Lady Deathwhisper normally gives me enough extra reach or stalling just fine, so I feel like this probably won't see play. Hand size is sometimes also something that they have to keep in mind since they're holding a lot of combo spells and play a fair amount of draw, which will end up limiting this card's usability even more.
The card also should do something at baseline so it still does something even if you have no Corpses. I realize that having no Corpses at a point where you'd want to play the card is not exactly a likely scenario, but the card should still do something if that happens. It's just a part of Hearthstone's design philosophy.
Strik's effect allows you to stop spending Corpses when you want to, but I might end up removing this aspect just for consistency with other Death Knight cards.
One important change we have for this season are the fact that your card descriptions now appear in the finalist voting. We've ran too many seasons without any changes to the system, and this should have some sort of effect. It may not be to everyone's cup of tea, but we're open to experimenting to see what works and what doesn't.
And also, we've taken the liberty of reducing the number of finalists from 8 to 6, which came about because of the number of entrants we received were dwindling, and 8 finalist often meant that about half of all the entries ended up appearing on the finals, and this also meant that poorly designed cards were more likely to make it to that stage. Reducing the number of finalists in correspondence to the lower number of entries should accommodate for this. In reality, this shouldn't make it that much harder to reach the finals. If we see an upsurge in entrants, then we will change this back.
The Death Knights have arisen, and now we serve them... in our job to make them new cards. Your card must be a Death Knight card, but you've got up to three different routes to go for a valid entry!
Rotten to the Corpse
Design a card with Corpse synergy.
The most straightforward way to do is to just make a card that spends Corpses, but there are a number of other ways you can go about this.
Triple Threat
Create a triple-Rune card.
Hint: Look at the existing triple-Rune cards that Death Knight has to get a better understand of what constitutes as a triple-Rune card.
House of the (Un)Dead
Design a card with Undead synergy/interaction.
Your card (if it's a minion) doesn't need to be an Undead, but merely just being an Undead will not count. Otherwise, you're free to go whatever route you want as long as it uses direct interaction with Undeads.
While you're more than welcome to try to make a card that fulfills all 3 prompts, this is fully optional and will likely prove to be a challenge.
We're kicking off Season 6 with a fun competition all about Death Knights. There's no prize for winning this one, but it'll be a sign of things to come.
As always, I can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.
Competition Phases
Here are the phases of this card design competition
Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, Jan 2 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Sat, Jan 7 17:00 EST (GMT -0500)
Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Jan 7 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Sun, Jan 8 16:00 EST (GMT -0500)
Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Jan 8 17:00 EST (GMT -0500). Runs until Mon, Jan 9 17:00 EST (GMT -0500)
Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.
Discussion Thread Rules
Please note: This is a special competition and not in a normal season.
Competitions are still something we've talked about. We know that people have wanted to see changes to them for a really long time and we've ended up having to put them off for multiple seasons because of work around the site, and this time, we really want to actually change something before we start the next season up. We are still deliberating on getting new comps up as we speak.
Shadows has also been pretty busy with his personal life, which has limited his time on the site pretty significantly. This has affected the timing of the next season since he's pretty important to getting the ball rolling. Only he has the templates we use, unless we were to try to MacGyver our own. Speaking of which, updating the way competitions work is much more complicated than it sounds like it would be. There isn't always a good time to be able to actually talk about it, which is something that MotLK, holidays, Shadows not being here, and just general work on the site has affected.
As for huge comps. We know that people want them, but there's never been a very good time to talk about how we would actually go about doing this. We would need to build a whole new system for them, which takes a lot of time and testing (much, much more than we when we did this for the normal competitions). A lot of time-consuming technical work is needed when that work is instead used for something that's generally more important. We would love to do this eventually, but (and as disappointing as this will be) don't anticipate it happening any time soon.
Freljord is definitely a thing we have to consider when we write clues for Christmas events since it's where all the snow is, but focusing exclusively on one region is incredibly predictable (and incredibly lame), so we have to try to get creative at times with non-Freljord clues.
It's related to a champion, but it's not a champion card itself. It's a bit hard to find since not all the token cards can easily be found on the base card's card page and instead, you have to go to the card database to find it.
If some cards look like they're missing some tokens or omitted information, that's because the cards were simply too complicated for me to try to explain them concisely in the article that there was simply no way that I would even entertain the idea of attempting to do so.
If you're really interested in knowing more about these cards, it's all in the set's thread.
Round 2 of feedback
Blood Empowerment is a really funky removal for Blood. It's a bit on the weird side, but I kinda like it. It could be a Shadow spell when you look at Blood Boil, Corpse Explosion, or Blood Tap. Then again, Death Strike, Obliterate, and Vampiric Blood are typeless, so it doesn't really matter. There's Team 5 being inconsistent again!
I'm afraid I don't really like Construct Quarters too much. Pure Unholy generally doesn't have that much trouble generating more Corpses than they know what to do with, and I don't think there would be much of a point in running this. If you were to do something with this, I would suggest the card do something else in addition to gaining Corpses, but I personally prefer Blood Empowerment.
I don't really like this too much. The effect being on a Rare feels very weird since the effect itself feels Legendary (the fact that it stacks with each usage further contributes to this feeling). Unholy probably doesn't have that much trouble keeping this thing afloat.
If you were to tweak this design though, you should capitalize Corpse.
Death Knight has now been added to the list of classes you can pick.
Path of Arthas and March of the Lich King are also now options for the expansions.
We are currently aware of the fact that Death Knight is not currently an option to choose for when submitting cards, and also that Path of Arthas and March of the Lich King can't be submitted as sets the card belongs to either.
We'll let you know when we've got that all situated.
The competition seems to be running slowly (although I have methods of combating this season and you'll see one soon enough), so here's some early feedback.
I think the card in concept is fine, even though Death Knight 6, 8, or 10-Cost spells, so I'm not sure what would happen if you tried to play the card with that many Corpses. Additionally, its only 7-Cost spell is Frostwyrm's Fury and its only 9-Cost spell is The Scourge, and it's very unlikely for Death Knight to ever have a spell of every Cost from 0 to 10 in Standard rotation at any point. I would say making it Discover any Death Knight card could fix it, but then it becomes a fairly consistent way of generating extra copies of strong minions.
Also, I'm not sure what's up with that name, but you should change it.
I like the effect, and I like the usage of the Duels character into Constructed Hearthstone. That's thinking smarter, not harder!
My only little gripe is that later down the line, and it may even be relatively soon, building an FFF deck that doesn't use weapons may not be that difficult (unless there happens to be a new weapon that they for some reason absolutely need to run) which would end up circumnavigating the downside entirely.
Good use of character, and good effect.
I personally prefer the minion version myself because I think it's a bit more original than applying to spells, and also because it seems stronger to me.
The first thing I want to say is, welcome aboard! We're glad to have new faces around, and we know that it might be a bit intimidating for some people to get into, so please do not hesitate to ask me or Link or anyone else here any questions if you feel the need to. As for your card…
I'm someone who plays FFF Death Knight pretty regularly, I can definitely tell you that it doesn't need this amount of mass spell-generation. Generating enough spells for my deck is generally not a problem. Frost Strike and Lady Deathwhisper normally gives me enough extra reach or stalling just fine, so I feel like this probably won't see play. Hand size is sometimes also something that they have to keep in mind since they're holding a lot of combo spells and play a fair amount of draw, which will end up limiting this card's usability even more.
The card also should do something at baseline so it still does something even if you have no Corpses. I realize that having no Corpses at a point where you'd want to play the card is not exactly a likely scenario, but the card should still do something if that happens. It's just a part of Hearthstone's design philosophy.
And also, here are some cards.
Strik's powers are as follows:
Strik's effect allows you to stop spending Corpses when you want to, but I might end up removing this aspect just for consistency with other Death Knight cards.
One important change we have for this season are the fact that your card descriptions now appear in the finalist voting. We've ran too many seasons without any changes to the system, and this should have some sort of effect. It may not be to everyone's cup of tea, but we're open to experimenting to see what works and what doesn't.
And also, we've taken the liberty of reducing the number of finalists from 8 to 6, which came about because of the number of entrants we received were dwindling, and 8 finalist often meant that about half of all the entries ended up appearing on the finals, and this also meant that poorly designed cards were more likely to make it to that stage. Reducing the number of finalists in correspondence to the lower number of entries should accommodate for this. In reality, this shouldn't make it that much harder to reach the finals. If we see an upsurge in entrants, then we will change this back.
Here we go!
Ladies and gentleman, welcome to our season 6 prologue competition.
Competition Theme: The Dead of Knight
The Death Knights have arisen, and now we serve them... in our job to make them new cards. Your card must be a Death Knight card, but you've got up to three different routes to go for a valid entry!
While you're more than welcome to try to make a card that fulfills all 3 prompts, this is fully optional and will likely prove to be a challenge.
We're kicking off Season 6 with a fun competition all about Death Knights. There's no prize for winning this one, but it'll be a sign of things to come.
As always, I can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.
Competition Phases
Here are the phases of this card design competition
Discussion Thread Rules
Please note: This is a special competition and not in a normal season.
Yeah, Mr.Stupid has a lot of great projects (of which many have been featured on this series, wink wink) and he's really great to work with.
Hope that helps.
Let week 4 commence!
(and Happy New Year everybody)
Competitions are still something we've talked about. We know that people have wanted to see changes to them for a really long time and we've ended up having to put them off for multiple seasons because of work around the site, and this time, we really want to actually change something before we start the next season up. We are still deliberating on getting new comps up as we speak.
Shadows has also been pretty busy with his personal life, which has limited his time on the site pretty significantly. This has affected the timing of the next season since he's pretty important to getting the ball rolling. Only he has the templates we use, unless we were to try to MacGyver our own. Speaking of which, updating the way competitions work is much more complicated than it sounds like it would be. There isn't always a good time to be able to actually talk about it, which is something that MotLK, holidays, Shadows not being here, and just general work on the site has affected.
As for huge comps. We know that people want them, but there's never been a very good time to talk about how we would actually go about doing this. We would need to build a whole new system for them, which takes a lot of time and testing (much, much more than we when we did this for the normal competitions). A lot of time-consuming technical work is needed when that work is instead used for something that's generally more important. We would love to do this eventually, but (and as disappointing as this will be) don't anticipate it happening any time soon.
Freljord is definitely a thing we have to consider when we write clues for Christmas events since it's where all the snow is, but focusing exclusively on one region is incredibly predictable (and incredibly lame), so we have to try to get creative at times with non-Freljord clues.
And yes, it is something about swapping.
I hope that helps.
The second Runeterra clue is definitely the hardest, but here's something that will help you tremendously.
If some cards look like they're missing some tokens or omitted information, that's because the cards were simply too complicated for me to try to explain them concisely in the article that there was simply no way that I would even entertain the idea of attempting to do so.
If you're really interested in knowing more about these cards, it's all in the set's thread.