How are we all settling in with the new expansion? It's been a wild ride these past few days, so this ended up getting pushed back until the morning. Still got it out though! I'm counting it as a mark on my 100% consistency record.

Conversation this week will be about a lighter topic, as well as designing drawbacks.

Sky High

First, as always, is the winner of the WCDC this week! Congratulations to shaveyou and their Cobalt Sky Serpent!

With this win, shaveyou becomes our first repeat winner - lets see what they come up with for their competition this time!

Some Light Reading

This week also had the second part of a two-part Fan Community Spotlight go up - Zozoth's "Crusade of Light".

This is the second expansion of a theoretical year, and features the introduction of two new mechanics, along with the required plethora of cards for them. Of course, since this was made before the introduction of Demon Hunter, that class doesn't feature here.

Make sure you check out the article to get some insight into their design process, and to find a link to the full set. I'll just give a special shout-out to a few of my favourites.

 

I'm a big fan of the Karazhan Portals - seeing Serpentshrine Portal in Ashes of Outland was great! - and Maraudon Portal is equally fun to see. I especially like the work put into the artwork.

Bonekeeper is a fun riff on the various stat setting Paladin minions with Taunt thrown in. The real star of the Paladin set though is Final Hour; a flavourful board clear that hits all the right notes of Hearthstone feel, giving a little lighthearted twist to the somewhat dark idea of the card.

Drawn Back

Last week's competition - The Price of Power - was all about creating cards with drawbacks. I was very lax with holding people to this ruling - after all, how does one decide what counts as 'enough' of a drawback? It can't be that the card becomes unplayable, because then what's the point in it?

However, I thought I'd take a moment to look at a few submissions to sort of ramble about why there were no disqualifications this week. This is my Conversation, after all, I can basically do what I want here. Nobody else reads these before they go live - unless you see a typo, then everyone else didn't catch it in all the editing they definitely do.

Go'Rah Blood Lord by DescentOfDragonsOP

This card was one of the first ones that came under my radar as being questionable. The specific rule for this week was:

  • Your minion must have better than average stats or effects for its cost, with a drawback

Now, the immediate question - does this have better than average stats or effects? It's hard to know. 4/4 for 4 is, of course, below rate. The stat gaining effect could basically be argued to be equivalent to Gruul's for all intents and purposes, and nobody is arguing that that's an OP card. The rub comes in the fact that on a lower-cost minion, that effect is relatively powerful - at the end of the first turn it becomes above-average in terms of stats, for example.

The downside, of course, is the loss of life. I'd say that's a pretty inarguable downside. The unusual part of judging disqualifications this week - and the main reason I abstained - is that if I were to DQ this, I'd basically be saying it isn't a strong enough card for it to be considered to meet the requirements of the competition.

I can't make a call like that. A stricter ruleset - one explicitly asking for above average stats, for example - would have mitigated this, but is that worth the loss of creative ideas?

Treasure Trader Bakieva by ChocolateChipCooke

Take this card, for example. A 2 mana 3/2 is explicitly average in its stats - all of the power comes from the effect of the card. A card like this wouldn't have been possible with those tighter rules.

Is this a perfect card? Of course not, no design is. One of my personal issues with it is how ridiculous it becomes when you have no cards in your hand - or even just one card. The power swing it offers in that case is ridiculous, allowing you to gain a fantastic treasure for no cost but having to play a 2 mana 3/2.

Slight design issues don't mean it isn't an interesting card though, and it'd have been a shame to condemn designs like this to the disqualification pile because they don't fit a stricter ruleset.

You'd normally be able to see our justifications for disqualifications on the Transparency Report, but since their explicitly weren't any DQs this week when I can see why you might expect some, I thought I'd give you all the insight into my thought process.

My Mother? A Murloc?

No, not those kinds of Taunts - we're looking for the mechanical kind in this week's WCDC. QUICKLY INSECT, CLICK THE BANNER BELOW! SULFURAS AWAITS!