At the start of the 9th season of fan creations back on HearthPwn, we ran the final annual Class Creation Competition, which asked our competitors to create a brand new class, with cards from all of the standard legal sets. Through several back-and-forths, the competition eventually resulted in Pircival's Archaeologist class reigning supreme.

Rafaam was not happy about it.

Once again, congratulations to Pircival for winning the Class Creations Competition. If you want to check out the class in its entirety, then you can find it here. Now on to the questions!

Why did you decide on making an archaeologist class? And what made you choose Decay as your keyword?

I felt I wanted to do an Archaeologist class because flavorwise, it felt new to Hearthstone. Thematically, it had very little overlap with the classes that it was most similar to, like Warrior, which helped the class 'feel' different even if it was mechanically similar. Decay felt like a fitting mechanic for an Archaeologist. I made Decay to enable these passive weapons, because infinite passive effects such as Baku the Mooneater and Frost Lich Jaina were some of the most disliked cards in the game, because of their overwhelming infinite value. Putting these effects on a timer felt like a good solution, and making it as intuitive as losing Durability felt like a good fit.

Was Decay made specifically for the class, or did you create Decay first, and focus your class around it?

I don't recall exactly, but I do think that this class was birthed around the idea of passive weapons, versus the existing beatsticks that you just attacked with in other weapon classes.

What initially got you into designing Hearthstone cards? 

I was first introduced into custom card design while googling custom hearthstone cards. From there, I got into the Customhearthstone subreddit, then the Customhearthstone Discord, then HearthPwn.

Do you have a personal specific design philosophy?

I don't have a particular design philosophy, but the design method for the vast majority of my cards was to find a cool art and create a card out of it. For the others, I thought of an archetype I wanted to support, and made a card that supported that.

What do you think gave you the edge in the end?

I don't really know what gave me the edge in the end, but I believe that it was the general quality of my cards, because they generally remained consistent, and I think people found the Decay keyword to be intriguing.

Were there any things you specifically liked, or disliked about this competition?

I enjoyed the longer times to prepare for the competition phases, but I wish that it was better advertised, and the competition challenges were less restrictive and didn't force people to make worse classes, but instead enabled better classes, like showing off the core strengths and weaknesses.

Besides your own class, what was your favorite of the other classes, and why?

I really liked CheeseEtc's Alchemist, and I thought all of his archetypes and many of his cards were really cool. It was really a shame he didn't make it to the finals. That would probably be my favorite out of the classes, but all of the other finalists were very high quality too.

Did you expect to reach the finale and win it? Or were there other classes you feared would take the title from you?

I was very surprised that I won the finals, especially considering that this was my first time participating in a large competition. Honestly, I felt most of the other classes could've beaten me. Quality-wise, it really was anybody's game.

The following were the other finalists:


The Lich by Linkblade91
The Astromancer by Shatterstar1998
The Enchanter by Technician

Anything else you would like to share?

I'd like to thank all of the people on the Customhearthstone discord for giving me a lot of feedback, as it was my main resource. Keep innovating and I can't wait to see you on Outof.cards!

Stay tuned for further updates on card creation tools and competitions coming right here on Out of Cards!