The year has just been flying past, hasn't it? Half of me still thinks it's March, and half of me is wondering why we haven't hit 2021 yet. Still, always good to have regular things like this to help you keep track of what day it is - I must admit that before we started the competitions back up I likely couldn't have told you what day of the week it was, nevermind the date.

This time, we'll be Conversing about the scope of a card design project.

First Line

As always, we must first congratulate the winner of the last WCDC! Well done to Wailor and their Sturdy Quarterback!

We look forward to seeing their theme ideas!

Exploration Date

The Fan Community Spotlight turned its attention to a smaller set recently - LutriSpellcaster's "Rafaam vs Explorers 3". This adventure-like set continues on after the story of the Year of the Dragon - Rafaam has now been thwarted by the League of Explorers in his attempts to steal the Staff of Origination and to resurrect Galakrond, so he's trying a different approach to conquering Azeroth in this one.

I found this set very refreshing - lore-filled expansions and grand new Class ideas are incredibly interesting in their own right, but sometimes trying to interpret all that new information at once can be a bit much. When designing them, you might overlook fantastic ideas - or shrug off poor ones - simply due to the sheer amount of things you need to keep track of. I'm very guilty of this myself; my first ever Class design, the Archivist, backed itself into a design corner very early on when several Basic cards became incredibly overpowered as I tried to expand on the class in expansions (as an aside, good lord was my card text poorly formatted back then - I hadn't realised how much I've improved).

On the other side of things, it can be draining as a viewer of a new class or expansion to try and establish how all these new cards are meant to work together and with existing cards. As much work as has been put into it from the creator, I always feel bad when I look at something and just don't understand what they were going for, or don't see how the pieces of the puzzle align.

Don't underestimate the advantages of being able to streamline a set down to just a few cards per class - not only can you cull some of the more uninteresting designs, but you can really tighten up how you present a theme. There's no longer a need to fill out a class with multiple playstyles or ideas at once, and instead you can focus on making one idea really shine.

All this is to say, of course, that I loved this set. Even without the fleshed out story of an adventure to tell me what's going on, it's quite clear how the classes are split, and the theming is a great twist of original ideas and callbacks to previous encounters with Rafaam and the Explorers. Here's some of my favourite cards - make sure you click the link above for the full interview and a link to the full card set!

   

Circus Fire

We're turning up the heat with some powerful spells in the WCDC this week! Click the banner below for more info, and we'll see you next week... unless?