Are you all enjoying the spooky Oozefest? I know I've been enjoying trying to puzzle out the clues for the card games I amn't familiar with - Hearthstone and Magic were relatively straightforward for me, though it did take a bit of thinking to remember what the actual name of some of the cards were, but Runeterra and Mythgard are whole other hunts!
Our Conversation this week will be just as spooky!
Gold Star
Firstly, we must congratulate the winner of the last WCDC! Well done to MrRhapsody and their Meteoric Entry!
We look forward to their theme ideas for next week!
Start To Finish
The FCS is keeping with the overall theme of 2020 and taking us to the Dawn of the Apocalypse, a custom expansion by our latest WCDC winner, MrRhapsody!
A perfect fit for our spooky celebrations, Dawn of the Apocalypse looks at a world in peril from a universe-ending threat known only as 'The End', locked away but scheming to escape. Its prison has 10 locks with obscure and horrifying conditions for breaking them - and wouldn't you know, we happen to have ten classes just itching to help out.
I love the presentation of this set. It is deeply story-focused, with detailed reasoning behind each Legendary's existence and the classes' overall themes; despite this, much of the content is completely original, using only the concepts from WoW and coming up with entirely original characters to fulfill them. While some of my favourite expansions - real and fan created - have a deep grounding in the lore of WoW, it's very interesting to step outside of it every now and then for something unique.
We've seen various shades of this in Hearthstone, even - the Boomsday Project comes to mind, with its wholly original take on Netherstorm through the medium of Dr Boom (a character whose entire personality is essentially a Hearthstone original), along with his wide array of scientific advisors. Scholomance Academy, too, introduces us to a mixed cast of brand new teachers. Even in these departures from the status quo, however, there are strong ties to the source material - Subject 9 and Turalyon, the Tenured, as an example - which is both a comfort and occasionally a source of frustration. Ah, the good old days when people were up in arms over Ragnaros, Lightlord 'ruining' the lore.
All this is to say that I'm a big fan of taking the settings of WoW and inventing your own lore as appropriate. Honestly, I want to see Hearthstone try it for an expansion - they've almost gotten there before, but never quite pulled off having no real characters (unless I'm remembering wrong).
Here's a few more of my favourite cards from the set - click the link above to see the full interview and get a link to the full set!
Candyland
Of course we had to get in on celebrating Hallowe'en ourselves! Our special card design competition has three different prompts to choose from, and any entry that doesn't get disqualified will win you some Candy for our new site shop. Click the banner to head on over and get in the spooky spirit!
Bob's Your Uncle
As always, we also have our regular WCDC this week. The name of the game this time is Battlegrounds - you must submit a card that could be found in both traditional Hearthstone and the new kid on the block Battlegrounds! Click the banner to enter the Tavern!
Comments
When can I have Tal'Bata for my Wild Highlander Burgle Rogue?
Fire Starter would be even cooler if it had something along the lines of "Deal 1 damage to a random enemy minion, if the minion dies repeat on neighbouring minions with 1 additional damage". I'm not sure that text makes sense (and trying to write card text makes you appreciate what a skill it is) but the idea being it would deal 2, 3, 4, etc damage on a neighbouring minion following the first minion's death.
Flavour of meteoric entry and cure testing is breathtaking.
"Dormant for 10 turns" can still be cheated out and therefore never be printed.
Once you cheat it out you'd still have to wait the 10 turns.
I do think that it being completely impossible to interact with makes it shaky design, but cheating it out a few turns early or whatever isn't that much of an issue.