Welcome, welcome, one and all, to the return of Card Design Conversation and the Weekly Card Design Competition! 

This article is gonna be a short one, as it's really just to let you all know that we're back in business just in time for the new expansion card reveals to really get your imaginations racing with new ideas. The game is being shaken up a lot in the next few weeks, and I'm so interested in seeing how the new expansion has been designed with the new Core Set in mind.

Demon Marks The Spot

Of course, while I've been taking a break from writing these every week, our other regular Fan Creations section has kept on going! There have been several great Fan Community Spotlights since our last Conversation - the majority of them for Hearthstone related content, but the latest one took a look at a custom Runeterra set!

I've always been a big fan of these interviews, as seeing other people's designs is so much of the fun of creating custom cards - seeing what inspired them into creating and using that as inspiration yourself. I know I've certainly started working on things after seeing someone else's take on the idea.

While we're talking about the Spotlight, I do want to take a moment to direct you to a few interesting ones in light of the new Core Set coming very soon:

  • ShadowsOfSense's Core Priest Set - My own take on a reworking of the Priest Core Set, back in early 2020. This was before Priest's initial reworking, which brought in cards like Natalie Seline and Radiance.
  • CheeseEtc's Core Priest Set - A different take on the same idea, this time just undercutting the actual reworking by a week. I believe we knew something was happening with Priest's Core Set sometime soon, but I still enjoy that we timed these articles so perfectly.
  • Neoguli's Core Set Rework (2, 3, 4, 5, 6) - A meatier set of articles covering a rework of the entire Core Set. Looking at what we actually got versus what was speculated here is very interesting to me, as you can see some similarities but also some very stark differences (due in part to how Blizzard chose to execute the idea in the end, I imagine).

Give them a look if you're interested, and of course expect more in the future!

Tempering Expansions

I do want to make a note of this now, because it is something that gets requested very often - there are currently no plans to start a full scale Expansion competition (or other Large competition) in Season 3. We want to be able to have an amazing system in place for you to both submit and collate your larger ideas, and there just hasn't been the time to spare to work on something like that.

We could do a more basic, forum-based system like in ye olden times, but frankly it's a large amount of organisation and planning on our end to get that in order and I just don't have the time for that at the moment. It'd also be a fair bit of a downgrade from what we're used to now with the competition system, and I'd rather see us continually improving and expanding upon what we do, rather than settling for something that functions.

I want to do a big competition as much as I'm sure a lot of you do - it just won't be this Season.

Class is in Session

Speaking of this Season, here's the link to the new competition that just went live shortly before this article! Card reveals are just around the corner, and one of the most intriguing new mechanics is Spell Schools, not least because every spell in the game has the chance to retroactively be added to one of the seven Schools.

This week, we want you to help bolster the mechanic by giving us a card that synergises with a School - or multiple Schools! Click the banner below to find out more.