It was so fun looking at all the entries for last week's competition. As someone who hasn't played much of Runeterra or LoL, I loved seeing the crazy variety of characters they had represented in Hearthstone. It was especially interesting trying to guess where people were pulling their inspiration for mechanics from - is this attempting to transplant the Runeterra card, a recreation based on their League mechanics, or something entirely new based only on the art?

Conversation this time is a short and sweet one.

Holding On

First up, the winner of the latest WCDC! Congratulations to FenrirWulf with their Thresh!

Their input will shape next week's competition, so look forward to that!

Tactical Espionage

The Fan Community Spotlight turns its attention to GrandInquisitor's Tactician Class this week!

This class follows the Demon Hunter approach of adding a class to the game, positioning itself as an addition that comes with Forged in the Barrens. I really like this idea for adding a class to the game, because it gives you an existing expansion to help tie your class to the game flavourfully. It also gives you a little bit of a project for the rest of that Standard Year, updating your class with new cards and potentially eventually coming up with a Core Set comprised of your favourites.

This might even be something that custom card designers might want to take inspiration from. Why not go back to a previous Hearthstone Year and try and imagine what a class designed to release over the course of that year might look like? You'd have to tie them to the first expansion of the year - at least tangentially, anyway - and think about what space they'd take up in the expansions for the rest of the year.

In the Year of the Dragon, for example, would you position a class as one of the heroes to balance out the roster, or would you prefer to side with the villains? It might seem obvious at first to try and make it balanced, but sometimes deliberately breaking a pattern or defying expectations can lead to the most interesting designs. For better or worse, Demon Hunter's 1 Mana Hero Power was certainly a talking point.

The Tactician does something similar, defying tradition by having what is essentially a delayed Hero Power (in its base form, at least). This can lead to all sorts of interesting decision points for both you and your opponent as you both try to take into account a known event happening in the future. This follows through across the whole class, not necessarily in exactly the same way but in cards that allow you to set up for later plays, or cards that help you manipulate the board to your advantage. It truly plays into the idea of a Tactician.

Click the link above to see the full interview, along with links to the Basic, Initiate and Forged in the Barrens sets.

Survival Of The Fittest

The current WCDC takes us through the Barrens to look at their new mechanic! Click the banner below before it's damaged!