Hello everybody and welcome to another Fan Community Spotlight. This week is all about engineering, science, and a return to familiar territory. We've got something we've been seeing for quite a while, and that is another mini-set for an existing expansion, and this time, it's Wailor making Boom Labs I.T. Division as a mini-set for The Boomsday Project.

The Boomsday Project with quite a bit of significance to the game. It was the first set since Goblins vs Gnomes to bring back relevancy to Mechs, the first set overall to give us Legendary spells that aren't Quests, the first set to introduce Treant synergy for Druids (which has become a staple mechanic for the class), and is one of the earliest sets where the general card design really started to bend the rules more than it had before. Magnetic also remains a favorite mechanic to a large amount of the playerbase despite its appearance in only one set.

The Boomsday Project is a great choice to build a mini-set for, as many of the cards in the game have cemented a place in Hearthstone history. I mentioned before about Legendary spells, but the minions are similarly cards with a lot of contribution to the game. Zilliax, Mecha'thun, and Whizbang the Wonderful are 3 of the most iconic and memorable Neutral Legendary cards in the game. Dr. Boom, Mad Genius remained a staple powerhouse in Warrior for a long time running, and Stargazer Luna appears to have been the basis for Outcast in Demon Hunter.

Speaking of Demon Hunter, Illidan is getting his share of cards in this mini-set too. Let's bring it over to Wailor.

What inspired you to create a mini-set of The Boomsday Project?

Wailor: "I work on I.T., so I created a bunch of computer-themed cards across the years. I guess it's just natural that you can find interesting ideas that would translate well to a card in your field of expertise. Of course, Boomsday is the only set where this computer-theme would make sense, so when I saw Beatdoof's Communion of the Ahn'qiraj and Hii's The Dalaran Heist, I decided to use these cards for a Mini-Set.

I also really love the Boomsday set: each class being represented by a field of science, the Magnetic keyword, the Project spells... I find it really interesting and flavorful. One of my favorite sets ever, even if its overall power-level is quite low."

How did you want to design the mini-set in relation to the base set? What cards do you think best signify what the mini-set is about?

Wailor: "Just like Beatdoof and Hii, I wanted to make a set to send straight-to-Wild, meaning the power-level could be more inline with what we see today. This also allowed me to create Demon Hunter cards, which I really enjoyed doing.

I also tried to support and expand concepts introduced in Boomsday. Similarly to how The Deadmines introduced Trade to support Tradeable, I made a bunch of cards with Magnetize, in order to support Magnetic. These are Cybernetic Crusader, Learning Machine and Kernelmeister Ingrid.

Besides this, there are revisits of other mechanics in Boomsday, like Quantum Processor for plain-old Magnetic, Virtual Reality Project for Project spells, Omega Harvester for Omega cards or Cracker Captain Ada, who interacts with Legendary spells.

Finally, I mostly tried to support the same archetypes for each class as the main expansion, like Man in the Middle for Thief Priest or Ecosearch for both Big and Treant Druid. Of course, there are some outliers that don't fit anywhere, which are mostly focused on flavor."

Are there any other cards you wish to highlight for any particular reason?

Wailor: "Well, I wanted to showcase my favorite card from the set, which is Trojansteed. I like how its drawback has, in turn, a drawback for your opponent, and it really captures what Trojan malware does in real life.

I also wanted to mention the card I've had the most problems balancing, which is Electronics Project. On the one hand, I didn't want it to be too bad compared with Mana Burn (which is already bad), but on the other hand, I didn't want it to be too broken with Tunnel Trogg.

I tinkered with a bunch of Mana Costs and number of Overloaded crystals, but in the end, decided that the best thing was to nerf Tunnel Trogg. I didn't feel too comfortable with this solution, but Blizzard has already done this (like with Dreadsteed when Defile came out) and the Trogg has always been a pretty unhealthy card to begin with, so I decided to go with it."

Do you have anything behind the scenes that you wish to share?

Wailor: "Not really".

Do you have anything else you wish to share?

Wailor: "If you have time, I'd encourage you to read the flavor explanation of the cards in the set, as you might learn one thing or two about computer science.

I'd also like to point out how well this set and Rastakhan's Afterparty work together. I didn't know about this set when I finished mine, but they have some very nice synergies without stepping on each other's toes too much. I really love when these coincidences happen :)"

This is the end of our little adventure on the main page, but it's just getting started elsewhere. Click the banner below to check out the entire mini-set.