Hello everybody and welcome back to another Fan Community Spotlight. It's December, which means that everyone is getting their Christmas shopping done for the holidays. This timing is quite perfect for our next Fan Community Spotlight, which is themed around shopping.

Today, we're looking at Gallywix's Megastore and it's associated mini-set, Revolt Against the Store. This project was made by TheFriendlyEnemy of whom is an iconic figure in the custom Hearthstone community, runs and maintains the most populous custom Hearthstone server, and has appeared on this series 3 times before.

We said earlier that the set is about shopping, and one of the biggest aspects of shopping is advertisement. The new keyword of Gallywix's Megastore is Advert. During each of your turns, a little pop-up window will display with an Advert card in your deck (chosen at random), and if you click on it, you will spend 2 mana and draw that card. In the spoiler below is an example of what this would look like with Purchasius, which functioned as the main card to advertise the mechanic (no pun intended) during its development.

Advert example

Additionally, this is one of the first (if not the absolute first) big project to incorporate cards for Death Knight, which were not originally part of the set before, but were added in a later update before the set was officially revealed.

The class may not be officially out yet, but that hasn't stopped people from tinkering the gears in their brain to work with the class, and it's easy to see why. The Rune system means that you can push a design further with less fear of breaking the game with other cards because they can't be combined with everything. You don't need to fear that your cool and crazy 3F card will break the game in combination with even a simple 1B or 1U card. The Corpse mechanic is also something that's really fun to play around with, not just in terms of cards that spend Corpses to get a power spike, but also the number of ways the mechanic can be supported, either directly or indirectly.

Here on Fan Community Spotlight, we advertise, just like this set does. Now it's time for me to advertise the set itself, and I've brought the creator of the set here with me to talk about it.

What exactly is this set about? What is the inspiration for the set theme?

TheFriendlyEnemy: "The set is about Gallywix setting up a supermarket in the Hearthstone universe, and all the Hearthstone-y consequences of that (like the baked goods being conjured by Mages etc.) When initially brainstorming ideas for the theme, I wanted to choose something everyone would be able to understand. Since pretty much everyone has bought groceries or seen an advertisement for a supermarket, I decided to try out this set theme and see where it led me."

What is the inspiration for the Advert mechanic and how you use it?

TheFriendlyEnemy: "I wanted the set’s keyword to be fairly flashy to encourage people to look further into the set. To do that, I looked at ways of using a new UI element. The main effect of the keyword was largely inspired by a keyword by Pircival (huge props to him for letting me use Advert), and from there I reflavoured the keyword until it fit the set’s theme."

What part of the set was the most fun to design?

TheFriendlyEnemy: "Once I had the foundations of the set in place, it was an absolute blast to design the whole way through. In fact, the set was so fun to design for that several other designers who have seen it ended up making their own custom cards with the set’s mechanics. (If any readers feel similarly inspired by this set, feel free to share your ideas with me!) However, my favourite class of all to make was Rogue. It felt like every card really encapsulated an element of the marketing theme, like Psychological Pricing and Half Off, while pushing a cohesive Discount Rogue direction."

How was it like to design cards for Death Knight?

TheFriendlyEnemy: "Death Knight’s sudden appearance midway through designing the set posed an interesting challenge. With only one expansion worth of cards to reference, there aren’t a lot of themes to work with for a whole Standard year. Luckily, the Corpse theme happened to line up perfectly with the Gallywix Megastores theme of spending resources that aren’t Mana, leading to some fun designs like The Fired Ones and Stitched Shopper."

Are there any other cards you wish to showcase for any reason?

TheFriendlyEnemy: "I was pretty proud of the way Warlock turned out, since despite its flavour not having an immediate connection to a supermarket, it ended up telling a pretty interesting story. The three deck size increasing cards (Impulse Buying, Overspending, and Reckless Advisor) represent rash decisions, like the one made by Arriss the Bargainer. His story, as hinted in the set images, involves him making a demonic pact with the demon Purchasius, who will buy from the store and improve its sales. However, if Purchasius is not fed with products, he will claim Arriss’s soul, which eventually happens in the miniset represented by Last Purchase."

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

TheFriendlyEnemy: "A lot happened behind the scenes since I started working on the set 17 months ago. Around December of 2021, I didn’t feel like I had enough momentum to continue the set and worked on other projects, namely Arcane Arcade Remastered. While I was making that set, I noticed a lot of mechanical similarities between the first draft of Gallywix Megastores and Arcane Arcade Remastered, and so I decided to start Year of the Spider. Putting both sets into the same context ended up giving me the momentum I needed to finally finish Gallywix Megastores and release it, with the help of some members from the Custom Hearthstone Discord."

Do you have anything else you wish to share?

TheFriendlyEnemy: "Keep a look out for The Tanaris Report, which will conclude the Year of the Spider, and check out the articles for the other Year of the Spider sets (Core set and Arcane Arcade Remastered) if you haven’t already. Thanks to everyone who took the time to look at this interview, and thanks again to Demonxz95 for hosting Fan Community Spotlight."

This will conclude this week's Fan Community Spotlight, but it certainly does not conclude our shopping madness. We've got until December 25th to buy our Christmas presents, and there's also a whole lot more cards in the expansion to look at. Click the banners below to look at the entire set, both the main set, and the mini-set.