After a bit of a long wait and a fun little prologue comp to hype up what there is to come, season 6 of our Hearthstone WCDCs has officially started! As for why it took so long, that's something I wrote about in more detail in my last Card Design Conversation. While Shadows has been gone for the season, Link and I have taken the position of running the show.

Normally, this would just be a redirect article to take you to the Discussion Topic of the current competition, but as season 6 comes with some significant updates to mention, we thought it'd be important for there to be a place to mention exactly what those changes are. This is also something I brought up in my aforementioned Card Design Conversation, but there are a few extra things to talk about.

What's Different About This Season

The first thing I want to talk about is the finals stage. This is something I talked about in my Card Design Conversation, and if you didn't notice it there, then you probably noticed it in the finals voting of The Dead of Knight. The finals stage comes with significant changes.

The first of which is the reduced number of finals. We've gone down from 8 to 6 for this season. It's no secret that the Fan Creations side of the site is much less popular than the rest of the site because it's something that only applies to a small niche of our readerbase. This is perfectly natural since different people will have a different favored part of the community or the game, and we recognize that not everyone is interested in creating their own cards or interacting with the people who do.

While we had a huge surge of entries for our first batch of competitions, they have slowly gone down overtime, and this sometimes gets to the point where about half of the entries of any given competition make it to the finals. Cutting our finalist count down to 8 to 6 is in response to this. This also means that theoretically there should be fewer incidences of poorly designed cards entering the finals stage. In the event that we have more people joining, we can very easily change this back.

Speaking of the finals stage, all entries that make it there now have their descriptions visible and they are all automatically hidden behind a spoiler, as such:

Normally there would also be stars there to give the card a score, but I couldn't vote on the finals since one of my own cards made it (flex). Anyway, the point is that you now have the option to see what each participant in the finals wrote about their card. I don't reckon this will actually end up changing the scores that much, but this is a change that I have seen requested, and now is the time to actually try it out.

I mentioned before about the low turnout that these competitions have. In this season, we have ways of combating that. Our first way that you probably noticed last week is our redirect articles that will go up every Tuesday at 5:00PM EST, or in other words, exactly 24 hours after the competition starts. A lot of people on this website probably don't even realize that these competitions exist, and these will make these competitions much easier to find for everyone. They redirect you right to the Discussion Topic of its corresponding competition. Additionally, we will continue to remind people of them every week during Card Design Conversation. Advertising is a pretty big source of what's changing this time around.

You can probably tell how far in advance I started writing this article.

Our season schedule is the following:

  • Monday - Previous competition ends/New competition starts
  • Tuesday - Redirect article posted on main page
  • Friday - Card Design Conversation
  • Saturday - Submission period closes/Second voting period begins
  • Sunday - Fan Community Spotlight/Finals voting begins

Some of these things might differ from time to time. Namely the fact that this week's redirect article is instead being taken up by an information one, and there's a chance that Fan Community Spotlight might go up on a different day. That pretty much depends entirely on communication from who I'm interviewing for that particular installment.

Prizes

Yep, you heard it correctly. We've got prizes this season, which is something I forgot to mention in my Card Design Conversation. We're all familiar with the prize of choosing the next competition theme if you win one of the main competitions. But this time around, we've got prizes for performance across the entirety of the season. Based on how many total wins you have across the season, you can receive either:

  • First place: 1 month of free Premium on the website + Derpcorn enamel pin + Derpcorn sticker
  • Second place: Derpcorn enamel pin + Derpcorn sticker
  • Third place: Derpcorn sticker

As for what happens in the case of a tie, that will be broken by whoever has the highest average scores across all their cards. In the event that happens to be a tie as well, then... maybe we just flip a coin.

As much as I would love to claim an early lead for these prizes with my victory over the prologue competition, I think it only make sense that for the sake of fairness, it won't be counted as it's not an official part of season 6. But otherwise, it's time to bring your A-game now more than ever! You've got actual physical prizes to compete for! That said, we still expect everyone to stick to the rules. We may have prizes to give out this season, but it's nothing worth cheating over.

So now that you know what all season 6 has to offer that's new, it's time to get your feet out there and start running in this race! We've got our first competition up