Hey guys, Descent of Dragons is out. We're having a lot of fun, hopefully (except that Galakrond Shaman is a thing).

But... what if Descent of Dragons, wasn't Descent of Dragons? Today on Fan Community Spotlight, we're looking at another take on the ending of the Year of the Dragon known as Dawn of Desolation created by a member by the name of CivilKobold. In terms of hypothetical release, Dawn of Desolation would replace Descent of Dragons (funnily enough, both have the same acronym) as the final expansion in the Year of Dragon.

Dawn of Desolation has no new special mechanic (although it does feature Elusive keyword as "Evasion"), but instead features the return of C'Thun and Twin Emperor Vek'lor, who would come back to Standard in this set, and would be supported again. They also play a part in the story, which I have chosen not to spoil for you guys.

The Interview

What's this set about? What are the themes? What are a couple of cards that showcase the set?

"Dawn of Desolation is about Lazul's betrayal of the League of E.V.I.L. and attempt at bringing about the destruction of Azeroth and rise of the Old Gods. Although she may have incapacitated everyone's favorite evil masterminds, she forgot to deal with their henchmen! It's up to our novice evil-doers (and the players) to rescue the League of E.V.I.L. and stop Lazul from bringing about desolation.

It wouldn't be the last expansion of the Year of the Dragon without Dragons, so I added a bunch of Dragons. You'll mainly notice representatives from the Old God's favorite dragon flights, Twilight, Infinite, Black, and a pinch of Chromatic. To take this theme into a bit of a darker direction, Dawn of Desolation adds in the mechanic of discarding Dragons from your hand to really push home the fact that they aren't messing around. Chromatic Shifter gives you a reroll and Recursive Drake provides you with an endless stream of 5/4s.

Lackeys make a return with the introduction of Ogreish Lackey and some big hitting Lackey generators like C'BOOM! and EVIL Pillaging, the set even introduces a brand new Neutral Lackey generator in the form of EVIL Carrier Drake.

The set also introduces Evasion as a keyword, which is just "Can't be targeted by spells or Hero Powers". Although I don't think this needs to be keyworded in the vanilla game, Dawn of Desolation adds quite a few cards which utilize this mechanic and need the space. Arch-Stalker Pebbles and Hidden Agenda are two such examples. Because of the reintroduction of C'Thun, the presence of Lackeys, and the mass of Dragons, I wanted to avoid making a whole new keyword as to not spread the set too thin.

Whispers of the Old Gods plays a pretty big part in inspiring this set's theme, you'll notice a lot of corrupted individuals, like Khadgar the Vigilant and a strange Infinite Dragon with a familiar hat...

Although Dawn of Desolation is spread a bit all around Azeroth you'll notice a few cards reminiscent of Nazmir, Voracious Bloodwing, the mysterious Troll worshipper God Splitter Vel'Shar. I also tried to add in Crawgs but couldn't find fitting art for the life of me (Bitten Bitter Biter used to be a card called Cannibal Crawg).

The four "good" classes serve the Old Gods with Lazul meaning the League of E.V.I.L. is outnumbered. So expect to see a load of corruption from Druid to Priest!"

How much experience do you have with making custom Hearthstone cards?

"I've always had little ideas here and there for Hearthstone cards. Most of the cards I've designed haven't seen the light of day, I've got a full expansion of 135 cards, a document with about 40 cards, and then 20 something cards for a secret project. Outside of my hidden stash of cards I've done quite a bit of cards on the Custom Hearthstone subreddit. Most of those are ideas I thought of while walking around or working and could really do with reworks. I was also part of the Custom Hearthstone subreddit's Witchwood team competition on the Houndmasters. Sadly I had to dip out of that near the middle for personal reasons.

Dawn of Desolation is far and beyond the best work I've done yet, I think after making a bunch of mediocre cards and designs I've found what works and what doesn't. But I've still got a long way to go before I'm completely satisfied."

Where does the idea for this alternate ending come from?

"I don't trust Lazul, I didn't when the League of E.V.I.L. was first introduced and I still don't trust her now. I was (and still am a little bit) convinced that Lazul would use the League of E.V.I.L. to bring about her ancient masters: C'Thun and pals. This distrust of Lazul got me thinking about what would happen if her affiliation to the Old Gods was explored in its very own expansion. What better place to explore this concept than at the end of the Year of the Dragon?

The design for Lazul's new card, Harbinger Lazul, came from my assumption that the Dragon at the end of the Year of the Dragon would be Deathwing. Now, Lazul and Deathwing have very similar goals, so I thought they'd work great together in a single card. This dynamic of Harbinger Lazul adding Deathwing to your hand was there from the beginning, the only thing that changed with her card was how she went about that. In her first design, she had to be revived a bunch, then she destroyed your Mana Crystals, then she gave you a token chain. But in the end I went with the Dragon synergy design you see today in order to cement Dragon Priest as an archetype I was pushing."

Bringing C'Thun back seems pretty exciting to me. How did this and what you've done with it come into fruition?

"I loved C'Thun decks back in Whispers of the Old Gods and wanted to see how it might look if my favorite Old God was brought back into the limelight with new, more relevant, synergy cards. I actually designed cards around C'Thun a bit before I got to work on the expansion itself. I posted an example of some cards I designed with this concept in mind on the subreddit. Although I became dissatisfied with a lot of them, quite a few made it into the final product unchanged, cards like Cold Snap Cultist, Twilight Drifter, Wailing Shot, Crackling Cackler, and Dread Ogre.

Others went through some changes but still kept the core idea of the card. C'thraxxi Unraveler used to be called Faceless Horror and had one less Health but gave your C'Thun +5/+5! Twilight Mindweaver got a 1 Mana reduction and became a Dragon. While Ravaging Zealot began as an entirely different card that destroyed a friendly minion and gave your C'Thun Attack and Health equal to the destroyed minion's stats, a far cry from the discard card it is today.

Many of the C'Thun cards were designed for the expansion with a focus on making each classes' C'Thun decks unique. Paladin has some odd Secret support in Mysterious Acolyte, Druid has a tutor for C'Thun in Novice Beckoner, they also have a way to give you a C'Thun with Lifesteal through Grand Whittler Heb, and Warrior makes sure your C'Thun destroys absolutely everything by giving it Rush through Boiling Blood Bruiser.

These experiments eventually led me to get to work on Dawn of Desolation itself since I wanted to create an expansion that reintroduced C'Thun. What better way to bring back C'Thun in the Year of the Dragon than with Lazul?"

Let's talk about G'huun. Since the other Old Gods aren't here, he basically serves as the secondary "big boss monster" with C'Thun. What was your goal with him?

"You pretty much said it yourself, I was never planning on bringing back all of the Old Gods, so G'huun serves as a new Neutral build around to fill that Old God-shaped hole. I really didn't want each build around deck to revolve around C'Thun, I wanted to capture that feel of utilizing those big 10 drops in unorthodox ways. To see if I could make a card that might push some niche or forgettable cards into playability, similar to N'Zoth, the Corruptor with cards like Infested Tauren. Now, G'huun has some noticeable differences to N'Zoth; He summons a set amount of minions, they all gain Rush, and they aren't resummoned from death (You have to manually play your Lifesteal minions).

While with N'Zoth you wanted to get as many Deathrattles with Taunt or some minor effect as possible, with G'huun you want to play specific Lifesteal minions that benefit from them surviving a turn. Some examples in this set would be Spawn of G'huun or Ancient Judicator."

Do you have anything behind the scenes you'd like to share?

"One of the best places I've found for art is in Blizzard's own press releases, there you can find a bunch of stuff which they haven't used or just used in single-player content. I also found myself taking art pieces of underused tokens to use on a card, a good example of this is Endless Whelp which is an edited token from Nightbane Templar. On that topic, digital image editing is an invaluable skill to learn, I'm still pretty bad at it but this project helped me learn a lot and encourage anyone reading to try their hand at it."

What's the most essential piece of advice you would give to people new to the fan creation community?

"Your cards are probably gonna start out pretty bad, but if you take the time to really sit down, focus, and dig into a product there is no doubt in my mind you'll improve greatly. I suggest if you really want to get into card design you should try your hand at an expansion. But instead of showing it to the world personally comb through it and review any problems and inconsistencies, learn from everything there that doesn't work. Jot down if the theming doesn't work or the balance is off, if you have too many minions or too many words, then put it away and try your hand at an entirely different theme. It may sound like a brutal approach to the whole thing, but once you've used that first attempt to learn, your time is better spent making something better than fixing something that's ok. If you get into the habit of focusing on a single project you may find yourself stuck and unable to really improve.

In any case, you can go back to that first expansion and try again later, when you're even better. (That's what I'll be doing)"

Do you have anything else you'd like to share?

"I'd like to thank everyone for checking out my expansion, it took a lot of effort and I'm really proud of how it turned out. When the time comes and we're all asked to make a decision that could change the fate of each and every one of us... I suggest you vote for the League of E.V.I.L. as they're cooler than the League of Explorers."

That would do it for today. Be sure to check out the set, and let us know what you think. Thank you for reading, and happy holidays.