Hello everybody, and welcome to the first Fan Community Spotlight of 2020. Do you remember how at the end of the Retrospective, I signified that we would be going on some "trials" for the first FCS of 2020? As a eluded to when I said that, we're looking at an expansion called "The Trials Within Us" created by our very own, linkblade91.

This set introduces a special card type, Trials. Whilst we've had FCS's in the past the introduced new mechanic and some that utilized special cycles with distinct type names, this is the first FCS that actually uses a new "type" of card in the same way that Quests are a type of card. This set introduces essentially the opposite counterpart of Quests, known as Trials.

Special reminder that cards without mana costs are treated as 0-Cost cards for the purposes of Genn and Baku.

Trials are cards that activate at the very start of the game, remove themselves from the deck, and come with an everlasting positive effect. That sounds like a lot for one card to do right away, and it is. So, what's the catch? Well, every Trial has a Burden attached to it. Burdens are negative effects that last for the rest of the game, which you will need to deal with. With the right deckbuilding though, you can perhaps find a way to take more advantage of the effects and overcome the trial (see what I did there). But what more will we learn in this set? Well we're about to find out, so without further ado, time for the interview (unintentional rhyme).

The Interview

Walk us through the set. What's it about? What does it bring us? What can we expect?

Link: "The Trials Within Us comes to us from Lorewalker Cho, who is telling us a story related to Blizzard's The Burdens of Shaohao animated mini-series. The set consists of nine separate stories, using prominent Warcraft characters and their respective lore to showcase how they deal with adversity. The Trial cards set the stage, telling you where in the Warcraft universe the story plays out and with whom, while the Sha cards represent the specific challenge that haunts each of them - Despair, Hatred, Anger, etc. It's kind of like I took the Seven Deadly Sins and paired each of them with a class, except I used the Sha from World of Warcraft so it was more on-brand and added two more to meet the nine-class requirement.

Each class set is tied to their representative's canon, so hopefully I did a good job in retelling their lore in such a way that marries their story with the gameplay."

How long have you been making your own cards?

Link: "A couple years now, I think. I wandered into Hearthpwn's Fan Creation section and decided I would participate in a Weekly Card Design Competition, if only because I was lonely and wanted to engage with some people. My early ideas were over-complicated to the nth degree, and Sinti would never let me hear the end of it lol :P

Hopefully I've gotten better since then, even though I still like to create complicated ideas (see: the Trial cards)."

Where does the Trial mechanic originate from? Did the Trials influence the set or the other way around?

Link: "The Trial mechanic comes from my second- or third-ever WCDC, when I tried to post one as my entry and Sinti shot me down. He was right, of course: custom ideas like that should wait for their own thing. So I sat on the idea, slowly working on it and creating the Trials, until a year had passed and my opportunity came in the form of the Year Competition to really showcase them. Then of course I got myself disqualified like an idiot, because I forgot to create 6 Neutral cards (I only made four). But I at least had a starting foundation for the expansion, and with some push from friends I continued the expansion several months after that disqualification.

The Trials were originally called "Contracts", as in a "Deal with the Devil"-type of arrangement. They were always intended to be the opposite of Quests (gain a benefit now, suffer a penalty forever), but starting out I had no connection to any particular lore from Warcraft. That came much later, when I chanced upon the Sha while perusing Wowpedia. This eventually led me to The Burdens of Shaohao, and that's when I made the move from Contracts to Trials, to better reflect the mini-series' flavor. So while the Contracts/Trials were created first, it was their marriage to The Burdens of Shaohao that really made everything click for me."

The Shas are a cool cycle. Besides lore reasons, what was the goal for each one?

Link: "The Shas are negativity made flesh, so gameplay-wise I thought that they should have a universally-negative aura effect. Turn off Taunts, turn off healing, lower everyone's Attack to 1, etc. However, The Trials Within Us is about overcoming this adversity, not continuously suffering it. So each Trial and class set is about overcoming their Sha's negative aura, turning it into a positive gameplay experience for them if you play a certain way (while making their opponent suffer in the process).

The Druid's Sha, Fear, turns off Taunts, but the Trial demands that their hero must attack each turn if able. By switching off Taunt, the Druid can bypass a wall and go face, whilst boosting his Attack with cards like Savage Moonkin or Primal Fury. In this way, the Druid has turned his Sha into a positive if he runs no Taunts himself; he has overcome his Fear by embracing and accepting it."

One thing that particularly stuck out to me was Xal'atath as there were no other Legendary weapons in the set? What significance does Xal'atath have in the set?

Link: "I thought Xal'atath would be a fun "lore character", and I wanted at least one of the nine classes to have something dramatically different so it would stand out as one of my example cards (I guess it worked). Xal'atath being a Priest Legendary weapon works on multiple different levels, at least in my eyes:

  1. Xal'atath connected perfectly with a Sha of "Arrogance", being a sentient weapon that would whisper dark secrets in your mind if you let it in.
  2. A Legendary weapon matched the picture I was using for "Whispers of Power", the Trial. Xal'atath being Old God-related furthered this unity.
  3. Dragon Soul really sucked, so as an apology the Priest gets a cool new weapon.
  4. With all of the self-harm being introduced for the Shadow Priest gameplay, the Priest needed another tool to heal with.
  5. While I'm sure there are some prominent Shadow Priests I could have used as lore characters, Xal'atath was more interesting to me personally."

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

Link: "I'm going to take this moment to shout-out to Shatterstar1998, who sent me a PM on HearthPwn months after the Year Competition had ended, telling me about how enjoyable they had found my expansion to be and wishing I would continue on the project. I was dealing with severe depression at the time (and still am), and it was his remarks that really helped me pull out of the hole. Until then, I had felt like a continual failure in card creating, and it was only through his "random gushing" that I began to appreciate my own efforts. So thank you again, Shatterstar."

What design philosophies do you have? What do you wish to spread to future creators?

Link: "My design philosophy is to just go for it. Everything is a first-draft, so you might as well push the limit and scale back as the feedback comes in. And that's it, really: You do you, and enjoy the process. If you're anything like me, you're positively terrified that people will think your ideas suck, and that that will somehow reflect back on your personally. You've got to get past that feeling somehow. (Good) feedback is not a personal attack, so take it all in and better yourself with it."

Do you have anything else you wish to share?

Link: "Thank you to everyone who helped me along the way with my ideas, a double-thank you for giving this expansion a look-over, and a triple-thank you to Demon for taking the time to share my expansion with you :)"

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for reading the first FCS of 2020. We have many more to come. Special thanks to linkblade91 for taking part in the interview. Be sure to check out the set, and let us know what you think.