Wailor's "The Miniscule Realm" Custom Set - Hearthstone Fan Community Spotlight

Hello everybody and welcome to another Fan Community Spotlight. That's right. My last one with my own set was not a fluke! This series really is back in full force. Let's keep this train running for another full set.

This time we have The Miniscule Realm by Wailor (or "EyeOfGuill" as I've sometimes known him on Discord as), who has been a very familiar face in this series for a very long time now. In The Miniscule Realm, everything is very small. Except for the effort. The effort put into this set is absolutely massive, and so is the predicament that Reno Jackson finds himself in after he accidentally shrinks himself to ant size. He's feeling a little bit... Undersized.

Undersized is the keyword found within the set. Undersized is a one-use keyword that triggers after either player plays a minion that costs more than it. But size is all relative. Where is small without big? Colossal also returns from Voyage to the Sunken City, and it's a little bit different because some Colossal minions may have different appendages on the same card.

That's my part in the article. It's quite small if I say so myself. The rest is all Wailor, so let's take it over to him.

It has been 2 years since the last Fan Community Spotlight. How much has custom Hearthstone changed in that time frame?

Wailor: "For me, the biggest change is that there are no comps anymore here on Out of Games, which I really enjoyed. In general, I think the scene has moved more towards polish and realism, and I’d say it also favors mechanics over flavor, although both are important and were important back in the day."

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

Wailor: "Well, some years ago, I realized Voyage to the Sunken City and Journey to Un’goro were both based on vintage sci-fi stories starred by members of the Explorers League. So, I decided to make The incredible shrinking man starred by Reno Jackson as an excuse to make bug-themed cards (I’m a huge bug nerd).

This idea roamed in my head for a while until the 400th competition on r/customhearthstone, in which we had to design a showcase for an expansion. The first thing I realized was that finding good bug art is not as easy as it seems, especially since I planned to give each class a different species of insect.

Related to this and also because an expansion consisting of just bugs would be dull as hell, I decided to come up with a fictional race. In the first rounds of the competition, they were just tiny people similar to the Lilliputians of Gulliver’s Travels. Soon, I realized fairies would be much more interesting, although I still depicted them as having a tyrannical ruler and unfair laws to keep the Gulliver flair."

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

Wailor: "I wanted the mechanic to reflect on how tiny the creatures featured here were. After tinkering a bit with other approaches, I decided to go the Spellburst route and make it trigger after you play a minion with higher Cost than itself.

The main issue with this is that you need a high Mana investment it: for instance, just to trigger the Undersized effect of a 2-drop, you need a whopping 5 Mana. To remedy this, I made it also trigger from your opponent’s minions, so it can also act as a disruptive tool and prevent your opponent from playing minions on curve."

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

Wailor: "I brought back the Colossal keyword, with the twist that they’re now animals like cats or birds to further emphasize how small of a scale we’re dealing with here; and they were all a blast to design. Although I explored different variations on the formula, like Colossals with different kinds of appendages or non-Legendary ones in the mini-set, the one I’d showcase is probably Bigglesworth, Apex Predator.

Another aspect I really enjoyed had, oddly enough, nothing to do with the cards themselves. Since my set diverges pretty heavily from Warcraft lore, I came up with a couple paragraphs of setting for each class. Some of them were focused on the fairy court, like Rogue being all about palace intrigues or Hunter being about the royal gardens. Others were about the natural world, like Ant Pally or Termite Warlock. Finally, some others depicted outcast factions who were enemies with the king of the fairies, including the Warrior’s Sharpbranch Militia or Death Knight’s Rottenberries.

Also related to aesthetics, I really liked making signature cards. As I mentioned earlier, finding good art of insects was not an easy task, but once I got it rolling I got a quite hooked to searching images, so I ended up with a good collection of artworks.

Finally, the mini-set was also a lot of fun to design, as I got to explore a whole different setting. Here, Reno found himself getting even smaller gradually, so instead of fairies and bugs, the cards here depicted very small animals, bacteria or even subatomic particles. I don’t know why, but this set was filled to the brim with card cycles, but I don’t think it ended up feeling weird."

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

Wailor: "I’d like to showcase some spells that I’m quite proud of because of their flavor: Royal Jelly, Call of the Light, Butterfly Effect and Surface Tension."

I also wanted to point out to my favorite class of the expansion, which is Rogue or, more specifically, their Poison package.

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

Wailor: "Well, I started a movie-themed set a while ago, but I don’t think I’ll continue with it. The approach I’ve been following is just making movie references and I don’t find that very amusing, but I don’t have a good alternative in mind and Blututh did it better anyways. That said, some sets turned out really good mechanically, like the Fel Demon Hunter."

I’ve also started to make cards for Slay the Spire that crossover with Blasphemous, as I love both games and feel they have similar aesthetics. IDK how it’ll turn out in the end, but here are a couple cards if you are curious."

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SET!

That's it for this week's Fan Community Spotlight, and yes there are more coming. You absolutely should go check out the entirety of The Miniscule Realm because it's a really fantastic set with a lot of great cards.

I hope you've been enjoying this Fan Community Spotlight renaissance. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.