Hello everybody and welcome to another Fan Community Spotlight, and this time we have one that shares a theme with our most recent expansion. And when I drop the normal thumbnail convention that I've used for the past 150 Fan Community Spotlights, that things are about to get real, and get real they are.
This is a set from TheFriendlyEnemy, who is known in many custom Hearthstone circles as one of the greatest card designers that the overall community has ever seen, and he has been a person I've featured on this series quite a few times in the past. His most recent set is a set called Finite, which is a set that's about time, and the Bronze and Infinite Dragonflights. That sounds kinda like Across the Timeways, no? Well yes, but in a much different light.
It becomes apparent right away that this is far from an ordinary custom Hearthstone project when you open the link to it. Upon doing so, this is the first thing that you see:
This set features a very heavy narrative element, and some questions in the interview have a spoiler on them as they go over some narrative details. As such, if you would like to experience the narrative for yourself, you may want to view the whole set first, THEN read the interview at the bottom. In fact, you are heavily encouraged to do this due to the story of the set and the structure in which the interview is laid out.
The set will take you through every class in alphabetical order, and the set can only be viewed this way. Your browser's back button will not even work!
If it any point, you do try to go back and stray from the timeline, you will have the option to return to the timeline which simply takes you back to where you were, or another option to "Accept Murozond's deal."
When the set was initially posted, only the Death Knight cards were visible with the other classes being unavailable until a timer fully ran out, giving the custom set a reveal season of its own like a real expansion would. The option to accept Murozond's deal would allow you to skip this and view all of the cards instantly, though this option no longer does anything since all of the cards have been revealed as normal now.
The set also contains one new keyword, Displaced. The first time a card with Displaced enters your hand (by any means), it goes into your deck and you would get a random Dragon instead of that Displaced card. When you draw that same Displaced card again, you will keep it.
There's no... time to lose though. Now we bring this over to TheFriendlyEnemy to understand what the Dragonflights are really all about in this set.
What exactly is this set about? What is the inspiration for the set theme?
TheFriendlyEnemy: "The very first words you see in the set are “This is a set about time”, and I think that sums it up if you want the short answer. But I think there’s more to it than that; it’s about reimagining time travel in Hearthstone, which is what inspired this set. Plenty of other designers have shown their take on a time travel expansion, and they tend to follow a bit of the same formula:
- Chromie or sometimes Toki hops through time, visiting past locations in Hearthstone (generally ones the playerbase feels nostalgia towards).
- Because of this, the set ends up becoming more of an anthology of 11 different stories than a cohesive story about time travel.
- The tone tends to be light-hearted, probably because time travellers are really powerful and it’s hard to write any real conflicts or obstacles for them. If a driving conflict is present, it’s often technobabble-y and not very concrete, like “Chromie has to use the chronotemporal stabilizer to prevent paradoxes from breaking the timeline!”
These are very natural decisions to make, and they aren’t necessarily bad, but I wanted to make something different to that. The set really came together when I thought of reframing time travel as a temptation of ultimate power for the non-time-traveling protagonists. That’s also the reason the set is called “Finite”, and not “Infinite” like you’d expect for a set featuring Murozond!"
What part of the set was the most fun to design?
TheFriendlyEnemy: "I loved using this set to showcase its keywords. On Turn X started as part of an article I wrote about Start of Game’s problems. Showing off one Legendary per class with the keyword let me justify a world where Start of Game is fully replaced with On Turn 1; none of the On Turn X designs could be done with Start of Game, even the ones with On Turn 1. It also helped make turn numbers a part of the set’s identity, through the Fleeting and Horde-∞ cycles mainly.
Displaced was also fun to explore the design space of. It has a lot going on, which I’m usually not a fan of for custom mechanics, but it ultimately gets used in so many different ways that I feel the number of moving parts is justified. Hunter uses it to play Dragons in a no-minion deck, Paladins use it for Balance the Scales, Rogue uses it for shuffle synergies, Warlock prolongs their deck while gaining discard fodder, and Priest just wants to hold Dragons".
How would you compare this set to Across the Timeways?
TheFriendlyEnemy: "Across the Timeways was announced during the early development of this set in the Warcraft 30th Anniversary Direct. Like I said earlier, time travel is a very common custom set theme, but Team 5 doesn’t have the same pressure as I did to stand out from the crowd, since there are only two other official time expansions (if you can call them expansions). As such, they do partially follow the “formula” I mentioned earlier, choosing to embrace the anthology aspect with the Fabled keyword. I think if I were designing a time travel expansion for Team 5, it would look quite a bit like Across the Timeways."
What's the deal with Timecap'n Hooktail?
TheFriendlyEnemy: "Timecap’n Hooktail, as well as Anomaloc, Conflux Defender, and Lazul, Eye of the End, are perfectly ordinary cards that support the set’s Í«ø\I¬Gçƺ mechanic. If you’re having trouble viewing it, try adjusting your monitor’s 4D display settings, restart your flux capacitor, or re-access the site from a compatible timeline. If none of that works, maybe ask Murozond for help instead?
Okay, jokes aside, the Displaced cards are placed in such a way that it starts out invisible, but slowly gets more obvious that something is missing, thanks to Fish Out of Water and Time Paradox that are very suspicious without context. Then, finally, Timecap’n Hooktail can’t be written without the keyword, hence the gibberish instead. This is the first time you’re outright told something strange is going on. By the time the Neutrals show up with the same gibberish, it should be without doubt that she wasn’t a one off and there is a hidden keyword.
This is meant to act as a motivation for taking the deal. The experience I was aiming for was that viewers would initially not take the deal, but as time went on it became more tempting, up until the final page where there’s nothing else to do."
Are there any other cards you wish to showcase for any reason?
TheFriendlyEnemy: "Due to the way I chose to present the set, the Neutral cards are held back until the end, but there are many that complement certain class sets nicely, especially towards the beginning. If you’re reading this article before checking out the set, take a look at Ny’alothan Invader; it fits nicely into two of the class sets you’ll see early on. End Time Accelerator helps out the Dragon theme that’s in a lot of classes, and Clockwork Colossus synergises with the Legendary cycle of the expansion."
Do you have anything behind the scenes that you wish to share?
TheFriendlyEnemy: "Quite a bit of what was happening behind the scenes this time was setting up the website with the presentation features, which would be a whole other article. To keep things on the topic of card design, I’ll share two prototypes for what the class sets could’ve been:
- Hunter’s dead companion was originally Huffer, with the Legendary changed to match. Ultimately, I decided that Heartfelt Absence was already funny enough that I didn’t need to lean on the “always Huffer” meme, and that Misha brought the set closer to the tone I wanted.
- Priest’s character wasn’t originally Infinite Toki. In fact, originally Priest wasn’t about tempting anyone – the message was to Aman’thul, talking about why he chose to stop serving the Titans and the bronze dragonflight. I didn’t want to use Toki at all, but since there really aren’t that many time travel characters related to Hagatha, I had to work her in somewhere for the League of EVIL ending."
Do you have anything else you wish to share?
TheFriendlyEnemy: "I’d like to take a moment to discuss one other important part of this set; it had its very own reveal season. I wasn’t originally planning on doing this, but it was actually requested by the community, so I added a reveal schedule to add each card to the site one-by-one. Those who experienced the set normally would follow this reveal schedule, whereas those who took Murozond’s deal could see everything, including future reveals.
It ended up being an interesting experiment into how to present a custom set; there was a roughly 40/60 split between the two options. The people who checked on the reveals every 2 hours ended up becoming more interested in the set than they would have been otherwise, but a majority preferred to just take a quick look through the classes rather than wait. While I’m glad there was an easy alternative option to engage with the set, it was such a cool experience seeing people leave comments daily on the newest reveals, even when Across the Timeways reveals were happening at the same time!"
Comments
No Comments Yet. Be the first to create one down below!