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Hearthstone | Posted by | 3 years ago
Fan Creations

Words of Power - Card Design Competition Discussion Thread

Competition Theme: Words of Power

People say that "words hurt", and this week is where we use our words to hurt our opponent.

  • Design a new keyword and three (3) cards that use that keyword. Your submission must include those three cards and a description of what that keyword is. A fourth card slot is open for submissions and you can use this to place your keyword tooltip in your submission.
    • Your cards must specifically use the mechanic to count. In other words, cards that merely interact with the mechanic (like Crowd Favorite or Journey Below) will not count unless they also use the mechanic itself (like Stonehill Defender).
    • You will need a HearthCards account to make a keyword tooltip. If you don't want to make an account, you will be allowed to write what your keyword does in the description box of your submission.

Wailor is asking for us to use some bold words in this competition. Something inspiring that invokes discovery if you catch what I mean.

As always, we can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.

Competition Phases

Here are the phases of this card design competition

  • Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, Mar 13 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sat, Mar 18 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
  • Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Mar 18 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sun, Mar 19 16:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
  • Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Mar 19 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Mon, Mar 20 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
  • Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.

Discussion Thread Rules

No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.

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  • Competition Theme: Words of Power

    People say that "words hurt", and this week is where we use our words to hurt our opponent.

    • Design a new keyword and three (3) cards that use that keyword. Your submission must include those three cards and a description of what that keyword is. A fourth card slot is open for submissions and you can use this to place your keyword tooltip in your submission.
      • Your cards must specifically use the mechanic to count. In other words, cards that merely interact with the mechanic (like Crowd Favorite or Journey Below) will not count unless they also use the mechanic itself (like Stonehill Defender).
      • You will need a HearthCards account to make a keyword tooltip. If you don't want to make an account, you will be allowed to write what your keyword does in the description box of your submission.

    Wailor is asking for us to use some bold words in this competition. Something inspiring that invokes discovery if you catch what I mean.

    As always, we can be reached through Discord or here on the site via PM if you have any issues to report.

    Competition Phases

    Here are the phases of this card design competition

    • Submission Phase: Starts on Mon, Mar 13 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sat, Mar 18 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
    • Voting Phase: Starts on Sat, Mar 18 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Sun, Mar 19 16:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
    • Finalist Phase: Starts on Sun, Mar 19 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400). Runs until Mon, Mar 20 17:00 EDT (GMT -0400)
    • Winner Selected: After finalist voting concludes and we validate votes.

    Discussion Thread Rules

    No thread rules were added to this season. Please populate and manually edit this thread with them.

    Friendly Staff

  • I have made three Keywords in the past, but I can't really use them to their fullest.

    • Legacy is a weapon-based Keyword, but I can't submit cards that support it. I would just be posting 3 Legendary weapons with no context.
    • Storm is like Manathirst except you must pay the higher cost to get the bonus. I came up with it a year ago and now it's redundant.
    • Burdens are reverse-Quests: you get a Reward immediately but must suffer the Burden for the rest of the game. Takes up too many slots.

    Pretty upset about this, not gonna lie.

    Friendly

  • Some of you might not be aware of how to make a keyword tooltip on the new version of HearthCards yet.

    To start, click the "Custom" cog button.

    This will take you to this menu:

    Custom menu

    Click the "Create" button and that will take you here:

    Create button menu

    You will need an account to access that menu. If you don't have one, it'll tell you that "You need to be logged in to make emblems". Click on the tooltip and that will take you here:

    Tooltip menu

    From there, just make the tooltip and save it.

    Friendly Staff

  • If you're also noticing that this competition is up an hour earlier that usual, the answer to that is because Daylight Savings Time started yesterday. Events on the site are run based on the website's clock which uses EST time. For those in areas which have started using it, the competitions are going up on the exact same clock time that they have normally gone up on, but if your area hasn't started Daylight Savings Time yet (or doesn't use it at all), it will appear as if the competitions are going up an hour earlier than their normal time. Just, be sure to be mindful of that as we go forward.

    Friendly Staff

  • And after all of those notes, here is my first keyword submission.

    (The submission wouldn't actually use the stylized method of presentation. It's just here because I already had it.)

    Objectives are basically Sidequests with requirements and rewards that scale. You can choose an easier requirement in exchange for a lesser reward, a harder requirement in exchange for a greater reward, or meet in the middle.

    I also have a fourth one here. If you prefer this one over any of the others, do let me know.

    Friendly Staff

  • I have two keywords I made for the custom Alchemist class and for a wild west expansion.

    Transmute is a pretty handy keyword that allows you to get rid of cards you don't need to draw cards that you want. I'm not 100% on it, because such a small effect feels better as a Class keyword instead of an expansion one.

    Other Transmute cards

    Gunslinger is like MTG's First Strike. It's kinda like a Divine Shield that only works for trading, but it also has some appliances that can't be done with that keyword, as shown by all three showcased cards.

    Other Gunslinger cards

    • Quote From Wailor

      I really like Gunslinger, but you have to be careful: according to the rules, this card would not count because it doesn't have Gunslinger itself. I don't agree with this, but that's how they're worded.

      Friendly

  • This might bite me in the butt come tomorrow's reveal, but I thought I would ride the groove of the teaser with Encore!

    Let's say you played these three minions on curve; this is what would happen:

    1. Incessant Drummer would cast Ancestral Spirit on itself, but you haven't played an Encore card before this so that's all it does.
    2. Electric Soloist would do its thing, then also cast Ancestral Spirit on itself, as that's what your previous Encore said.
    3. Encore E.T.C. would do its thing, then cast the Nature spell because that is now your most-recent Encore effect.

    Side-note: I don't believe there's a single keyword in the game with a tooltip greater than two lines of text. It's probably okay if yours is a little more than that, but it shouldn't take a paragraph to explain what's happening.

    Friendly
    • Quote From linkblade91

      Side-note: I don't believe there's a single keyword in the game with a tooltip greater than two lines of text. It's probably okay if yours is a little more than that, but it shouldn't take a paragraph to explain what's happening.

      This is also a result of a quirk with new HearthCards and the difference in text sizes on the tooltips between versions. Old HearthCards would try to shrink your text down to 2 lines if it would normally go over that with the normal text size, up to a certain point and then it will finally go down to a third line.

      New HearthCards on the other hand uses larger text than tooltips on old HearthCards, and also keeps the text the exact same size regardless of how much text you type. I think Transmute and Gunslinger would be both 2 lines of text on the old version of HearthCards.

      What you said is definitely something that everyone should be mindful of regardless though, especially on new HearthCards where it's very easy to accidentally overtype and write a huge tooltip.

      Friendly Staff

  • Wow, what a bold theme! I love it!

    I'll start out with the keyword and cards from the custom expansion I've never finished. Thanks to Demon and linkblade for providing help for creating the tooltips!

     

     

    Some background info:

    I picture this keyword and those cards arriving in an expansion called "The Great Air Race" which takes place in the Jade Forest on Pandaria and revolves around the Order of the Cloud Serpent, so prepare for Dragons, Pandaren and first and foremost... Mounts! Every class gets a Legendary Mount card to help them win the race. With the exception of Druid I used their WoW class mounts for these. I’m really surprised Blizzard hasn’t walked down this path a long time ago. They are so cool! Winning "The Great Air Race" will not only be a matter of speed, but also of endurance. And that's where my custom keyword comes in - Stamina (x). It activates when a minion survives (x) turns on the battlefield as a start of turn effect. To help identifying minions with this effect, they would be flagged with a little hour glass at their bottom, similar to the lightning bolt for other effects. The counting of turns would work just like it does with Dormant minions.

  • I can't seem to log into Heartcards anymore. Whenever I press the 'sign in' button, it doesn't respond. I've tried it on different devices as well as the mobile version of the site. Even the 'change password' button has the same issue. Does anyone know what might be the cause?

    This keyword is inspired by how absolutely terrible discard works as a game mechanic. It has never lived up to its full potential. That would change with the introduction of Scrap. Scrap is the user-friendly evolution of discard that lets you choose between (only) two cards to discard and gives you the option to keep both of those cards, but lose the effect in return.

  • First attempt. Intended to work like rebound from mtg, although able to function with minions it's printed with too. The replayed minions would trigger their battlecries again, too.

     

    Not too sold on it, might go with something else. We'll see!

    Edit 1: The duplicate effect is supposed to trigger whether or not the minion survives, which is why they're costed higher than they otherwise probably would be. I had a third minion that I kind of scrapped that would summon a couple of "Spell Damage +1" bodies, as a combo enabler on a future turn. But then, if you couldn't remove the original board, you'd end up pretty consistently with Spell Damage +6 and it was just too much.

  • Not to monopolize the page with my ideas, but I have another one: Launch! Coming from an outer space/rocketry sort of flavor, Launch is the opposite of the new Finale, giving you a bonus if it's the first card you play in a turn.

    • Krazzel always has some scheme goin' on, so he's never in a place for long. By playing him first you get a lot of card draw, but he's A. hard to tutor for, B. technically inefficient over time, paying 2 mana for 1 card, and C. creates no board presence whatsoever if you continue to Launch him.
    • Blowback Punch is like the Warrior version of Lightning Breath, but can be trickier to use since the target needs to survive long enough.
    • Booster Rocket is like Life Sentence, but they'll come back should you choose to attack with it (or have your weapon destroyed some other way). In that sense, it's a single-target Anachronos effect without a set timer. It is cheaper than Life Sentence because you can really only ever use it once if you plan to leave that minion gone forever; otherwise, you're gonna have to deal with it eventually.
    Friendly

  • Here's my entry: Harmony!

    Harmony effects can be naturally activated by running two copies of the card in the deck, but also through copy effects such as Moonlit Guidance, Cold Storage, Shadowstep, Selective Breeder and so on.

    • I really like how all numbers on the cards are the same, it makes for a great harmony overall.
    • Ballad of the Hawk is my favorite card among the three, I like the "call upon the spirits" flavor of the Druid. I didn't find satisfying art for the token, but it would be an Undead/Beast, strengthening Beast Druid synergy.
    • Pogo-Hip-Hopper is obviously a callback to Pogo-Hopper. It has Echo because it's harder to do this type of combo in current year Hearthstone, but also because its pogo-microphone isn't well configured! Rogue has a lot of bounce effects, so it can easily activate powerful Harmonies.
    • I wanted to make a Harmony Legendary, just because you really have to find an unnatural way of playing this card multiple times to benefit from this effect. In return, the effect is pretty powerful, devastating all of the crowd with her songs. She's on fire!

    I also created this bonus card, but I didn't play enough on the Harmony side and it just felt like a Battlecry, so I didn't include it.

    Show Spoiler

    Also, it was supposed to be a guitarist with a loop pedal to create more and more harmonies as time passes.

  • Fatal Flaw: Until a condition is met, this minion cannot take damage or die on your opponent's turn.

    Fatal Flaw: Until a condition is met, this minion cannot take damage or die on your opponent's turn.

    This Mechanic was inspired by the myth of Achilles, in that he is an invincible Hero who has one fatal flaw that brings him down (The Holy Smite mimics Apollo guiding the arrow to pierce Achille's Heel). I thought that there were a lot of interesting ways to use this mechanic to make units stickier without making them uninteractable. Fatal Flaw is also different from immune in that the opponent can still target the minion with things like Silences and Debuffs.

    Peerless Hero was based on Achilles specifically, and though he may seem too powerful at first glance, his battlecry gives the opponent a way to immediately kill him for 1 Mana, so essentially you are spending 2 Mana and a card to force the opponent to spend 1 Mana and also get a Holy Smite. Aside from the cool flavor, I think this card could be playable in a Holy deck or a deck wanting some extra removal.

    Millhouse the UNSTOPPABLE! was just a fun idea I had for a way to play on Millhouse's obsession with getting to 10 Mana crystals, although in this case his plan blows up in his face. Millhouse exemplifies Fatal Flaw in that he can stick on the board for a while and give you spell damage, but if you or your opponent cast enough spells he returns to being a 1/3 Spell Damage +1 minion, which is not that powerful in modern Hearthstone. Millhouse can also be played on turn 2 and expect to stick around unlike other spell damage cards, which I also like about him.

    Boom's Flawless Creation's flavor is that Dr. Boom built an invincible mech but then gave it a self-destruct button (the opponent's Hero Power). As a 2/4 Magnetic I would expect this card to be fairly good already, and it has the chance to force the opponent to play sub-optimally to damage it, which is an added bonus.

    So what do y'all think? Are there issues any of these designs/the Keyword itself?

  • Someone needs to give feedback or this competition is never going anywhere. I guess that'll be me.

    Linkblade91
    I feel like Launch is probably your best bet as far as card context is concerned since what you said about Legacy and Trials apply, and I feel like Encore is mostly undercut by the theme of Festival of Legends. I don't think Storm is entirely redundant because of Manathirst since they both have different design spaces.

    Wailor

    I'm not really sure how much design space Transmute has, but it's a good mechanic and I don't think it has less design space than something like Overkill or Honorable Kill, so I think it's fine.

    Gunslinger seems like an okay idea for a mechanic, but as you noted, I feel like the idea is mostly taken by Divine Shield even if they're not exactly the same mechanic. This isn't really that important as far as the context of the competition is concerned, but I feel like the name doesn't really have much flavor diversity compared to "First Strike" (or "Quick Attack" which is what LoR uses for this mechanic) which can be applied to basically whatever you want it to. As Link noted, Deputy Instructor also wouldn't count since it doesn't use the mechanic itself.

    Anchorm4n

    First off, I think the idea of an air-racing expansion is fucking awesome and you should absolutely do it if you feel you're up to it.

    I'm not exactly sure how Stamina works since the tooltip and your description just specifies "a minion" and not the Stamina minion itself. If I play a Stamina card when I've already had a minion on board for multiple turns, will it retroactively keep track of how many turns that minion has been alive and take that into account for the total? Does it get the effect right away if the minion in question happens to already meet the Stamina requirement when you play the Stamina card?

    AeroJulwin

    Scrap is a good mechanic. In a world where Hearthstone didn't originally have discard, it having Scrap instead would be astronomically better.

    But as much as I do like the mechanic, it might be difficult for people to look past it as "just discard" but slightly different.

    Dolphinslayer
    Duplicate is okay. From the way Auchenai Echopriest is designed though, I actually can't tell if the minion needs to survive for the Duplicate to trigger. If it doesn't, that's cool. If it does, then its application on minions is a bit questionable for the same reason Overkill (and to a lesser extent, Honorable Kill as well) didn't fare too well. With a few exceptions, relying on minions to stay alive is a strategy that is unreliable and one that you don't really want to run.

    Matthieu

    Hey, welcome aboard. Glad to see you here. I say this to everyone joining these comps for the first time, but I do hope you have fun and don't hesitate to ask us any questions if you need to. For future reference, it's better to post your idea in the Discussion Topic first to get some feedback to see how the entries can be tweaked and then post your submission.

    I feel like Harmony with the way its applied flavorfully might be a bit undercut by the theme of Festival of Legends, which might dock some points from some voters, but then again… it might not. Harmony is a good mechanic and I think it has some cool design space to explore.

    The balance of the cards seem a bit questionable. Ballad of the Hawk receives a pretty massive upgrade for the second (and later if you happen to get them) copies. Pogo-Hip-Hopper is a cute reference to [Hearthstone Card (Pogo Hopper) Not Found], but the combination of Echo and Harmony doesn't strike me the right way since Echo is specifically a Witchwood mechanic (except for SN1P-SN4P). Doremi, Lead Singer is a really cool idea, although I feel like Mage is a bit of a weird class to put it in since it doesn't have that many ways to copy minions unless you put it in a set where its gimmick is allowing Mage to do that.

    CursedParrot

    Fatal Flaw feels very… weird. Very ambitious and very bizarre and I'm not sure how to feel about it.

    I don't like Millhouse the UNSTOPPABLE! since he's basically invincible. You play it on basically any turn and it's pretty much guaranteed to live. It's especially troubling if it's played on turn 2 since he'll stick there for multiple turns at a turn and you can freely cast spells with the bonus damage with no penalty while also keeping board presence. Even if your opponent were to spend all their mana next turn on spells, then you spend all of your mana on spells, and then they spend all of theirs again next turn, it would still be alive (since either 8 or 10 mana has just been played at that point). It just stays alive too reliably while also being too threatening to be fair.

    Friendly Staff

  • Feedback time!

    CursedParrot
    I respect the creativity, but I feel like the mechanic is inherently OP. Also the art is a little all over the place, there's no common ground recognizable for me. Overall not my cup of tea, I'm sorry. (This would translate to 2 stars since all cards are well executed.)

    Matthieu
    Hey there, welcome to this part of the site! I like your keyword, it's pretty flavorful. That said, I'd like to echo Demon's concerns about the power level of the cards and also invite you to wait a bit longer for feedback before submitting in the future. With the help of a few other contestants you might have found ways to further improve your cards and thus bolster your chances at winning the competition.

    linkblade91
    I agree with Demon, Launch is the coolest Keyword of yours. All the cards look fun to play and like a great fit for the keyword. The only thing I'd like to question is if Booster Rocket should really be a Paladin card - other than the Anachronos similarity I don't see much support for that argument. I'd prefer it in Rogue where you have to weigh its effect against using other weapons and your Hero Power. Valeera also has stuff like Sap and Vanish which are kinda related.

    Dolphinslyaer
    While the keyword isn't super exiting, I really like what you did with it. Especially the Priest card is super cool! Two concerns: 1) If Duplicate really replays the whole card, wouldn't that create an infinite loop, even if the tooltip says "one more time"? 2) You're missing a third card ;-)

    AeroJulwin
    I have only one thing to criticize: I don't like the third option. It's a very cool effect, but I think the power level should be toned down a bit by forcing the player to discard one of the two cards. That way, it's still better than most current discard effects, but it's still a little risky to play them.

    Wailor
    I very much prefer Gunslinger, it's the most flavorful keyword I've seen so far. If you add a last little bit of polish, you're gonna be my favorite for this week's competition :-) linkblade already pointed out that the Paladin card wouldn't qualify and I have some small flavor issues with the Warrior card. A shotgun typically deals smaller shrapnel AOE damage which doesn't fit the current statline and effect very well. Might easily be solved by changing the name.

    Demonxz95
    I'm a little torn here. While I really like the flexibility your keyword adds by the scaling effects, it's still pretty close to what sidequests do already. A drawback of the scaling effects is that your cards are packed with numbers which doesn't look very nice to me when you see them side by side. Might be better if you see them among other cards of the class without this keyword, but that's unfortunately not the way we'll see them when we vote. Finally, I would go with the initial three and skip the Priest card because it's too close to Priest's Galakrond for my taste.

    On another note, thanks for your feedback! I'm a little surprised "Stamina" caused confusion. The way it's meant to work is that the effect triggers when the minion with the keyword survives (x) turns, so when The Prismatic Disc survives 2 turns, it gains Spell Damage +2 for example. How do you think could I word the tooltip to make this more clear?

    • Quote From anchorm4n

      Feedback time!

      Demonxz95
      On another note, thanks for your feedback! I'm a little surprised "Stamina" caused confusion. The way it's meant to work is that the effect triggers when the minion with the keyword survives (x) turns, so when The Prismatic Disc survives 2 turns, it gains Spell Damage +2 for example. How do you think could I word the tooltip to make this more clear?

      Just phrase the tooltip as "this minion" instead of "a minion".

      With the knowledge that the minion itself has to survive that many turns, the keyword itself feels like it's probably weak for the same reason I said Duplicate was also weak. Relying on minions to survive in Hearthstone typically doesn't work out too well. As soon as you play The Prismatic Disc for example, your opponent is just going to kill it as soon as they can and you'll rarely get the Spell Damage from it.

      Friendly Staff
    • Quote From anchorm4n

      Feedback time!

      Dolphinslyaer
      While the keyword isn't super exiting, I really like what you did with it. Especially the Priest card is super cool! Two concerns: 1) If Duplicate really replays the whole card, wouldn't that create an infinite loop, even if the tooltip says "one more time"? 2) You're missing a third card ;-)

      The intended way for this to work would be like twinspell, where it duplicates exactly once, and then the summoned copy would not have Duplicate. And yeah, I'm not too sold on the keyword anyways, I was working on a few third options that never came to me. I'll probably come around with another keyword soon.

       

       

  • Early feedback, will update more as they come in.

    linkblade91

    Legacy is an interesting keyword, though I don't know how interesting the design space of the keyword itself would be rather than just whatever weapon it's attached to. I actually think Legacy being a keyword that meant "This always keeps enchantments" could be more interesting if done right, although there's a chance that that ends up being kind of same-y and repetitive too.

    Storm is probably the most interesting of the three keywords of your first batch. I think it sets itself apart from manathirst in a really interesting way, as evidenced by rain of arrows. I don't think rain of arrows simply having "Manathirst (7)" would be anywhere near balanced, so I think there is definitely room to explore this space.

    Burden does not feel distinct enough from Quests in my opinion. Quests are already designed in a way that including them in your deck/activating them comes at a cost (or, at least the good ones are *cough* stormwind *cough*). That cost being including the card in your deck, having no turn 1 play, and most importantly, filling your deck with OTHER cards that probably wouldn't be there if they weren't included to complete the quest consistently. Burden certainly is different, making the quest essentially "complete" early in the game and dealing with the downside for the remainder of the game instead of for the first part of the game, but that develops different problems. Either the downside is so punishing that you would never want to play the Reward in the first place, or it's meaningless and you just played a 1 mana spell (that I assume starts in your opening hand like a quest? although I could be wrong) that just turns the game into a 1-sided slaughter from turn 1. 
    TL;DR, not unworkable, but I think it would be better to just stick with Quests.

    Encore is cool, and very flavorful for a Shaman keyword. A lot of Shaman's "repeat your last/other battlecries this game" cards are really, really good, and sometimes so prohibitively powerful that they limit future design space. We all know which card(s) I'm talking about here LOL. However, Encore is a really nice fix to this problem by limiting which Battlecries can be affected by this new strong but balanced keyword. Nice!

    Launch is also very nice, but I think it would be (I don't want to say better, but maybe more interesting) if it was the EXACT opposite of Finale, as in you have to play it and still have remaining mana left in your turn. That way, the bonus effect comes at the cost of disrupting your curve. Otherwise, a lot of these cards don't really feel like the Launch condition is a bonus, it just feels like an extra good card that slots right into your curve. Overall, still an interesting keyword too.

    Half of the text in my feedback this week is going to be addressing your keywords! Haha. I love it though, so feel free to keep it coming.

    Demonxz95

    Objective feels to me like Sidequest with extra steps. I also feel like with how complicated explaining both the setup and the reward are, it's going to be really limited to keep finding interesting/new ways of setting up objectives in only four lines of text on the card. I'm actually impressed by how much you managed to fit on there as is lol.

    wailor

    Transmute is really good, as we've already seen how popular the Tradeable keyword is, and this is very unique from that at the same time. I think in most cases, this is straight up better than Tradeable too, considering this trades other cards, not just itself. I think there is a lot of design space to explore here, good job.

    Gunslinger is also awesome, and as you've said, different than just Divine Shield. I was wondering how Hearthstone would be able to incorporate a "First-strike" like keyword that is different than just "Immune while attacking" and this is a very concise and efficient way of describing exactly that. I do think the keyword, if implemented into Hearthstone, would probably be something less explicitly gun-related (which is a shame, because the flavor on some of your cards is great), but other than that I really like the keyword, especially on The Phantom Ranger.

    anchorm4n

    That expansion also does sound really badass, not gonna lie lol.

    Stamina is pretty interesting for sure, but I think the design space here needs to be pretty specific. Specifically, I think these minions need to have ways of surviving or protecting themselves. As is, for example, The Prismatic Disc has exactly a 0% chance of ever surviving enough turns to get the bonus, as any deck you're up against is immediately going to assume you're a combo deck and use every resource available to kill it, probably. That being said, I do really like the other two Stamina (1) minions, as surviving for 1 turn is a lot more likely. It's just a little complicated, because it would be very boring for every Stamina card to be printed with Stamina (1). Only other thing I can think off the top of my head is I'm pretty sure that the Lunarwing Owl would be worded "Cast 'Moonfire' on each enemy minion." or "on all enemy minions," but yeah, I do like the keyword.

    AeroJulwin

    Scrap is exactly what you said it is, a much better version of the Discard keyword. The way that a lot of the cards are worded, would the "third" option of the two be to decide not to scrap a card? (Looking at Law of Equivalent Exchange, it seems that the "Scrap a card to draw another" line implies that you could choose NOT to and only get the first effect). If so, that seems even better. I honestly wish that this was the way that Discard worked in Hearthstone, I'd give Discolock a try.

    Matthieu

    Harmony is interesting for sure. That being said, I think both of the first two cards with it are really, really pushed, and the third one seems unplayable unless like Demon said, Mage's set mechanic is being able to get copies of cards in hand. In that case, it feels like the effect is extremely overpowered if mage is able to do that consistantly. Either way, this keyword definitely has potential, and as an eternal Value Mage player, I would LOVE to see some Harmony cards printed for mage.

    CursedParrot

    Fatal Flaw seems really cool, if used in moderation. I think it's one of those keywords that should become maybe a rarely used evergreen keyword, like Immune. I disagree with the thought that Millhouse is too powerful. Maybe he's a little under-costed for such a sticky minion, but I love that the effect is symmetrical for both players. Either way, Spell Damage +1 is not a game breaking effect to have for a few turns, unless possibly it's just that you have it so early in the game.

    Maybe Fatal Flaw should instead work so that they can be brought down to 1 health but not killed, or maybe so they should die as soon as their Fatal Flaw is met. Either way, probably needs some work, but I like the direction it's headed.

     

  • Thank you all for the feedback! I think I got too carried away on the idea of making minions that stuck around and had a mini-quest attached to them that I ended up making an overly complex keyword. Here's my next idea that should be a lot simpler:

    Maddened: This can't attack on your turn. At the start of the opponent's turn, they choose a valid target for this to attack.

    I think that Maddened as a mechanic is pretty cool because of how it encourages counterplay and can be used as both a buff and a debuff. Maddened minions attack at the start of the next turn, which essentially gives them a worse version of Rush (or charge if the opponent's board is empty, similarly to how Gnome Muncher works). However, the opponent can play around this by playing either small minions to waste the Maddened attacks or large minions to make unfavorable trades for you. This mechanic would be introduced in an expansion centered around the Old Gods and the forces fighting against them, this time with more of a focus on the elements of mind corruption, which maddened plays into very well. Yogg-Saron, Lord of Insanity exemplifies this theme through giving you Mad Whispers to either drive your own minions insane for a pseudo-rush effect, or giving enemy minions Maddened to force their next attack to target what you want it to (making it a pseudo-silence). My worry is that the card effect might be too weak and that Yogg'Saron itself isn't very flashy, so let me know if you have ideas to fix that problem without using too much card text. Corrupted Ogre is another play on the Maddened mechanic in that it serves as a sticky board-control tool that forces your opponent to trade it into their minions since it can't go face (but it also becomes useless if the opponent has no minions). Maddened Outcast uses the mechanic mainly as a debuff to lock down threatening enemy minions as long as you can keep a few tokens around. He can also be played on an empty board as a 3/2 with pseudo-charge.

    What do y'all think of this design? I think it's a lot simpler but it is still somewhat complex and unprecedented since it forces an action on your opponent's turn, but I think it's a plausible keyword in modern Hearthstone and is relatively intuitive (basically the opponent is in charge of the minion's attacks, not you).

    Also, I'll give feedback later today when I have time :)

  • I'm still not sure which keyword I'll go with, but I've updated Deputy Instructor to fit the criteria, as you guys pointed out.

    Feedback + tooltips for those who don't have one:

    linkblade91
    It's a shame you can't submit Burden, because it's absolutely brilliant (I remember it from years ago, btw). I don't like the other two 

    Among your other ideas, I think I prefer Encore. My main issue is the fact you have to submit several cards of the same class to showcase how it would play out, but that also makes it so that we can't see what other classes would do. If you end up going with it, change E.T.C by another card, since they've just announced another version of this character (I don't mind the overlap of expansion themes too much, but another E.T.C. is where I draw the line).

    Launch seems to be the preferred option, and I also like it. I agree with Anchorman that Booster Rocket would be more interesting in Rogue (also, it's kinda like a Sap effect, so it still makes sense for the class).

    Demonxz95
    A pretty cool twist on the Quest formula.

    Among your cards, I think Assemble an Army is my least favorite card, but all four are solid.

    anchorm4n
    The theme of the expansion is very strong, but I'm not a fan of the keyword itself, as needing a minion to survive several turns is very unreliable.

    I'd probably make it like a Battlecry that happens some turns later. This would work very well with all your cards except The Prismatic Disk, but you can always change its effect.

    AeroJulwin
    Now that they've introduced Overheal, Scrap feels like something we might get in the future.

    I'm a pretty big fan of the mechanic itself, and both Law of Equivalent Exchange and Oddity Trader are very interesting uses of it (Unstable Void is also good, but not as creative).

    My main advice is to use different watermarks to showcase it being evergreen, like Overheal. Of course, LoEE needs to keep the Alchemy watermark, but the other two cards can use different ones.

    Also, here's your tooltip :)

    Dolphinslayer
    I don't know, I think it's a pretty solid keyword. I like the effect of both cards. My main issue would be the art, as the draenei in the Priest card is clearly an Arcane Mage and the Mage card doesn't have a very hearthstone style (also, it feels pretty complex for a common).

    Your tooltip:

    Matthieu
    Welcome abroad!

    The effect is pretty cool, but I'd probably change the name, as the new expansion just introduced Harmonic spells, which are a totally different thing.

    Deja Vu is a very natural name for such an effect, but you can use Chorus or something similar if you want to keep the music theme. I'd probably go with Deja Vu (which would need to completely change the flavor and art of Pogo-Hip-Hopper, but the other two cards just need a change of name).

    CursedParrot
    Maddened is interesting, as we've never had a negative keyword, but it's too wordy right now. Also, your Yogg can't participate because it uses token cards, which is a shame because it's the best card. 

    Like other people, I'm not a fan of Fatal Flaw.

    Here are your tooltips:

  • I adjusted Booster Rocket, and (finally) created an account so I could make the Launch tooltip. Question is: which one?

    The first one is my original iteration, and the second is based on Dolphinslayer's feedback (still within two lines of text, too :P). There's some overlap, but ultimately they carve out different design spaces; I can see pros and cons for either one:

    • First-Launch is less flexible, but perhaps in a good way. Later in the game, Unspent-Launch could be triggered with little consequence.
    • Unspent-Launch, early on, demands the cards be played off-curve. This could balance cards from being too good if they're the only card you planned to play that turn anyway.
    • Unspent-Launch lets you play multiple Launch cards in a turn, whereas there can only be one First-Launch. That makes First-Launch more impactful, both gameplay-wise and in terms of flavor. Unspent-Launch is diluted.
    • I'm struggling to define why Unspent-Launch is called "Launch". A launch is the beginning of a rocket's takeoff; First-Launch makes narrative sense to me, while Unspent-Launch does not (currently).

    Edit: Typing that out, it sounds like I want to go with First-Launch. I always struggle with this part; the deciding :/

    Friendly

  • Hello after a long time. I wanted to use one of my former keyword Bleed (x) with with a change.

    I changed it to Infect(X) since we have the actual effect in the game right now for Death Knight. So here it comes;

    Infect(x) isn't a keyword only for death knights tho. You can see that on Shaman, Rogue, Demon Hunter, Warlock and Druid too. Shamans and Druids can use it with their nature magic, Rogues can reach that word with their oils for their weapon and Warlocks and Demon Hunters can use fel to infect their opponents.

    I edited the existing cards Alexandros Mograine and Blood Boil like this;

    but they won't be my entries since it would not be creative. Here my entries come;

    Information on Plague Sprout ; it can only increase once. I mean it won't deal 3 damage after it increases to 2. Using the spell twice deals 1 damage and then other 1 damage and when it is increased, 2 damage and then 2 damage like how fatigue damage deals in an order. Using the spell twice in a turn won't make it increase on 4 turns instead of 8 turns and using the spell twice won't increase the damage to 3 by that what i mean is, each spell's damage is its own. if you use one on turn 4 and the other on turn 12 for example, first one will deal 2 damage and the second will deal 1 damage until it increases in 8 turns.

    Edit: Changed the wording on Apocalypse.

    Edit 2: I've created more cards to show how it can be on other type of cards like minions, weapons, spells and locations. Help me decide to choose for competition please. :)

    Edit: 3: Added runes to Fink Ployd.

  • The way that a lot of the cards are worded, would the "third" option of the two be to decide not to scrap a card?

    Yes. I mentioned it in the text, but that's easy to miss in the absolute textwall that this week's thread has become. I was planning on either adding it to the tooltip or mentioning it in the description.

    I have only one thing to criticize: I don't like the third option. It's a very cool effect, but I think the power level should be toned down a bit by forcing the player to discard one of the two cards. That way, it's still better than most current discard effects, but it's still a little risky to play them.

    That's fair. Scrap doesn't quite have the risk of discarding random cards, unless you really need that extra effect like the second destroy from Unstable Void. But I personally really like the versatility of it. It creates a bit of strategy, which I always love to see on cards. Besides, otherwise it wouldn't really warrant bring a full keyword anymore.

     

    Feedback:

    linkblade
    I'm a fan of Storm. I do think the tooltip should clarify when you pay the alternative cost. If I play the card with enough mana crystals, does it automatically upgrade or does it function like Choose One?

    This might be an unpopular opinion, but I'm not a big fan of both Encore and Launch. Encore cards are only strong if you have another one ready to be played. They will reach maximum strength if you have as many in your deck as possible, meaning that's what they'll be balanced around and won't be very worthwhile outside of that scenario.

    Launch is just another battlecry but with a minor requirement, which we literally just got another one of. I can still be convinced, but you'll need to design a card that would be specifically interesting if it can't be played after any other cards.

    Demon
    I like Objective, but I do agree about it impeding on Sidequest. And I think it needs a different name (probably something related to quests) considering objective spells are already a thing. I think the Warrior one is probably the least interesting of the four.

    Wailor
    I think I like Gunslinger better. I do agree a different name would be better to free up design space and because many minions with guns wouldn't have this.

    anchorm4n
    I'm afraid I agree that effects that rely on a minion to survive one or even multiple turns are simply too unreliable to make for an interesting keyword. And The Prismatic Disc shows the rider fully, but very little of the mount.

    Dolphinslayer
    I like the effect, although for some reason it feels a little weird to me that it also duplicates minions (instead of only the effects).

    I'm not a big fan of Escalating Missile. It deals a lot of damage, so it should probably be rebalanced or at least not be able to hit the enemy hero. And the fact that it has a whole secondary effect just to deal a single damage more feels very insignificant. Maybe it could start lower and increase every time the effect is triggered? That would also work well with Mage since they can possibly discover another copy of it.

    Matthieu
    I'm a big fan of the keyword. It has a lot of potential, but I think the cards aren't executed very well. The Druid one becomes very powerful and you'd expect Nature spells to fit Harmony better since Druid has more ways of generating those. Pogo-Hip-Hopper's Harmony effect is way too easy to trigger and doesn't infinitely upgrade like Pogo-Hopper which is slightly disappointing. And the Mage card is a two-turn OTK. I also don't think Blizzard would print a Legendary with Harmony unless it's a Rogue card or duplicates itself, because copying/bouncing minions is way too specific.

    CursedParrot
    Fatal Flaw is a little more out there, so I don't know how the general audience will respond, but I think it's pretty cool. Especially Boom's Flawless Creation. But I think the other two cards aren't very well executed. As mentioned, Millhouse is probably a little too sticky. And I don't like Peerless Hero, first of all because it literally gives your opponent the means of getting rid of it and secondly, because said means is cheaper than the minion itself. Sure, you also get a Holy Smite, but you still pay 1 more Mana than your opponent so Peerless Hero looks more like a 2-Cost Neutral Holy Smite to me.

    Maddened is also quite interesting and I like the cards you made for it. But there's indeed only room for 4 images in a submission so tokens will be a no-go this week.

    Almaniarra
    Infect should probably exclude heroes the same way poisonous does, because you're severely limiting your own design space here. The cards you made for it are interesting, but I'm not sure how well they would perform, since you generally don't want to wait a turn for a minion to die. Blood Boil is the only card like this they printed so far and that one functions more as an AOE where if the surviving targets attack your hero that will simply guarantee your hero will get some health back.

    And keep in mind that Blightfang, which is half of the existing infect cards, has its infection effect trigger when the targets die.

    • Quote From AeroJulwin

      Almaniarra
      Infect should probably exclude heroes the same way poisonous does, because you're severely limiting your own design space here. The cards you made for it are interesting, but I'm not sure how well they would perform, since you generally don't want to wait a turn for a minion to die. Blood Boil is the only card like this they printed so far and that one functions more as an AOE where if the surviving targets attack your hero that will simply guarantee your hero will get some health back.

      And keep in mind that Blightfang, which is half of the existing infect cards, has its infection effect trigger when the targets die.

      Well, actually i have something like these in my mind too but i didn't add them just because of the rules since they don't have the actual keyword.

      (I had to do this. :) )

  • Feedback:

    Show Spoiler

    Demonxz95: I think that objectives are pretty cool, they open up the ability to play the card flexibly early or late game. It does kind of limit card text space but I think you did well in terms of making the effects still feel interesting (the boarclear especially is really cool). The Demon Hunter one does kind of bore me since it's just drawing cards to get some units, maybe making it work on something different like Outcast could be cool?

    Wailor: I prefer transmute, I think it's just a really cool keyword and opens up a lot of possible designs. As for the designs themselves, I think Chimera is really cool but I'm on the fence about the others. Maybe something that cares more about the card it's transmuting could be cool (Like, for example, a card that transmutes a minion in hand into one with more/less Attack). Also, you should specify whether it is random or targetted (Ratsearcher should either say random or have some specification like Discover or "your leftmost minion in hand")

    linkblade91: I like your keyword since it allows for cool and unique chains, but I think that Electric Soloist and ETC aren't great uses of it since the effect doesn't change based on which minion does the Encore. I think things like "Encore: Attack the lowest-health enemy" or "Encore: Destroy this minion and give its stats and keywords to a random adjacent minion" would lead to more interesting play patterns.

    anchorm4n: I think that Stamina is a bit of a doomed keyword since it's so hard to keep units on board in HS (think of how often Inspire cards triggered more than once). You seem to be aware of this in that you made them very low Stamina requirement cards, but that makes them very similar to a start of turn effect. That said your designs specifically are really good and balanced so I think you could submit it anyway but if you have other ideas those might be worth thinking about.

    AeroJulwin: Scrap feels a little too basic for me to go for it but I tend to make overly complex designs so take that with a grain of salt. 

    Dolphinslayer: Duplicate feels like a pretty solid design, you just need to think of a third card that makes cool use of the effect. I think Spell Damage sounds useful so maybe a balanced version of that scrapped card could work.

    linkblade91: I like Launch as a keyword but your cards specifically (except Krazzle) feel a little too much like battlecries to me. I think if you design some cards that you don't want to play as your first card (like how Finale is put on card generation) would make it feel more mechanically distinct.

    Almaniarra: I like the keyword but the card text around whether something is infected or applies "infect" is unclear (for example, you Infect a minion but you also give your weapon infect to make it infect other characters).

  • I'll probably go with Gunslinger, as it's the generally preferred option. People seem to be very divided regarding its flavor, so here are two alternate names for it:

    Quick Draw is a middle ground that keeps some wild west flavor while also being more generic than Gunslinger.

    Swift, on the other hand, goes all the way in the flavor-agnostic direction.

    Keep in mind I still plan for all the cards to be wild west themed (I designed it as an expansion exclusive keyword, after all)

  • Based on feedback, I've changed the Maddened Keyword to:

    Maddened: When this attacks, the opponent chooses the target at the start of their turn.

    The major mechnical difference is that this version of Maddened does not give the minion pseudo-rush, freezing a Maddened character stops it from attacking, and the player in control of the Maddened character can choose whether or not to make it attack (when you attack with a Maddened character you choose the target, then the minion stops mid-attack and the opponent chooses the target at the start of their turn before drawing a card or taking any actions).

    I redesigned Yogg-Saron to not need tokens, I think it's a cool design but I'm on the fence about whether it is worth including. Vicious Basilisk are a play on a corrupted version of Stoneskin Basilisk and Ogre Magi, like how Whispers of the Old Gods had corrupted versions of older cards. Xal'atath was my idea for a Maddened Weapon, in this case it gives Shadow Priest a lot of healing and damage, but the opponent can play around it by keeping small minions on the board to force Xal'atath to attack into. I worry that Maddened might make it a bit weak but I think with 2 or 3 Attack it becomes worth it just for incremental board control and healing. Flavor-wise Chromie provides an alternate version of the Anachronos effect as she is a time dragon corrupted by the Old Gods, while Samuro has the same stats as the original Samuro (with the same handbuff synergy) but is much weaker and more balanced because the opponent can make it hit only 2 minions.

    Which 3 of these cards do you think make the best use of the keyword? Any balance changes I should make?

  • I ended up going with Gunslinger. Sadly, I couldn't implement most of the feedback you guys gave, as I don't have much time this week.

  • Hey everyone, i'm super late this week D:

    A new keyword for hunter! Lean in more in the Hunter fantasy by gaining bonuses for successfully hunting something in a turn!

    • Reptile Fetcher - Functionally a 2 mana 4/3 if you can activate Predator. Of course you can hit something else of higher priority other than the Crocolisk. The purpose of the card is to also offer you something to hunt in the case the enemy has no minions. The crocolisk is just the vanilla 2/3 one, hope it's clear enough that it doesn't need a token.
    • Night Hunt - Hit and track your prey! A little less efficient damage/mana value but the Rush carries over to the next turn allowing you to play a Beast and attack right away to trigger another Predator next turn.
    • Cobraptor - Very proud of the name first of all lol. But the card is similar in that it promotes beast play and hunting fantasy. You select your mark and sick your pet onto it next turn, hopefully killing it for Predator. If you are already in a chain of kills you can make killing the cobraptor super hard with stealth. He's beefy enough to benefit from Night Hunt too, possibly taking down 2 to 3 targets even.

    • I love it, especially the Cobraptor is amazing! 

  • You have just a little under 7 hours to submit. I didn't really get a time to post the 24-hour reminder because of how the reveal season started and that just sort of took all of my active mind space at the time. I also didn't really have any time to possibly get another keyword in.

    Last-minute feedback that hopefully you guys will be able to read.

    CursedParrot
    I'm afraid I don't really like Maddened. It feels like it goes too much against the way Hearthstone typically works.

    Almaniarra
    Infect is a fine mechanic, but the way it's written on the cards is sometimes a little bit weird (particularly on Plaguelands for example). Aside from the cards that can affect heroes, it does also feel a bit derivate of Poisonous. Some of your support cards are pretty cool (even if you can't use them).

    Wailor

    I realize that you've already submitted with Gunslinger, so this doesn't really help much… but out of those two, I prefer Quick-Draw if you to keep the mechanic strictly wild west themed.

    And good call on giving Deputy Instructor the mechanic proper.

    BasilAnguis

    Predator is definitely one of the better keywords I've seen.

    Although it's not entirely clear if Night Hunt will trigger itself or not. In other words, if Night Hunt is the first card to kill a minion that turn, will it trigger its own Predator effect? If not, then the tooltip should probably be reworded as "A bonus if an enemy minion has previously died this turn".

    Friendly Staff

  • Good luck to everyone in the voting!

    Been a little busy so you might have noticed I submitted my Launch early (and didn't provide much feedback *cough*). Not feeling confident in my stuff, again; definitely think there was room there to improve, but there's always next week.

    We're beyond the half-way point for the Season D:

    Friendly

  • Good luck to our finalists!

    Friendly

  • Congratulations to Wassculaire! Now I'm bummed I didn't submit my Time Pirate's Pillage keyword, which was basically the same thing lol :P

    Friendly

  • Congrats, Wassculaire!

  • Congrats, Wassculaire!