This weeks theme comes from Crucinel, whose "Avatar of Sargeras" was the runner up of our "Secondhand Spellcasting" competition.
Competition-Specific Restrictions:
Your card must do something "When the game starts...". The only existing example is Prince Malchezaar, so it may be difficult to know where to begin. Thankfully, Asylum has taken the second post of the Discussion Topic to discuss some design considerations and recommendations that may help give you more direction.
Competition Process
Preview Phase (Starts Now! Ends 20:00 UTC 16/February/2017) During this Phase, the Discussion Topic is made available, previewing this week's competition theme. Entry and Early Voting Phase (Starts 20:00 UTC 16/February/2017, Ends 19:00 UTC 20/February/2017) During this Phase, the Submission Topic is made available for your submissions. You may also, of course, feel free to give early up-votes to any submissions that you like! Voting Phase (Starts 19:00 UTC 20/February/2017, Ends 19:00 UTC 21/February/2017) During this Phase, the Submission Topic will be locked, so no more entries may be submitted. Instead, use this time to browse the submissions and up-vote your favorites! Final Phase (Starts 20:00 UTC 21/February/2017, Ends 20:00 UTC 22/February/2017) During this Phase, the Discussion Topic will also be locked, and a new Poll Topic will go up. Discussion will be allowed to continue in the Poll Topic, and it will also include all the qualifying finalists and poll to decide the winner of the competition!
Discussion Topic Rules
To make sure that everything runs smoothly, we need to reserve the Submission Topic for submissions only. Everything else goes here. What is everything else, you might ask?
Rules or Process. Do you have a question about the competition's process? Do you need clarification about one of the entry requirements? Are you not sure whether your entry adhered to the rules? Ask here!
Feedback or Ideas. Do you have some ideas you'd like to run by others before settling on one? Do you need help balancing or wording your entry? Do you need help finding art that will fit your card? Or do you just want feedback from the community on your entry? You're in the right place! Remember, although you are allowed to make minor tweaks to your entry after you've submitted it, you're only allowed one submission per week, so make sure that you've settled on your card for sure beforehand.
Discussion! Do you have thoughts on other people's entries? Are there directions you don't like that you're seeing too many people take? Or directions you'd like to see more people take? Would you like to help others and contribute to a greater community understanding of Hearthstone card design and balance? This is where you want to be!
All of that said, please refrain from the following:
Posting TONS of Ideas. Discussion topics become an absolute mess if everybody is posting a dozen different ideas. Please post not more than 3 distinct ideas at a time. Any more than that and we'll have to delete your post.
Advertising Your Entry. Please don't pop in here just to advertise your entry only to never be heard from again. This includes only asking short, generic, or insincere questions like "Thoughts?" or "Do you think this is interesting?". Yes, getting feedback on your entry is one of the purposes of this topic, but we're not just here for other people to help you. We're here for you all to help each other. 12 hours after this competition begins, there should be plenty of other posts here for you to give specific feedback or for you to comment on a trend. If you post your entry for feedback after this time and do not also offer some form of substantial commentary, critique, or praise of others' work, you may find your post deleted.
Plagiarism. Many people post their ideas here before finalizing them in the submission topic. Directly plagiarizing those ideas to post in the submission topic yourself is absolutely not acceptable.
So, without further ado, have fun and get creating!
Despite not being the originator of this week's theme, I've actually become very excited about it once I began thinking over the possibilities. Given that this design space is almost completely unexplored, I thought it might be a good idea to share some thoughts right off the bat to get the ball rolling on discussion. Please note that while I will be giving examples, they're all deliberately bad because I don't want rhetorical examples to "take" any ideas. Instead, I want to use them to inspire direction while also demonstrating and pointing out potentially fatal flaws.
The first thing to keep in mind this week is that, while it's highly experimental, balance is critically essential. Look at this card:
This card is a mistake. The theory is that the minion itself is under-statted because it produces a positive effect, but in practice the minion never needs to be played and indeed may never even be drawn! It costs nothing but one-thirtieth of your deck to produce a start-of-game effect, and so start-of-game effects must be internally balanced with themselves. TL;DR - Start-of-game effects that are purely positive are bad design. Now, it may be arguable that there are purely positive effects for which only giving up one-thirtieth of your deck is enough, but at that point the benefit has to be so minor that I just don't believe it's worth doing at all. So, what can you do? Here are some ideas...
(1) Effects that are themselves a wash. I'm not going to provide an example of this one, because Prince Malchezaar is already an example! His effect is a gamble. Yes, it increases the number of options in your deck, but that's also inherently balanced by making it harder to draw exactly what you want. Yes, it might give you some powerful minion, but it's a gamble that could just as easily land you with a crap legendary that's nothing but a wasted draw. Notice, by the way, that the Prince himself, disregarding his start-of-game effect, is a perfectly balanced Pit Fighter! Take his example; if your start-of-game effect is truly balanced, whatever card it's attached to should be able to be balanced completely disregarding it.
(2) A positive effect counter-balanced by a negative effect. This is just as simple as it sounds. When the game starts, you may benefit from some positive effect but are also subject to some appropriately counter-balancing negative effect. Here's a terrible balanced example that literally nobody would ever want to use but that works for demonstration purposes. The bonus is a free Wisp at the start of the game, and the penalty is that it puts you behind by one Mana Crystal. Note that entries this week are not actually required to be Legendary. It's totally reasonable to put two of these in a deck and get two free Wisps at the start of the game! However, that penalty is one that can only happen once a the start of the game, so that's something to watch out for.
(3) Effects that are direct exchanges/replacements. This is arguably a combination of the first two approaches, but the idea is that whatever bonus you gain inherently comes at some loss. Here's an example using a transformation effect. To gain the War Golem, another card must necessarily be lost as the subject of the transformation. This example also demonstrates that cards this week don't need to be "vanilla" after taking into account the start-of-game effects.
(4) Effects that are symmetrical. These are effects that only provide a bonus but that provide it to both players or that impose a penalty but impose it on both players. Be careful with these, because that's not actually as easy to balance as you might think! Effects that appear symmetrical on paper may very well not be in practice, as the below example demonstrates. Sure, both heroes obviously take the same penalty, but the actual practical effects are heavily skewed towards screwing over late-game decks that need to survive early on versus aggro rush decks that don't care about their health as long as they're killing the opponent as quickly as possible. I like this example because it demonstrates that spells are perfectly fair game for this theme, but on the other hand, this is super poorly designed because the creator didn't think about what would happen if you put two of them in a deck. Games would be over as draws before they even began, and it'd just be used to troll away people's win streaks in Ranked.
(5) Effects that are purely negative, in exchange for a powerful card. While effects that are purely positive don't work, effects that are purely negative just might! The below example is horridly balanced, but you get the picture. You get a powerful card, but in exchange you pay a penalty just by including it in your deck.
Now, these MAY not be the only ways to tackle this theme in mechanically balanced ways! They're just the only ones that I thought of. If you want to depart from them and try to argue for something else, then by all means. As I said, I just wanted to lay more of a foundation for discussion. Share your thoughts, agreements and disagreements, and get creating! =D
Ok So this is the first idea I got as I read Asylum's post. Don't know how balanced it is and also dont know how to shorten the text to match Beneath the Grounds but decided to throw this out here.
Here's an idea I had. It's basically a way of starting with 28 or 29 cards in your deck, at a cost of a lower life total:
Hmm.. When would this be usefull? Maybe in Combo or something but still I can think of better cards to replace this in those situations even a 1 drop would probably be prefered. As for the idea I do believe that direction is worth exploring.
Here's an idea I had. It's basically a way of starting with 28 or 29 cards in your deck, at a cost of a lower life total:
Hmm.. When would this be usefull? Maybe in Combo or something but still I can think of better cards to replace this in those situations even a 1 drop would probably be prefered. As for the idea I do believe that direction is worth exploring.
It's generally better to have a smaller deck, because you are more likely to draw the cards you need for combos. Or just to draw the best cards in your deck. It doesn't make sense to say you would replace this with something, because it's basically an empty slot in your deck. The question is whether you think it's worth it to start with lower life in exchange for that.
For your card, there isn't much reason to play it after the game starts. This is something McF4rtson, I believe, brought up when critiquing one of my cards for the CDC. If you get the effect before you even play the card, there needs to be some reason to play it. If it's a vanilla card with subpar stats in your hand, that isn't the case. Maybe you disagree, but I think he had a good point.
So this is an idea I've fiddled with before... I have two ideas, I'm not sure which to go with. Also, I may rebalance Trueheart as a Grimy goons card. Voltharia is balanced off the fact that both a 1/1 whelp and a 3/8 windfury are dead as sin, but dragon effects are strong as hell. Trueheart was designed with Inspires more in mind, so if this is another "New standard year concept" I'll have to ditch it. I'm trying to decide if I should go with either of these or pursue a different concept entirely.
@cL4wzHS Beneath the Grounds is balanced because the Nerubians have no chance of appearing before turn 4 and above, and having drawn nerubian into nerubian on an inordinate number of occasions, I can tell you this card would cause more ragequits than patches... From both sides, probably.
Nice for an aggro deck which wants to have more steam power at the beginning. And nice too for a control deck which wants to reach mid-end game state faster.
Of course, if each player has a Mana Lobbyist, they start their first turn with 3 Mana!
Despite not being the originator of this week's theme, I've actually become very excited about it once I began thinking over the possibilities. Given that this design space is almost completely unexplored, I thought it might be a good idea to share some thoughts right off the bat to get the ball rolling on discussion. Please note that while I will be giving examples, they're all deliberately bad because I don't want rhetorical examples to "take" any ideas. Instead, I want to use them to inspire direction while also demonstrating and pointing out potentially fatal flaws.
The first thing to keep in mind this week is that, while it's highly experimental, balance is critically essential. Look at this card:
This card is a mistake. The theory is that the minion itself is under-statted because it produces a positive effect, but in practice the minion never needs to be played and indeed may never even be drawn! It costs nothing but one-thirtieth of your deck to produce a start-of-game effect, and so start-of-game effects must be internally balanced with themselves. TL;DR - Start-of-game effects that are purely positive are bad design. Now, it may be arguable that there are purely positive effects for which only giving up one-thirtieth of your deck is enough, but at that point the benefit has to be so minor that I just don't believe it's worth doing at all. So, what can you do? Here are some ideas...
(1) Effects that are themselves a wash. I'm not going to provide an example of this one, because Prince Malchezaar is already an example! His effect is a gamble. Yes, it increases the number of options in your deck, but that's also inherently balanced by making it harder to draw exactly what you want. Yes, it might give you some powerful minion, but it's a gamble that could just as easily land you with a crap legendary that's nothing but a wasted draw. Notice, by the way, that the Prince himself, disregarding his start-of-game effect, is a perfectly balanced Pit Fighter! Take his example; if your start-of-game effect is truly balanced, whatever card it's attached to should be able to be balanced completely disregarding it.
(2) A positive effect counter-balanced by a negative effect. This is just as simple as it sounds. When the game starts, you may benefit from some positive effect but are also subject to some appropriately counter-balancing negative effect. Here's a terrible balanced example that literally nobody would ever want to use but that works for demonstration purposes. The bonus is a free Wisp at the start of the game, and the penalty is that it puts you behind by one Mana Crystal. Note that entries this week are not actually required to be Legendary. It's totally reasonable to put two of these in a deck and get two free Wisps at the start of the game! However, that penalty is one that can only happen once a the start of the game, so that's something to watch out for.
(3) Effects that are direct exchanges/replacements. This is arguably a combination of the first two approaches, but the idea is that whatever bonus you gain inherently comes at some loss. Here's an example using a transformation effect. To gain the War Golem, another card must necessarily be lost as the subject of the transformation. This example also demonstrates that cards this week don't need to be "vanilla" after taking into account the start-of-game effects.
(4) Effects that are symmetrical. These are effects that only provide a bonus but that provide it to both players or that impose a penalty but impose it on both players. Be careful with these, because that's not actually as easy to balance as you might think! Effects that appear symmetrical on paper may very well not be in practice, as the below example demonstrates. Sure, both heroes obviously take the same penalty, but the actual practical effects are heavily skewed towards screwing over late-game decks that need to survive early on versus aggro rush decks that don't care about their health as long as they're killing the opponent as quickly as possible. I like this example because it demonstrates that spells are perfectly fair game for this theme, but on the other hand, this is super poorly designed because the creator didn't think about what would happen if you put two of them in a deck. Games would be over as draws before they even began, and it'd just be used to troll away people's win streaks in Ranked.
(5) Effects that are purely negative, in exchange for a powerful card. While effects that are purely positive don't work, effects that are purely negative just might! The below example is horridly balanced, but you get the picture. You get a powerful card, but in exchange you pay a penalty just by including it in your deck.
Now, these MAY not be the only ways to tackle this theme in mechanically balanced ways! They're just the only ones that I thought of. If you want to depart from them and try to argue for something else, then by all means. As I said, I just wanted to lay more of a foundation for discussion. Share your thoughts, agreements and disagreements, and get creating! =D
That was one of the theme I thought about during the week I won last season. I think it would be better to add a "when your first turn starts..." option because this option allows us to do effects that would otherwise generate too much tempo differential depending on whether you go first or second e.g. "When the game starts, summon a 1/1 Wisp" is bad because you can attack with it directly when you go second (it would be like Patches), "When your first turn starts, summon a 1/1 Wisp" is better because it doesn't have "charge" when you go second.
My first idea comes from the cause of the Cataclysm in WoW, Deathwing. The visual would destroy the left and right sides of the battlefield, setting the max number of minions per side to 5 for the rest of the game. Worldbreaker is one of the titles given to Deathwing after the cataclysm. The effect does not stack whenever both players have this card since it's coded to destroy the 1st and 7th locations only.
My first idea comes from the cause of the Cataclysm in WoW, Deathwing. The visual would destroy the left and right sides of the battlefield, setting the max number of minions per side to 5 for the rest of the game. Worldbreaker is one of the titles given to Deathwing after the cataclysm.
I like his, keeps aggro under control some but doesn't seem broken, I say go for it
You keep the card in your deck, as opposed to my previous idea, and you don't take damage. But you don't know what you're discarding. The plus side is that you have a smaller deck.
Okay, so I'm seeing that most of you have decided to do exactly the thing that I warned against immediately and created effects that are entirely positive with no counterbalance. That's fine, I guess. =|
Anyway, for my own entry, I thought this would be cool. Paladin's have the best armor in the game in WoW, and it's totally weird they get absolutely zero access to Armor in Hearthstone, so I think this could be a neat way to introduce some more variety to potential Paladin builds.
My first idea comes from the cause of the Cataclysm in WoW, Deathwing. The visual would destroy the left and right sides of the battlefield, setting the max number of minions per side to 5 for the rest of the game. Worldbreaker is one of the titles given to Deathwing after the cataclysm.
I like his, keeps aggro under control some but doesn't seem broken, I say go for it
"Deathwing competes with Ragnaros to see who can be in the more cards."
This is a cool and original idea. Very good for Dragon decks that have fewer, stronger minions. I would put this in every deck since I prefer control matchups.
This is the Discussion Topic. The Submission Topic is here.
Competition Theme: Ready, Set...
This weeks theme comes from Crucinel, whose "Avatar of Sargeras" was the runner up of our "Secondhand Spellcasting" competition.
Competition-Specific Restrictions:
Competition Process
Preview Phase (Starts Now! Ends 20:00 UTC 16/February/2017)
During this Phase, the Discussion Topic is made available, previewing this week's competition theme.
Entry and Early Voting Phase (Starts 20:00 UTC 16/February/2017, Ends 19:00 UTC 20/February/2017)
During this Phase, the Submission Topic is made available for your submissions. You may also, of course, feel free to give early up-votes to any submissions that you like!
Voting Phase (Starts 19:00 UTC 20/February/2017, Ends 19:00 UTC 21/February/2017)
During this Phase, the Submission Topic will be locked, so no more entries may be submitted. Instead, use this time to browse the submissions and up-vote your favorites!
Final Phase (Starts 20:00 UTC 21/February/2017, Ends 20:00 UTC 22/February/2017)
During this Phase, the Discussion Topic will also be locked, and a new Poll Topic will go up. Discussion will be allowed to continue in the Poll Topic, and it will also include all the qualifying finalists and poll to decide the winner of the competition!
Discussion Topic Rules
To make sure that everything runs smoothly, we need to reserve the Submission Topic for submissions only. Everything else goes here. What is everything else, you might ask?
All of that said, please refrain from the following:
So, without further ado, have fun and get creating!
Despite not being the originator of this week's theme, I've actually become very excited about it once I began thinking over the possibilities. Given that this design space is almost completely unexplored, I thought it might be a good idea to share some thoughts right off the bat to get the ball rolling on discussion. Please note that while I will be giving examples, they're all deliberately bad because I don't want rhetorical examples to "take" any ideas. Instead, I want to use them to inspire direction while also demonstrating and pointing out potentially fatal flaws.
The first thing to keep in mind this week is that, while it's highly experimental, balance is critically essential. Look at this card:
This card is a mistake. The theory is that the minion itself is under-statted because it produces a positive effect, but in practice the minion never needs to be played and indeed may never even be drawn! It costs nothing but one-thirtieth of your deck to produce a start-of-game effect, and so start-of-game effects must be internally balanced with themselves.
TL;DR - Start-of-game effects that are purely positive are bad design.
Now, it may be arguable that there are purely positive effects for which only giving up one-thirtieth of your deck is enough, but at that point the benefit has to be so minor that I just don't believe it's worth doing at all. So, what can you do? Here are some ideas...
(1) Effects that are themselves a wash.
I'm not going to provide an example of this one, because Prince Malchezaar is already an example! His effect is a gamble. Yes, it increases the number of options in your deck, but that's also inherently balanced by making it harder to draw exactly what you want. Yes, it might give you some powerful minion, but it's a gamble that could just as easily land you with a crap legendary that's nothing but a wasted draw. Notice, by the way, that the Prince himself, disregarding his start-of-game effect, is a perfectly balanced Pit Fighter! Take his example; if your start-of-game effect is truly balanced, whatever card it's attached to should be able to be balanced completely disregarding it.
(2) A positive effect counter-balanced by a negative effect.
This is just as simple as it sounds. When the game starts, you may benefit from some positive effect but are also subject to some appropriately counter-balancing negative effect. Here's a terrible balanced example that literally nobody would ever want to use but that works for demonstration purposes. The bonus is a free Wisp at the start of the game, and the penalty is that it puts you behind by one Mana Crystal. Note that entries this week are not actually required to be Legendary. It's totally reasonable to put two of these in a deck and get two free Wisps at the start of the game! However, that penalty is one that can only happen once a the start of the game, so that's something to watch out for.
(3) Effects that are direct exchanges/replacements.
This is arguably a combination of the first two approaches, but the idea is that whatever bonus you gain inherently comes at some loss. Here's an example using a transformation effect. To gain the War Golem, another card must necessarily be lost as the subject of the transformation. This example also demonstrates that cards this week don't need to be "vanilla" after taking into account the start-of-game effects.
(4) Effects that are symmetrical.
These are effects that only provide a bonus but that provide it to both players or that impose a penalty but impose it on both players. Be careful with these, because that's not actually as easy to balance as you might think! Effects that appear symmetrical on paper may very well not be in practice, as the below example demonstrates. Sure, both heroes obviously take the same penalty, but the actual practical effects are heavily skewed towards screwing over late-game decks that need to survive early on versus aggro rush decks that don't care about their health as long as they're killing the opponent as quickly as possible. I like this example because it demonstrates that spells are perfectly fair game for this theme, but on the other hand, this is super poorly designed because the creator didn't think about what would happen if you put two of them in a deck. Games would be over as draws before they even began, and it'd just be used to troll away people's win streaks in Ranked.
(5) Effects that are purely negative, in exchange for a powerful card.
While effects that are purely positive don't work, effects that are purely negative just might! The below example is horridly balanced, but you get the picture. You get a powerful card, but in exchange you pay a penalty just by including it in your deck.
Now, these MAY not be the only ways to tackle this theme in mechanically balanced ways! They're just the only ones that I thought of. If you want to depart from them and try to argue for something else, then by all means. As I said, I just wanted to lay more of a foundation for discussion. Share your thoughts, agreements and disagreements, and get creating! =D
Here's an idea I had. It's basically a way of starting with 28 or 29 cards in your deck, at a cost of a lower life total:
Come Play Make the Keyword!!!
Check out my Worgen Class in the Class Competition
Ok So this is the first idea I got as I read Asylum's post. Don't know how balanced it is and also dont know how to shorten the text to match Beneath the Grounds but decided to throw this out here.
For referance Ambush!
Thank you Kanye,
Very Cool.
Thank you Kanye,
Very Cool.
Come Play Make the Keyword!!!
Check out my Worgen Class in the Class Competition
Here's an idea I've posted before for that Hunter / Druid Dragon synergy. Might remake it as a symmetric effect for this competition.
Currently working on the Tinker! K&C and WW / JUG and KotFT / Classic / Basic / Introduction
My Previous Classes: Apothecary (unfinished) / Chronomancer / Death Knight (old)
My Previous Expansions: Hallow's End
So this is an idea I've fiddled with before... I have two ideas, I'm not sure which to go with. Also, I may rebalance Trueheart as a Grimy goons card. Voltharia is balanced off the fact that both a 1/1 whelp and a 3/8 windfury are dead as sin, but dragon effects are strong as hell. Trueheart was designed with Inspires more in mind, so if this is another "New standard year concept" I'll have to ditch it. I'm trying to decide if I should go with either of these or pursue a different concept entirely.
@cL4wzHS Beneath the Grounds is balanced because the Nerubians have no chance of appearing before turn 4 and above, and having drawn nerubian into nerubian on an inordinate number of occasions, I can tell you this card would cause more ragequits than patches... From both sides, probably.
Nice for an aggro deck which wants to have more steam power at the beginning. And nice too for a control deck which wants to reach mid-end game state faster.
Of course, if each player has a Mana Lobbyist, they start their first turn with 3 Mana!
That was one of the theme I thought about during the week I won last season. I think it would be better to add a "when your first turn starts..." option because this option allows us to do effects that would otherwise generate too much tempo differential depending on whether you go first or second e.g. "When the game starts, summon a 1/1 Wisp" is bad because you can attack with it directly when you go second (it would be like Patches), "When your first turn starts, summon a 1/1 Wisp" is better because it doesn't have "charge" when you go second.
Custom cards :
CLASSES : Alchemist (CCC#5 | Phase V) | Chef (CCC#4)
EXPANSIONS : Year of the Scorpion (Year Comp)
Fun for the whole family:
I can see this week being insane. Setting my idea now, although it may be tweaked:
"at the start of the game summon a random demon, you lose health equal to twice its cost"
i I can't tell if this is balenced or broken (it would be a warlock card of course) thoughts?
"At the start of the game.... END THE GAME"
@ZardozSpeaks I was waiting for you to say that xD
Thank you Kanye,
Very Cool.
Well, it's a combo enabler, but it might be too good?
My first idea comes from the cause of the Cataclysm in WoW, Deathwing. The visual would destroy the left and right sides of the battlefield, setting the max number of minions per side to 5 for the rest of the game. Worldbreaker is one of the titles given to Deathwing after the cataclysm. The effect does not stack whenever both players have this card since it's coded to destroy the 1st and 7th locations only.
Okay, here's a different take on deck thinning:
You keep the card in your deck, as opposed to my previous idea, and you don't take damage. But you don't know what you're discarding. The plus side is that you have a smaller deck.
Come Play Make the Keyword!!!
Check out my Worgen Class in the Class Competition
Okay, so I'm seeing that most of you have decided to do exactly the thing that I warned against immediately and created effects that are entirely positive with no counterbalance. That's fine, I guess. =|
Anyway, for my own entry, I thought this would be cool. Paladin's have the best armor in the game in WoW, and it's totally weird they get absolutely zero access to Armor in Hearthstone, so I think this could be a neat way to introduce some more variety to potential Paladin builds.
Armor Up! as the Warrior Hero Power, of course.
Currently working on the Tinker! K&C and WW / JUG and KotFT / Classic / Basic / Introduction
My Previous Classes: Apothecary (unfinished) / Chronomancer / Death Knight (old)
My Previous Expansions: Hallow's End