Hearthpwn

Hi y’all,

 thanks for the votes to 2nd place, but I won’t be able to finish. :( It was nice to participate though!

Scholomance Academy


*Commune can be used without minions on the board, and it will restore 1 Health to your hero.
Basic Set (for reference)

First half of Apprentice Set (for reference)

Capable of channeling ancestral spirits through their body, spirit walkers are revered in tauren and orc societies for the history and wisdom they carry within them.
More Lore:

The eyes of a spirit walker are ancient and shine with the light of a thousand souls. Their bodies are vessels, conduits from the realm of the dead to the world of the living. A spirit walker strong enough to bear the weight of so many souls achieves a mystical transcendence, embodying the collective will and experience of the generations that are reaching out to him.

A spirit walker lives only partially in the mortal world. His mind roams freely, and countless personalities enter his memories and his thoughts. When speaking to a spirit walker one can never be entirely certain that only the spirit walker responds, for they speak with the voices of the ancient ancestors.

  Keyword & Class Strengths 

 
(X) could be a spell, minion, weapon, Totem, 4-Cost, etc.

The loyalty a spirit walker feels for his community is zealous. The spirits of countless ancestors fill his mind, impressing a powerful need upon their host to guide and safeguard the tribe.

In not so many words, the kin and kindred of a Spiritwalker are of the upmost importance to them, and empower them to do amazing things, gaining new powers through playing minions or spells in sequence, and even through playing different tribes.

---

Class Strengths and Mechanics

Strengths

1. Single target/lone minions. Handbuffs and board buffs like Power of the Wild or Bloodlust are few and far between for the Spiritwalker. However, this class excels at buffing powerful single minions, keeping them alive, and bringing them back from their untimely demise.
   
   
2. Dormancy and Immunity. A sleeper mechanic that saw more attention in Ashes of Outland, Dormant, is a key focus for the Spiritwalker class. Not all 'dead' things are really dead, and in truth, the spirits are merely waiting to be called upon. At some points, minions under the Spiritwalker's control may phase in and out of the corporeal plane, while still being able to attack, gaining Immune temporarily.
   
   
3. Card draw/generation. To keep up with your opponent, Spiritwalkers need every opportunity they can get to level the playing field, and that means card draw/generation.
   
   
4. Health Restore/Addition. Health restoration and addition is vital for the Spiritwalker to maintain board presence and keep themselves in the game.
   
   
5. Death-based effects. There are minion demise related cards.
   
   
6. Taunt, and other keywords that significantly obstruct your opponent as you build a tall board.

Limitations

1. Low AOE potential. Board clears will usually be conditional, and may have a 'negative' effect rather than just dealing damage.
   
   
2. Limited hard removal. As with AOE, Spiritwalkers don't carry Twisting Nether or Assassinate with them, but under the right circumstances, they can get good value removal.

Weaknesses

1. Low burst damage. Spiritwalker isn't inherently a class that rushes to the finish line (even though there is potential for early game snowball), so don't expect much in the way of face damage.

 Showcase 

All Cards

Themes

 Cards from Previous phases

Basic

Apprentice 1

Apprentice 2

I think the problem with this is you're losing the discover effect, which is already a powerful and exciting one, and tacking on damage. This also seems to allow for multi-targeting? i.e. when discovering something more than once. If it targeted just the enemy hero...

When is the deadline?

Alright, so I've done some iterations of my cards and I've come up with a complete set. Subject, of course, to change.
This set has two main archetypes: Uncommon buffs/targeted spells, and Totem synergy. With a nod to Dormant as a Spiritwalker mechanic. This is also the 'AoE Set', with two cards falling under that umbrella.
By the way, this is Scholomance, so there are the class cards, then the dual class. I've chosen Shaman and Priest as my dual class pairings.
I've noticed a concerning trend... Most of my cards start with 'R', 'S', or 'T'... I'll have to remedy that in future sets!
Thinking of showcasing Alluring Alumnus, Self-Possessed, Totem Mayhem, and Taskmistress Akara.


Reminder: Kin: with no (X) means it does something if the last card you played had the same card type as the card with Kin on it. (i.e. minion with Kin looks if you played a minion last).

Commons:

Totem Grower affecting all Totems is intentional - I want it to hit itself to become a 3/6 with Overload: (1). Otherwise imo it would be too weak especially with Hearthstone's current power level.

Rares:

Let me know if Mystfire should stay as a fire spell. It might not be fire coloured... but it's still fire. It's like... sleepy, mysterious fire.
Tempest Totem is worded as it is to avoid confusion. I could just say 'Spellburst: Draw 2 cards." but there's something about that repetition that I don't like (and doesn't look nice).
If Top of the Class's wording looked like this:

Could you still understand it to have the same effect? I feel like people think it's doing a Simulacrum style thing with this wording, even though Simulacrum's wording is totally different.

Epics:

Totem Mayhem originally cost 6. Could it still cost 6? Or is 7 a good fit?
Legendaries:

Why does Leper Pigmy deal damage to your hero? Surely it just negates the damage with its lifesteal...?

Sasshara is a great card... Deathrattle and Reborn being put together is the goal for deathrattle archetypes, but since I don't see anyone else doing Uldum, you've got it on lock. great implementation

Kind of jealous of how well plagues fit into your class. Especially Plague of Plagues, where did you get that art??

Cursed Presence should read "trigger" twice. The quest should have a full stop at the end of the reward (just a foible).

Congrats to everyone who made it through to this stage. We had around 27 total votes. (1st place got 1/3rd of the votes, most people got around 1/4, so there was definitely some vote overlap).

I'm going to be doing Scholomance Academy, and my boon and bane are pretty simple; showcase an extra card, and show all rarities.

I've made 3/4 dual-class cards for each class so far. I've decided the classes I'll be sharing will be Shaman and Priest (regardless of the proper order laid out in the expansion - doesn't really work for more than 10 classes). Here they are:



I recognize it's somewhat hard to distinguish the class border here. Unavoidable I'm afraid.
Self-Assured Senior: Compare Frazzled Freshman for the flavor. Really like the art on this one. Meant to support a buff archetype, fits well into Priest and Spiritwalker (compare Test Subject for an idea of the kind of deck this goes in).
Top of the Class: Unconventional board clear. Feedback on this is lukewarm I suppose? Hard to tell with people lol.
Trainee Trendsetter: Had a lot of thinking to do coming up with a name. Think Seance but you can use another spell as the trigger.



The "Totem in the name" thing just sort of happened.
These all synergize with each other - should be relatively plain how they do it. Totem Mayhem is a stretch for play on words with 'Total Mayhem'. Totem Grower follows along with Totem Golem and Totem Goliath in terms of how the naming goes for totems with attack.

I'm going to start on unique class cards now, but if anyone's got any ideas for legendaries I'm all ears.

Is it possible to see how many people voted, given you can vote for multiple entries?

Good luck to everyone. Hope I can move on to the next phase - things start to get interesting.

Quote from JeanTheMedicRat >>

I have not found any rules about no legendary Spells. Hero cards are allowed so, spells should be too. And with lack of any feedback from you, I'll submit my cards as they are. 

 From the first post:

• Do I have to follow the rarity distribution of the Demon Hunter Initiate set?
  
  • Yes.
  • You may not introduce a Legendary spell, weapon, or Hero in the Initiate set as there are none in the current Demon Hunter example we've been given.

Perhaps MC could make an exception?

We’re about 6 hours past it but I’d say you probably have another 6 hours before the thread closes.

New full custom emblems set for reference.

If you rotate into landscape mode it should replicate the desktop experience.

Pretty sure legendary spells are not allowed in this set.

A problem I have with your class (personally) is just how reliant on Sky’ree your cards are. A particularly egregious example is Dive In! which does nothing if you do not have Sky’ree. 

The reason I mention this, since it is never a problem with the class because of the hero power, is because of Rogue and Priest. If they get their hands on a copy of this, they either a) can’t play it or b) waste 5 mana on it to do nothing (depending on how it works).

If the steal/copy/burgle mechanic did not exist, I would be fine with it, but since it does, very narrow cards like this one are a no-no for me. Other classes have Demons or Silver Hand recruits; but they have means of accruing them outside of the hero power, either through a variety of different class cards, as tokens or otherwise, or there are neutral alternatives that activate the synergies regardless.

Once again, with the legendaries you can guess that since they’re just vanilla minions if you don’t have Sky’ree, I’m not too enthusiastic about them. The tiny birb is a good concept though - is just hard to imagine a way around the limitation. Something more general about the hero power, perhaps?

 Roughneck Rider is incredibly strong as a 3-drop. Your opponent wastes a lot of resources trading into it, if they can at all, and it gets 2 damage off without killing itself. It’s better than all cards that say “Immune until end of turn” or “Immune while attacking” basically.

Recurring Storm is like Headcrack except much more flexible. It’s a suboptimal cost, but it’s a ping every turn and could almost be seen as an extra hero power. If there were a condition as to whether it comes back or not, like Headcrack, I’d like it more.

I don’t think introducing spell school synergy in an initiate set is allowed? If it is, it seems very much “on the edge”. 

Channel Storm is just cast when drawn, right? I don’t see why you can’t say this in the card text, it’s a pretty common keyword these days.

Alright, so I’ve restructured a lot of my set, I’d like some feedback on a few of these. I’m on mobile so I can’t really post pictures… Here’s the whole album - the second half of the set starts after the first legendary .

https://imgur.com/a/9D9T4fW

EDIT: Alright not on mobile anymore...
 

The prophecies:

I feel like I should change Prophecy: Vitality, but I'm not sure what sort of improvement I can add that would fit the theme and would also be understandable.