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- maxlot
- Card Design Champion
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Member for 7 years, 5 months, and 23 days
Last active Mon, Oct, 23 2023 20:27:34 -
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0
Very happy Archaeologist won, not surprised though, Pirc has really put effort into it and it's shown off.
That said though what the heck Enchanter in last pardon what heck excuse me goodness gracious
1
Hoping on Archaeologist to win also, it's the most elegantly designed one in my eyes. The keyword's simple, has a wide range of applications and allows for passive weapons to be a lot more possible and the themes work well and are well grounded. The Lost Ark is still a dumb card though, and I feel you should probably have included the Quel'Delar token for Nightblade Traveler.
I like Enchanter a lot also but I think it gets massively held back by Phase, which is a keyword that I don't think works out in practise very well. I like everything else, the class themes are concrete and distinct, even if I'm concerned with how functionally the class would work out in play.
For lich, I think it's been executed mostly quite well but it doesn't feel like it stands out enough to really interest me. A class built around ice and death without much more to mechanically distinguish it just makes me feel like I'm looking at something I've already seen hundreds of times, and I dislike the hero power and a lot of the overly long cards such as the death knight.
Quite happy with the finalists this time around overall, even if I wanted Alchemist to get through Archaeologist has always been my favourite. Good luck to all.
0
This is probably my favourite of the finalists. Decay's not that bad of a custom keyword, the hero power's good, you've got well established themes and the card quality is very high. I've got a little feedback but I think most of the cards you can still update are fine.
I think you should upscale Gnomechanic. As a 1 mana minion with a reward also worth about 1 mana, I think it's still a fairly disappointing thing to draw later on in the game, despite only working later on in the game.
I think mechanically your Rumble set works well, but I'm not sure I'm getting enough Jani vibes from it, feels maybe a bit too generic. The flavour on most of the cards points to the arena, dueling, combat etc, but there's very little on scavenging, trash, or other prominent Jani themes.
I think your Boomsday theme is fine but maybe Shuffl-o-Tron is a bit too direct.
Hope you win.
0
I think I'm gonna sit the rest of the comp out, I wanna go back and revisit my basic set and retouch on some of the classes core concepts, and to be completely honest I'm prioritising the class over the competition here because I'm not enthused about the competition enough to have to bother with the second challenge. I'll continue working on the class, I was just hoping that I could work on it through the course of this competition without the challenges impeding as much as they seem to be promising to.
Insert Challenge 2 copypasta here.
0
Definitely still not fond of Cocktail Throw as a basic card. I like your art choices and I like the change to Lab Accident. I feel like you need more healing representation in the basic set, since none of your current basic cards represent it as a theme. Unwilling Subjects could also use a bit of a bump in power, unless there's a lot of aura buffs in the class.
13
THE RINGMASTER
Being a Ringmaster means being responsible for the wellbeing of your performers, animals and the circus itself, but they all come second to entertaining your audience and putting on a show. The Ringmaster is a class that has a lot of small themes that you, as the player can choose between to focus your deck on. They've got tokens, card draw, healing, buffs and many other themes to be explored in basic, through classic and then through later expansions. The biggest focus, in the end, tends to come down to individuality and deckbuilding. Any spell could be your archetype and you have to figure out how to use it in a way that wows the world.
Keyword
Circuses typically have a Signature act, the one that they're first to slap on posters, the one saved up until the finale of the show, the performance perfected to bring in the money. Not all do, of course, and some utilise theirs more than others, but which Signature you have and which cards you include to combine with it often plays a major role in individualising the deck. Expect this to be elaborated on in Classic, or look at my Phase 1 post below.
Example Cards
Remaining Cards
Tokens:
Captivated Cats art is by Crazy JN, can't find the artist behind Thrilling Image.
Previous Phase
Here's the first phase submission. Feel free to get a better idea on the class and Signature here.
0
Got home from shopping a little while ago and took a second to write out my submission, but I've gotten it done now. Good luck to everyone else submitting now, except you Hurien how dare you take my #21 spot? I'll never forgive you. Never.
(okay but seriously though hope you do well)
21
The Ringleader
The Ringleader is a light, fun-loving class that does its best to put on a show for its audience. The class has a lot of strong synergies, buffs, heals, tokens and a focus on miracle play.
Signature is the Ringleader's keyword, and a big part of what makes the Ringleader the Ringleader. Many circuses are famous for their own different acts, one specific act among the entire show that they slap on posters and imprint into the memories of everyone watching. Signature symbolises that. When you begin building a Ringleader deck, everything's as normal, the deckbuilding is just the same as any other. But when you include a Signature card into it, a slot appears at the top, filled with a pair of bananas to keep the seat warm. From there, you can drag any spell in your collection into it.
These spells appear at the top of the decklist no matter what, in golden text and still taking up the slots in your deck. For a Ringleader, these spells are their, well, Signature , the one they're best known for and the one that puts them apart from the rest. Most Ringleader decks aren't defined fully by their themes, but more specifically by the one specific Signature that ties it all together. Enough talk on thematics though, what does a Signature really mean for a deck? Many Ringleader cards add copies of your Signature to your hand or your deck, and some modify the way it works. Many times, this just means it'll have an extra effect added on top of the spell, both spectacles triggering at the same time, but some change the way the Signature is targeted, repeating every effect on the card onto every new minion it affects.
But then, what of the subtle, overly cautious rogue, or the stoic, overly annoying priest, neither whom pay the same love towards their granduer as the greatest of Ringleaders, who happen upon Signature cards through their burglery and mind-reading? Well, much alike the Worthless Imp s from Sense Demons or the Shadow of Nothing from Mindgames , the Bananas from before will act as the default option. Should they be the type to rely on stealing a lot, they should end up finding a Signature generation card eventually. And by that point they should have built up quite the impressive Banana indeed. And besides, most Signature cards will do something by themselves regardless.
Card Showcase
Star Performance ~ A cheap, targeted, multi-purpose buff and heal card from the basic set. While not the most exciting card on its own in the game, a Ringleader knows that the signature act of their show is their most trained, not their most extravagent. Healing your hero and buffing friendly minions is a big part of Ringleader; be sure to consider basic cards like these when looking through Signature cards.
Circus Supplier ~ A handy little chap that's sure to be of use in any circus - he just radiates enthusiasm. He's a nice and simple way of getting yourself more copies of your Signature across the course of the game. I had two Star Performance s in my deck, but with two of these, I may as well have four. That's a lot of attack boosting and healing, however we're not really doing anything too fancy with it yet. And hey, if another class gets one of these guys, what they get will be amusingly appropriate.
Firedancer ~ Before, we were just setting up, but suddenly, those Star Performances might be looking a little scary to your opponent now. If the Ringleader can establish a small board, an extra 9 damage is gonna be coming right for the opponents face, maybe more. The Firedancer is an exaggerative man, putting on quite an impressive performance, and positively heating up the audience for what's to come next... But wait, those Star Performances also heal, right?
(Pay no heed to the old Ringleader border! The work of trickery, surely!)
Three times the targets, three times the spells. Three buffs, three individual heals that bring you an extra 9 Health. This goes for any targeted card that does more than one thing, though effects that say "Your next Signature " only pertain to one of those casts, of course. While any Ringleader can run any spell, the ones they're using as their Signature will surely feel different from the rest.
Dining Dash ~ Ringleaders also have access to aura spells or turn spells, whatever you want to call them. Think of Lock and Load or perhaps Stampede . These spells work the same way, and of course reward the Ringleader for doing a LOT of things in a single turn. Such as, for example, healing your hero a lot of times in one turn. Hmmmm... I wonder how they could do that? Miracle players need look no further than Ringleader for their source of massive, one turn insanity.
Finale Architect ~ This lady is the one who likes to plan out the final acts of the shows she works on. Works great with aura/turn spells and spells that don't require targets, though the ones that do will just target randomly should their original target die before they cast. Sometimes, things don't go according to plan, and that's just fine. Be sure to write out a little risk assessment form before using her, because she certainly won't be doing that. All she cares about is making sure your next turn is one that leaves an impression, which it certainly will.
Expect a lot more signature generation, healing, buffs, wacky insanity and potential for explosive plays in the future of Ringleader, for these five don't even scratch the surface of its potential.
Art Sources:
Regina ~ Fajareka Setiawan
Announce ~ Maren Marmulla
Performer ~ Jingsketch
Chain Dance ~ Anastasia Bulgakova
Star Performance & Finale Architect ~ Anzka Nguyen (Seriously check her stuff out she's great)
Circus Supplier ~ ALRadeck
Firedancer ~ Cesar Rosolino
Dining Dash ~ Dmitry Bolotov
0
I uhh... Briefly forgot that not everyone was doing what I was with mostly basic/classic cards and I didn't check to make sure Merrian was even a classic legendary. Sorry for the lecture about a mistake you didn't even make lol, least it ended up being somewhat helpful. The new Nether Storm art is pretty cool, I like it. Algalon is an obvious fit as the classic legendary, but I think it'd be nice if he was a little simpler. He's certainly extreme enough for a classic legendary though, so I'm somewhat happy with him.
I'll be going through some potential other things to include in the showcase today and tomorrow, but since you mentioned something of relevance, might as well just leave this here and stuff.
Details hidden for dramatic effect. You could probably guess the condition though.
0
Gonna critique the class as a whole in its first functional state before everything else, so basic and classic. Fortunately for me, the first question you ask is about the hero power. And I gotta say, no, you don't have enough damage spells even slightly to make the hero power good. The hero power already suffers from a few issues in not doing anything by itself and thus being useless on turn 2, revolves around the composition of your deck, it needs to be played preemptively before cards and thus only really activates when you can invest quite a lot of mana in one turn etc, but it doesn't really help any of those issues to include two spells in basic and one in classic that do damage. If I play an Enchanter and actually intend to use my hero power a single time that game, I HAVE to include Flamebreath, Immolate and/or Arcane Spikes. If it just gave my hero spell damage that turn, maybe I could ALSO use it with the singular classic weapon out of two total available to the class, but right now the hero power gives between three spells +1 damage when casted after it that turn. I'd suggest just going with something else for the hero power.
While I was making summoner, which you may remember, may not, I ran into an issue. It had both a class keyword and secrets! I didn't realise when I was first concepting it and I honestly regret it now, but this forced me into dividing up the class pretty awkwardly. In classic, out of 15, Druid has 10 Choose One cards, Shaman has 9 Overload cards and Rogue has 8 Combo cards. Additionally, Mage had 6 Secrets, Hunter had 5 and Paladin had 4.
I couldn't attach my keyword to a secret either, and I needed to give my keyword and secrets both adequete room in the class, yet I've started redoing the entire thing because to this day I still only have 6 keyword cards in there.
Where this all leads is to a very narrow point. You have a keyword, TWO keywords even, weapons, secrets, buffs and spell damage synergy. You've only ended up with 4 cards with a class keyword on them and the keyword barely has a presence in classic. You only have two weapons, you have 3 damage dealing spell cards and no cards in classic that provide any kind of spell damage. I'm not even sure how you could be concerned that Nightwell Tome would be OP when the only ways of turning it on are Inscribed Slate and Leyline Control, one which is another weapon and would break the book, the other which only lasts a turn. After that point you need to start throwing out Ogre Magis and Kobold Geomancers in order to attack with it, and need to maintain Spell Damage +2 throughout the entire process for it to even be above the par of Assassin's Blade.
Essentially, the class it so split up at its core that it ends up doing a lot of different things which demand a lot of cards invested towards them, cards it can't afford to provide, to the point where a large amount of the elements of the class are genuinely nonfunctional. Before wondering about balance of specific cards and the classes survivability, I really think you need to cut off some of the elements of the class because it's looking pretty messy right now.
0
I think making cards that do nothing but reveal information without doing anything with it could be a mistake. Hearthstone cards that reveal information already exist, many priest cards perform that role for example, but they all do something on top of revealing information. The power of revealing information should be valued at next to nothing, for it would provide little impact to decision making against a lot of archetypes and ends up being quite matchup dependant. Adding cards to your hand, doing something that scales with stuff in your opponents hand, etc, all do other things while revealing just as much if not more, it's more interesting to add information cards like that.
0
I definitely like this class, it's been handled really well. The class concept feels a lot fresher than stuff like Tinkers and Alchemists which show up each year (Not that they're bad though), and you've done a good job describing said concept. I'm often turned off by random token hero powers, they're often hard to manage and suffer from the same RNG issue as shaman. While it's still technically true for this, there's a lot less reliance on the RNG due to the way they're stored in the hand and can't stack. Good job there. Recall is a fantastic keyword. Generally applicable, fits the class well, lots of design space, etc etc. Reminds me a lot of Combo in it being a simple battlecry alternative trigger.
Westfall Settler is a really nice simple 1 drop for the class. It definitely does a good job of showing off the keyword; Voodoo Doctor is often a wasteful turn 1 play because the healing is wasted, yet Recall allows this to put that healing in the fridge for later. Definitely include it in the showcase.
Nether Storm is playable as a 9 mana silence and destroy all minions, yet the card is a lot more than that. I'd definitely recommend keeping recall effects more towards the low end of the scales, but having exceptions is fine. Chronicler so far seems like it's a little slow naturally, and though it works well like that, I'd avoid making it much slower than it has to be.
Cartographer Merrian is a card I have a few problems with. To preface this, I'd like to go over her status as the Fandral Staghelm or Brann Bronzebeard for the class. At first, while I was working on Ringmaster, my classic legendary was this dude:
(Mind the old border)
He was intended to fill a similar role, and I'm still unsure on his design in general but regardless of how good he is for the class, the spot he'd belong simply isn't classic. I feel similarly about Merrian. Fandral Staghelm also isn't the classic druid legendary, and there's a few reasons for all this. The classic legendary for the class is quite important to get right. Classic as a whole is meant to be rather simple, but the legendary for each of the non-warlock classes are especially so, despite being in the rarity that holds the most potential for complexity. King Krush has one word in the text, Grommash Hellscream is that same word with an Enrage effect, Tirion Fordring was two keywords and a big stick, etc etc. The classic legendary should be a simple, yet extreme version of the fundamental principle of the class. Hunter has a bunch of scary beasts and to smack you with the beasts, thus the legendary is a really big one. Warrior has angry guys and punches his own guys in the face which makes them angrier, thus they get a really big one. Shaman's a mess and therefore their legendary is a really big one. Mage's entire principle is spells so they gave their legendary a condition of play spell with a reward of get spell. Classic Legendaries are intended to be cards that often lead to the game finishing when they hit the board, which is why a third of them have charge, a couple of them are exploitable otk fuel, Tirion represents 15 damage you can't really deal with, Edwin is an all in card that gives you a minion your opponent literally can't deal with at such an early stage of the game and Jaraxxus is borderline impossible to sustain yourself against in classic.
That was all a bit long-winded but hopefully my point's clear enough. The classic legendary best fits the set when it's simple, extreme and causes your opponent to die soon after. That said, as for the card itself, it feels like it could probably reduce design space for Recall effects, but not really much else.
Prophecy is a card that I'm happy exists but might need some tuning down. A lot of people making classes, I feel, like to make their class a "control" class with no considerations for anything else. Drawing 7 for 5 is a lot though, golly. If you have 3 cards in hand, it's still a draw 4, so I think maybe it could go down to 6. That said, it's power is, moreso than most dependant on the power of other cards that enable more aggressive or tempo focused iterations of chronicler to exist. Keep this card in the back of your head at all times I suppose.
Mountain's Gift, I feel, is a bad card to showcase. Showing off that you have battlecry synergies is nice, but there aren't any other battlecry cards in the showcase. For highly synergistic card like this, my first thought is to think of what cards I could use it with obviously, yet since this is my first sight of the class, that pool of cards that I could use this on is dry. I'm a little skeptical of battlecry chronicler in general regardless, because their recall keyword typically means that they'll actually have a lower than average battlecry count unless you go out of your way to make sure otherwise.
On a side note, happy with the art you've used for all of your cards mostly, only real outliers are Merrian being too zoomed in, and perhaps Nether Storm not looking destructive enough. In the other cards shown, I'm mostly happy with them but have a couple of criticisms. Trauma feels quite strong, being 1 damage off of vanilla damage spells and having an attached boardwide freeze. Gilnean Reveler and Oblivious Ruin and both quite cool but their text is very filled out, the presentation of the cards could be better.
I think the class overall is great, easily in the top 3 other classes I've seen in the comp so far, I mostly just don't like Merrian, that's about it.
0
"Should you obtain a Signature card but aren't using a deck that has a Signature, like many thieving priests and rogues, a banana shall be your Signature." was added to my original post a little bit afterwards, but when it comes to the submission post, I'll definitely elaborate on it, yeah. It's probably fine, since any class that's stealing some of your cards is probably gonna steal quite a few, and they'll hopefully hit a Seeker, Draft or Planning eventually, and'll have charged up a pretty large banana over time hopefully. Brutal Tango is a complete miss unfortunately though, alike Glacial Mysteries and other such cards.
I think you and I think of different things when we think of Ringleaders. Sure, they're the authority of the circus, its face and its ruler, but a Ringleader doesn't necessarily have to be too authoritarian. The class takes good care of its performers, it's important for them to do so. That said, despite that, most of the healing cares more about you healing yourself anyway. The class was originally going to have weapons which would be stuff like whips and all that but I dropped it due to art concerns, but maybe in an alternate timeline Ringleader might've been more commanding. Think of the class as the circus as a whole rather than as a Ringleader specifically.
I am also a little unsure on Jaunty Tune but since Doppelgangster exists I feel that Force of Nature might just not really be an actual card, but the remains of one. I do have some cards started for later sets, now that you mention it, I just only recently finished my classes border and only basic/classic/Architect have been updated. I could definitely throw out some more stuff later, though I wanna keep some behind my back, don't wanna spoil too much. Thanks for your thoughts in general, I'll be sure to check out Chronicler in a second.
0
Pai also mentioned the wording on Tango being potentially made more clear and I was waiting to see how many people could understand it here, so it being criticised almost immediately is something I appreciate. I'll be sure to think of something better for it. You've got the effect right though. Bungling Busker being weird is partially the point of it, it's a strong 3/1/5 spell damage minion but only really that effective of one should it not be a targeted spell, which a lot of Ringleader damage spells are. It should also come up every once in a while when there's something specific in an expansion that it synergises well with. Might work, might not.
Fragment of Thrills is an illusion, like Leon's token. It's a scorpion, but it's not a real one. Also, thanks, I've spent quite a few hours looking for art, so hearing that it's paid off is good to hear. Thanks for such quick feedback!
2
Ay, gonna compete in this, just finished getting stuff ready. Not got too much longer for feedback, but I'm lazy and left this late. I'll be sure to get to any classes posted here after mine, I want to get back into the swing of things reviewing classes and all that. Enough talk though for now, might as well just put the cards forward.
Regina, the Ringleader
Signature Explanation:
Right, this keyword is another shot at a concept I've been coming back to continuously while making custom Hearthstone cards, spell manipulation. A signature spell is a trick that you, as the center of your circus tent, are most known for. Or at least, what that circus is most known for. When you start building a Ringleader deck and include a card with the word Signature on it, a slot appears at the top of the decklist, which starts off being populated by a banana, which is essentially the default option for a signature spell, alike Sense Demons' Worthless Imps or Mindgames' Shadow of Nothing. Should you obtain a Signature card but aren't using a deck that has a Signature, like many thieving priests and rogues, a banana shall be your Signature. The text is golden and slightly larger to make it distinguishable from normal cards in your collection. From there, you can simply drag any Ringleader spell you include in your deck into that slot to replace it, as seen below.
But this prompts the question of what a Signature card actually does. Well, I'll show a couple of the cards and explain.
As it's your signature technique, you'll be able to acquire more copies of it over the course of the game, and change the way it works. Every good Ringleader can walk up on stage and perform any of these tricks, but not every ringmaster can perform that specific trick in the way you can. As a Ringleader, I could be running a deck built around the basic spell Star Performance.
During deckbuilding, I know that I could potentially have quite a lot of star performances triggering this game, and can then build the whole deck around that. I could use token generation to keep the board full and then use a conal Star Performance as a finisher, I could use large quantities of it in general as burst, I could pack healing synergies to be seen later to take great use of the triple Star cone. After all...
Three times the targets doesn't just mean tripling the amount of minions affecting, it's giving you triple the spells. Ideally, if I handle Signature correctly it should allow for exceptional diversity between archetypes, allowing for more deckbuilding choices than usual. But I'd like some feedback on the concept of Signature as a whole, as thoughts on how to best implement it. Balancing out the levels of Signature generation might be hard, for starters. But for now, that's the keyword concept.
Themes and Basic/Classic List:
Below are a brief look on each of Ringleaders gimmicks and the first proper draft of its basic and classic cards, likely to be significantly updated as the class is better explored.
Themes:
Healing
Tokens
Buffs
Cones
Draw
1 Attack
Spells, Aura Spells and Spell Manipulation
Basic:
Ringleaders have a lot of flexibility, but some of their weaknesses include burn spells and wide AoE. They have lots of cones, hitting three minions at a time, but hitting 5 requires cards like Blazing Display or a dedicated Chain Dance or to be seen Meteor Spin deck with a Firedancer, with a cone-cone, which hits 5 minions. They also suffer from potentially being great at a lot of things, but are mostly just decent at the things that's not the signature card of their deck.
Classic:
Ringleader likes spells, but like them in a different way than perhaps a mage or a priest. They have their own aura spells, which last the turn you cast them like an aura attached to your hero. They're quite alike Lock and Load as well as Stampede. They also have cards like Bungling Busker, a cute but sad little chap who's trying his best but isn't playing that lute quite perfectly. Consider sticking him into a Blazing Display or Stage Fright Ringleader, or maybe a Ringleader that's going all in on utilising Brutal Tango with something like Meteor Spin. Showstopper Leon's a fan favourite at the circus, and can present the threat of being a slighty smaller King Krush that may just come back at the finale of the show... Albiet a tad different looking.
Tokens:
Every circus needs an illusion trick or two.
Showcase Thoughts:
Right now, for the showcase, I'm thinking the way to go's gonna be:
Dining Dash
Firedancer
Star Performance
Talent Seeker
And Finale Architect, who's a spell manipulation epic like Bungling Busker, but from the Boomsday Project or Goblins vs Gnomes, I'll decide on that fully later.
She represents Ringleader miracle plays through massive turns with a whole lot of spells going off at once. In general, in the showcase, I want to show off Aura spells, a potential card to be used as a signature as well as a strong Signature synergy card like Firedancer, Signature generation like Talent Seeker which also represents token synergies, and something rather wacky to finish it all off. Talent Seeker could end up being replaced for the showcase with Costume Draft or Show Planning, and I'd like some thoughts on which is best here.
I'd like to give a quick thank you to Nikko, for allowing me to use the border I made way more easily than it would be otherwise, and just being a fantastic developer in general. All feedback for the class is appreciated, and now that I exist again I'll be sure to try and provide some off my own. Also if there are any formatting errors with this post, I'll get to it eventually don't worry. From what I've seen of what other people have been making so far, I'm pretty excited for this years entries. Post ended up becoming longer than it probably should have been for the discussion topic so I'm just gonna cut myself short here, toodloo for now.