Hearthpwn

I think all the finalists can agree that this has been a long competition and has been creatively challenging. The last expansion was the hardest for us all I think, simply trying to come up with ideas. I'm also a bit sad that there were so many disqualifications on good contenders—Shadows' own expansion for instance (and now Tox/Cogito/Otovent's). I don't know what the official count is on that now, but it's probably around 1/4 of all contestants. I think these are all good lessons for the future—135 cards and 3 different expansions is a big ask!

Good luck to each and every one of the finalists! (...myself included)

Yeah, it's been quite the journey and I'm glad that a few of us pulled through, despite distractions such as the Boomsday Project expansion. Nearing the end, grinding out each individual new card idea became increasingly painstaking. Congradulations to teknician, Shatterstar1998/Demonxz95, and CheeseETC (and Percival) who managed to pull through!

To be perfectly honest, I do not think my expansion (Year of the Phoenix) is nearly as good as any of the others. Following the first expansion, it's just full of flashy nonsense that has little player interaction and filled with unnecessarily gimmicky combos. It wasn't easy to think of new ways to twist Hearthstone ideas - human creativity is surprisingly limited. 

I believe that Hearthstone, when it comes down to it, earns its popularity through sheer simplicity. Anyone can gather a bunch of cards and play (And unfortunately, I broke my own mantra). Cards like Shatterstar1998/Demonxz95's Mjolnir wonderfully follow this concept, at first glance, the two lines of words are very easy to comprehend. But in gameplay, you strategize to keep a certain degree of armor, opponents can damage your hero to influence your actions, etc. The possibilities of such few lines of text are endless. Another interesting thing about ShatterDemon's set was the introduction of temporary "permanent" cards. They granted a sort of effects (such as negating overload or Fandral's choose both effect) for a set number of turns. It allowed a possible outlet to introduce enchantment-like effects without feeling oppressive and precariously balanced (like how Lakkari Sacrifice was). This simple overarching ideal continued throughout the expansion. If you look holistically at the cards, very few use the full four lines of text. The Commons are often as interesting, if not more so, that the Legendaries. Despite the lack of fancy artwork like that of the other YCC submissions, the quality of each individual card is... just really awesome.

More of ShatterDemon cards:

CheeseETC and Teknician both used differing ways to detail an alternate mana source. Personally, I never liked this idea, but I believe they both made this quite well. One creates permanent "Nether Portal"-like constructs, while the other is access alternate abilities of minions. Both included multi-tribal cards. Both used fancy headers and footers and a lot of custom artwork... what if they're the same person? (Grabs tinfoil hat). Cheese's Year of the Scorpion also featured an innovational "Recipe" mechanic, which were like miniature quests that returned the card you cast if certain actions were done. I'm not entirely sure what's going on with Teknician's Year of the Gryphon expansion... but it's really exquisite. There are a lot of game-changing ideas being tossed around... What do you mean that snake grants BOTH heroes Stealth?

Anyway... I decided to upvote Shatterstar1998/Demonxz95's Year of the Dragon; Regardless how I feel, I wish everyone the best of luck!

Edit: Lel, of course I get upvoted by them, and only them :P

Can a mod replace my Capt'n Cookie from Kitchen Apocalypse with this one please? I took teknician's Cookie for some reason LUL.

EDIT: Also, only 2 days? Looks awfully short for the final phase of a big comp imo

It does seem like a very short period of time to vote on something that took like 3 months to make for each person.

A year in review:

Year of the Phoenix:

Year of the Scorpion:

Year of the Gryphon:

Edit: Year of the Dragon (self-review):

Here's the tribute cards I made for all of my fellow competitor:

And finally, to my wonderful partner in crime Demonxz95:

Quote from CheeseEtc >>

Can a mod replace my Capt'n Cookie from Kitchen Apocalypse with this one please? I took teknician's Cookie for some reason LUL.

 Bump

I didn't have time in my thread to do this, but I feel like people criticizing some of the cards aren't considering the potential synergies they have...

If I'm not allowed to do this I'll take it down.

Quote from teknician >>

I didn't have time in my thread to do this, but I feel like people criticizing some of the cards aren't considering the potential synergies they have...

The arrow means 'synergizes with...'














 Any Divine Shield, Lifesteal, or Taunt minion

If I'm not allowed to do this I'll take it down.

 I mean, it's on you to point out the synergy of your set to the previous year and to the Classic set. Not everyone can pick up on all (or any) of the synergy.

Huge congrats to Teknician. I will gladly take second place with Shatter.

Honestly, the finals here were a lot more interesting here than they were last big comp, where we all already knew Sea Witch would win by a mile. Here, it was really up to the finals to determine who would win and pretty much everyone had an equal chance of winning in my opinion.

Well, I'm really glad to have won. I can say that. But the amount of hard graft the other finalists—and contestants—put into this competition, especially in the face of creative burnout, is truly amazing. I want to shoutout ShadowsOfSense because I felt their year was finalist material—at least you predicted Venomizer :)
On the other hand, 90 overall votes so 🤷

I'd like to thank Maxlot, Pircival, CheeseETC and their Year of the Scorpion, ThePixelDash, Nerdtron, justlikejames0801, the r/CustomHearthstone Discord server, and my pet cat.

That feeling when Phoenix predicted his(?) own placement lol. Congrats to the winner.

Congrats teknician! Nicely done.