Worlds Beyond Warcraft Phase V - GRAND FINALE POLL!
Poll: Vote for who you think should be crowned the winner!
Ended Feb 25, 2016
Ended Feb 25, 2016
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PHASE V - GRAND FINALE!
Hello, and welcome to the grand finale of HearthPwn's second ever Class Creation Competition! This competition's theme is "Worlds Beyond Warcraft", and submitted classes were to represent things outside of Warcraft-specific lore. After over a month of competition and several rounds of elimination, only 4 finalists remain out of over 180 initial entries. Now it's up to you to vote on who will be the ultimate victor. Our finalist classes are below represented by their Hero Portrait, Hero Power, and 8 example cards. You may only vote for one.
For more info on each Class (including keyword explanations and all existing card sets),
click on their Hero Portrait, which will link you to their individual Finalist Topics.
BARD
by DKPaladinMDL
POKEMON TRAINER
by sashashepto
AGENT
by Asylum_Rhapsody
NIGHTMARE
by SgtFailure
You can find me here! Good luck everyone!
This has been an exciting and at times heartbreaking competition, and I'm honored to have my Agent here with three other amazing finalists. Best of luck, everyone! =D
Woooo! It's a privilege to even make it this far. Good luck to everyone and I hope all you voters out there have a good time looking through the classes!
Check here for my new cards!Pokemon HS class!All the Pokemon as HS cards!
Wait we can only vote for one? I wanted to vote for the Bard and the Nightmare. Those are my favorite classes. I decided to vote for just the Bard, since I think it is overall the best designed class, part of this coming from the extra effort he put in for presentation.
Come Play Make the Keyword!!!
Check out my Worgen Class in the Class Competition
Come Play Make the Keyword!!!
Check out my Worgen Class in the Class Competition
Siras Terra, the Geomancer
Check here for my new cards!Pokemon HS class!All the Pokemon as HS cards!
As sashashepto said, at this point in the competition we're dealing with the best of the best - given the option to vote for any number of them, I don't doubt that many people would end up picking 3 or even all 4. By restricting you to just one choice, we force you to decide which one you think is a cut above the rest, so whoever comes out on top is really the absolute best of the best.
You can find me here! Good luck everyone!
All right, time for some short reviews. =D
BARD
It think that one of the most amazing things about this class is that it manages to be unique without being too complex. The vast majority of it is nice and simple and short and sweet, and yet it still inspires all new possibilities and oozes flavor. It's odd, because it feels like there's not much to say about it, but I think that's just because it feels so realistic. Like, "Okay, I just completely believe this class.".
If I have one criticism of this class, it's that I think it was a very safe choice thematically. Despite not being Warcraft-specific by any stretch, Bards are a fairly standard fantasy trope, and so I don't think this quite took full advantage of the "Worlds Beyond Warcraft" theme.
I think my favorite card is Magic Mic. It's hilariously cleverly themed, and I like in general the flexibility of the Debut spell, especially of course its interaction with your Melody Keyword.
POKEMON TRAINER
You put a lot of time and work into this class, and it definitely shows. As a big Pokemon fan myself, I'm hard pressed to find anything that I don't think is a wonderfully and logically faithful adaptation, and like the Pokemon franchise itself, your whole class just screams for invitations to make more.
My one big criticism of the class is one that I know you've heard before, and that's its volume of tokens. Like I said earlier, during the starting phases of the competition, I think this volume of tokens was a big advantage because it meant you got to show off more material, but at this stage your class has more individual cards than the other three combined, and I think it has reached a critical mass where it's just going to be too much work for a lot of people to get through most of.
I'm going to say that my favorite card of yours is Honedge. I loved your choice to make it a weapon rather than a minion, and I think that it makes very unique use of your Evolution mechanic to get around the versatility problem of most existing weapons.
NIGHTMARE
At each state of the competition I was worried this class was going to get overlooked, and I'm really glad that it wasn't and that it's a finalist. Not only is the theme so much fun, but it's clear how much thought you've put into your cards combos and synergies with one another, and they're not even very simple ones either. Your class offers a unique play style in a way that I don't think any of the other finalists do, and I love it.
I must admit that one thing I haven't been so sure about, though, is your Hero Power. It strikes me as incredibly weak when we take into account that something like Beneath the Grounds costs 3 and shuffles three 4/4s into the opponent's deck and is still generally considered not very good. I think it's forgivable given that the concept is still so solid and unique and interesting, but with how well thought out everything else in the class is, it strikes me as odd the Hero Power could appear so under-powered.
Fuel for Nightmares is my favorite card here. I like all of the cards that work with mass-shuffling nightmare tokens, but this one was my favorite because of its incredibly thematic use of Spare Parts. If anything like this existed in the game, even if it were bad, I would play with it immediately because it just looks so much fun.
AGENT
This one is obviously the best and has zero flaws and everybody should vote for it.
. . .
Okay, I'm just kidding. =P
What I think makes this class the most appealing is the various original mechanics it brings to the table, from the Cover Up keyword allowing for hand attacks and deck attacks that are actually tolerable to the unique Half-Secret spells that let it play with Secrets without the normal tempo loss. Also, the theme is tons of fun, or at least is was for me, and I encourage folks out there not as familiar with obscure conspiracy theories to look up stuff like the Black Knight Satellite and out-of-place artifacts. The truth it out there!
A lot of the class is admittedly very experimental in what it tries to accomplish, though, and I'll readily admit there were some misses in there. Specifically, the wordiness required of both Half-Secret and Cover Up cards leaves a lot of them looking and feeling very inelegantly worded and text-dense. True, nothing ventured, nothing gained, but this maybe tried too many ventures at once, what with both of these complex mechanics and trying to introduce its own unique tribe and playing with the File sub-mechanic.
My favorite card? I think I'm going to go with "Weather Balloon". Though it's one of the wordier cards, it's just so much fun thematically, and it's probably one of the more interesting and usable Half-Secrets.
Thank you for the kind words and the wonderful competition asylum, I'll do the same now:
warning: opinions incoming
AGENT
I think that the Cover Up mechanic is probably my favorite that I've seen. Whenever I see it though, I always think 'there has to be a more concise way to word that'. If there is one, I don't know it though. Thematically, I really like how the agent turned out. Loving the creepy art and the confidential theme. It's straight out of Area 51. 'Grey Experimenter' is definitely my favorite. It like completely removes threats from your opponent, which disincentives playing solely on those gimmicks.
BARD
I think that the melody mechanic is sick man, and while I was confused by it at first, your concise infographic cleared things up. I think that the class is believable, but is thematically inconsistent at times. That's a bit nitpicky though, as I think it's hard to maintain a constant theme throughout so many cards. My favorite has got to be 'white noise'. It's so simple and fun. Holy crap, this should actually just become a card, its so fun.
NIGHTMARE
Your hero power is seriously my favorite. Shuffle things into your opponents deck, thats so sick man. I think the manifest keyword is not too shabby as well, but honestly your class' theme is so sick. I thought you'd run out of names to give abstract concepts of fear/horror but you did not. And the art looks sick. I really love the phobias, playing 'Deimos' has got to be so fun. Again, the art is just sick though.
POKÉMON TRAINER
I set out to make a pokemon class where the pokemon actually evolve, and I tried my best. However, I did make some other controversial design choices that I'd like to justify my personal opinion towards:
I understand that others have different opinions around design philosophy (it is, after all, a strictly aesthetic decision). Some of you guys vehemently disliked my use of tokens. In my class, there are two types of tokens: Evolutions and the others. As for the Evolution tokens, I simply had to make them. I didn't see any other way to Evolve my minions without making evolution tokens. And I think it would be exciting to cast your hero power and your hand just explode with awesomeness in front of your eyes. New cards! Cooler cards! Awesome! Of course, I could have stopped there. I used an absurd amount of tokens for Horde of Unown or the Eeveelutions (Professor Oak's Gift is deceiving in terms of token volume, as it only adds one card to your hand). As for those, I simply hold the opinion that it's funner that way. It's the difference between Arch-Thief Rafaam and Ethereal Conjurer. With rafaam, the thought is more 'Ok, ill play the card and pick Lantern of Power'. However, with the conjurer, the thought is 'Ok, I need an answer so Ill play this card. don't know what ill get!'. I like that spontaneity and working-on-your-toes thinking. Again, this is strictly personal preference.
Check here for my new cards!Pokemon HS class!All the Pokemon as HS cards!
Well, I can't just let everyone else do reviews and not join in. Here I go...
AGENT
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
I have to go for now, I'll resume these reviews in future posts...
Woooa, if only I could vote for both Agent and Bard, they were my favorites.
I'm going for Bard, because it had cards that completely caught me like Magic Mic, Electric Guitarrist, Regal Trumpeteer and Mr Popular (it amuses me how even while dying summons fans xD). Melody is awesome mechanic, and the class overall is really hearthstone-like (wich means, simple to get and open to great combos), wich means this concept is really well designed.
Agent's biggest pro is the huge ammounts of flavor. Conspiracy theories has been well-used, and most (if not all) of them are englobed in it (I had in mind the legendary for the new expansion, although I forgot his name, is that rich guy that, according to some conspiracies, controls in fact the world). Cover-Up, Files and the damaging secrets are things wich lead to cunning tactics and interesting deck design. The class can be sometimes a bit tough to understand, but it's sooo good I would have loved to vote for this one too.
Nightmare is a really interesting mechanic. It's style is unique, and fears are very well represented (may I think some more dark might be good, but that's something for the next expansion). It did not call me as much, but it's a really smart design, and some cards like the phobias were very interesting for me. Also,the class has a lotof synergy with itself, but not restricting its tools to the very own class.
Pokemon Trainer is extremely complex (after basic set, I just could not get through all these cards), with gynormous ammounts of token cards, and is usually restricted to itself. However it is true that I saw there cards with really intelligent design, the problem of the tokens is not always that big, because you put efforts in giving also more simple cards to tinker with. I guess I'm not the most adecuate person to say this (because, well, I'm not that much into pokemon, I followed it a long time ago but lost track after first editions), but I guess it would be awfully hard to make a better pokemon trainer than this one.
Good luck for all of you! It has been a pleasure.
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Siras Terra, the Geomancer
Siras Terra, the Geomancer
Check here for my new cards!Pokemon HS class!All the Pokemon as HS cards!
My vote goes for the bard. I'm a huge fan of music, and I like the themes of the class. Melody is such a cool, but simplistic, keyword, the artwork of the cards is great, and you hit the themes of the different expansions suprisingly well.
I am probably biased here becbard mechanic is copied from the gathering but that is what also gives it appeal. It is simple and a good mechanic but is overpowered. It is like a druid on crack. There is a card that restores 10 health to each hero and that would never get printed because its ablity to stall the game / e incredibly over pow.
Most of the classes featured here are amazing. :3
My pick currently would either be for the Agent and the Nightmare. Still deliberating, because both of these classes offer very different styles of gameplay and hence, I need to think a lil bit more!
I have to say though, Bard is probably the one that has the most effort placed in. Not discounting any of the other classes, but seeing how the creator balances his cards and testing it out over another Hearthstone client - that's some dedicated work there. It's just that the class tends to be a fair bit overpowered with the Melody effects, and it steamrolls against most classes out there effectively.
Well done to all finalists for making it this far!~
Yikes that hero power seems super strong on pokemon trainer. Just control and heal till turn 10 then you play a Leeroy with +6-8 and a faceless.
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