Hearthpwn

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!

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.

Quote from SgtFailure >>

Best of the luck to all of the contestants, I'm a proud member of the race and while I fear that the Nightmare ended up just a bit too complex for the average voter/player I'm still glad I made it. I got a lot of great feedback in the process and it taught be a lot about designing classes.

My vote falls on the Agent. While I believe that the Nightmare is in no way incapable of winning I want to show support for the simplicity of this class, and how it dares toying with removing cards. Cover Up is a great mechanic, fitting both tempo and control, and the File Hero Power is probably the cleanest of them all. The only thing I lack is a Hand Size matters card, but I suppose Hands On Agent would be a go to play either way.

Quote from SgtFailure >>

Quote from nurgling13 >>

Quote from SgtFailure >>

Best of the luck to all of the contestants, I'm a proud member of the race and while I fear that the Nightmare ended up just a bit too complex for the average voter/player I'm still glad I made it. I got a lot of great feedback in the process and it taught be a lot about designing classes.

My vote falls on the Agent. While I believe that the Nightmare is in no way incapable of winning I want to show support for the simplicity of this class, and how it dares toying with removing cards. Cover Up is a great mechanic, fitting both tempo and control, and the File Hero Power is probably the cleanest of them all. The only thing I lack is a Hand Size matters card, but I suppose Hands On Agent would be a go to play either way.

 Come on, man. Don't concede! Your class is great. I personally think it has the best flavor, and you did a very good job of balancing the effects.

 Oh, that's not a concede! Not in any way, it is just hard to express that I'm impressed about the other classes. Sorry if it sounded like one.

Quote from Gomelus >>

Quote from SgtFailure >>

Quote from nurgling13 >>

Quote from SgtFailure >>

Best of the luck to all of the contestants, I'm a proud member of the race and while I fear that the Nightmare ended up just a bit too complex for the average voter/player I'm still glad I made it. I got a lot of great feedback in the process and it taught be a lot about designing classes.

My vote falls on the Agent. While I believe that the Nightmare is in no way incapable of winning I want to show support for the simplicity of this class, and how it dares toying with removing cards. Cover Up is a great mechanic, fitting both tempo and control, and the File Hero Power is probably the cleanest of them all. The only thing I lack is a Hand Size matters card, but I suppose Hands On Agent would be a go to play either way.

 Come on, man. Don't concede! Your class is great. I personally think it has the best flavor, and you did a very good job of balancing the effects.

 Oh, that's not a concede! Not in any way, it is just hard to express that I'm impressed about the other classes. Sorry if it sounded like one.

 Don't you dare throw the towel now *salts level rising*

BTW, I second the question, why only one vote? It feels really restrictive, especially at this point were most of the class deserve a vote IMO.

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.

Well, I can't just let everyone else do reviews and not join in. Here I go...

AGENT

Strengths:

• Like I said previously, for me, the main appeal of agent is the absolutely magnificent flavor. Asylum always does such a good job (on this class and on Seer from last year) in finding inspiration for cards and translating those inspirations into card effects. I find cards like "Weather Balloon" and Nessie to be super cool, because of how much their effects remind you of the ideas themselves. 
• Agent's sub-theme of File synergy I think is accomplished really well. Files in Agent are similar to my Songs in Bard, where they aren't the main focus of the class, but they reflect a key theme in it and have several cards that synergize with them. When I look at that set of cards the world "elegant" just comes to mind. Not to mention that Conspiracy Theorist is another AMAZINGLY well-flavored minion.
• Almost every card in Agent really feels like a fresh, new idea. Usually in most classes, around 30-50% of the cards are extremely nuanced, while the others are cards that you might expect to see in the game, but thanks to the Cover Up mechanic, there are a ton of effects in Agent that have really never been seen before. In terms of Originality, this class is probably the best. I thought that it would be hard to get enough material to work with on this class, but you did it! I had the same reaction to Seer, genuinely impressive.

Weaknesses:

• In accomplishing that amazing flavor, some cards tend to take it too far. As a result there are a lot of very complex and wordy effects. This is just me personally, but as some of you may know, I HATE 4-line cards. I'm a simplicity guy. I think that in a lot of cases the tradeoff of simplicity for flavor was worth it, but still.
• I will go against the grain in saying that I don't like the Cover Up mechanic, although I have to admit that it does fit the class very well. I also didn't like the idea of "deal 2 damage" secrets. Neither of these are dealbreakers, especially since so many people have said that they liked them, but it's a drawback in my eyes.

I have to go for now, I'll resume these reviews in future posts...

Quote from Dekion1980 >>

Is this just for fun or would these classes be considered for real play in the future? I presume the former... 

Quote from Dekion1980 >>

 I don't seem to be able to comment on the Bard thread (haven't tried the others). I wanted to ask if the Melody mechanic could be played per minion that has it each turn or if only one melody per turn could be used/played whilst all other minions would then only be able to play as usual? 

Quote from Gomelus >>

We're supposed to pick what we considered the very best (like no one ever was).

Quote from MvonTzeskagrad >>

 ...and Mr Popular (it amuses me how even while dying summons fans xD). 

Quote from Dekion1980 >>

 I don't seem to be able to comment on the Bard thread (haven't tried the others). I wanted to ask if the Melody mechanic could be played per minion that has it each turn or if only one melody per turn could be used/played whilst all other minions would then only be able to play as usual?