Hearthpwn

Damn, the bar is unexpectedly high. There is a lot of quality submissions! I don't stand a fucking chance.

Quote from CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkey >>

Damn, the bar is unexpectedly high. There is a lot of quality submissions! I don't stand a fucking chance.

Quote from Asylum_Rhapsody >>

Quote from CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkey >>

Damn, the bar is unexpectedly high. There is a lot of quality submissions! I don't stand a fucking chance.

On the bright side, we're getting fewer submission than I expected. I suspect that the challenges might have scared off some less capable competitors. What that means is that we'll have fewer eliminations from each round to the next, so even if you end up middle-of-the-pack in one any given round, you may still have a chance to redeem yourself in the next.

Quote from Aezuriel >>

Updated concept, mocking up what my submission will look like.  Any input appreciated.

Hero:

Matheron Petrosa.  Scarlet Crusader

The Commander of a Refugee envoy sent to resettle on a distant Island, Matheron has been recalled to bolster the front-lines in the Scarlet Crusade's never-ending fight to purge evil from both, the land and hearts of men.

Lore:

The WoW equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition, the Scarlet Crusade is a religious-military organization originally dedicated to the destruction of all undead/evil.  They are infamously known for resorting to extreme measures as their zealotry and fanaticism has been rumored to impede their ability to distinguish friend from foe -- or even innocent from enemy.

Sample Cards:

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Unique Keyword:

*Note: Paying life is unaffected by Armor or Immunity

 

 Zeal serves three distinct functions for the Scarlet Crusade:

• Additional Costs -- The represents the Scarlet Crusade's willingness to go to extreme measures to get a job done. Similar to Overload, Zeal allows for cards to have a stronger effect by assessing a cost in addition to mana.  Paying life also reinforces the pyrrhic nature of the Crusade's strength, their willingness to sacrifice anything (even their own humanity) to get the job done.

Example:

    versus  

 

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• Status -- This represents the fanaticism of the Scarlet Crusade.  Zeal can offer the player a unique form of Spell Damage, by having effects that can be stipulated or augmented by the Zeal rating of permanents in play.  For good or ill, Zealotry is a unique bond that ties the Scarlet Crusade tightly together and gives them strength in numbers.

Example:

      versus 

 

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• Cost Reduction/Self Reinforcement -- This represents the collective bond the Scarlet Crusade has with each other and often is the reason the seem so cloistered by outsiders.  The second half of the Keyword allows for the LIFE cost paid for effects with "Zeal:(x)" to be reduced if you already have minions with Zeal in play.

Example:

• If you have nothing in play, the cost of Zealot's Ire is 1 Mana and 2 Life.
• If you have a Scarlet Flame Initiate in play, the cost of  Zealot's Ire is 1 Mana and 1 Life.
• If you have TWO Scarlet Flame Initiates in play, Zealot's Ire costs 1 Mana (and 0 life).

 

 

Ok, my basic set has been rehashed again. Most things haven't changed much, but I'm slowly working on the balance of things. Let me know what you think.

Quote from Aezuriel >>

Quote from The_Odinson >>

 I definitely think your class idea is interesting, but there are some things to clean up. First off, paying life should just be taking damage. HS doesn't use the term life, it uses the term health, and you either restore health or take damage, look at the Warlock hero power Life Tap as an example. I get your first 2 cards, but some explanation as to why you decided to show off Inquisitor's Purge would be nice. The card has a fine name and art, but you don't have any reasoning as to why you wanted to use that as an example for what your class is. Also, this is probably extremely unimportant in the long run, but Silence doesn't appear on Basic set cards. But again, that's not really important at least to this round.

I can reset it to say "Pay Health" easily if that ends up being necessary, but I want there to be a definitive separation between self-sacrificing effects and effects that just self inflict damage.  Specifically, I want there to be design space for effects that can undercut Armor or Immunity, as (at the moment) Armor is mostly a cosmetic form of stacking health. I like the idea that I might choose to give this class access to armor effects, and yet still have cards that force the player to care about "Pay Health" costs could kill them no matter what their armor is.

As far as Inquisitor's Purge as an example card is concerned, I already had two cards (three if you count Hero Power) that are there to help develop the framework for how Zeal works in comparison with existing effects.  I wanted something flavorful, but distinctly Basic Set that could showcase the feel of the Class when not leaning on the keyword.

A high-cost destruction spell seemed to fit that well, especially with the flavor I put on it.  Silence is available to Priest as Common, So I figured a high profile removal would be an okay way of introducing Silence to the Basic set in a class that would naturally gravitate to paying a high cost in order to completely eradicate something.  As a bonus, it harkens to a similar card I made for a different competition, that may or may not come back out of my bag of tricks for this challenge.

 

Quote from Aezuriel >>

Quote from The_Odinson >>

 

Ok, my basic set has been rehashed again. Most things haven't changed much, but I'm slowly working on the balance of things. Let me know what you think.

Fall Back - So, This one has changed, used to be far different, but I went with a much much cheaper version to see how it fairs. I think changing it to be more basic text and making it 0 cost seemed nice to me. This might very very much need to be 1 mana, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

Last Ditch Effort - This one also changed, but less so. This used to always target the most expensive enemy minion. This however I felt fit the name of the card better, and the wording was a bit simpler. 

Caution - This is one of the first conceptual buff ideas for the class and its meant to really queue into the racing concept. I felt like 2 mana for a symmetric effect might still be too good, but I would love to know what other people think.

 

Clumsy Mechanic - Much like Warlock I want to throw drawbacks on a few of the class cards but give them tempo upside. This is one of those cards that I felt like had enough variance and disadvantage to be good but not over powered. I still am not sure if want the Battlecry to be at 2 or 3 damage, but yes, this hits your face on an empty board, you are a character.

Start Your Engines! - The second of our group buffs and major theme pushers. Again, we are taking a basic card from another class and changing it to fit our needs. This is something that is almost necessary, as there are only so many ideas. This card is a bit difficult to play and might be overly frustrating as a basic card simply because the Can't Attack Heroes clause does apply to your whole side no matter what, meaning you have to make your attacks correctly.

Speed Freak - Ok, this started out as a 2 mana 4/2 and someone told me there are no vanilla minions in class cards, but I think this card is great. Yes, its vanilla, but its over budget, and its something different from every other class.

Tactical Maneuver - This is one of two Basics with the health related text. I am not sure if people feel like that is overly complicated for basic, but there are other cards with a fair amount of text in that range, like Kill Command or wordy cards like Mind Vision and Tracking.

Crowd's Favor - This card replaced something that I don't think quite fit into the basic set. I like the idea of having some sort of buff, but I don't want something too cheap. I also didn't want to go straight into a +6/+6 bigger Blessing of Kings and I felt like stealing half of a 0 cost card and making what is probably a somewhat disappointing buff is ok. This might be too weak, but I feel like it fills out everything.

Fan Favorite - This card might seem somewhat odd in but I felt like it was a great concept card. The Crowd Favorite is a winner, he's tough and he's dangerous, but he's also the one almost all the other racers are looking to knock off. This led me to make a large Taunt minion to embody that. The name of this did change, but nothing else.

 

 

 Looking over this post and your previous, I like the concept you are reaching for.  I think however, you should consider a change that would move away from stockpiling inherent value, and towards the kind of back and forth tempo swings that happen in a race.  More specifically, in its current form, I feel like the end game for this class would be limited to stockpiling tempo until reaching a critical mass, having one big turn that defines the game, and thing riding that one big advantage to the win.  This can be okay for a deck archetype (see Miracle Rogue, or Tinker Oil, etc) but extremely limiting for a class and unfun to play with.  It also makes this seem more suited to an NPC adventure encounter than a playable class (see Temple Escape from The League of Explorers).

This might be hard given the challenges we have been posed with since your hero power has to generate an asset.  I'm curious What this class would look like if you took this class in a different direction with The Keyword. 

Maybe something like:

"Draft -- When casting this card from hand, it is amplified by the number of cards played before it this turn. If it is a minion, minion gets +1/+1 for each card played, if it is a spell it is cast as though it has Spell Damage +1 for each card played."

 

Quote from Aezuriel >>

Quote from The_Odinson >>

 Silence only appears on more commons than any other type of card, including Earth Shock, but it still isn't a keyword blizzard put into Basic. That being said, I don't think that is part of this phase, and it may not be a consideration for the Basic phase. Its likely unrealistic that any of us with Keywords tired to our hero power should be doing that, as no other class specific keyword ever shows up there. This is all just stuff I remember from the one time I participated in a class contest but that was the very first one. 

If Inquisitor's Purge is meant to help showcase your class, but not focus on Zeal, I am still curious. Does your class care about Silence? Or is this just a pre-packed Polymorph+Fireblast that's been fitted to your needs? I'm not saying the card is bad or doesn't fit, but in your post you don't mention to us why you picked to show it. I think with basic cards that bit of purpose helps, because basic cards just show the tip of the iceberg. The class isn't even fully formed there. Keywords are often missing and sometimes even whole playstyles aren't available because of how limiting Basic can be. I think the Basic set is easily the hardest to design and the hardest to judge, because it often doesn't, and shouldn't give you the whole scope of a class. Therefore each card needs to have a very specific purpose and rational.

 At its best, The Scarlet Crusade is about utterly destroying Undead/Evil. Not taking chances, not trying to bargain with it, not trying to understand its place in the circle of life.... just complete and thorough eradication. 

I am not sure exactly how/if I am going to deal with armor and weapons for the class, and I feel Scarlet Flame Initiate and Scarlet Shieldbearer have the martial feel of the class down.  I have more options for removal in my bag without resorting to silence, Zealot's Ire is one.  But I wanted to show what it looks like when a Scarlet Crusader decides that something simply has to die... and never come back. It shows the totalitarianism of the Scarlet Crusade in a simple, brutal, and effective way, while alluding to existence of the Inquisition side of the crusade in order to sell the flavor.  Even if it gets adjusted for rarity, or removed altogether, I feel it is a good example of a staple class card that could be used in any deck, and I'm not sure what other need I would try to fill in order to replace it with another card for the "showcase".

The next best thing I can think of would be making the card a minion, an Inquisitor by name, and have it Battlecry with the exact same effect.  It would NEED to be a Legendary at that point, and would likely incur some Zeal rating.  For now, I would rather allude to the Inquisition and keep the card a basic for the showcase.

 

Quote from Aezuriel >>

Quote from Mewdrops >>

Quote from Asylum_Rhapsody >>

Quote from CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkey >>

Damn, the bar is unexpectedly high. There is a lot of quality submissions! I don't stand a fucking chance.

On the bright side, we're getting fewer submission than I expected. I suspect that the challenges might have scared off some less capable competitors. What that means is that we'll have fewer eliminations from each round to the next, so even if you end up middle-of-the-pack in one any given round, you may still have a chance to redeem yourself in the next.

Yeah, I was going to submit but looking at the entries on that page in particularly, I'm kinda chickening out XD. I'm not even sure I can get top 50% there...

That aside, anybody have some idea on what example cards I should use? These are the ones I'm currently using.

These are some ones I'm considering showing instead:

 

 

 

 

Sylvan Mystic, Gemini and Libra feel like they should be Legendary minions, I think If you use them you should readjust their stats to reflect that level of play experience.  Libra should be somewhere near Alezstraza and Mystic somewhere around Medivh.  Gemini, might be more challenging, but you could make it where Gemini just creates its twin as the battlecry... or if you want to insist on thinning... make two Gemini (e.g. Gemini, of awesome-thing-1, and Gemini, of awesome-thing-2).

That said, I feel like Libra and Gemini are getting into Astrology and feel disconnected from the Class.  I would try to make them spirits of some sort and use them to push the flavor of the class instead of being neat stat-sticks.

It also bothers me that your unique keyword "punishes" players for using the cards printed with it.  I understand how you are using it mechanically, but I would rather see you change Ethereal to give a bonus effect for using cost reduction instead of prohibiting it (think combo).

As for what cards to choose, your class has the potential to be very complicated. What helped me really dial-in mine was to have two cards that demonstrate how your Class "should" be played and can be used to explain the mechanics and how it works with your hero power, and then have one card that shows a non-keyworded defining moment.

If you don't make any other changes, I would select Foxfire Spirit, Spirit Fire, and Spirit's Compassion.

Quote from Inciflahrdus>>

Is it valid to create the keyword for a mechanic that is already in the game, but as a description?

I don't have a problem with it. People have submitted entries before to previous Class Creation Competitions that do just that. The easy example is the Faerie Dragon mechanic of not being able to be targeted by spells or hero powers, which we've had entries before keyword as Elusive or something.