Hearthpwn

Wow, there's, uh, not a lot of submissions this time around.

Also, HOW THE HECK DO YOU PREPARE THE FINAL POLL SO FAST AND CALCULATE THE RESULTS SO QUICKLY?!

Any card that permanently "keeps a minion on the board" but disables attacking (including having 0 attack) gets flat out ignored for any vote consideration. Giving it taunt is only a soft-solution but doesn't fix the inherent problem with cards like Fel Reaver and Unlicensed Apothecary around. You would just instantly win the game, depending on your deck type. So Petrify, Perma Frost, Blood of Monoroth, Tar Improvement and Flowering Strength are all out of the window.

Some other ideas are also overdone (e.g. Sinister Touch) and not implemented in a new, exciting, flavorful or creative way.

Speaking of flavor, I just love Hemophobia, but the effect itself is pretty useless.  

Furbog Brew has no place in Druid. That's paladin territory.

Personally, I like Mind Flay the most. It's a creative use of a scaling damage with a mechanism that is already in place.

Forced Equality is also great, but might be too OTKish with the access Paladin has to big buff stuff (Dinosize, Kings, Double Atack etc).

RIP in peace page 4.

Congrats to all the finalists, some of the cards are really cool. Still, I find it weird that no entries from page one made it here. Sure, they had more visibility so they got more votes but the overall quality in page one was excellent and I feel it's a bit unfair that none of them qualified just because they were all in the same page.

Permafrost: Very flavourful, has a lot going for it with the theme, especially in a Freeze Mage deck. This card isn't a writeoff especially because casting it on an enemy minion only gives them more room for minions, and essentially provides as much free health to the hero as the minion has. A

Sinister Touch: Neat effect, good in Warlock esp. when faced with a big threat or wanting to get some life gain. A fair price too. However, not sure if this targets the hero of whoever owns the minion or the hero who casts it— doesn't seem like a 'debuff' as much as neutralizing face damage. B

Petrify: Very standard, not particularly exciting– basically a less costly Hex for the wrong class. D

Forced Equality: An interesting effect, but it's basically Faceless Shambler (w/o Taunt) for TWO of your other minions (you could play two Wisps and even War Golem (god forbid Swamp King Dred) in the middle, then play this card. That's 42 (or 54) stat points for 10 mana and 4 cards, which is kind of insane given the setup you need for cards like The Ancient One. B- for the OP nature of the card.

Mind Flay: Using Fatigue damage in the middle of the game is certainly interesting, but I've already made it known that Fatigue should probably be kept out of anything but running out of cards. This card could be "Choose a minion. Whenever it attacks, your opponent takes 1 damage for every time it attacked." Because it's very unlikely to be played in Fatigue. Even when you are in Fatigue, it's a bit of a tech card and it would be unfair if you purposefully went into fatigue just so you could do this to them. B

Hemophobia: I like it. It fits the Warrior class very well, and provides a way of saving your board. But that's the problem too. It saves your board too easily. Whirlwind and this and all the other damaged friendly minion synergies for Warrior make this incredibly overpowered. When you play this you can basically ignore your opponent's board and push face damage... "Fun and interactive". B-

Blood of Mannoroth: I expected to see more cards like this in the finals. There are only three cards in the finals that give stat debuffs, which is actually sad because it's a design space that hasn't been properly explored by the Hearthstone devs and it seems like it hasn't been explored well by the competitors. The fact that this is a conditional buff/debuff makes it more interesting than some of the straight up debuffs, as it makes it more flexible. It also considers order of play, as you can't do Whirlwind if you want to debuff an enemy with this card. I love the flavour as well; A Warrior card that actually looks at the Orcs and the Burning Legion connection. Compared to Rampage and Blessing of Kings, this is a very well balanced card and it gets my full approval, no matter how many quirky effects there are in these finals. A+

Covert Ops: Good but overpowered on Windfury minions, or on Charge minions and sticky friendlies. It's a conditional debuff if you cast it on an enemy minion, but it seems like it's even sillier when you put it on a friendly minion. Not sure how this would work with Freezing Trap, as an enemy minion would attack, but then it would get Frozen before it could activate the buff, and then the debuff just disappears, never to be seen again. If the debuff lasted long enough it would just get removed from play by Freezing. That said, even though this has a 'time limit' on how long it's in play, it's a pretty long one and can be kind of obnoxious because some Hunter secrets (like Explosive Trap) are quite powerful. Too OP! B

Furborg Brew: True that this is Paladin territory, but the Choose One idea makes it less Paladin-y. Well, not really. It's basically a combo piece with Swipe because there are only a few instances when you wouldn't use this to help kill the minion. It really might as well be "Change a minion's health to 1" which is an absolute debuff, not even a conditional one, and basically doesn't fit the class (nor does the name). C

Tar Imprisonment: Interesting play on the Tar Creeper / Tar Lord idea, but really sucks for your opponent and is only technically a conditional debuff, given that you could play it on your own minions, but you never would (except maybe in a niche case to set off a weird Shadowflame). Flavor is okay, but nonetheless I can't really see this as a warlock spell. Not really any spell, but maybe a Tar related minion. It hasn't been done before, I'll give it that. C++ 

Corpse Looting: So it's Primalfin Champion but for Rogue. Rogue doesn't have really any good spells it can cast on a friendly minion (most return the minion to hand or deal damage), so it strikes me as a strict debuff. I suppose it's particularly useful if you have to waste burn on a huge 10/10; Corpse Looting into Backstab into Eviscerate + Eviscerate. And then you get back your Eviscerates and Backstab. I actually like it for that, even if it's not the most unique. A-

Flowing Strength: Fandral Staghelm ruins this card which isn't the case for most other Choose One cards, but I can let that go for the fact that it has good utility when doing board control or running taunts. Because it's Druid and Choose One though, and because of the Fandral Staghelm un-synergy, I look at this as kind of a worse Mannoroth's Blood. B+

With all that out of the way, I'm voting for Blood of Mannoroth. Runners up for me were Permafrost and Corpse Looting.

Well, next time i will post on the bloody last page so i can easily get to the finals.

Quote from ThisOtherGuyTox >>

Quote from Teknician >>

Furborg Brew: True that this is Paladin territory, but the Choose One idea makes it less Paladin-y. Well, not really. It's basically a combo piece with Swipe because there are only a few instances when you wouldn't use this to help kill the minion. It really might as well be "Change a minion's health to 1" which is an absolute debuff, not even a conditional one, and basically doesn't fit the class (nor does the name). C

 The name dosen't fit?

Fight me.

I partially agree with Zukuu. Any ability that can permanently disable a minion is, IMO, bad. However, I feel the taunt offset is effective enough that I feel the cards that provide taunt are acceptable (though I personally won't be voting for them)...

Being able to set a minion's attack to 0 and not being forced to kill it at some point is potentially more harmful than simply killing the minion. Like Zukuu pointed out, minions such as Bittertide Hydra, Fel Reaver, hell, even Venture Co. Mercenary are just too problematic when they have their attack set to 0. There's also the issue of the fact that reducing a minion to 0 is effectively removing a minion slot for your opponent, reducing the total number of minions they can have on the board by one. Barring some sort of hard counter, such as attack buffs or silence effects, they're simply stuck with their debuffed minion. At least when they are given taunt, you're forced to deal with it before you can utilize your own minions for face damage. I mean, imagine if Hex didn't give taunt, just a 0/1 frog. Yup, better hope they play aoe because otherwise, that frog's not going anywhere. This is also why during the voting phase I didn't upvote any card that gave a minion, "Cannot Attack". It's just bad design in my opinion (no offense to the creators that this applies to, just voicing my opinion as I see it).

I personally voted for Hemophobia and Mind Flay. I'd give the edge to Hemophobia personally because I think it's a very interesting mechanic. It also makes me wonder how it would work with taunt, should Blizzard ever actually implement such a thing. IE: Could I cast Hemophobia on my own minion to bypass the opponent's injured taunt minion? Because that'd be pretty interesting. It's not necessarily the most powerful (I'd actually argue that it's rather weak) or the flashiest of the created cards, but I feel that it's the most interesting and the most creative. 

That being said, I'd like to wish everyone good luck!

Quote from ZardozSpeaks >>

WOW. This is one of the best list of finalists we've ever had. With only a couple exceptions, I think these are really great cards. This week's prompt was exactly what I've been arguing for: intelligible prompts that have a mechanical goal, instead of just meeting arbitrary restrictions on card text. This was  gilgamesh1010's  prompt, I know some people game him shit for the otk potential of his Standoff card, but I'm really impressed with this week's prompt and result, and I think credit should go to him.