The more I look to design cards for this competition the more it is bothering me about the ambiguity around when the year is set. If this was a real year it would not be treating un'goro, knights of the frozen throne and kobolds as standard because witchwood and the year of the raven exists but we don't have the full year of the raven to work with either.
personally I'm just going to be designing cards that work in synergy with all standard expansions unless mods confirm otherwise but it really is a niggle.
The more I look to design cards for this competition the more it is bothering me about the ambiguity around when the year is set. If this was a real year it would not be treating un'goro, knights of the frozen throne and kobolds as standard because witchwood and the year of the raven exists but we don't have the full year of the raven to work with either.
personally I'm just going to be designing cards that work in synergy with all standard expansions unless mods confirm otherwise but it really is a niggle.
I think it's best to design the sets as if they were fairly far into the future with none of the current standard sets. And anyways I think it's best to design the sets of one year as existing together, without outside set influence, as it's a bit bad when half of the synergy cards of some theme rotate out, leaving the other half as useless.
Here's two keywords I'll use in sets in my year, which will be Year of the Mech. Here's the list of Mechs that Assemble can summon. It works like Adapt, you get three choices and get to summon one of them. The X in Celebrate can be a lot of things. For example, it could be Celebrate (A Spell), Celebrate (A 1-cost minion), Celebrate (A Mech) and so on.
Ok, so here are my idea of year. Maybe I,m too toxic but this gonna be...
For the first, some cards gone too wild, so let's move them to the Wild...
Hall of Fame:
Nr. 1: Mana Wyrm: If played on turn 1, with The Coin if you're the second player, this little thing can win games. That's not we should expect from 1-mana common drop. Replacement:Arcane Artificer: It's also very good card, and also is spell oriented card. Still it's not OP as Mana Wyrm.
Nr. 2: Divine Favor: This card is just horrible annoying. Mostly you won't empty your hand, because you'll have no answer for ongoing opponent's turn, but with this card this don't matter, because for each card used, you'll get another card in replacement. Replacement:Unidentified Maul: This card has mostly usable effect, and you won't loose tempo with it. Also it can be used in Odd Paladin, just like Divine Favor.
Nr. 3: Doomguard: He's actually one of the strongest classic charge minions. Now they adding more balanced rush minions, but with cards like this Standard will never be realy balanced. Replacement:Hooked Reaver: Also a big demon with, but probably weaker than Doomguard.
Now, time for cards:
The first expansion-
Ihgaluk Crag:
It's home of Skumblade Tribe, one of Saurok tribes. Saurok are lizard-men race. Most says, that Saurok were created by mogu, but Skumblade Tribe don't believe them. They believe that they were made by invisible devilsaur in the air, Kros.(there aren't too many artworks on internet for this set, so don't be angry for Saurok that aren't realy looks like Saurok)
This set also provides new mechanic called Prophecy:
Here is example of card using it:
Here are two other cards from this set:
Now, the second expansion:
Pirates vs Ninjas:
It's fully fan-made expansion, so you won't see too many lore legendaries. The main theme of this set are Ninjas, Pirates and new card type: Locations, and new tribe: Ninja.
Here are two example cards:
Each class gains its own Location. Ogre Ninja also will gain Ninja tribe.
And the last expansion:
The Black Temple:
The Black Temple is cytadel of Illidan. I was waiting for this expansion for so long, and now I have opportunity to made it myself. This would be full of Nagas, Elves, Demons, Undead, and many others. And this expansion also have it's own keyword, which introduce one of Sea Witches ability: Manashield.
I can't show you Illidan himself because he has tokens, but i can give you an example of minion using Manashield:
This would be the last expansion of this year, because I wanna keep the best theme to the final end.
Alright, I think I've got the banner, I'm not sure if it looks good though.
So, I already got the idea of two of my expansions, still trying to figure out what the third one will be about, but I've got a good amount of examples for it, especially when going to the "Year Flavour"
The first expansion will be "Hunters of Azeroth" and will get inside a brutal island, where Hunters and Beasts fight for survival and for exotic head trophies, as everyone can steal things from you, so can you. The Wendigo is described as an evil supernatural creature, cannibals and possessors of a great inner animal, as Wendigos are half-human, half-beast but still its not the minotaur.
As brutality and blood spills everywhere, pilferers and carnivores stalk in the lands to capture their respective prize, as with the keyword itself, Consume is already in a few cards, like The Boogeymonster and Wind-up Burglebot, however, going a bit deeper isn't that bad, right?
I'm showing 3 cards because again, I've no idea what the 3rd expansion is going to be about tbh
The 2nd Expansion will have place in a haunted mansion (still no name), where ghosts wander around, unsuspected things happen and spirits start upping the pumping of your heart, will your heart hold enough to survive in this manor?
Ghosts can possess other foes, or commonly, non-living things, as their spirit goes, the corporeal body becomes bended, unable to make a new movement by itself, this keyword has been included in Kobold Barbarian, but here is commonly applied by other cards, just look how even the angel of death is an spirit too!
And yes, I had planned to make a random action every turn, because you could possess characters, but not sure how it'd be worded or coded.
Also I'll give feedback later, I'm all out of stuff and all in for joy, but kinda busy by that matter.
I feel like the community has a distaste for the "Random attack" in general since how frustrate it is to lost control of your own minions, so I don't think it is a good idea to expand upon. It also make the game literally come down to a coin flip since the Hero will always exist and interact with the effect.
1. Divine Favor - While most slower Paladin decks can't use this, I feel that its too easy for aggro decks to take advantage of the insane potential this card has against control. Paladin will get new draw in my second expansion that is based on your board instead of your opponent's hand.
2. Mana Wyrm - Everything a 1 drop shouldn't be. If you don't draw early removal (which some classes don't even have), you're probably going to lose. Instead, I want to take tempo mage in a more elemental style of play.
3. Gadgetzan Auctioneer - Rogue has always been forced into Miracle because of this card. I want to create some new archetypes for Rogue that don't wholly rely on drawing cards. Also, there are some low cost spells I have in the works that I worry would make this too OP anyway.
Expansion #1: Festival of the Loa
The trolls are holding a party in honor of their Loa, and you're invited! Try out the first spells that are also in tribes, the Vodoo spells! Each class has at least two, and they all push the classes in different directions and have synergy with each other! The classes will also each recieve their own Legendary Loa, minions with very powerful abilities!
Expansion #2: Highlander Trek
Explore the Highlands that the Tauren call home. This expansion introduces a new keyword, Resilience. After a minion has survived a certain amount of turns, it will perform a one-time, powerful effect. This is a way to introduce lower-cost minions with cool effects without making them overpowered for their cost.
Expansion #3: Attack on Argus
The final battle against the Burning Legion is at hand. Sargeras's army of demons will invade Azeroth at any moment. The only way to beat them is to become them. A new keyword, Infuse, gives your minions raw fel power in exchange for taking two damage at the start of each of your turns. Another core part of this expansion is upgrading the Discard effect. In addition to Warlock getting some upgrades, there will also be some Neutral minions given this mechanic so everyone can revel in its OPness!
Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
As someone has said, Infuse is too simple to become a keyword. There is some major typo (Voodoo and Discard) on your showcase cards, as well as the fact that you made Loa a tribe without showing any Loa tribe synergy.
Hey guys! I am excited to get back into competitions by going ahead and jumping into this. These are always fun, even if I tend to not make it past the first few rounds. As always I am excited to hear your feedback on my ideas and give my own for yours ( Something I'll get to once I get this posted, probably tomorrow because it's getting late here now and I haven't looked through the thread yet).
Introducing:The Year of the Lion! I thought to myself, what better creature for this competition to represent my year other than that of the mighty king of the jungle. The Lion symbol of Stormwind is pretty iconic in of itself. I started with the idea of having a set of words to represent my Year themes and chose the creature later. Those words were decided upon to be Strength, Honor, and Wisdom. From those I can branch into a variety of sub-themes and ideas, with a sets initial feel correlating to each word. The idea here is have strong cohesive themes across each set that builds into one-another, and I hope I accomplish that with what I will be showcasing to you today.
But First, What are we rotating?
1. Innervate: With Molten Giant being rotated the Hearthstone team has shown they are not afraid to unnerf cards to allow stronger combos to exist in wild. This card rotating has the same design philosophy behind it, while also opening up some new avenues for Standard in Druid. It will go back to its original state of providing two mana crystals to preserve and open up new combos in wild, while not having too much power.
2. Doomsayer: Doomsayer has had a long history of usage in a variety of control and combo decks. Often used powerfully in a combo or to stall your opponent's early game, it's a card that has a pretty varied but oppressive at times history for Hearthstone. I think it's past due for this card to receive the treatment to go to wild. I think having some new tools and new combos arising instead of focusing on the same kind of tropes could work well.
3. Gadgetzan Auctioneer: Yeah, it definitely seems like I'm targeting long staying combo decks with all of my choices. This card is no different. This specific kind of Miracle Rogue has been one of the longest standing decks in the entirety of Hearthstone, and while it has changed throughout the years, it still exists in some form even to this day. I do not want to nerf Auctioneer but I think this has been a long-time coming for this guy to visit the wild.
With that out of the way. Let me introduce the First set of our year and a few of the cards that you might see.
First Expansion, Might Of The Dragonflight: The dragons of Azeroth have faced many numerous hard years as of late. They have been forced to adapt and grow new resolve, strengthening themselves. The dragons of Azeroth are looking to show the other races they are still a force to be reckoned with. This set will focus on the five different dragon flights and how they fit into each of the nine classes. I think it's a broad enough theme that I can keep it varied, but have good core ideas. And we're introducing a new card type in a way, Equipment. They are a passive card type, and I think it is the next logical step after Weapons to broaden their scope. These new cards will help you weather the onslaught that faces you. These cards take the same slot as a weapon would. You have to use them wisely though, as they lose a bit of their magic at the end of each of your turns.
Frost Ward: A simple defensive card for Mage that provides a small boost to early game defense without being overbearing. I wasn't quite sure on how to balance this or the concept in general but here's the idea.
Pit Stinger: A simple design for Druid, a class that fits the theme of the card I built. It's a solid mid-game card that works as a soft-taunt, forcing your opponent to trade into it, or you'll get to sack something more powerful with the dragon that lays in wait. You could also hide it behind a beefy taunt or two, giving you a powerful removal tool.
Second Expansion, Siege Of Stormwind: Our next expansion is something that I think is a pretty cool concept. Lore-wise Orgrimmar has been sacked recently and the latest book entices the idea but doesn't go through with it. What if there was an expansion where the modern version of Stormwind, the capital of the Alliance, is sacked by the Horde. Gnomish Airships battling Goblin Zepplins. Tauren charging through the gates as Night Elves defend from afar. Etc, etc. The set will focus on the battle of the two nations and provide a variety of cards relating to this theme. It also introduces a new keyword, Duelist. Only one enemy minion may attack a minion with Duelist per turn. So you better deal with it one blow. Of course, you could also use spells to help you out.
Duelist: I think the keyword explains itself. It gives minions a new dimension and fits the theme of Honor that I was going for. A duel is only between two people after-all, so it makes sense it can only fight one minion.
The Seamstress: Works like Deathstalker Rexxar's Hero Power, where the cards costs and effects are combined. Having the freedom to mix things up is what I feel would make this a legendary effect. I can already think of some pretty powerful combinations. No doubt there are some I didn't think of either. 3 mana 2/2 is a pretty common stat line for powerful effects these days. It does something largely unique, it definitely fits warlocks themes. I really like this design, but I might change it from being a demon and change the art. I dunno yet. Just the thought of someone twisting the soldiers around to her liking so they become more powerful feels so awesome to me.
Oathbound Tauren: Really simple, really effective. I like simple designs as much as the complex ones. This card would be really handy in Warrior and just honestly springs to mind when I think of the keyword. That's the ideal kind of card.
Third Expansion, Beneath The Veil: Slow down and listen for a while. The last set ventures to the land of Pandaria where their ancient wisdom is unparalleled. There are plenty of mysteries to uncover and lessons to be taught. The set definitely rounds out the three of my core themes. I love Pandaria and it definitely works for my year of Hearthstone. The set will have a sub-theme of learning things from the other classes. I also have a new keyword here, again something that works thematically I think. Restraint means that your minion has a delayed effect that triggers on the start of your next turn.
Restraint: I think the idea of delayed effects will give me some fun space to work around. The card I showed off doesn't particularly fit that fully at the moment as I'm still tweaking ideas and it's likely that won't be the one I choose to show off.
Enlightened Monk: It was supposed to be common, but It doesn't really matter at the moment. It just gets the concept across and shows a bit of the versatility of the keyword I came up with. Good early game card. Might need a slight tweak or two if I keep it.
Salvage: Shows off that other concept i was talking about. Really cool design I think, and it's relatively balanced at the mana cost. I don't really have much else to talk about here.
I don't even know why you name the Equipment as a special card type since it behave exactly like weapons. Just said that each class will have a special weapon that lose Durability this expansion (even though I'm against the idea since it dilutes class identity).
Your HoF cards seem to just asking for negative reception. Innvervate is a Basic card. Doomsayer is a well-liked, widely used and high skill early game minion for control decks, I'll give you that Gadgetzan Auctioneer is divisive, but given that you don't have any old cards to rotate, oh boy.
I'm confused about the Restrain keyword: Do the effect activate multiple time? Or is it a one-time deal.
I'm trying to make some cards to get the ideas flowing, which has been pretty hard so far, and I don't expect it to get much better. I think the second expansion, the one with the Draeneis in space, is gonna be the hardest to keep lore-friendly. I'd like to know your opinion of what might work and what probably will not, and also what are the best cards to showcase during the first phase.
For the first expansion, we have the title character of a very questionable movie, the comic relief of another one, a tabloid photographer and a film critic. This is gonna be the fun, lighthearted expansion, so expect lots of puns and jokes (and also a big focus on flavor and top-down designs).
"Aren't the vampires he hunts the ones supposed to have Lifesteal? And how the heck is he supposed to turn into a Worgen at the end!? He's an Orc, duh. Geez, who writes these things?" "He's, without a doubt, the worst parrot you've never heard of." "He's your biggest fan. He'll follow you until you love him."
"He wonders why he doesn't get invited to press screenings anymore."
Then, we have the third expansion, which tells of events that happened before the Great Sundering, from things that happened immediately before, during the War of the Ancients, to the time when the Titans had just arrived in Azeroth. We're gonna see lots of Trolls and Mogu, which were the dominant empires on Azeroth for a long while, but also Pandaren, Night Elves, titan-forged and Qiraji, as well as past versions of well-known, beloved lore characters.
This expansion is already halfway done, as I first started work on it months ago, so what I'm gonna do is filter through the existing cards and adapt the best of them to fit the competition's standards. If you want to check them all out, just click here.
""And remember kids, after you go to the bathroom, don't forget to wash your brains!" Says a lot about the anatomy of the Qiraji." "When the Thunder King set out to conquer the empires of the "lesser" races, huge battles were fought. So many were crushed under the might of the Mogu Empire; the ones who were not so lucky were forced into slavery." "Aman'Thul, the Highfather himself, reached down through Azeroth's skies and heaved the Old God, Y'Shaarj, from the surface of the world. Then came Anduin, and he cast Eternal Servitude and... here we go again."
I don't think Hero cards are allowed given that you have to create the Token for Hero Power. Also, you didn't give a rough outline for your third expansion as well as showcasing too much of the the other two.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click here to visit my Timestream Tracking Finalist Year of the Dragon in collaboration with Demonxz95
So, I decided to do a repost for our entry with some modification because it didn't get any respond last time:
AND NOW...
A collaboration between Shatterstar1998 and Demonxz95, we present to you...
Year of the Dragon
(insert Spyro reference here)
Nightmare on the Nether
Nightmare on the Nether takes us to the Emerald Nightmare and the Twisting Nether - an ethereal dimension of chaotic magics that connects the myriad worlds of the universe, where corruption overcomes the best of everyone and darkness lurks around every corner. No one is truly safe, even the dragonflights. Dangerous creatures like Demons, Ethereals, Voidwalkers and Nether Dragons await.
As one can see from Feldrake, we have a new keyword, Elusive:
Elusive is the unofficial, but widespread fan term to refer to the effect "can't be targeted by spells or Hero Powers", found on cards like Faerie Dragon. As of the start of this year, it will finally become a full-fledged keyword. Elusive isn't like Inspire or Discover, which played main roles in their respective introductory sets. Instead, it's more like Lifesteal or Rush, where it plays a supporting role rather than a main one.
Once Upon a Time in Azeroth
Harkening back to the days of fairy-tales and legends, Once Upon a Time in Azeroth brings these stories to life in the world of Hearthstone. Dragons, fair and mighty princesses, ancient powerful deities and taking animals await.
Arthur, Wise King also demonstrates the new Legacy keyword:
Legacy cards have an effect where they activate when you play a certain amount of cards in a turn. Think Sherazin, Corpse Flower or Dragon Soul. There are all different types of Legacies to fulfill too, regular Legacy as demonstrated as Arthur, but also Spell Legacy (whenever you cast X amount of spells this turn) is another example. These effects can also happen multiple times per turn, so don't be afraid to go a little overboard.
Caverns of Time
The Caverns of Time are a zone where time magic is most prominent, where the Bronze Dragonflight and other time wielders are located. It's this set where all 9 classes get cards to harness the power of time and cards with new, interesting mechanics.
This expansion also introduces a brand new type of card:
Enchanted Forest Shrine presents a new idea, collectible dormant cards that you actually put into your deck that you play onto the battlefield and last for a certain amount of turns. In this case, Enchanted Forest Shrine combines the effects of your Choose One cards into one card for 3 turns. With Fandral Staghelm now out of Standard, we need another card with this effect. After 3 turns (yours, and your opponents, counting the turn you play it as the first turn), it removes itself. These retain the behavior of other dormant cards like The Darkness or Nether Portal, where they aren't considered minions and cannot be destroyed. They also cannot be generated by cards like Unstable Portal or Evolve because they are not minions.
Hall of Fame
Our choices might surprise you, but we have our reasons.
Mindgames is a very high-rolly, very weak card that all in all just poorly designed, limit the effect of spell generation in Priest and has no business being in the Classic set. Lightbomb will rotate back into Standard to replace it, with the bonus is that the card removes the need for Priest to have an AoE printed in every set and made the Wild format impossible to play around.
Alarm-o-Bot is pretty much the same exact deal. Very weak and high-rolly, and creates an awkward minion to pull from a random effect. Either it ends up being completely useless and you could've gotten anything else instead, or it high-rolls a game for you by cheating out your biggest threat. As a card to put into your deck, it just creates meme decks that fail at even being meme decks. Bone Drake will rotate into the Classic set to replace it as Dragons are a theme of our year and will improve the Dragon synergy of the sets. Speaking of Dragons though...
Nozdormu is the final card to rotate to the Hall of Fame. It's another weak card, but it makes for some interesting moments when summoned by a random effect. Unfortunately, it's existence also produces a number of bugs that force players to skip their turns and catches unattentive players off-guard. Not to worry though, because Murozond will be making an appearance in the Caverns of Time set. Nozdormu will be replaced by The Lich King, because, let's be honest, it's the god damn Lich King.
Of course, a friendly reminder that cards aren't only rotated out because of power-level reasons, look at Ice Lance or Coldlight Oracle for instance. Similarly, Master of Disguise was nerfed even though it wasn't playable anywhere, but the nerf was necessary to open up design space. Fun fact: Animated Armor was intended to be a Neutral card, but was moved to Mage (literally the worst possible class for the card) because of pre-nerf Master of Disguise.
Our choices might surprise you, but we have our reasons.
Mindgames is a very high-rolly, very weak card that all in all just poorly designed, limit the effect of spell generation in Priest and has no business being in the Classic set. Lightbomb will rotate back into Standard to replace it, with the bonus is that the card removes the need for Priest to have an AoE printed in every set and made the Wild format impossible to play around.
Alarm-o-Bot is pretty much the same exact deal. Very weak and high-rolly, and creates an awkward minion to pull from a random effect. Either it ends up being completely useless and you could've gotten anything else instead, or it high-rolls a game for you by cheating out your biggest threat. As a card to put into your deck, it just creates meme decks that fail at even being meme decks. Bone Drake will rotate into the Classic set to replace it as Dragons are a theme of our year and will improve the Dragon synergy of the sets. Speaking of Dragons though...
Nozdormu is the final card to rotate to the Hall of Fame. It's another weak card, but it makes for some interesting moments when summoned by a random effect. Unfortunately, it's existence also produces a number of bugs that force players to skip their turns and catches unattentive players off-guard. Not to worry though, because Murozond will be making an appearance in the Caverns of Time set. Nozdormu will be replaced by The Lich King, because, let's be honest, it's the god damn Lich King.
Of course, a friendly reminder that cards aren't only rotated out because of power-level reasons, look at Ice Lance or Coldlight Oracle for instance. Similarly, Master of Disguise was nerfed even though it wasn't playable anywhere, but the nerf was necessary to open up design space. Fun fact: Animated Armor was intended to be a Neutral card, but was moved to Mage (literally the worst possible class for the card) because of pre-nerf Master of Disguise.
I can't see how Mindgames has limited design space. Priest has probably the most powerful spell tutoring card in the game, Shadow Visions, and Mindgames still sees zero play. On the other hand rotating in Lightbomb goes exactly against the goal of the Hall of Fame, pretty much all control Priest decks until the end of time would play double Lightbomb.
Alarm-o-Bot I could maybe buy, though it's existence hasn't prevented Blizzard from printing powerful minions thus far. You might have some 0-Attack synergies planned in your future submissions, that break this card, but it doesn't seem like this card has been a design restraint for Blizzard, and "high-rolly" isn't a metric Blizzard has use for Hall of Fame inductees thus far.
Nozdormu I think is a candidate for just an outright adjustment to mechanics, a card like it should not be playable in constructed imo, but moving it to Wild is also fix, but again doesn't really match the spirit of the Hall of Fame. Once again you move in a card which goes against the goal of the Hall of the Fame.
The Lich King is heavily played in both control and mid-range decks and even shows up as a finisher in certain types of aggro decks. His high immediate value in the form of taunt and strength at the eight mana cost made the decision during deck-building, “Is this eight mana minion better than The Lich King?” rather than, “Is this eight mana minion the best choice for my deck type?” Dozens of cards in the seven to nine mana range never saw play because The Lich King was always the easy choice in that range, and some decks only want to run one high cost card.
Does the above sound familar? It's Blizzard's reason for rotating Ragnaros 2 year ago.
I think you're really missing the mark on the goals of the Hall of Fame.
Our choices might surprise you, but we have our reasons.
Mindgames is a very high-rolly, very weak card that all in all just poorly designed, limit the effect of spell generation in Priest and has no business being in the Classic set. Lightbomb will rotate back into Standard to replace it, with the bonus is that the card removes the need for Priest to have an AoE printed in every set and made the Wild format impossible to play around.
Alarm-o-Bot is pretty much the same exact deal. Very weak and high-rolly, and creates an awkward minion to pull from a random effect. Either it ends up being completely useless and you could've gotten anything else instead, or it high-rolls a game for you by cheating out your biggest threat. As a card to put into your deck, it just creates meme decks that fail at even being meme decks. Bone Drake will rotate into the Classic set to replace it as Dragons are a theme of our year and will improve the Dragon synergy of the sets. Speaking of Dragons though...
Nozdormu is the final card to rotate to the Hall of Fame. It's another weak card, but it makes for some interesting moments when summoned by a random effect. Unfortunately, it's existence also produces a number of bugs that force players to skip their turns and catches unattentive players off-guard. Not to worry though, because Murozond will be making an appearance in the Caverns of Time set. Nozdormu will be replaced by The Lich King, because, let's be honest, it's the god damn Lich King.
Of course, a friendly reminder that cards aren't only rotated out because of power-level reasons, look at Ice Lance or Coldlight Oracle for instance. Similarly, Master of Disguise was nerfed even though it wasn't playable anywhere, but the nerf was necessary to open up design space. Fun fact: Animated Armor was intended to be a Neutral card, but was moved to Mage (literally the worst possible class for the card) because of pre-nerf Master of Disguise.
I can't see how Mindgames has limited design space. Priest has probably the most powerful spell tutoring card in the game, Shadow Visions, and Mindgames still sees zero play. On the other hand rotating in Lightbomb goes exactly against the goal of the Hall of Fame, pretty much all control Priest decks until the end of time would play double Lightbomb.
Alarm-o-Bot I could maybe buy, though it's existence hasn't prevented Blizzard from printing powerful minions thus far. You might have some 0-Attack synergies planned in your future submissions, that break this card, but it doesn't seem like this card has been a design restraint for Blizzard, and "high-rolly" isn't a metric Blizzard has use for Hall of Fame inductees thus far.
Nozdormu I think is a candidate for just an outright adjustment to mechanics, a card like it should not be playable in constructed imo, but moving it to Wild is also fix, but again doesn't really match the spirit of the Hall of Fame. Once again you move in a card which goes against the goal of the Hall of the Fame.
The Lich King is heavily played in both control and mid-range decks and even shows up as a finisher in certain types of aggro decks. His high immediate value in the form of taunt and strength at the eight mana cost made the decision during deck-building, “Is this eight mana minion better than The Lich King?” rather than, “Is this eight mana minion the best choice for my deck type?” Dozens of cards in the seven to nine mana range never saw play because The Lich King was always the easy choice in that range, and some decks only want to run one high cost card.
Does the above sound familar? It's Blizzard's reason for rotating Ragnaros 2 year ago.
I think you're really missing the mark on the goals of the Hall of Fame.
All of those cards have issues, imo. Brann Bronzebeard/N'Zoth, the Corruptor/Spiritsinger Umbra all have very specific effects which must always be considered when designing cards, which isn't necessarily awful but does feel restrictive if they're permanent cards. I'd say of the three, maybe Brann is the least of a problem? N'Zoth should never rotate back.
Medivh, the Guardian is the one with the least issue, overall, I think. It does have to make you somewhat consider what spells you print, especially in Druid where Mana Ramp could break him, but overall not a huge worry. I'd have definitely picked him out of that list.
The Lich King has already been explained, it has too powerful effect and rotating it in is basically contradicting why they rotated Ragnaros the Firelord out.
I have... a few ideas floating around for what I might do for this comp. Nothing concrete though, and since I'll be away for 2/3rds of Phase II, I might not end up bothering. Naming ideas thus far are Year of the Hydra or Leviathan, depending on how heavily I lean into my ideas for monsters or the ocean respectively.
What I do have (mostly) figured out are my Hall of Fame picks.
Force of Nature - Rotated, changed to 'Summon three 2/2 Treants with Rush'. This is to return some of the old use of the card, while not allowing some unforeseen combo to dominate Standard. I admit, this is mostly a way for me to cover my bases, since my removals involve preventing future disasters. No replacement ideas yet.
Blade Flurry - Rotated, mana cost changed from 4 to 2. Again, another card fix that should not be broken in Wild but may be an issue in Standard. Opens up more space for Rogues to get interesting Weapon buffs and interaction without worrying about a broken combo. No replacement ideas yet.
Illidan Stormrage - Now, this one I understand makes basically negative sense, but I have good reasoning! One of the current ideas floating around my head for Warlock involves Demon Summoning synergy. Flame of Azzinoth are Demons, and while seeing Illidan actually be good for once would be cool, I don't want to deal with that clash. I'm already having a hard enough time imagining trying to balance Wild at least a little with stuff like Imp Gang Boss without worrying about Illidan in Standard too. This one will change if I end up not going in the direction, of course.
Our choices might surprise you, but we have our reasons.
Mindgames is a very high-rolly, very weak card that all in all just poorly designed, limit the effect of spell generation in Priest and has no business being in the Classic set. Lightbomb will rotate back into Standard to replace it, with the bonus is that the card removes the need for Priest to have an AoE printed in every set and made the Wild format impossible to play around.
Alarm-o-Bot is pretty much the same exact deal. Very weak and high-rolly, and creates an awkward minion to pull from a random effect. Either it ends up being completely useless and you could've gotten anything else instead, or it high-rolls a game for you by cheating out your biggest threat. As a card to put into your deck, it just creates meme decks that fail at even being meme decks. Bone Drake will rotate into the Classic set to replace it as Dragons are a theme of our year and will improve the Dragon synergy of the sets. Speaking of Dragons though...
Nozdormu is the final card to rotate to the Hall of Fame. It's another weak card, but it makes for some interesting moments when summoned by a random effect. Unfortunately, it's existence also produces a number of bugs that force players to skip their turns and catches unattentive players off-guard. Not to worry though, because Murozond will be making an appearance in the Caverns of Time set. Nozdormu will be replaced by The Lich King, because, let's be honest, it's the god damn Lich King.
Of course, a friendly reminder that cards aren't only rotated out because of power-level reasons, look at Ice Lance or Coldlight Oracle for instance. Similarly, Master of Disguise was nerfed even though it wasn't playable anywhere, but the nerf was necessary to open up design space. Fun fact: Animated Armor was intended to be a Neutral card, but was moved to Mage (literally the worst possible class for the card) because of pre-nerf Master of Disguise.
I can't see how Mindgames has limited design space. Priest has probably the most powerful spell tutoring card in the game, Shadow Visions, and Mindgames still sees zero play. On the other hand rotating in Lightbomb goes exactly against the goal of the Hall of Fame, pretty much all control Priest decks until the end of time would play double Lightbomb.
Alarm-o-Bot I could maybe buy, though it's existence hasn't prevented Blizzard from printing powerful minions thus far. You might have some 0-Attack synergies planned in your future submissions, that break this card, but it doesn't seem like this card has been a design restraint for Blizzard, and "high-rolly" isn't a metric Blizzard has use for Hall of Fame inductees thus far.
Nozdormu I think is a candidate for just an outright adjustment to mechanics, a card like it should not be playable in constructed imo, but moving it to Wild is also fix, but again doesn't really match the spirit of the Hall of Fame. Once again you move in a card which goes against the goal of the Hall of the Fame.
The Lich King is heavily played in both control and mid-range decks and even shows up as a finisher in certain types of aggro decks. His high immediate value in the form of taunt and strength at the eight mana cost made the decision during deck-building, “Is this eight mana minion better than The Lich King?” rather than, “Is this eight mana minion the best choice for my deck type?” Dozens of cards in the seven to nine mana range never saw play because The Lich King was always the easy choice in that range, and some decks only want to run one high cost card.
Does the above sound familar? It's Blizzard's reason for rotating Ragnaros 2 year ago.
I think you're really missing the mark on the goals of the Hall of Fame.
Yeah I mean, Blizzard has never actually rotated anything back in, but the cards they've suggested have always been fairly low impact like Shatter and Gang Up, most of the listed cards saw a good amount of play in their tenure.
The more I look to design cards for this competition the more it is bothering me about the ambiguity around when the year is set. If this was a real year it would not be treating un'goro, knights of the frozen throne and kobolds as standard because witchwood and the year of the raven exists but we don't have the full year of the raven to work with either.
personally I'm just going to be designing cards that work in synergy with all standard expansions unless mods confirm otherwise but it really is a niggle.
I think it's best to design the sets as if they were fairly far into the future with none of the current standard sets. And anyways I think it's best to design the sets of one year as existing together, without outside set influence, as it's a bit bad when half of the synergy cards of some theme rotate out, leaving the other half as useless.
Here's two keywords I'll use in sets in my year, which will be Year of the Mech. Here's the list of Mechs that Assemble can summon. It works like Adapt, you get three choices and get to summon one of them. The X in Celebrate can be a lot of things. For example, it could be Celebrate (A Spell), Celebrate (A 1-cost minion), Celebrate (A Mech) and so on.
Assemble is a really cool idea, also kudos for not being scared to re-design Discover. Celebrate seems like a weird choice for the word, though it depends on the theme of your set.
1. Divine Favor - While most slower Paladin decks can't use this, I feel that its too easy for aggro decks to take advantage of the insane potential this card has against control. Paladin will get new draw in my second expansion that is based on your board instead of your opponent's hand.
2. Mana Wyrm - Everything a 1 drop shouldn't be. If you don't draw early removal (which some classes don't even have), you're probably going to lose. Instead, I want to take tempo mage in a more elemental style of play.
3. Gadgetzan Auctioneer - Rogue has always been forced into Miracle because of this card. I want to create some new archetypes for Rogue that don't wholly rely on drawing cards. Also, there are some low cost spells I have in the works that I worry would make this too OP anyway.
Expansion #1: Festival of the Loa
The trolls are holding a party in honor of their Loa, and you're invited! Try out the first spells that are also in tribes, the Vodoo spells! Each class has at least two, and they all push the classes in different directions and have synergy with each other! The classes will also each recieve their own Legendary Loa, minions with very powerful abilities!
I get that you only have 2 cards if you want to split them between sets, to show off, but showing a Voodoo synergy card with a Voodoo card makes it hard to evaluate. Even if it's just in the blurb, what makes Voodoo spells different.
Expansion #2: Highlander Trek
Explore the Highlands that the Tauren call home. This expansion introduces a new keyword, Resilience. After a minion has survived a certain amount of turns, it will perform a one-time, powerful effect. This is a way to introduce lower-cost minions with cool effects without making them overpowered for their cost.
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I think Resillience cards would run into the same problem we had with Inspire, your examples at least seem to be french vanilla when they don't trigger though.
Expansion #3: Attack on Argus
The final battle against the Burning Legion is at hand. Sargeras's army of demons will invade Azeroth at any moment. The only way to beat them is to become them. A new keyword, Infuse, gives your minions raw fel power in exchange for taking two damage at the start of each of your turns. Another core part of this expansion is upgrading the Discard effect. In addition to Warlock getting some upgrades, there will also be some Neutral minions given this mechanic so everyone can revel in its OPness!
Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
An upkeep cost is interesting. Though I think you should put it outside the Battlecry, because it will let you reference Infuse minions, and you'd be able to use it create French Vanilla cards like a 5 mana Boulderfist Ogre for example that just had the text Infuse. Though you'd probably have to change the keyword.
All of those cards have issues, imo. Brann Bronzebeard/N'Zoth, the Corruptor/Spiritsinger Umbra all have very specific effects which must always be considered when designing cards, which isn't necessarily awful but does feel restrictive if they're permanent cards. I'd say of the three, maybe Brann is the least of a problem? N'Zoth should never rotate back.
Medivh, the Guardian is the one with the least issue, overall, I think. It does have to make you somewhat consider what spells you print, especially in Druid where Mana Ramp could break him, but overall not a huge worry. I'd have definitely picked him out of that list.
The Lich King has already been explained, it has too powerful effect and rotating it in is basically contradicting why they rotated Ragnaros the Firelord out.
I have... a few ideas floating around for what I might do for this comp. Nothing concrete though, and since I'll be away for 2/3rds of Phase II, I might not end up bothering. Naming ideas thus far are Year of the Hydra or Leviathan, depending on how heavily I lean into my ideas for monsters or the ocean respectively.
What I do have (mostly) figured out are my Hall of Fame picks.
Force of Nature - Rotated, changed to 'Summon three 2/2 Treants with Rush'. This is to return some of the old use of the card, while not allowing some unforeseen combo to dominate Standard. I admit, this is mostly a way for me to cover my bases, since my removals involve preventing future disasters. No replacement ideas yet.
Blade Flurry - Rotated, mana cost changed from 4 to 2. Again, another card fix that should not be broken in Wild but may be an issue in Standard. Opens up more space for Rogues to get interesting Weapon buffs and interaction without worrying about a broken combo. No replacement ideas yet.
Illidan Stormrage - Now, this one I understand makes basically negative sense, but I have good reasoning! One of the current ideas floating around my head for Warlock involves Demon Summoning synergy. Flame of Azzinoth are Demons, and while seeing Illidan actually be good for once would be cool, I don't want to deal with that clash. I'm already having a hard enough time imagining trying to balance Wild at least a little with stuff like Imp Gang Boss without worrying about Illidan in Standard too. This one will change if I end up not going in the direction, of course.
Admittedly, this is a tough block for Shatter and I. A problem I had with picking Brann or Medivh is that it would leave a very weird gap in their respective adventure rewards where one of the wings would randomly not have a Wing Reward. I did also have the same thoughts Umbra, N'Zoth as you did about design space. This leaves The Lich King which I didn't think would've caused any problems like that at the time, and out of all of those cards, The Lich King felt like it made the most sense as a Classic card.
I actually never thought about un-nerfing cards and rotating them like Molten Giant. Blade Flurry seems like a good choice, although I feel like if it were unnerfed, it would be broken with Kingsbane.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click the image to go to my custom Time Traveler class.
It's home of Skumblade Tribe, one of Saurok tribes. Saurok are lizard-men race. Most says, that Saurok were created by mogu, but Skumblade Tribe don't believe them. They believe that they were made by invisible devilsaur in the air, Kros.(there aren't too many artworks on internet for this set, so don't be angry for Saurok that aren't realy looks like Saurok)
This set also provides new mechanic called Prophecy:
Here is example of card using it:
Here are two other cards from this set:
I've seen this same idea posted multiple times in this thread, no comment on whether it's an interesting idea or not, but it's not novel and you want to stand out presumably. As for your sample cards, they don't really tell me what the set is about, and feel like cards that could be in any set. Silver Construct's wording needs to be cleared up, presumably it's destroy 1 of your opponent's Mana Crystals.
Now, the second expansion:
Pirates vs Ninjas:
It's fully fan-made expansion, so you won't see too many lore legendaries. The main theme of this set are Ninjas, Pirates and new card type: Locations, and new tribe: Ninja.
Here are two example cards:
Each class gains its own Location. Ogre Ninja also will gain Ninja tribe.
You should check out Blizzard's reasoning for not making quests cost 0 and for not making quests cast themselves automatically. The Location card you chose to show off isn't interesting at all, all Shaman decks will be 29 cards for the entire time this card is in rotation. Pirates are a known quantity so showing off a ninja card is a good choice, but this card could easily be a Pirate, which is probably why Blizzard has avoided Ninjas as they overlap a lot in design space with Pirates, I would show a card that really shows off what it means to be a ninja, and why they're different from Pirates other than art.
And the last expansion:
The Black Temple:
The Black Temple is cytadel of Illidan. I was waiting for this expansion for so long, and now I have opportunity to made it myself. This would be full of Nagas, Elves, Demons, Undead, and many others. And this expansion also have it's own keyword, which introduce one of Sea Witches ability: Manashield.
I can't show you Illidan himself because he has tokens, but i can give you an example of minion using Manashield:
This would be the last expansion of this year, because I wanna keep the best theme to the final end.
Please, give some feedback!!!
This is probably your best teaser, and the mechanic is interesting, though your tooltip is way too wordy.
Nightmare on the Nether takes us to the Emerald Nightmare and the Twisting Nether - an ethereal dimension of chaotic magics that connects the myriad worlds of the universe, where corruption overcomes the best of everyone and darkness lurks around every corner. No one is truly safe, even the dragonflights. Dangerous creatures like Demons, Ethereals, Voidwalkers and Nether Dragons await.
As one can see from Feldrake, we have a new keyword, Elusive:
Elusive is the unofficial, but widespread fan term to refer to the effect "can't be targeted by spells or Hero Powers", found on cards like Faerie Dragon. As of the start of this year, it will finally become a full-fledged keyword. Elusive isn't like Inspire or Discover, which played main roles in their respective introductory sets. Instead, it's more like Lifesteal or Rush, where it plays a supporting role rather than a main one.
Elusive! No need for the extra blurb in the tooltip. Just from a UI perspective Trader doesn't really seem like something that works with how Hearthstone is played, and how Team 5 likes to design cards and do player interaction. Feldrake is cool, though I'd rather see an Elusive synergy card.
Once Upon a Time in Azeroth
Harkening back to the days of fairy-tales and legends, Once Upon a Time in Azeroth brings these stories to life in the world of Hearthstone. Dragons, fair and mighty princesses, ancient powerful deities and taking animals await.
Arthur, Wise King also demonstrates the new Legacy keyword:
Legacy cards have an effect where they activate when you play a certain amount of cards in a turn. Think Sherazin, Corpse Flower or Dragon Soul. There are all different types of Legacies to fulfill too, regular Legacy as demonstrated as Arthur, but also Spell Legacy (whenever you cast X amount of spells this turn) is another example. These effects can also happen multiple times per turn, so don't be afraid to go a little overboard.
I don't like the Druid card just cause it's not clear how it works at all, do I take 10 damage, do you take damage, who draws the cards. Legacy is interesting, though you should work on putting a HS twist to an existing IP, the way Kobolds did for DnD.
Caverns of Time
The Caverns of Time are a zone where time magic is most prominent, where the Bronze Dragonflight and other time wielders are located. It's this set where all 9 classes get cards to harness the power of time and cards with new, interesting mechanics.
This expansion also introduces a brand new type of card:
Enchanted Forest Shrine presents a new idea, collectible dormant cards that you actually put into your deck that you play onto the battlefield and last for a certain amount of turns. In this case, Enchanted Forest Shrine combines the effects of your Choose One cards into one card for 3 turns. With Fandral Staghelm now out of Standard, we need another card with this effect. After 3 turns (yours, and your opponents, counting the turn you play it as the first turn), it removes itself. These retain the behavior of other dormant cards like The Darkness or Nether Portal, where they aren't considered minions and cannot be destroyed. They also cannot be generated by cards like Unstable Portal or Evolve because they are not minions.
Future Strike is dumb and would never be printed, it's just asking to be turned into degenerate combo deck. I like dormant time restricted enchantments better than the permanent/uninteractable kinds I've seen proposed a lot so far. Fandral is my favorite card, I'd be glad to see the effect back in standard.
So I've done it everyone. I just went and submitted as I can only do this on my phone and it is pretty time consuming to do it in the discussion first. I'd appreciate anyone who's willing to click my signature and have a look to see if there are any glaring errors for me to edit.
Im ready to give any minor feedback on one or two cards/keywords if needed.
Never say never in Hearthstone. People always said no to removing cards from your opponent's deck, then came Gnomeferatu and Skulking Geist. People said no to un-nerfing cards, then came Molten Giant un-nerfed and put into the Hall of Fame. Several other cards along this line have also been printed: Time Warp, Uther of the Ebon Blade, all the Rogue Secrets, pretty much every tutor card ever made. My point is, Hearthstone evolves its card design as a game, this is just natural progression of that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click the image to go to my custom Time Traveler class.
Hemet the legendary hunter has fallen on hard times and has, therefore, decided to cash in on his prized beast collection by opening a petting zoo.
As a special event for the opening ceremony our heroes have been invited to bring their own pets along to join the fun.
Each hero will be bringing their beloved legendary pet to the zoo to meet the other critters. Their pets serve as powerful mascots that are willing to risk their lives to protect their owners.
This expansion will introduce the keyword Pet
which imbues the Pet cards with an inherent Bolf Ramshield effect which acts as them protecting their master. I am mindful that Bolf is considered quite weak due to being able to be killed by going face. For this reason the Pets will have their own additional powerful effects to compensate for this weakness. The two I have chosen to showcase demonstrate how this effect can be played with to ensure staying power also.
Whilst both the showcase cards I have chosen are Pets this will by no means be a one note expansion. The petting zoo will have much more to offer as its opening ceremony approaches.
Canis, Lightlicker
Uther's faithful pooch takes to the front lines with the Silver Hand and even acts as a medic to return its fallen comrades to your hand.
I have purposely costed it as 4 so it will not work for Odd Paladin. It will also have excellent synergy with Tactical Retreat that appears later in the year.
Al'ar
Another powerful phoenix joins the mage's ranks. This card would fit excellently in an elemental deck and playing it would activate its own Deathrattle if it gets killed in your opponent's following turn or your own. If you are able to continue to play elementals each turn Al'ar will be able to continually negate one instance of damage a turn which neatly symbolises the phoenix rising from the ashes to protect its master once more.
Yeah I mean it's Bolf + Card. Thematically doesn't really line up with how Pet Battles happened in warcraft, they were more like Pokemon battles than meat shields for their tamers.
Fractured Time
There is a land, once barren, where a lush, green forest grows and, from the forest, strange figures emerge.
Some claim to be fallen heroes, inexplicably, returned from the grave.
Others, dressed in unusual garb, wield technology that would bewilder even the finest gnomish tinker.
It would appear that someone or something is disturbing time's natural order.
This expansion introduces the keyword Fate
These serve as delayed effects which I have determined make them slightly less valuable than cards that produce an immediate effect meaning cards can be costed and statted more kindly. It also adds a new layer of strategy as you attempt to juggle he later effects and position the board in the correct way for that turn.
There would be changes to the UI to incorporate this mechanic. A small circular bubble will appear in the top right of the game which you can hold to view the upcoming fates.
Veteran Tracker
A neat card that demonstrates the Fate keyword and shows that it is capable of producing a more complex effect than something like Corrupt which is mechanically similar. It will immediately grant +1/+1 to a minion and, if it's a Beast, the Fate counter will start and a copy of the Beast will be added to your hand 2 turns later.
Tactical Retreat
This card will shuffle Silver Hand Recruits that you control as well as any in your hand into your deck.
I have chosen this card to demonstrate the synergy that crosses over between the expansions of the Year of the Butterfly.
I foresee it working quite well as a card draw on its own as sometimes the Silver Hand Recruits may not be as useful on the board. You also have cards like Drygulch Jailor and Canis, Lightlicker that can get them into your hand.
To top it off you have Prince Liam that could make great use of any Recruits in your deck and turn them into Legendaries.
Hey this mechanic again, it might be too late at this point, but so many people have used this exact same mechanic. Tactical Retreat is a cool card, though I'd just remove the Silver Hand requirement to it, it's a downside in most cases to shuffle your field into your deck, I don't think it needs to be restricted to Silver Hand Recruits. And you could also support Molten Giant Holy Wrath memes with that minor change.
The Great Sundering
Azeroth is a land forged by the elements and, for a time, a balance was seemingly struck, but there are those that would change that.
There are those that would shape this land to their own ends and when they are done its face will change forever.
For some time I have been toying with the idea of persistent effects. A game that I've enjoyed for many years is Pokémon and the introduction of Weather really changed the meta there.
Here I have chosen Terrain which will be seen on cards that change the environment.
When a Terrain is set its effect will continue at the end of every turn until you or your opponent play another Terrain card that changes it.
Stronghold
Every class will receive a common 1 cost Terrain spell with minor effects that synergise with their play style.
This one works well for Taunt Warrior or any kind of defensive archetype.
Eruption
There will be some cards that change the Terrain as a byproduct of what they do. Here the Shaman causes an eruption of lava that continues to damage at the end of the turn as all the minions will be standing on scorched earth.
I like this idea, it reminds me of field spells from yugioh, at least until they changed it to where both players could control a field spell.
Hall of fame
Counterspell
I am conscious that Terrain could potentially create a serious advantage if not handled well. I can't have the Mage counterspelling the answer to their Terrain.
Doomsayer
This one appears in a disproportionate amount of decks and is too powerful with Freeze .
Divine Favour
A lot of people have already mentioned the reasons behind this one and the need to have a more versatile card draw for Paladin.
Epilogue
Thanks for spending the time to read through the Year of the Butterfly. I am aware that a successful expansion requires more than just a keyword to be viable so I will be coming up with more ideas for each one should I progress.
Doomsayer and Divine Favor are good choices, Counterspell is odd, especially as you've included an inbuilt way to interact with your Terrain cards, I think adding some kind of minion terrain counter to your set would be good enough.
Never say never in Hearthstone. People always said no to removing cards from your opponent's deck, then came Gnomeferatu and Skulking Geist. People said no to un-nerfing cards, then came Molten Giant un-nerfed and put into the Hall of Fame. Several other cards along this line have also been printed: Time Warp, Uther of the Ebon Blade, all the Rogue Secrets, pretty much every tutor card ever made. My point is, Hearthstone evolves its card design as a game, this is just natural progression of that.
Alright correction, Future Strike is dumb, and should never printed. Blizzard has continuously nerfed and restricted how much they print Charge cards, and cards that interact beneficially with charge cards, even printing Rush in what is essentially a retcon of the mechanic.
After looking at the card again, I stand by original point, I don't think Blizzard would ever make this card, it's so clearly problematic.
Hemet the legendary hunter has fallen on hard times and has, therefore, decided to cash in on his prized beast collection by opening a petting zoo.
As a special event for the opening ceremony our heroes have been invited to bring their own pets along to join the fun.
Each hero will be bringing their beloved legendary pet to the zoo to meet the other critters. Their pets serve as powerful mascots that are willing to risk their lives to protect their owners.
This expansion will introduce the keyword Pet
which imbues the Pet cards with an inherent Bolf Ramshield effect which acts as them protecting their master. I am mindful that Bolf is considered quite weak due to being able to be killed by going face. For this reason the Pets will have their own additional powerful effects to compensate for this weakness. The two I have chosen to showcase demonstrate how this effect can be played with to ensure staying power also.
Whilst both the showcase cards I have chosen are Pets this will by no means be a one note expansion. The petting zoo will have much more to offer as its opening ceremony approaches.
Canis, Lightlicker
Uther's faithful pooch takes to the front lines with the Silver Hand and even acts as a medic to return its fallen comrades to your hand.
I have purposely costed it as 4 so it will not work for Odd Paladin. It will also have excellent synergy with Tactical Retreat that appears later in the year.
Al'ar
Another powerful phoenix joins the mage's ranks. This card would fit excellently in an elemental deck and playing it would activate its own Deathrattle if it gets killed in your opponent's following turn or your own. If you are able to continue to play elementals each turn Al'ar will be able to continually negate one instance of damage a turn which neatly symbolises the phoenix rising from the ashes to protect its master once more.
Yeah I mean it's Bolf + Card. Thematically doesn't really line up with how Pet Battles happened in warcraft, they were more like Pokemon battles than meat shields for their tamers.
Fractured Time
There is a land, once barren, where a lush, green forest grows and, from the forest, strange figures emerge.
Some claim to be fallen heroes, inexplicably, returned from the grave.
Others, dressed in unusual garb, wield technology that would bewilder even the finest gnomish tinker.
It would appear that someone or something is disturbing time's natural order.
This expansion introduces the keyword Fate
These serve as delayed effects which I have determined make them slightly less valuable than cards that produce an immediate effect meaning cards can be costed and statted more kindly. It also adds a new layer of strategy as you attempt to juggle he later effects and position the board in the correct way for that turn.
There would be changes to the UI to incorporate this mechanic. A small circular bubble will appear in the top right of the game which you can hold to view the upcoming fates.
Veteran Tracker
A neat card that demonstrates the Fate keyword and shows that it is capable of producing a more complex effect than something like Corrupt which is mechanically similar. It will immediately grant +1/+1 to a minion and, if it's a Beast, the Fate counter will start and a copy of the Beast will be added to your hand 2 turns later.
Tactical Retreat
This card will shuffle Silver Hand Recruits that you control as well as any in your hand into your deck.
I have chosen this card to demonstrate the synergy that crosses over between the expansions of the Year of the Butterfly.
I foresee it working quite well as a card draw on its own as sometimes the Silver Hand Recruits may not be as useful on the board. You also have cards like Drygulch Jailor and Canis, Lightlicker that can get them into your hand.
To top it off you have Prince Liam that could make great use of any Recruits in your deck and turn them into Legendaries.
Hey this mechanic again, it might be too late at this point, but so many people have used this exact same mechanic. Tactical Retreat is a cool card, though I'd just remove the Silver Hand requirement to it, it's a downside in most cases to shuffle your field into your deck, I don't think it needs to be restricted to Silver Hand Recruits. And you could also support Molten Giant Holy Wrath memes with that minor change.
The Great Sundering
Azeroth is a land forged by the elements and, for a time, a balance was seemingly struck, but there are those that would change that.
There are those that would shape this land to their own ends and when they are done its face will change forever.
For some time I have been toying with the idea of persistent effects. A game that I've enjoyed for many years is Pokémon and the introduction of Weather really changed the meta there.
Here I have chosen Terrain which will be seen on cards that change the environment.
When a Terrain is set its effect will continue at the end of every turn until you or your opponent play another Terrain card that changes it.
Stronghold
Every class will receive a common 1 cost Terrain spell with minor effects that synergise with their play style.
This one works well for Taunt Warrior or any kind of defensive archetype.
Eruption
There will be some cards that change the Terrain as a byproduct of what they do. Here the Shaman causes an eruption of lava that continues to damage at the end of the turn as all the minions will be standing on scorched earth.
I like this idea, it reminds me of field spells from yugioh, at least until they changed it to where both players could control a field spell.
Hall of fame
Counterspell
I am conscious that Terrain could potentially create a serious advantage if not handled well. I can't have the Mage counterspelling the answer to their Terrain.
Doomsayer
This one appears in a disproportionate amount of decks and is too powerful with Freeze .
Divine Favour
A lot of people have already mentioned the reasons behind this one and the need to have a more versatile card draw for Paladin.
Epilogue
Thanks for spending the time to read through the Year of the Butterfly. I am aware that a successful expansion requires more than just a keyword to be viable so I will be coming up with more ideas for each one should I progress.
Doomsayer and Divine Favor are good choices, Counterspell is odd, especially as you've included an inbuilt way to interact with your Terrain cards, I think adding some kind of minion terrain counter to your set would be good enough.
Never say never in Hearthstone. People always said no to removing cards from your opponent's deck, then came Gnomeferatu and Skulking Geist. People said no to un-nerfing cards, then came Molten Giant un-nerfed and put into the Hall of Fame. Several other cards along this line have also been printed: Time Warp, Uther of the Ebon Blade, all the Rogue Secrets, pretty much every tutor card ever made. My point is, Hearthstone evolves its card design as a game, this is just natural progression of that.
Alright correction, Future Strike is dumb, and should never printed. Blizzard has continuously nerfed and restricted how much they print Charge cards, and cards that interact beneficially with charge cards, even printing Rush in what is essentially a retcon of the mechanic.
After looking at the card again, I stand by original point, I don't think Blizzard would ever make this card, it's so clearly problematic.
Thanks for the feedback there. I'm not too hot on the WoW lore as I've never played it. Just looking to create my own scenarios that are loosely based on it. I knew Pets existed in the game but didn't actually know you could battle them!
With Fate I honestly don't remember seeing this effect before but it's simple enough for that to have happened sure. Hopefully the other things going on in that expansion will be enough as the Butterfly/Fate thing is quite important to the whole concept.
With Terrain yes I've been finding that this keyword gives me the most things to play with.
After looking at the card again, I stand by original point, I don't think Blizzard would ever make this card, it's so clearly problematic.
What makes it "so clearly" problematic? The Charge? The stats? What is it, because it's really not as clear as you think it is.
All of it, the ability to bank 3 mana into a combo card the turn before, essentially giving you 0 mana 3/2 to combo with is far too powerful. Even in aggressive decks this is strong, as it lets you further commit while avoiding aoe.
Ethereal Trader is sooo unrealistic when it comes to Hearthstone. I get the idea, it is cool but I can't image blizzard ever doing something like that. Same goes for Persepholes who is completely busted by the way. Future Strike is really dangerous, I don't think they'll ever use Charge keyword again by the way. I like the thematics you both are going for though, and the location cards with Turns Active ability looks like an interesting spin on the idea.
What do you think about my submission? It is already posted so obviously I can't change anything of significance but I'm still curious what is your opinion :)
I honestly don't think Ethereal Trader is as unrealistic as everyone is saying it is. It's basically a Discover effect, then your opponent gets a Choose One effect afterwards. In fact, I think it's actually more realistic in interactivity than Kazakus, a card that already exists in the game. Evolution in game mechanics and pushing the limits of Hearthstone is a good thing. Admittedly, trying to word Persephole's effect to accurately measure everything has been a bit of a challenge, and we will most likely choose a different card to showcase. I may talk to Shatter about changing the Wolf from Future Strike to have Rush instead of Charge. Thank you for your feedback though.
As for your set, Banish instantly makes me think of Yu-Gi-Oh, which I imagine is what you were going for. Unfortunately, I don't feel like it has very much design space, and I find the idea of a keyword with another keyword in its description to be a bit strange. I like the Cleave effect, although I don't feel like it has enough design space to justify making it a keyword. How does The Swamping Pillar work? Is it permanent? How would players be able to know that a location is currently active? Totemic Slam is cool, although a Hero Power called Totemic Slam already exists, so you may need to change the name. That and I don't like the idea of rotating Mana Wyrm because Mage has already had enough rotations as is, they already have the least amount of Classic cards because they've had 2 cards rotate to the Hall of Fame where every other class has had only 1 or 0.
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I know I sound like a dick but can people use spoilers please? You don't have to show someone's entire post just to reply on one thing.
@ShatterStar1998 I agree with Shadows, you should probably rotate Medivh back in instead of Lich King. Hes a little too OP to be in the classic set. Your other HOF choices are pretty interesting too, well done with those. I think applying the keyword Legacy to old cards is bad idea, especially considering it hasn't been done when other keywords were introduced. It will just confuse people. The expansions themselves are interesting, I'd stick with those themes.
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Unpopular opinion: Rogue is OP
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The more I look to design cards for this competition the more it is bothering me about the ambiguity around when the year is set. If this was a real year it would not be treating un'goro, knights of the frozen throne and kobolds as standard because witchwood and the year of the raven exists but we don't have the full year of the raven to work with either.
personally I'm just going to be designing cards that work in synergy with all standard expansions unless mods confirm otherwise but it really is a niggle.
I think it's best to design the sets as if they were fairly far into the future with none of the current standard sets. And anyways I think it's best to design the sets of one year as existing together, without outside set influence, as it's a bit bad when half of the synergy cards of some theme rotate out, leaving the other half as useless.
Here's two keywords I'll use in sets in my year, which will be Year of the Mech. Here's the list of Mechs that Assemble can summon. It works like Adapt, you get three choices and get to summon one of them. The X in Celebrate can be a lot of things. For example, it could be Celebrate (A Spell), Celebrate (A 1-cost minion), Celebrate (A Mech) and so on.
Ok, so here are my idea of year. Maybe I,m too toxic but this gonna be...
For the first, some cards gone too wild, so let's move them to the Wild...
Hall of Fame:
Nr. 1: Mana Wyrm: If played on turn 1, with The Coin if you're the second player, this little thing can win games. That's not we should expect from 1-mana common drop. Replacement: Arcane Artificer: It's also very good card, and also is spell oriented card. Still it's not OP as Mana Wyrm.
Nr. 2: Divine Favor: This card is just horrible annoying. Mostly you won't empty your hand, because you'll have no answer for ongoing opponent's turn, but with this card this don't matter, because for each card used, you'll get another card in replacement. Replacement: Unidentified Maul: This card has mostly usable effect, and you won't loose tempo with it. Also it can be used in Odd Paladin, just like Divine Favor.
Nr. 3: Doomguard: He's actually one of the strongest classic charge minions. Now they adding more balanced rush minions, but with cards like this Standard will never be realy balanced. Replacement: Hooked Reaver: Also a big demon with, but probably weaker than Doomguard.
Now, time for cards:
The first expansion-
Ihgaluk Crag:
It's home of Skumblade Tribe, one of Saurok tribes. Saurok are lizard-men race. Most says, that Saurok were created by mogu, but Skumblade Tribe don't believe them. They believe that they were made by invisible devilsaur in the air, Kros.(there aren't too many artworks on internet for this set, so don't be angry for Saurok that aren't realy looks like Saurok)
This set also provides new mechanic called Prophecy:
Here is example of card using it:
Here are two other cards from this set:
Now, the second expansion:
Pirates vs Ninjas:
It's fully fan-made expansion, so you won't see too many lore legendaries. The main theme of this set are Ninjas, Pirates and new card type: Locations, and new tribe: Ninja.
Here are two example cards:
Each class gains its own Location. Ogre Ninja also will gain Ninja tribe.
And the last expansion:
The Black Temple:
The Black Temple is cytadel of Illidan. I was waiting for this expansion for so long, and now I have opportunity to made it myself. This would be full of Nagas, Elves, Demons, Undead, and many others. And this expansion also have it's own keyword, which introduce one of Sea Witches ability: Manashield.
I can't show you Illidan himself because he has tokens, but i can give you an example of minion using Manashield:
This would be the last expansion of this year, because I wanna keep the best theme to the final end.
Please, give some feedback!!!
I feel like the community has a distaste for the "Random attack" in general since how frustrate it is to lost control of your own minions, so I don't think it is a good idea to expand upon. It also make the game literally come down to a coin flip since the Hero will always exist and interact with the effect.
As someone has said, Infuse is too simple to become a keyword. There is some major typo (Voodoo and Discard) on your showcase cards, as well as the fact that you made Loa a tribe without showing any Loa tribe synergy.
I don't even know why you name the Equipment as a special card type since it behave exactly like weapons. Just said that each class will have a special weapon that lose Durability this expansion (even though I'm against the idea since it dilutes class identity).
Your HoF cards seem to just asking for negative reception. Innvervate is a Basic card. Doomsayer is a well-liked, widely used and high skill early game minion for control decks, I'll give you that Gadgetzan Auctioneer is divisive, but given that you don't have any old cards to rotate, oh boy.
I'm confused about the Restrain keyword: Do the effect activate multiple time? Or is it a one-time deal.
I don't think Hero cards are allowed given that you have to create the Token for Hero Power. Also, you didn't give a rough outline for your third expansion as well as showcasing too much of the the other two.
Click here to visit my Timestream Tracking Finalist Year of the Dragon in collaboration with Demonxz95
Class Creation Finalist: The Astromancer
Best cards vote by community:
So, I decided to do a repost for our entry with some modification because it didn't get any respond last time:
AND NOW...
A collaboration between Shatterstar1998 and Demonxz95, we present to you...
Year of the Dragon
(insert Spyro reference here)
Nightmare on the Nether
Nightmare on the Nether takes us to the Emerald Nightmare and the Twisting Nether - an ethereal dimension of chaotic magics that connects the myriad worlds of the universe, where corruption overcomes the best of everyone and darkness lurks around every corner. No one is truly safe, even the dragonflights. Dangerous creatures like Demons, Ethereals, Voidwalkers and Nether Dragons await.
As one can see from Feldrake, we have a new keyword, Elusive:
Elusive is the unofficial, but widespread fan term to refer to the effect "can't be targeted by spells or Hero Powers", found on cards like Faerie Dragon. As of the start of this year, it will finally become a full-fledged keyword. Elusive isn't like Inspire or Discover, which played main roles in their respective introductory sets. Instead, it's more like Lifesteal or Rush, where it plays a supporting role rather than a main one.
Once Upon a Time in Azeroth
Harkening back to the days of fairy-tales and legends, Once Upon a Time in Azeroth brings these stories to life in the world of Hearthstone. Dragons, fair and mighty princesses, ancient powerful deities and taking animals await.
Arthur, Wise King also demonstrates the new Legacy keyword:
Legacy cards have an effect where they activate when you play a certain amount of cards in a turn. Think Sherazin, Corpse Flower or Dragon Soul. There are all different types of Legacies to fulfill too, regular Legacy as demonstrated as Arthur, but also Spell Legacy (whenever you cast X amount of spells this turn) is another example. These effects can also happen multiple times per turn, so don't be afraid to go a little overboard.
Caverns of Time
The Caverns of Time are a zone where time magic is most prominent, where the Bronze Dragonflight and other time wielders are located. It's this set where all 9 classes get cards to harness the power of time and cards with new, interesting mechanics.
This expansion also introduces a brand new type of card:
Enchanted Forest Shrine presents a new idea, collectible dormant cards that you actually put into your deck that you play onto the battlefield and last for a certain amount of turns. In this case, Enchanted Forest Shrine combines the effects of your Choose One cards into one card for 3 turns. With Fandral Staghelm now out of Standard, we need another card with this effect. After 3 turns (yours, and your opponents, counting the turn you play it as the first turn), it removes itself. These retain the behavior of other dormant cards like The Darkness or Nether Portal, where they aren't considered minions and cannot be destroyed. They also cannot be generated by cards like Unstable Portal or Evolve because they are not minions.
Hall of Fame
Our choices might surprise you, but we have our reasons.
Of course, a friendly reminder that cards aren't only rotated out because of power-level reasons, look at Ice Lance or Coldlight Oracle for instance. Similarly, Master of Disguise was nerfed even though it wasn't playable anywhere, but the nerf was necessary to open up design space. Fun fact: Animated Armor was intended to be a Neutral card, but was moved to Mage (literally the worst possible class for the card) because of pre-nerf Master of Disguise.
Token:
(Created by Ethereal Trader)
(Created by Persepholes) (Naturalize)
(Created by Future Strike)
A few other cards that we created as back ups:
Some clarification:
Click here to visit my Timestream Tracking Finalist Year of the Dragon in collaboration with Demonxz95
Class Creation Finalist: The Astromancer
Best cards vote by community:
I can't see how Mindgames has limited design space. Priest has probably the most powerful spell tutoring card in the game, Shadow Visions, and Mindgames still sees zero play. On the other hand rotating in Lightbomb goes exactly against the goal of the Hall of Fame, pretty much all control Priest decks until the end of time would play double Lightbomb.
Alarm-o-Bot I could maybe buy, though it's existence hasn't prevented Blizzard from printing powerful minions thus far. You might have some 0-Attack synergies planned in your future submissions, that break this card, but it doesn't seem like this card has been a design restraint for Blizzard, and "high-rolly" isn't a metric Blizzard has use for Hall of Fame inductees thus far.
Nozdormu I think is a candidate for just an outright adjustment to mechanics, a card like it should not be playable in constructed imo, but moving it to Wild is also fix, but again doesn't really match the spirit of the Hall of Fame. Once again you move in a card which goes against the goal of the Hall of the Fame.
Does the above sound familar? It's Blizzard's reason for rotating Ragnaros 2 year ago.
I think you're really missing the mark on the goals of the Hall of Fame.
Regarding to your point to the Lich King: It's a point of debate between Demon and me. I have a set of cards that is the replacement: Brann Bronzebeard, Medivh, the Guardian, N'Zoth, the Corruptor, The Lich King, Spiritsinger Umbra and he picked the Lich King.
Click here to visit my Timestream Tracking Finalist Year of the Dragon in collaboration with Demonxz95
Class Creation Finalist: The Astromancer
Best cards vote by community:
All of those cards have issues, imo. Brann Bronzebeard/N'Zoth, the Corruptor/Spiritsinger Umbra all have very specific effects which must always be considered when designing cards, which isn't necessarily awful but does feel restrictive if they're permanent cards. I'd say of the three, maybe Brann is the least of a problem? N'Zoth should never rotate back.
Medivh, the Guardian is the one with the least issue, overall, I think. It does have to make you somewhat consider what spells you print, especially in Druid where Mana Ramp could break him, but overall not a huge worry. I'd have definitely picked him out of that list.
The Lich King has already been explained, it has too powerful effect and rotating it in is basically contradicting why they rotated Ragnaros the Firelord out.
I have... a few ideas floating around for what I might do for this comp. Nothing concrete though, and since I'll be away for 2/3rds of Phase II, I might not end up bothering. Naming ideas thus far are Year of the Hydra or Leviathan, depending on how heavily I lean into my ideas for monsters or the ocean respectively.
What I do have (mostly) figured out are my Hall of Fame picks.
You can find me here! Good luck everyone!
Yeah I mean, Blizzard has never actually rotated anything back in, but the cards they've suggested have always been fairly low impact like Shatter and Gang Up, most of the listed cards saw a good amount of play in their tenure.
Assemble is a really cool idea, also kudos for not being scared to re-design Discover. Celebrate seems like a weird choice for the word, though it depends on the theme of your set.
I get that you only have 2 cards if you want to split them between sets, to show off, but showing a Voodoo synergy card with a Voodoo card makes it hard to evaluate. Even if it's just in the blurb, what makes Voodoo spells different.
I think Resillience cards would run into the same problem we had with Inspire, your examples at least seem to be french vanilla when they don't trigger though.
An upkeep cost is interesting. Though I think you should put it outside the Battlecry, because it will let you reference Infuse minions, and you'd be able to use it create French Vanilla cards like a 5 mana Boulderfist Ogre for example that just had the text Infuse. Though you'd probably have to change the keyword.
Admittedly, this is a tough block for Shatter and I. A problem I had with picking Brann or Medivh is that it would leave a very weird gap in their respective adventure rewards where one of the wings would randomly not have a Wing Reward. I did also have the same thoughts Umbra, N'Zoth as you did about design space. This leaves The Lich King which I didn't think would've caused any problems like that at the time, and out of all of those cards, The Lich King felt like it made the most sense as a Classic card.
I actually never thought about un-nerfing cards and rotating them like Molten Giant. Blade Flurry seems like a good choice, although I feel like if it were unnerfed, it would be broken with Kingsbane.
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I've seen this same idea posted multiple times in this thread, no comment on whether it's an interesting idea or not, but it's not novel and you want to stand out presumably. As for your sample cards, they don't really tell me what the set is about, and feel like cards that could be in any set. Silver Construct's wording needs to be cleared up, presumably it's destroy 1 of your opponent's Mana Crystals.
You should check out Blizzard's reasoning for not making quests cost 0 and for not making quests cast themselves automatically. The Location card you chose to show off isn't interesting at all, all Shaman decks will be 29 cards for the entire time this card is in rotation. Pirates are a known quantity so showing off a ninja card is a good choice, but this card could easily be a Pirate, which is probably why Blizzard has avoided Ninjas as they overlap a lot in design space with Pirates, I would show a card that really shows off what it means to be a ninja, and why they're different from Pirates other than art.
This is probably your best teaser, and the mechanic is interesting, though your tooltip is way too wordy.
I don't like the Druid card just cause it's not clear how it works at all, do I take 10 damage, do you take damage, who draws the cards. Legacy is interesting, though you should work on putting a HS twist to an existing IP, the way Kobolds did for DnD.
Future Strike is dumb and would never be printed, it's just asking to be turned into degenerate combo deck. I like dormant time restricted enchantments better than the permanent/uninteractable kinds I've seen proposed a lot so far. Fandral is my favorite card, I'd be glad to see the effect back in standard.
So I've done it everyone. I just went and submitted as I can only do this on my phone and it is pretty time consuming to do it in the discussion first. I'd appreciate anyone who's willing to click my signature and have a look to see if there are any glaring errors for me to edit.
Im ready to give any minor feedback on one or two cards/keywords if needed.
Never say never in Hearthstone. People always said no to removing cards from your opponent's deck, then came Gnomeferatu and Skulking Geist. People said no to un-nerfing cards, then came Molten Giant un-nerfed and put into the Hall of Fame. Several other cards along this line have also been printed: Time Warp, Uther of the Ebon Blade, all the Rogue Secrets, pretty much every tutor card ever made. My point is, Hearthstone evolves its card design as a game, this is just natural progression of that.
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Yeah I mean it's Bolf + Card. Thematically doesn't really line up with how Pet Battles happened in warcraft, they were more like Pokemon battles than meat shields for their tamers.
Hey this mechanic again, it might be too late at this point, but so many people have used this exact same mechanic. Tactical Retreat is a cool card, though I'd just remove the Silver Hand requirement to it, it's a downside in most cases to shuffle your field into your deck, I don't think it needs to be restricted to Silver Hand Recruits. And you could also support Molten Giant Holy Wrath memes with that minor change.
I like this idea, it reminds me of field spells from yugioh, at least until they changed it to where both players could control a field spell.
Doomsayer and Divine Favor are good choices, Counterspell is odd, especially as you've included an inbuilt way to interact with your Terrain cards, I think adding some kind of minion terrain counter to your set would be good enough.
Alright correction, Future Strike is dumb, and should never printed. Blizzard has continuously nerfed and restricted how much they print Charge cards, and cards that interact beneficially with charge cards, even printing Rush in what is essentially a retcon of the mechanic.
After looking at the card again, I stand by original point, I don't think Blizzard would ever make this card, it's so clearly problematic.
Thanks for the feedback there. I'm not too hot on the WoW lore as I've never played it. Just looking to create my own scenarios that are loosely based on it. I knew Pets existed in the game but didn't actually know you could battle them!
With Fate I honestly don't remember seeing this effect before but it's simple enough for that to have happened sure. Hopefully the other things going on in that expansion will be enough as the Butterfly/Fate thing is quite important to the whole concept.
With Terrain yes I've been finding that this keyword gives me the most things to play with.
What makes it "so clearly" problematic? The Charge? The stats? What is it, because it's really not as clear as you think it is.
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All of it, the ability to bank 3 mana into a combo card the turn before, essentially giving you 0 mana 3/2 to combo with is far too powerful. Even in aggressive decks this is strong, as it lets you further commit while avoiding aoe.
I honestly don't think Ethereal Trader is as unrealistic as everyone is saying it is. It's basically a Discover effect, then your opponent gets a Choose One effect afterwards. In fact, I think it's actually more realistic in interactivity than Kazakus, a card that already exists in the game. Evolution in game mechanics and pushing the limits of Hearthstone is a good thing. Admittedly, trying to word Persephole's effect to accurately measure everything has been a bit of a challenge, and we will most likely choose a different card to showcase. I may talk to Shatter about changing the Wolf from Future Strike to have Rush instead of Charge. Thank you for your feedback though.
As for your set, Banish instantly makes me think of Yu-Gi-Oh, which I imagine is what you were going for. Unfortunately, I don't feel like it has very much design space, and I find the idea of a keyword with another keyword in its description to be a bit strange. I like the Cleave effect, although I don't feel like it has enough design space to justify making it a keyword. How does The Swamping Pillar work? Is it permanent? How would players be able to know that a location is currently active? Totemic Slam is cool, although a Hero Power called Totemic Slam already exists, so you may need to change the name. That and I don't like the idea of rotating Mana Wyrm because Mage has already had enough rotations as is, they already have the least amount of Classic cards because they've had 2 cards rotate to the Hall of Fame where every other class has had only 1 or 0.
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I know I sound like a dick but can people use spoilers please? You don't have to show someone's entire post just to reply on one thing.
@ShatterStar1998 I agree with Shadows, you should probably rotate Medivh back in instead of Lich King. Hes a little too OP to be in the classic set. Your other HOF choices are pretty interesting too, well done with those. I think applying the keyword Legacy to old cards is bad idea, especially considering it hasn't been done when other keywords were introduced. It will just confuse people. The expansions themselves are interesting, I'd stick with those themes.
Unpopular opinion: Rogue is OP