So I've not played HS since sometime during Uldum. Last deck I played was Duel paladin... the first, jankier version. But, I was at least making custom cards up until around Galakrond's awakening. I had a whole expac built... and like what always seemed to happen, the very idea I was pursuing was immediately done by Blizz. This expac was never released because it was a Draenor/Outland themed expansion, and it was only 80% done when AoO and Demon Hunters were announced. I thought I'd drop it now because a. Otherwise I'd completely forget I had it and b. I was interested in designing a new set soon, and thus wanted to at least clear my plate of the old work. When I looked back on it, I realized I was actually really proud of it, and I think you guys may get a kick out of it too (Provided this site isn't 100% dead). Well, look at your watches, cause it's high noon everybody... time for the Nagrand Showdown!
Nagrand Showdown!
Nagrand Showdown was a Wild West themed Draenor expansion. It was optimized around the time of Galakrond's Awakening, so it's got a lower power level than many current expacs, no Demon Hunters and the old-school rarity distribution. The pitch I'd give you is that this is an expac about Outlaws and sheriffs, with the most heinous (At the time of design, not yet used) villains each class had to offer. We had two mechanics we explored here. The first was Scout.
Scout as a mechanic was designed to give you more flexibility in how you played a card. As the tooltip indicates, this mechanic allowed you to play a Minion, Weapon, Hero card twice a turn; The first time returning the minion to your hand and triggering the scout effect, whilst the second time triggered any battlecries and stuck the minion to the board. They were meant to be comparable to but not stronger than Hero Powers, or self contained effects. This is probably my favorite mechanic I have ever built, as it gave us a lot of design freedom and offered compelling choices when being played. However, if you were scouting for the plains of Nagrand, you may find more than you bargained for, like a Wanted outlaw!
Wanted heroes were our (When I say we or our, it's me and McF4rston, my forever collaborator) attempt to balance the Hero card concept. We wanted to circumvent the issues of one card, permanent value generators that hero cards had previously caused. While The Voice of Iyu (real wow name) here could go infinite, it would definitely kill you one day, and the other heroes were all massive bombs with limited survivability but massive short term board effects. If I were to return to Wanted and Scout mechanics today, they could be balanced much higher and much more aggressively. McF4rston and I always stray on the side of too cautious, seeing as we can't easily playtest. However, we didn't just use Keywords to denote cycles.
We had a bunch of really fun internal cycles and class concepts. We tried to design each class with an internal, unique cycle. Shaman had 3 0-cost secrets (At that point in time we didn't know Rogue would get secrets again) all based around the number 10, Pally had a "Highlander Legend" archetype, mage did spell damage like they would end up doing in Scholomance, and so many others we were really happy with. I'll from here out dispense with the wall of text... the cards themselves will take ages to port in. I'll do three previews and then the rest will be in spoiler, with some explanation or anecdote.
Druid
The draenor faction Druid represented was Botani, and it considering I had to do much of the art through gimp edits it was probably the most tedious. If you want the art, PM me, noone should have to go through what I inflicted on myself. Druid was never a class I played heavily in HS, but the the set is divided between aggro synergy with fatigue cards and split turn effects. I think Druid wasn't lacking options at the time so it was more a "what cool designs can we do" class than anything particularly directed. Druid features no Scout cards because they get enough options in Choose One effects already. Iyu is meant to be a risk/reward card for a class that really, really sucks at AoE normally.
Hunter
Hunter was designed with Scouting in mind for uh... obvious reasons. The faction represented by Fenris Wolfblood is the Thunderlord clan of Orcs, but you could easily consider this the cowboy class. For individual card design ideas, things like Obvious Trap and Fastest Hand in the Westare designed to indirectly thin your deck whilst playing some level of mind games with your opponent. Fenris, Roughrider is designed to let you funnel extra mana that might be wasted on a Hero Power on building a stronger one later. If I were designing him again now he would decrease costs faster and/or gain more armor.
Mage
McF4rtson built quite a bit of this class, and designed the Spell Damage cycle and Westfall Hold 'Em. The Kael'thas Sunstrider you see here was based on his boss fight in Outland, and was designed to give mage survivability they generally lack. We'd noticed that Heroes in KoFT often played to the weaknesses of their class; Famously, Frost Lich Jaina would heal you. Other fun cards are Candelabra Crusher and Dirty Griv Blinkshot, showing off some of the more fun sides of Scout. Dirty Griv was meant as the cowboy mascot of the expac, with a flashy setup/payoff scout that could alternately win you the game, fill your board with secrets or refill your hand and board.
Paladin
Paladin was the class I spent the most time with in HS, so I can certainly attest to their often spotty power level. I eschewed the usual equal effects that I love in paladin for a more experimental angle, a Single General archetype whereby you could choose your own C'thun. There's a lot of image editing in the art here, and I'm happy with quite a bit of it. The theme here was sheriffs, with High Exarch Turalyon being the world's biggest boy scout and emphasizing the higher end of Scout effects. Sidearm of the Law and Outlaw's Trail are designed to give Paladin removal effects that don't conflict with it's identity. Saidan Dathrohan is another hero designed to cover a classes' weaknesses, in this instance being AoE.
Priest
McF4rtson designed the Shadowform cycle, and I don't think it was in the Hall of Fame at the time. Again, this predates the priest redesign. Also, Fleeting Visions has nothing on Secret Passage, and we weren't even sure we'd balanced it enough at the time. "Gentleman" Iskarshowcases some of the fun side of priest that I miss, with confusing and niche removal effects. Plus, it makes attacking face a more complicated question for the opponent. Town Preacher Ishanah is a fun card that gives you information while also a benefit, if you know the meta well.
Rogue
I absolutely love the Rift mechanic, really gives rogues a true assassination, backstabby kind of effect. Many expansions have a big destroy effect, and here it was tacked onto "Tombstone" Kargath. I saw a note in my files to fix his art, and hoo god I feel that pain looking at it. A lot of this set was covered by McF4rtson, as he played rogue more often than I did. I remember long debates on Card Counting at the time. Calamity Ezala had a much cleaner image edit, and her effect isn't dissimilar to want Jandice Barov ended up being.
Shaman
If you think Shaman has too many tokens, hoo man Warlock will be fun. Quick explanations from the files; Kilrogg Deadeye let's you choose Minion, Spell or Other, depending on what's still in their deck, then 1 of 3 options of that type. Frostwolf Primalist's keywords are mostly what you'd expect (Taunt, Rush, Divine Shield, Windfury, Lifesteal). The secrets tick up over multiple turns, which is effectively the gimmick for having them at 0-cost. Warlord Ner'zhul could probably be reduced to 10 overload, and is a big Overload payoff which was lacking at the time. Notably, the Discover effect from Warchief Ner'zhul would give warlock cards.
Warlock(I apologize in advance)
So uh... we may've gone mad with power. Warlock is Hero themed, and yes I did that damn non-dragon Hero Card in image editors. The idea is demons jockeying for power, only to be nothing in the face of the two legion lords present here; Archimonde the Defiler, who cares not for scheming and backstabbing, and Kil'jaedan the Deciever, who delights in struggles of and utilizes all the power of those beneath him. This was a fun set to balance, and I'm really happy with it all things told.
Warrior
Azuka Bladefury predates Bladestorm by a few months, I swear. Chopperlord Blackhand is a concept I like to play around with, effectively causing it to deal AoE on the attack and on defense. we had a lot of fun with armor in this set, especially considering armor is integral to the Wanted heroes.
Neutral commons
Neutral Rares
Neutral Epics
Neutral Legendaries
Plenty of these would be underpowered nowadays, but we thought they were a lot of fun at the time. Yrel was a real fun time to edit, and Hellscream was not much better. Looking back, I'm unsure why we used charge so much in this set, but I still really like Gey'arah's design. Hellscream is an odd but I believe fun combo piece. Doc Grotmar is a McF4rtson original, works well with Taunts but would likely need to be cheaper nowadays. Akama is just the big endgame style legendary we get a lot. Yrel is an interesting deck archetype I feel.
And that's sundown...
This set was a blast to relive for us. If you got this far, thank you for joining us! It may no longer be an accurate depiction of how sets are made nowadays, but it is a fun reminder of how sets used to be.
There were a ton of crazy ideas in here. The scout keyword, in my opinion, was one of the more interested keyword ideas Jengus and I came up with, though in all fairness, the way we used it is probably a bit on the weak side in today's power level. Some are deceptively strong, I'd say, such as the the Scout effect of reducing a Beast's costs by 2 and giving it Rush. It essentially becomes a 1 mana Hero Power reading give a Beast Rush. Another one would be a Warlock minion, 3 mana 2/3, that secretly targeted minions and upon playing, would destroy them all. Even if you chose just one minion, it was a 6 mana 2/3 minion, destroy a minion. It might have the potential to find a home in modern lists.
As for the temporary Wanted heroes, I'm not 100% sure what was going through our minds with those but that's another concept I wouldn't mind resurrecting in the future and giving another spin on it, it is a concept with great potential, and even as-is, some of the Wanted heroes like the Druid one that turns fatigue into an AOE were crazy enough to work.
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So I've not played HS since sometime during Uldum. Last deck I played was Duel paladin... the first, jankier version. But, I was at least making custom cards up until around Galakrond's awakening. I had a whole expac built... and like what always seemed to happen, the very idea I was pursuing was immediately done by Blizz. This expac was never released because it was a Draenor/Outland themed expansion, and it was only 80% done when AoO and Demon Hunters were announced. I thought I'd drop it now because a. Otherwise I'd completely forget I had it and b. I was interested in designing a new set soon, and thus wanted to at least clear my plate of the old work. When I looked back on it, I realized I was actually really proud of it, and I think you guys may get a kick out of it too (Provided this site isn't 100% dead). Well, look at your watches, cause it's high noon everybody... time for the Nagrand Showdown!
Nagrand Showdown!
Nagrand Showdown was a Wild West themed Draenor expansion. It was optimized around the time of Galakrond's Awakening, so it's got a lower power level than many current expacs, no Demon Hunters and the old-school rarity distribution. The pitch I'd give you is that this is an expac about Outlaws and sheriffs, with the most heinous (At the time of design, not yet used) villains each class had to offer. We had two mechanics we explored here. The first was Scout.
Scout as a mechanic was designed to give you more flexibility in how you played a card. As the tooltip indicates, this mechanic allowed you to play a Minion, Weapon, Hero card twice a turn; The first time returning the minion to your hand and triggering the scout effect, whilst the second time triggered any battlecries and stuck the minion to the board. They were meant to be comparable to but not stronger than Hero Powers, or self contained effects. This is probably my favorite mechanic I have ever built, as it gave us a lot of design freedom and offered compelling choices when being played. However, if you were scouting for the plains of Nagrand, you may find more than you bargained for, like a Wanted outlaw!
Wanted heroes were our (When I say we or our, it's me and McF4rston, my forever collaborator) attempt to balance the Hero card concept. We wanted to circumvent the issues of one card, permanent value generators that hero cards had previously caused. While The Voice of Iyu (real wow name) here could go infinite, it would definitely kill you one day, and the other heroes were all massive bombs with limited survivability but massive short term board effects. If I were to return to Wanted and Scout mechanics today, they could be balanced much higher and much more aggressively. McF4rston and I always stray on the side of too cautious, seeing as we can't easily playtest. However, we didn't just use Keywords to denote cycles.
We had a bunch of really fun internal cycles and class concepts. We tried to design each class with an internal, unique cycle. Shaman had 3 0-cost secrets (At that point in time we didn't know Rogue would get secrets again) all based around the number 10, Pally had a "Highlander Legend" archetype, mage did spell damage like they would end up doing in Scholomance, and so many others we were really happy with. I'll from here out dispense with the wall of text... the cards themselves will take ages to port in. I'll do three previews and then the rest will be in spoiler, with some explanation or anecdote.
Druid
The draenor faction Druid represented was Botani, and it considering I had to do much of the art through gimp edits it was probably the most tedious. If you want the art, PM me, noone should have to go through what I inflicted on myself. Druid was never a class I played heavily in HS, but the the set is divided between aggro synergy with fatigue cards and split turn effects. I think Druid wasn't lacking options at the time so it was more a "what cool designs can we do" class than anything particularly directed. Druid features no Scout cards because they get enough options in Choose One effects already. Iyu is meant to be a risk/reward card for a class that really, really sucks at AoE normally.
Hunter
Hunter was designed with Scouting in mind for uh... obvious reasons. The faction represented by Fenris Wolfblood is the Thunderlord clan of Orcs, but you could easily consider this the cowboy class. For individual card design ideas, things like Obvious Trap and Fastest Hand in the West are designed to indirectly thin your deck whilst playing some level of mind games with your opponent. Fenris, Roughrider is designed to let you funnel extra mana that might be wasted on a Hero Power on building a stronger one later. If I were designing him again now he would decrease costs faster and/or gain more armor.
Mage
McF4rtson built quite a bit of this class, and designed the Spell Damage cycle and Westfall Hold 'Em. The Kael'thas Sunstrider you see here was based on his boss fight in Outland, and was designed to give mage survivability they generally lack. We'd noticed that Heroes in KoFT often played to the weaknesses of their class; Famously, Frost Lich Jaina would heal you. Other fun cards are Candelabra Crusher and Dirty Griv Blinkshot, showing off some of the more fun sides of Scout. Dirty Griv was meant as the cowboy mascot of the expac, with a flashy setup/payoff scout that could alternately win you the game, fill your board with secrets or refill your hand and board.
Paladin
Paladin was the class I spent the most time with in HS, so I can certainly attest to their often spotty power level. I eschewed the usual equal effects that I love in paladin for a more experimental angle, a Single General archetype whereby you could choose your own C'thun. There's a lot of image editing in the art here, and I'm happy with quite a bit of it. The theme here was sheriffs, with High Exarch Turalyon being the world's biggest boy scout and emphasizing the higher end of Scout effects. Sidearm of the Law and Outlaw's Trail are designed to give Paladin removal effects that don't conflict with it's identity. Saidan Dathrohan is another hero designed to cover a classes' weaknesses, in this instance being AoE.
Priest
McF4rtson designed the Shadowform cycle, and I don't think it was in the Hall of Fame at the time. Again, this predates the priest redesign. Also, Fleeting Visions has nothing on Secret Passage, and we weren't even sure we'd balanced it enough at the time. "Gentleman" Iskar showcases some of the fun side of priest that I miss, with confusing and niche removal effects. Plus, it makes attacking face a more complicated question for the opponent. Town Preacher Ishanah is a fun card that gives you information while also a benefit, if you know the meta well.
Rogue
I absolutely love the Rift mechanic, really gives rogues a true assassination, backstabby kind of effect. Many expansions have a big destroy effect, and here it was tacked onto "Tombstone" Kargath. I saw a note in my files to fix his art, and hoo god I feel that pain looking at it. A lot of this set was covered by McF4rtson, as he played rogue more often than I did. I remember long debates on Card Counting at the time. Calamity Ezala had a much cleaner image edit, and her effect isn't dissimilar to want Jandice Barov ended up being.
Shaman
If you think Shaman has too many tokens, hoo man Warlock will be fun. Quick explanations from the files; Kilrogg Deadeye let's you choose Minion, Spell or Other, depending on what's still in their deck, then 1 of 3 options of that type. Frostwolf Primalist's keywords are mostly what you'd expect (Taunt, Rush, Divine Shield, Windfury, Lifesteal). The secrets tick up over multiple turns, which is effectively the gimmick for having them at 0-cost. Warlord Ner'zhul could probably be reduced to 10 overload, and is a big Overload payoff which was lacking at the time. Notably, the Discover effect from Warchief Ner'zhul would give warlock cards.
Warlock (I apologize in advance)
So uh... we may've gone mad with power. Warlock is Hero themed, and yes I did that damn non-dragon Hero Card in image editors. The idea is demons jockeying for power, only to be nothing in the face of the two legion lords present here; Archimonde the Defiler, who cares not for scheming and backstabbing, and Kil'jaedan the Deciever, who delights in struggles of and utilizes all the power of those beneath him. This was a fun set to balance, and I'm really happy with it all things told.
Warrior
Azuka Bladefury predates Bladestorm by a few months, I swear. Chopperlord Blackhand is a concept I like to play around with, effectively causing it to deal AoE on the attack and on defense. we had a lot of fun with armor in this set, especially considering armor is integral to the Wanted heroes.
Neutral commons
Neutral Rares
Neutral Epics
Neutral Legendaries
Plenty of these would be underpowered nowadays, but we thought they were a lot of fun at the time. Yrel was a real fun time to edit, and Hellscream was not much better. Looking back, I'm unsure why we used charge so much in this set, but I still really like Gey'arah's design. Hellscream is an odd but I believe fun combo piece. Doc Grotmar is a McF4rtson original, works well with Taunts but would likely need to be cheaper nowadays. Akama is just the big endgame style legendary we get a lot. Yrel is an interesting deck archetype I feel.
And that's sundown...
This set was a blast to relive for us. If you got this far, thank you for joining us! It may no longer be an accurate depiction of how sets are made nowadays, but it is a fun reminder of how sets used to be.
There were a ton of crazy ideas in here. The scout keyword, in my opinion, was one of the more interested keyword ideas Jengus and I came up with, though in all fairness, the way we used it is probably a bit on the weak side in today's power level. Some are deceptively strong, I'd say, such as the the Scout effect of reducing a Beast's costs by 2 and giving it Rush. It essentially becomes a 1 mana Hero Power reading give a Beast Rush. Another one would be a Warlock minion, 3 mana 2/3, that secretly targeted minions and upon playing, would destroy them all. Even if you chose just one minion, it was a 6 mana 2/3 minion, destroy a minion. It might have the potential to find a home in modern lists.
As for the temporary Wanted heroes, I'm not 100% sure what was going through our minds with those but that's another concept I wouldn't mind resurrecting in the future and giving another spin on it, it is a concept with great potential, and even as-is, some of the Wanted heroes like the Druid one that turns fatigue into an AOE were crazy enough to work.