Hearthpwn

@Elmo1191

I just think that most people would rather go for a flashy semi op gimmick than something balanced or good for the game. Or up voting a character they know (this is most apperant in card competitions where op stuff gets to the finals and most ridiculous stuff too. Hell a card that summoned 7 dr booms and dr. broom made it to the finals in the last competition). 

Woo! Hello again. First of all, thanks to everyone who gave me some feedback on the Basic cards I posted, and to everyone who pointed out my mistake in including Silence >.<

@DKPaladinMDL: I completely agree with your reasoning on Annihilation. I don't particularly like the card, but I would say it was fairly balanced as it is. 

@Melioro: I really like all of your cards, they mostly seem to be balanced, and the effects are simple enough that they feel like Basic cards. One thing to note is that you should probably create a 1/1 Troll Headhunter token, for Zandalari Chieftain.

@Vonrith: I like almost all of your cards, very well thought out. The only one I really dislike is Bootlegger, as it feels very powerful to me. However, in thinking that a 2 mana 3/2 could still take it out, I will concede that it is probably fairly well-balanced, at least as a class card. I'd prefer it as a common card, rather than a Basic, but that's just me.

Should have time to look over some other people's entries later!
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The Archivist class has been updated, and I'm pretty ready to submit it. I'll post it here first though, so I can get some thoughts on the new and altered cards.


As always, we start with the Hero and Hero Power. Spellwear is a condensed way of saying 'After you cast a spell, this loses 1 Durability'. The class has a large focus on interaction with these Spellbook weapons, both in interaction with Durability and in interaction with Spell Damage.

I'll put the unchanged cards in a Spoiler here:-

And here we have the new and altered cards from before!


As per The_Odinson's suggestion, I reduced the mana cost of Warded Pages to 1, to allow you to potentially cast more spells with it. And in answer to your question about interaction with Blazefire Book, no, this card is not intended to prevent the weapon from being destroyed by that. 


And the two brand new cards! Huge props to Squiddlyicious for inspiring Manadrain Orb with his comment about Spell Damage interaction, and huge props to Elmo1191, for essentially half-way designing Book of Mana, when he suggested a weapon that didn't involve Spellwear.

Manadrain Orb is probably one of my favourite cards, because you can quite easily get an equal draw to Arcane Intellect, but the more Spell Damage you have, the more damage you're going to do to your hero!

Book of Mana was very hard to balance, especially with cards like Scroll Keeper. It couldn't have it's own Spell Damage value, as that would be ludicrous. 3 Durability was a conscious decision so that it would persist into your next turn, at which point you could increase it's durability using some of the cards yet to be seen, or could use something like Warded Pages to get it to go off an extra time for free.
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Fun Fact: Manadrain Orb, the card designed to replace Tranquility (which was ineligible as it involved Silence), actually involved Silence itself in its first iteration, before I caught that, facepalmed and fixed it >.<

So what are your thoughts on the balance of these cards? Which ones do you think should be the featured three? Any help is appreciated :)

Quote from Elmo1191 jump

Ok, i know this doesn't matter for this phase as there will be a poll in the end, but i have noticed that most submissions do get some upvotes, except for mine. That, coupled with the fact that my submission one that barely made it through to this phase begs the question (and i don't want this to sound like whining, i just want some constructive criticism): What is wrong with my Faranell exactly? Why do people seem to not like it much? Is it the concept as a whole, is it the keyword, is it the cards or the hero ability, are they OP or something? Where did i go wrong?

 Personally, I think it's probably something along the lines of charachter appeal. I mean, there's a variety of people out there and some would probably cherish the thought of playing with pestilent corpses and toxic, gassy themes. But most, me included, would prefer a well known, prestigious charachter, something along those lines. Just in terms of mechanics, yours are lacking the awesomeness needed to override this basic matter of interest. Carnacore did this splendidly by using an unknown charachter but polishing his cards into a very enticing whole in the class.

Quote from Melioro jump

Hello everyone! Thanks again to the moderators for choosing my Shadow Hunter class as a wild card, and for their help to everyone in this competition. I would really appreciate your guys' feedback on my basic cards.

Hero Power: Channel spirits gives a random friendly minion +2 Attack, +1/+1, or +2 Health this turn only. If you control no minions it will give your hero +2 Attack this turn. I wanted to create a class focused on playing minions, buffing them up, and controlling the board but a good class will let players play multiple archetypes. +2 attack for your hero can be good for clearing early minions and maintain card advantage as a control player. +2 attack on a minion can work for aggro or simply to trade up. +1/+1 and +2 Health also work to trade up. Class cards below.

Sorry for the wall of text but a lot of thought went into some of these cards.

If there are 4 minions on the board Berserking is a Mana heroic strike with a prerequisite. In almost every deck-type this card will mostly serve as a finisher. If you're playing aggro and have 6 minions on the board you have a 2 Mana fireball that uses your hero, and can't bypass taunt, and isn't effected by Spell Damage. Since this class doesn't have and will not have anything to interact with hero attack such as savagery or blade flurry I think it's fine as burst/combo card. Turn 10 Onyxia + Berserking + coin + Berserking is 14 damage which I'm comfortable with when looking at current finishers in the game such as rockbiter + rockbiter + card with windfury.

Chain Heal is rather simple. After you're done trading into the enemy board heal your minions back up, unless RNG hates you and heals 6 to your face when you're already at 30Hp. If you have no board it will help you stabilize as a control player. Also lightwarden dream. The best parallel to Entangling Roots is Frost Nova. It shuts down your enemy's board for a turn but Entangling Roots allows your to trade into the enemy easily. If you have no board though it's basically a worse Frost Nova that loses a lot of its strength in the late game. This class won't have anything like a consecration or flamestrike. Definitely here to help midrange players the most.

Like Druids, Shadow Hunters will have poor/psudo-board clears like Entangling Roots. Shadow hunters will have hard removal though. Transform: Wyvern let's you easily remove a minion if you have a minion of your own, or on turn 5 you use your Hero power for +2 attack with Tranform: Wyvern. A card to help midrange and control decks. A 1 of perhaps in aggro to bypass taunt or deal with a tough target.

Victory rush initially gave a random friendly minion a buff if it killed but too many of my cards relied on having a board that I felt uncomfortable. As it is now it's a big mortal coil useful mostly to midrange, control, and combo deck players. Mandokir's Tribute is like consecrate except you use your face, and only hits 3 minions. A good midrange and control tool. Let's you control the board.

Zandalari Chieftain benefits from your hero power, and buff common in zoo decks at one point or another such as dire wolf and Sun Cleric. You could compare it to a cheap Violet Teacher except easier to remove and has a much different criteria. Useful in aggro and token decks, maybe midrange. Darkspear Guardian is what you wan Iron Fur Grizzly to be. It's very vanilla but is likely to go 2 for 1 against aggro, and taunt goes into the theme of controlling the board. It protects targets like knife juggler or Zandalari Chieftain for aggro, or your face for midrange. control, and aggro decks. Combined with the hero power a 2/4 body can be quite strong. Gurubashi Priestess is chain heal on legs similar to Holy light and Guardian of Kings for Paladin. Having a 5/5 body that stabilizes you can be very useful to contest with fire elementals and other 4 to 5 health creatures. Also lightwarden dream. So much hope.

 Yeah, this is just a solid set, very basic and uninteresting, which I consider both good and bad. Zandalari Chieftain is staple material I'd say as he is now, I think he needs to lose 1 health due to his strong synergy with the class. Also you are penalising yourself quite heavily with the transform vyvern thing. Probably not a significant deal, that it's one turn only, but considering you are giving your opponent better minion than with hex it seems quite punishing, it probably wouldn't matter in the most cases. 

As for your tenth card, you probably should think about a spell, according to elmo, who studied the sacred arts of basic set crafting. Most likely another removal spell.

Quote from ShadowsOfSense jump

Woo! Hello again. First of all, thanks to everyone who gave me some feedback on the Basic cards I posted, and to everyone who pointed out my mistake in including Silence >.<

@DKPaladinMDL: I completely agree with your reasoning on Annihilation. I don't particularly like the card, but I would say it was fairly balanced as it is. 

@Melioro: I really like all of your cards, they mostly seem to be balanced, and the effects are simple enough that they feel like Basic cards. One thing to note is that you should probably create a 1/1 Troll Headhunter token, for Zandalari Chieftain.

@Vonrith: I like almost all of your cards, very well thought out. The only one I really dislike is Bootlegger, as it feels very powerful to me. However, in thinking that a 2 mana 3/2 could still take it out, I will concede that it is probably fairly well-balanced, at least as a class card. I'd prefer it as a common card, rather than a Basic, but that's just me.

Should have time to look over some other people's entries later!
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The Archivist class has been updated, and I'm pretty ready to submit it. I'll post it here first though, so I can get some thoughts on the new and altered cards.


As always, we start with the Hero and Hero Power. Spellwear is a condensed way of saying 'After you cast a spell, this loses 1 Durability'. The class has a large focus on interaction with these Spellbook weapons, both in interaction with Durability and in interaction with Spell Damage.

I'll put the unchanged cards in a Spoiler here:-

Two minions that show Spell Damage and weapon synergy at its most basic level. As with the spells, these minions seem particularly weak, but with the abundance of Spell Damage already in the game and the new weapons I plan to introduce, they have to be this weak so as not to be broken. Scroll Keeper especially can be a very good turn 1 play, and consistently enough a good lategame play.


A very simple taunt that's slightly bolstered by having Spell Damage. Not too much to say about it.


The spells that straight up state a damage value that can be affected by Spell Damage. Ink Assault works similarly to Cleave, and A New Chapter is a favourite of mine due to it's duality - it can be used as a board wipe or a card draw engine depending on how and when you play it.


A more interesting board clear option. With your Hero Power it becomes a 6 mana (potentially over two turns) 3 damage AOE, to minions only, which seems awful. The real power of this card comes in combining it with the weapons that we have yet to see, and is why I think the minions only justification is needed.

And here we have the new and altered cards from before!


As per The_Odinson's suggestion, I reduced the mana cost of Warded Pages to 1, to allow you to potentially cast more spells with it. And in answer to your question about interaction with Blazefire Book, no, this card is not intended to prevent the weapon from being destroyed by that. 


And the two brand new cards! Huge props to Squiddlyicious for inspiring Manadrain Orb with his comment about Spell Damage interaction, and huge props to Elmo1191, for essentially half-way designing Book of Mana, when he suggested a weapon that didn't involve Spellwear.

Manadrain Orb is probably one of my favourite cards, because you can quite easily get an equal draw to Arcane Intellect, but the more Spell Damage you have, the more damage you're going to do to your hero!

Book of Mana was very hard to balance, especially with cards like Scroll Keeper. It couldn't have it's own Spell Damage value, as that would be ludicrous. 3 Durability was a conscious decision so that it would persist into your next turn, at which point you could increase it's durability using some of the cards yet to be seen, or could use something like Warded Pages to get it to go off an extra time for free.
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Fun Fact: Manadrain Orb, the card designed to replace Tranquility (which was ineligible as it involved Silence), actually involved Silence itself in its first iteration, before I caught that, facepalmed and fixed it >.<

So what are your thoughts on the balance of these cards? Which ones do you think should be the featured three? Any help is appreciated :)

 Oh boy, it looks like we got a similar thing going on in our classes with the durability usage of the equipment. Ok, so there's some neatly polished stuff here. I will probably not go over balance, because it's really hard to evaluate that sortof thing with your concept, anyway, here we go.

The minion baseline is fair. Although a 2/3 on turn 1 is quite strong, it's also quite vulnerable to silence. The archivist seems like an enourmous powerhouse, well put together. The orb is very meh - filler material.

Spells - powerful, and well tuned according to you class specialisation. Seem fair, regarding the powerlevel displayed by the minions at this stage of the reveal. Oh and ink assault - you really struggled with the naming of these, huh. 

If I understand the wording correctly manadrain orb implies sources only, not actual spell damage? So an experienced archivist would only net 1 card extra? And also, is the damage taken also dependant on spell power? Can't really evaluate much without understanding the specifics.

Book of mana - I think you are more excited about this than I am, not particularily impressive, in effectiveness anyway, which is good, by all means.

I do have somewhat of a problem though. I feel, that your cards become crazily powerful with the neutral card pool that boost spellpower which I don't know is a good thing, but the way it promotes interactive deckbuilding is fine I suppose. Well, all in all, I like it.

Meanwhile I've been working on a bit of a teaser, so here is my expert legendary and I wanted tips and such. Wording and stats are inconsistent, I kindof made 2 different ones so you could see all the things that went through my head while designing these, so I made them crossover.

 Token: 
Which art is more appropriate, and the statlines, wording? Did I manage to capture the flavour of the warden ultimate?

Alright, nice feedback. Can you elaborate more on the art thing? Because I actually kindof like the 2nd art better, the only thing that really attracts me with the 1st is the compatibility with my border design. But say I would really choose the 1st, there's no way I would make the 2nd the spirits, they just don't look like that. I wouldn't likely use the current spirit art, but finding an appropriate one is difficult for now.

Well, I value flavour in card design quite highly, and the avatar in the rts really didn't pack a punch, it was the spirits that wrecked along with the warden flourishing in the chaos. I think I've captured that quite well. I also absolutely want to keep her at 6 mana to avoid her duking it out with other lategame legendaries when played on curve. It's just that, 6/8 seem like fine stats, but it's not really the body that is important, but really the text. Similar to archmage antonidas, I'm fairly sure people would still play him as a 2/5 or something outrageous. But on that note, I'm completely open to altering attack, health points, but most importantly so it's possible to price it at 6.

@DonnieMcKarlo: Thanks for the feedback! In regards to Manadrain Orb, yes, it's specifically sources of Spell Damage only. So an Experienced Archivist, which benefits from Spell Damage but doesn't actually give any Spell Damage, wouldn't get you any cards. And a Maylgos will only draw you one card, the same as your Hero Power weapon, or Keystone Orb.

Because of this, it's better to have multiple small sources of Spell Damage rather than a few large ones when you play the card, because the damage you receive does indeed increase with Spell Damage - so for example, if you had three Spell Damage +1 minions out, you would draw 3 cards and take 4 damage. If you had a Malygos out, you'd draw 1 card and take 6 damage.

You are very right about Ink Assault - I wanted to differentiate the class from just casting spells like Fireball, but didn't want to overflow with 'Word of ...' cards, given that each weapon is already called 'Book of ...'. So I was stuck coming up with strange aesthetic choices based on libraries and writing books. I like it, if only because I found really cool pictures while Googling 'Ink Explosion'.

In regards to your card, I unfortunately can't really comment on the lore flavour of the card, having never played WoW, but balance-wise, I think you could probably increase the health, if you want the Spirits to be the powerhouse. 3/8 could be alright for it, depends on how weak you could stand having the attack. As for card text, you don't need the comma in Spirit's card text, and you can leave out the part about 'your own side of the field', as it is assumed that when you summon something it is to your side of the field.

@Elmo1191

I like the third artwork the most, as for the effect go with either first or second.

I really like the first art, but I'd prefer it green as well. If you give me a link to the image I could see what I can do with it? As for the effect, I think 6 or more health is a good range - 5 health has a lot of minions that would be good to destroy, but would mean you'd probably have to raise the mana cost. Edit: Melioro has a point actually, most of the 5 health minions would be dealt with by SW:D. Notable exception being Cairne Bloodhoof, maybe? But only I run him anymore XD

In regards to the effect being 'boring', I actually like it as it is. Make it too complicated and it doesn't feel like a Basic card anymore. I also like that it's a low cost removal spell.

Edit: Something like this maybe?