Hearthpwn

Death Knight's Hero Power is one of the strongest parts of its kit. On its own, it's slightly weaker than mage (Deal 1 damage, can't go through taunts, if you have a weapon equipped you must use it on the same target). With weapons, however, it becomes very strong, as you can remove powerful minions without sacrificing too much health. This allows DK to play control effectively, but keeps the Hero Power useful even in aggro decks.

Thematically, the spell Marrowrend dealt damage and gave you charges of Bone Shield, protecting you from damage. This spell behaves similarly to that. 

Blood Rune

A very potent removal card, which even has synergy with the Hero Power. This card is a fitting representation of blood, since it fits the theme of taking and healing damage as well as removing minions to control the board in a midrange or tempo deck.

Frost Rune

This rune is probably the most inefficient of the three runes, but the point of the runes isn’t to be worth running on their own. It serves as a quick trigger for all of the cards that require a minion to be Frozen, and provides a helpful buffer against aggro.

Unholy Rune

Unholy rune is between Blood and Frost in terms of Strength. It’s extremely useful in token decks, to trigger effects that proc when a friendly minion is summoned and to provide something that require friendly minions to be destroyed.

Death Pact

A concern with this card might be that it infringes on Warlock’s flavor of destroying friendly minions. This is true, but I’m okay with it. You would expect Death Knight to be similar to Warlock, in the same way that you’d expect Paladin to be somewhat similar to Priest (which they are).

One of Death Knight’s main weaknesses is that it doesn’t have a reliable card draw engine - but not that it lacks card draw. The handful of Death Knight cards that serve as draw engines have to have some condition met in order for them to work - this is the one that synergizes most with an Unholy/Undead token aggro deck.

Remorseless Winter

The most iconic card in a Frost DK deck is Shatterstrike - a 3 mana spell that destroys all Frozen minions. As such, it’s important to make sure that DK doesn’t have a reliable way to freeze all enemy minions for a low mana cost, and this card as well as the other AoE Freezes will reflect that. This one introduces unreliability by freezing all minions, so it can’t be used to clear the board in quite the same way that equality consecrate can in paladin. In a control-style deck, it works fine, and is actually quite powerful.

Shatterstrike

Here it is, the focal card in Frost DK. It is the core of the Freeze archetype around which everything else revolves - even if cards don’t play into Shatterstrike, it’s this card that brings the deck together.

While Freeze is a frustrating and non-interactive mechanic, I think that card like this that damage Frozen characters help make it more bearable. Instead of Frost being all about stalling, it’s more about synergy; using Freeze as a condition for an effect rather than a way to stay alive until you can deal 30 damage all at once.

Iceborn Knight

This is one of the earliest cards designed for Death Knight, if not the first. I want to say right off the bat that it’s ability is not intended to be a high-synergy effect (although it does still have some synergy). Instead, the purpose of the card was to be a flavorful but extremely simple card in the basic set.

Even though one of my main design principles has been simplicity, my past basic sets have actually been relatively complicated, so I’ve tried really hard to make a simpler basic set this time around, and this card was one step towards that.

Soulblade

As mentioned earlier, the strength of Death Knight’s hero power has it relying on weapons for hard removal, and Soulblade is an excellent example of an efficient weapon. While it’s numerically a bit weaker than Truesilver Champion, it has a bigger impact on the board, which may make it better. I’d be okay with this card becoming one of the very strong basic cards.

Bloodborn Lich

It’s kind of awkward to have this card after that talk about simplicity. But I think it’s not too complicated for the basic set, seeing as how Northshire Cleric is also basic. This is a powerhouse card for token decks, it can pump out a lot of damage and turn the game around, but it’s numerically balanced with Cult Master.

Death and Decay

Death Knight feels like the class that should have an epic, impactful 10 mana spell, like Pyroblast or Mind Control. This AoE spell came to mind as a simple yet new concept. Although the spell is numerically balanced at 5 damage, it felt like 6 was necessary to give it any potency in the late game, and since 10 mana cards need to be a bit more than numerically balanced to see play (not that this card is necessarily viable).

Death Coil

I am actually really happy with how this card turned out, since it made a cool effect while solving a very difficult problem. Allow me to elaborate.

Death Coil is a pretty iconic spell that deals damage to enemies, but can also be used to restore health to your Undeads. This naturally suggests a design like Demonfire, but the problem is that Demonfire is super weak. It’s hard to make a card that’s aesthetically pleasing while not blowing Demonfire out of the park with powercreep. What usually ends up happening is either the Undead effect is too weak (One incarnation costs 1 mana and deals 2 damage to enemies or restores an Undead to full health - you’re supposed to be rewarded for controlling an Undead, and all you get out of it is a .5 mana effect for the cost of 1 mana?), the effect is not aesthetically pleasing (for example, it deals 2 damage to enemies or gives a friendly Undead +3 attack - 2 and 3 don’t match like the numbers do in Demonfire and Demonheart), or the effect is a strict powercreep on Demonfire (Like, 2 mana: deal 3 damage to a minion or give a friendly Undead +3/+3).

This card managed to avoid all of those problems, and create a cool effect. It embodies the flavor of damaging enemies or benefitting friendly undead, the numbers match, and it’s not powercreep on Demonfire since it only works on an Undead with 2 or less health. Plus, it triggers deathrattles and all that jazz, making it pretty viable in an Unholy DK deck - something I’m very happy about.

Plague Dog

Our first Rune generator, as well as a cheap Undead minion with a Deathrattle. This card is a must-have in Unholy aggro decks, but would probably see play in Rune decks as well as the class’s go-to 1-drop.

Death Rune

As previously mentioned, Death Runes in WoW were wild card runes that could function as any rune - so naturally, Death Rune can function as any rune. The fact that you have to pay 1 extra mana to use the Rune you want means that it might not initially be viable, but just you wait until Rune and spell synergy that comes down the road later.

Plague Eruptor

This is the first of two (maybe more in the future) Raging Ghoul summoner, the 1/1 Undead with charge that dies at the end of the turn. Works as a double-proc for Undead summoning as well as a single proc for minions dying - not to mention it’s a 2/2 that can deal 1 damage. Overall quite a powerful and flexible card.

Gathering Storm

Here we have the introduction of the “Next time you cast a spell” mechanic. The point of cards like these isn’t to challenge you with an activation requirement, but more to enhance your next spell. There is still some value increase as the cards effectively read “Have a spell in your hand that you can immediately play, or get delayed value”, and that’s worth something since combo requirements and time displacement both have a cost.

This was one of the very first “Next time you cast a spell” cards. It’s supposed to showcase what makes the mechanic fun - enhancing your next spell to interact with the board in some special way. When you have the deal 3 random damage attached to your next spell, you can make your trading decisions differently and it causes the spell itself to really feel like a brand new card, which is what I’m going for. I thought this card was weak, other people said it was fair, still others said it was OP, so I’m keeping it as it is.

Mark of Blood

The problem with healing is that it doesn’t impact the board at all. To make a viable healing card, it seems like it either needs to be numerically overpowered, or attached to another effect. Here’s an example of how I think viable heals can exist, by making them conditional. This card works excellently in a Blood or Blood + Frost control deck.

Soulguard Bonecaster

This was the first minon to get a “Next time you cast a spell” effect, and it’s intended to merge the Unholy token and Tempo/spells archetypes together. Works great with Unholy rune + Eternal service (although eternal service is probably getting nerfed). 

This card was recently changed to a Deathrattle to force more delay into the effect and to nerf the card, so that you couldn't just play it and Unholy Rune for a ridiculous turn 4.

Shadowmourne

This card’s design was actually contributed by a friend - originally he wanted it to be a Pseudo “Your hero is immune while attacking” weapon, and did it in a roundabout way for some reason. When I reminded him that DK’s hero power already did that, the card suddenly came to life. Without Hero Power, it’s like you were using your hero power, and with it, it’s an extremely powerful healing option. Actually, this card might be too powerful, it will probably be seeing a nerf soon. At least it’s not an aggro card :)

Darkfallen Lord

It’s here, it’s in standard, and it’s here to stay. This is probably the single most terrifying card for Unholy aggro, and there are some really incredible synergy plays that can be done with it. Unholy Rune, Death Coil, Plague Eruptor… You should be able to face an Unholy deck knowing full well that this is the most powerful card in it, and that using hard removal on it isn’t a waste at all. This card does need prior setup or some extra mana in order to have a shot at living, which can hopefully slow it down somewhat.

Howling Blast

There’s not much to say about this card, other than the fact that it avoids the problem that all 4 mana damage spells have - comparing to Fireball. If the card seems too strong, remember that dealing damage to a minion as opposed to to anything makes a much bigger difference than you think, especially at 4 mana (Since 5 mana, deal 99 damage to a minion would be balanced).

Epidemic

Especially with this class, I’ve been trying to take the coolest designs from my previous classes and incorporate them into this one. Epidemic is one such card, coming from the Drop the Bass spell in my Bard class.

Source aside, it’s a really fun effect, great for control decks that have a nonzero presence on board. Remember, if you don’t control any minions, you have to spare one of your opponent’s.

Unstable Abomination

This card was designed fairly late in the process. DK needed a 5-drop minion. It would preferably be Undead. It had to be a good stand-alone card that can be dropped on turn 5. This is what came out. It is intentionally strong in arena, but hopefully doesn’t see play in constructed outside of midrange (if midrange DK is even a deck).

Frostmourne

After I decided against having The Lich King as a legendary that replaces your hero, I had to implement Frostmourne in some other way. This is the most flavorful design I came up with, where you can steal the effects of your opponent’s minions by killing them, much like it is used to steal souls in the lore.

Horn of Winter

This card went through a lot of design iterations. The original design for the card was a spell that summoned some number of tokens, and next time you casted the spell it would essentially perform that effect a second time.

Unsurprisingly it was really hard to get this card to feel decent on the first cast while not feeling completely broken on the second proc. The first version of this card was 6 mana: Summon four 1/1 Ghouls. Next time you cast a spell, summon four more. But again, it felt too weak on the first cast, and it was too hard to buff without making it OP.

At this point I realized that maybe the card would be easier to balance if the minions were 2/2. To some degree, it was, but it still faced the same problem. At this point, I had two choices - give up on summoning the same number of minions on the second cast, or give up on summoning the same type of tokens on the second cast. I tried both of these, and ended up submitting “6 mana: Summon three 2/2 Skeletons. Next time you cast a spell, summon three 1/1 Ghouls” for feedback. As someone was giving their take on it, they likened it to “essentially summoning three 2/2s, and then giving them +1/+1.” I had already adjusted to the idea of not having the second match the first, and giving +1/+1 seemed more flavorful with the whole horn idea. I did some quick balancing and printed it.

Darion Mograine

We’ve reached the first legendary minion. I’ve always struggled to make good legendaries, although I started to improve while I was making Bard and I think the legendaries here are at least decent.

I went into DK knowing that I wanted control DK to be a viable playstyle. But I never seem to find the right mix of cards that a class needs in order to be control-worthy. I knew that survivability, removal, and late-game threats were important, so I combined those three themes into one card.

Now, upon seeing this card, a lot of people wanted me to push the “anti-tirion” theme further. I want to talk about why I didn’t do that. Sure, this card could have been “8 mana 6/6, Charge, Poisonous, Battlecry: Equip a 3/5 Corrupted Ashbringer” or something like that, where every number, keyword, and effect gets inverted. That might be a funny joke, but this isn’t a joke - it’s the classic set legendary which has to bear the weight of the class almost as much as the Hero Power. I did want there to be enough in the card to call out a clear connection to Tirion - the weapon is Corrupted Ashbringer, after all, so there has to be something. For me, 8 mana 6/6 with a deathrattle that equips an Ashbringer was enough to do that, and it left me with enough space to design an actual card.

The card itself is very slow, as it’s an 8 mana 6/6 that doesn’t have the immediate impact on the board that Tirion does with Taunt and Divine shield. I think that the loss of those two keywords is worth a lot more on a card like this than in your general case, which is why the weapon itself is much stronger.

While I would have rather had the heal interact with the amount of durability that the weapon had remaining so that there was choice as to how many times you wanted to attack as opposed to just attacking twice and leaving it at one durability being almost always the optimal play, the original card text which had this ability made the card extremely convoluted. [However, a suggestion for a simple card text with this interaction has accomplished this, so we may be seeing that in the future.]

Gameplay Note: When you take fatal damage, since your health gets set to 15 it cancels out the damage from that attack itself, effectively like Ice Block does.

Visual Note: When the effect triggers, the sword flies in an arc from the weapon slot and impales your hero. It vanishes into green outlines after a few moments, and as it does your hero restores health and gets a green tint to the hero portrait for the rest of the game.

Crypt Lord

This card is meant to embody the flavor of a breeding spider. In gameplay, it’s supposed to be too slow to be reliable, but fun to make gimmicky decks with, like resurrect shaman. DK is already immersed deeply enough in deathrattles, so it doesn’t really need any particularly powerful Naxxramas card.

Salvager’s Scythe

Admittedly, this is more of a filler card. It exists to give DK better synergy with Mana Reprocessor as well as a GvG-flavor weapon to increase the size of the Discover pool from Forgotten Tomb. People have been saying that this is actually a pretty decent card, especially with the Hero Power, which is a pleasant surprise.

Mana Reprocessor

If you’ve read my past concepts I use this mechanic a little too much. Basically, DK felt like it needed one more Unholy Rune generator, but I didn’t want it to be too good. I phrased it as “I need half of an Unholy generator.” This card is in wild and forces you into spare part archetype, so I think it’s functional without being super reliable.

Consume Soul

This opens the door for some pretty insane stuff, which I think is mitigated by the fact that you have to have 3 mana so you can’t cheese out something ridiculous on turn 1. Not sure if it’d be run in aggro decks because of the lack of card draw (unless Death Pact becomes a thing), but it could see play in midrange since I assume they’d run some tokens like Unholy Rune and whatnot.

March of the Damned

Don’t worry, there aren’t any cards in Death Knight that give all friendly characters +2 attack. This card is actually fairly inefficient, and the only big thing it can do is buff Darkfallen Lord to all hell.

Death Note

Originally a meme card, but it was so flavorful and mechanically smooth that I just had to add it. I put it in wild for this reason, since no-removal is supposed to be a weakness of DK.

Seal of Darkness

In case you couldn’t tell, this card is supposed to play off of Seal of Light. Without the Hero Power, it’s just a underaverage midsize removal option. With Hero Power, it can be a great swing tool to help you recover.

Teron Gorefiend

Ever since I started working on Death Knight I knew that I was going to have a legendary minion which destroyed a friendly minion to resummon itself when it died. Originally, it was: “6 mana 7/5 with Deathrattle: Destroy a random friendly minion. If you do, resummon this minion.” This version suffered from a lot of problems, the first being that it didn’t really seem to fit in any decks. Sure, a 6 mana 7/5 that didn’t die was pretty scary, but you had to be running it in a token deck or else the random destroy would make it too risky to play any moderately-sized minions, not to mention that the minion was super slow.

The first improvement was to change random to “Rightmost,” which is where tokens spawn, so with decent positioning you can get this card to kill the friendly minions that you want it to. I really liked this, it felt like it gave the card strategic depth, it wasn’t just “Play Teron and who cares about the rest of your board” but rather “Play Teron into a well set-up board and get rewarded.”

Secondly, I made the decision of giving this minion charge. I was more loose with something like this because I knew I could put the card in wild if it ever got out of hand (which I did, regardless of whether or not it’s strong).

I really like the card as it is right now, although I might consider dropping Teron’s health to 2. My motive for making it 3 was to make him a nonzero board threat, something that you’re actually worried about being able to live forever.

Army of the Dead

Visual Note: There is a 25% chance that one of the ghouls summoned will be a gnome pretending to be a ghoul, as the token indicates.

DK is a token class, and token classes can do cool things with a board full of tribe minions. I don’t think it’s good enough to see play, nor would it cause some crazy combos, but there are still some cool possibilities.

Frost Wyrm

Another card to demonstrate how DK handles Frost synergy - not like Lich did and Freeze Mage does, by dragging out and stalling the whole game, but using Freeze as a trigger to push more power onto the board. This card is pretty powerful and works excellently with Frost Rune, and the fact that it can hit the enemy hero too allows it to be a nice finisher in a control setup.

Note that this card is a dragon. Not that I think Dragon DK is or should be a viable deck, it’s more of a “If you’re going to try to play Dragon DK, it should be a Frost deck” since Frost is the control archetype and that’s where dragons fit best in my opinion.

Raise Dead

This card is really powerful for its mana cost. But note that DK has a lot of tokens - so if you want to use this card, even in a control deck, you’ll have to make some changes to build your deck around it. I could see this being a potentially very powerful card in a control deck, but it might be too slow to work.

There is some really nice art that I recently found that I might change this card’s picture to. Just thought I might say that.

Glacial Advance

Gameplay Note: This card requires 5 minions to be on the board in order to be playable.

Remember what I said about not having a cheap way to freeze all enemy minions? The unreliability factor in this card is that 5 minions must actually be present on the board to play it, and if you use your own minions to reach 5, they’ll die too.

Eternal Service

This is an Undead synergy card that I’m pretty happy with, at least in terms of the effect and not really the balance. I wanted to make sure that Undead synergy felt different than your generic token “Give friendly minions +1/+1” or “Give friendly minions +x attack.” This is a powerful effect that doesn’t do either of those types of things, and it is exactly the type of token Undead combo card I wanted.

Anyway, this card could see a cost increase to (3). In a deck where all your minions are undead, the condition doesn’t matter too much.

Dark Simulacrum

Another one of the early “Next time you cast a spell” effects. I’ve always been a fan of cards like “Add the copy of the last spell you casted to your hand,” but most classes that an effect like that would fit thematically in would be broken with such an effect. DK happens to have an ability that copies spells called Dark Simulacrum, have a mechanic that gives it really easy wording, and have spells that are powerful enough to be fun to copy but not powerful enough to break the game. Neat!

Dancing Rune Weapon

I knew from the beginning that I should have a Dancing Rune Weapon effect, but I wasn't sure how to implement it. I was experimenting with cards that summoned minions and did something else and this effect came to mind, which I think is a good representation. That being said, this card is absurdly strong for its mana cost. I put it in wild for this reason. I think it’s still a really fun card to use though and I’m happy I designed it.

Breath of Sindragosa

This card is designed to be the Frost-dependent draw engine for DK, but it can also serve as an AoE freeze in a pinch. Probably one of the better Freeze cards, and has some really fun interactions. Not much to say other than the fact that I’m all-around pretty happy with this card.

Encase in Ice

Self-freeze effects are pretty cool, but they run into the problem of not being worth it since numerically freezing a friendly minion isn't worth that much of a stat boost, but in practice it is. This card gets around that by upping the ante to a permanent freeze, which can justify a 4.5 mana effect on a now 3-mana card. This can also be used in control to immobilize an enemy minion, but only if you're not planning on having any minions attack.

Eldritch Lance

So far I have been enjoying peoples' reactions to this card:

“What the hell were you thinking, this card is hot garbage!”

“---hero power---”

“Ohhhhhh…..”

This is probably the wonkiest card in the DK set but I think it accomplishes its purpose quite well. It has an interesting story too, so I’ll go into the design process.

I was thinking about how DK was supposed to make up for its lack of removal by using its hero power combined with weapons to reach big stuff. But, other than Frostmourne, there were no big weapons with which to kill big things. So I wanted to make another high-attack weapon, but I didn’t want it to contest frostmourne’s high-cost weapon slot.

How could I create a low-cost, high attack card? “Can’t attack heroes” came to mind. So then the card was “5 mana 7/2 weapon - Can’t attack heros.” But, then I saw that people would probably just use this to kill medium size minions, a 5 mana double assassinate where you only had to take a little bit of damage. I didn’t like this - I wanted people to really be using the hero power. So, what if I raised the attack of the target?

The rest was just details. It felt weird to only raise attack, so I thought maybe it could change health as well, to the attack of the weapon. I settled on 7 as the attack and such for the 4 mana 7/7 meme dream, and it turned out quite well.

Northrend Valiant

Similar design story to the rest. DK needs another rune generator - this time for Blood. But Blood is the best rune, so I didn’t want to give it too much generation potential. So, I should probably stick it in wild. Where in wild? TGT has a lot of space. TGT has inspire. I need an inspire card.

Done and done. I think this is a pretty good design lesson for your classes - try to fill multiple needs with a single card, so that it feels like it’s tied into the game on multiple levels.

Sindragosa

Isn’t Sindragosa’s effect just, like, a big Frost Wyrm? Yes, because Sindragosa is, like, a big Frost Wyrm.

So DK has no finishers across the board, and while I don’t want DK to be a combo class, a control deck like Frost DK could really use some sort of win condition aside from maybe Thing in the Ice which you’ll see later. The first idea that comes to mind is to convert Freeze effects into damage to face, so that you can use Frost Runes as finishers. How about dealing damage to a character whenever it gets Frozen? Seems good. Slap on some stats, and there we go.

This was the most straightforward legendary to be designed out of all of them in the DK set, although there was one aspect which caused some thought, and that’s because the original text of the card said “Whenever a character is frozen, deal 5 damage to it.” This included friendly minions, your hero, and Sindragosa. I definitely didn’t want Sindragosa to be killing herself, but should I spare any other friendly stuff? This card already favors single-target so much more than AoE, I wouldn’t want to make AoE any worse. I did stick with only Sindragosa being immune to the effect though, just because  the card is already so strong as it is.

Ancient Runeblade

With this card we have one of the first (and only?) cards that synergize specifically with runes and not just with spells. It’s also one of the few DK cards to be in the style of “whenever you cast a spell” instead of “next time you cast a spell.” The goal behind this was to give some sort of powerful driving force to the rune Death Knight archetype, so that it felt like you were generating runes for a purpose beyond using them for effects and maybe triggering a few “Next time you cast a spell” effects. Originally, this card was ridiculously strong - it had 3 attack instead of two, but this was so clearly broken that it got nerfed immediately.

Forgotten Tomb

First, let me clarify some confusion that people seem to be having - this card does not say “Discover a basic Rune, a weapon, OR an Undead,” it says “Discover a basic Rune, a weapon, AND an Undead.” This means that you discover 3 times, which gives you a lot of control over exactly what you get out of this card.

I’ll say it flat out - this card was inspired by the card from the subreddit a while ago, Hemet’s Hunting Guide, a hunter spell that allowed you to discover one copy of three different types of cards. DK needed a discover card and I thought it was a neat idea, given how DK has several specific card archetypes within it beyond the basic “Minions” and “Weapons.” I doubt that this card would see play, as it isn’t quite “card draw,” and I think it’s too slow for the Rune deck. But there’s potential.

Also this is a good time to point it out in case it isn’t clear - this card says “Discover a basic Rune” which means your three choices will be Blood, Frost and Unholy with 100% probability, Death Rune is not an option. If the card just says “Random Rune” (The Un’goro legendary says this, but I”m not sure if any of the other ones do) then it has a chance of generating Death Runes.

Thing in the Ice

This card might not have been the hardest card to balance, but if so, I can’t remember one that was harder. The lack of feedback combined with the incredibly counterintuitive nature of the card made it really hard to judge.

Flavor concerns aside, I like the mechanics of this card. It makes you think about Freeze differently, and it serves as a win condition for Frost DK. I’ll tell you the story of this card’s design to give you some perspective.

I knew I wanted to make another card that synergized with being Frozen, and when I was thinking about fun things you could do with Freeze, somehow the picture of a Frozen minion getting Frozen again and having some special effect came to mind and sounded really cool.

Given that Shatterstrike and shatter already existed, it felt rather pointless to make a double-freeze effect that affected enemies that’s better than destroying them (Turns out, there was one - taking control of them - which became Dominate Mind). So I thought that Double Freeze would get put on a friendly minion.

When I thought about Freezing a friendly minion twice to activate it, the reward naturally lent itself to summoning a big minion. The first incarnation of this concept was a 5 mana 0/8 that transformed into an 8/8 with charge.

People said this was too strong, so I tried changing it into an anti-aggro card - dropping the cost to 3, and making it an 8/8 with taunt. It still felt too strong, and I was sad that it wasn’t a win condition. I brought the cost back up to the 6-7 range, and added windfury. But then it felt too polarizing, it was almost certain to die to hard removal, but on the off chance that it didn’t you instantly won the game. It’s really scary to give big 10/10 minions charge and so I was really hesitant to do so. After talking to my friend about it, though, we decided that if we wanted this card to be a win condition, it had to have charge or else it would be useless - for such a slow effect that required a minimum of three cards, charge was hard to abuse.

At this point, it was just a numbers thing. It was a 6 mana minion, and I knew the health of the Thing would be equal to the stats of the Horror. It started at 8 but it still seemed weak, so I impulse buffed it to 9 and then further to 10 and here it is.

Corroded Egg

I’ve always really liked the concept of Nerubian egg, and it’s probably one of my all-time favorite cards. Needless to say I was pretty sad to see it go. I felt like Death Knight, whose Unholy aggro archetype is built around interactions like Nerubian egg, they were the class most worthy of getting their own, more efficient nerubian egg. This card could potentially be OP, and the concept is admittedly unoriginal (was trying to make a “corrupted” nerubian egg), and it could be reworked into something that summons 1/1s on its death instead.

This is a good time to say that Crypt Fiends are the resident 3/3 Undead tokens for this class, like Ghouls are the 1/1 Undead token and Skeletons are the 2/2 Undead token.

Malefic Specter

Of all the Undead synergy cards it’s probably the one I like the least, although it is interesting in the way that it forces you to build your deck out of almost exclusively Undead minions to get guaranteed value, and that value is quite high.

Runic War Axe

The first (and only) card to have “Next time you cast a spell” on a Deathrattle. [Come to think of it, a good nerf for Soulguard Bonecaster]. A pretty strong weapon for control, mostly exists to give an early game removal option that doesn’t rely on synergy with other cards. The fact that the heal is attached to next time you cast a spell is nice too, so that you can save the health for when you actually need it, since with the Hero Power you might not be taking very much damage.

Scourgelord Tyrannus

This is probably the legendary that I’m least happy with, mostly because it’s another card where the brunt of the text is on the token it summons. From a flavor perspective, this was unavoidable, since it’s Rimefang, Tyrannus’s Frost Wyrm, that rains down ice on the party during the raid.

Furthermore, this Frost Wyrm is an Undead instead of a Dragon like Sindragosa and Frost Wyrm, so let me explain my rationale behind that. Frost Wyrms are inherently ambiguous as to which tag they should receive, because they are literally both Undead and Dragons. Since Dragons and Undead both have distinctive features, then I would give them the tag that’s most appropriate to the situation. Frost Wyrm and Sindragosa are slow, big cards that synergize with Frost, which is intended to be the Dragon archetype for DK (If there is a dragon DK deck). They also don’t follow any of the themes for Undead minions (see the introduction), so I made them Dragons. Rimefang follows many if not all of the rules for Undead minions, and it’s on a card that synergizes so much better overall if it’s also Undead. So I made it Undead.

In terms of gameplay, I like how this card functions - again, my goal being to create synergy with having a board full of Undeads other than “Give your Undeads +2 Attack this turn.”

Vrykul Icebringer

This minion was the original solution to Frost decks needing a card draw engine, before I came up with Breath of Sindragosa. I’ve left it in because I think that out of all the archetypes, Frost is probably the one that’s most justified to have two draw engines, being a control deck and all. It’s getting nerfed to a 2/4, by the way.

Frozen Fanatic

From a numerical perspective, this card might be slightly Underpowered. Normally, C’thun cards are supposed to have vanilla stats, ignoring their C’thun buffing effect. This card could probably be balanced as a 4/5 or a 3/6, but the problem is that Iceborn Knight is already a 4 mana 3/6 and the upcoming Darkmaw Devilsaur is already a 4 mana 4/5, and while you technically can repeat  statlines I really don’t like to do it.

As for the effect itself, you obviously get some extra value at the cost of Freezing your C’thun. Furthermore, once you’ve already Frozen it, playing a second Frozen Fanatic has no downside. Getting +4/+4 from only one card makes triggering your 10-attack C’thun cards a lot easier, allowing you to potentially run fewer C’thun cards and having more versatility with your deck. The fact that your C’thun is going to be Frozen when it comes out means that you’re probably going to be trying to OTK your opponent with a really big C’thun, or you could run a C’thun-light deck and run Twilight Geomancer to get some immediate value and mitigate the impact of the Freeze.

Seer of Endless Ice

In the same way that Frost Wyrm claims the Dragon archetype for Frost DK, this card claims the C’Thun archetype for Frost DK. Getting three Frost Runes is really useful, for triggering Thing in the Ice or getting a lot of burst off of Sindragosa - that’s why none of those combos are standard-legal.

Speaking of standard, as Frost gets nerfed by standard rotations, I think that C’thun DK is how frost will live on until next year when WoToG rotates out.

Ooze Belcher

Sludge Belcher was a cool card, but it got oppressive when it saw play in every single non-aggro deck in the game.  As a class card, I think a similar design is okay, especially in DK.

It’s hard to tell if this card is going to be more annoying or less annoying than Sludge Belcher. On the one hand, it loses two health on the initial body, which means it’s more likely that your opponent will be able to kill it with weak removal or with what they already have on the board. But on the other, the first body it spawns has 2 attack instead of 1, which makes it somewhat harder to trade with, not to mention that it’ll spawn a 1/1 at the end which gives you more protection. Overall, I think that this card is going to be better for having a sticky taunt to slow your opponent down than it is for actually putting power of the board.

What it will be great with, though, is N’zoth DK, because you get two taunts out of it for one card.

Dominate Mind

The aforementioned card that does something better than Shatter when you have a Frozen enemy. People have been saying that this card is both too strong and too weak, and I’ve definitely been on both sides of this argument, so let me try to explain both of them.

If you’re worried that this card is too strong: Compare it to Shatter and Assassinate. Shatter gets a 3 mana discount on assassinate for requiring a frozen minion, so this card gets a 3 mana discount on Mind Control for requiring a Frozen minion. Not to mention that once you take control of the minion, unless you did some really crazy shenanigans in the way that you Froze it, you won’t be able to attack with it next turn.

If you’re worried that this card is too weak: Maybe this is true, but Mind Control is a really strong effect regardless of the mana cost. You get to remove an enemy minion without triggering its Deathrattles or anything like that, which is worth something in and of itself. It’s probably really easy to set this card up with Frost Rune so the 3 mana discount is rather generous for such an easy condition.

Archerus Runeguard

Not much to say about this card. Unholy needed a generator besides Plague Dog and the nonexistent Mana Reprocessor. The only question was, what trigger is most appropriate for Unholy Runes? In case you haven’t noticed, each and every rune generator has its own unique condition, and those conditions are placed within each archetype. Unholy fits with Deathrattles and low-cost minions, Blood fits with mid-size minions and tempo gameplay, and Frost fits with removal and C’thun minions. “Whenever this attacks” is a nice aggro-oriented trigger that hasn’t been used yet.

This card is probably a bit strong, I would consider changing the stats to 3/2 to make it easier to remove, or limit it to “Whenever this attacks the enemy hero.”

Icecrown Portal

There’s a 2 mana portal, a 4 mana portal, a 5 mana portal, a 6 mana portal, and a 7 mana portal.

Where’s the 3 mana portal????

The main reason that DK has a portal card is to fix this problem. The only thing I’d wish that it did is if the effect involved the number 3 instead of the number 2, since the numbers 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 are used. Unfortunately this seemed to be impossible.  

This is one of the few freeze cards that would probably work really well in a tempo deck.

Ebon Queen

Like Epidemic, this is a card inspired by one of the well-liked cards in Bard: Star of the Show, a minion that summoned tokens that made it stronger. I changed the token bonuses from bonus attack to Immunity to reflect the nature of chess (how pieces protect each other and make it unwise to capture). It also gives the set a stronger tie in to Karazhan flavor. The card is a bit strong as it is right now, so it’s getting toned down next patch.

Graverobbing Geist

I’m sad to have to sink to this level and do the 1 mana 1/1 that adds a card to your hand, but Undeads really needed another 1-drop and this fit the bill with recent developments. It may be buffed

I'm going to avoid writing up the MSoG set beyond this point since a lot of it is contentious and could see changes.

The Omega Rune

It was going to be a disaster. Quests in Un’goro are based off of actual locations in Un’goro crater - but where the hell am I going to find something related to Death Knight? I checked out all the zones, hoping for any that were particularly Death-y. Slithering Scar? Already used in the Warlock quest, apparently. Terror Run? Just a bunch of dinosaurs, nothing to do with death. So I started desperately looking through even the zones that didn’t seem like they’d fit Death Knight. It was looking pretty grim, until suddenly I read -

“The Shaper's Terrace is a Titan-related area that was added to Un'Goro Crater in Wrath of the Lich King on the bluffs above Marshal's Refuge to the east. It seems to be related to Titan buildings found on Northrend and elsewhere in southern Kalimdor…

Recently, the terrace has been taken by members of the Cult of the Damned. For the quest The Activation Rune, players need to kill the Cult's local leader, High Cultist Herenn. He is located in the Hall of Repose and possesses the Omega Rune necessary to activate the Etymidian.”

SAVED. The quest is pretty much finished within a few minutes. Before I had started seriously looking to make the quest, “End 6 turns with a Frozen minion” and “Play 6 Runes” had been bouncing around in my mind. After seeing a quest called the Activation Rune which creates the Omega Rune, it had to be the Runes quest (which I made 8, as by the time we reached Un’goro there was quite a bit of Rune generation).

Onto the reward, which the quest so conveniently tells us will be a titanic Stone Colossus called “The Etymidian,” described as “One of the most destructive forces ever created by the Titans.” So we know it’s going to be a minion, and a 5 mana 8/8 at that. Also, the “Destructive” nature makes me feel like this card is going to Destroy things. Rune decks likely fell under the Unholy/Blood combination, which meant that it would probably be played in a tempo or midrange deck. I asked around what would help a deck like this win, and the response was generally “A card that can help swing the game.” “Next time you cast a spell” effects are great for swings, but given the power level of the Etymidian, it would feel weird to pack so tightly into one minor condition. So, I figured that I could spread the power out over a long period of time. I attached Destroy to it in the most natural way, ending up with the effect “The next 3 times you cast a spell, destroy a random enemy minion.” I impulse buffed it to 5 times while creating the spell and that seemed to be a good choice.

• Ghoul wording -> "Charge. At the end of your turn, destroy this minion."
• Frozen Fanatic capitalize T
• Seer of Endless Ice reworded
• Vrykul Icebringer Health 5 -> 4
• Vrykul icebringer -> Wotog
• Encase in Ice -> TGT
• Glacial Advance -> TGT
• Soulguard Bonecaster -> Classic
• Shatterstrike -> Basic
• Gathering Storm -> classic
• Army of the Dead -> GvG
• Horn of Winter -> Classic
• March of the Damned -> GvG
• Dancing Rune Weapon -> TGT
• Unstable Abomination damage 5 -> 4
• Ebon Queen attack 6 -> 4
• Crater Cultist -> 2 mana 2/1 "Reduce the cost of spells in your hand by (1)."
• Encase in Ice -> 3 mana, give a minion +4/+4 and Taunt, then permanently Freeze it.
• Frost Fever -> "Freeze a minion. Reduce its attack by 3, but not to less than 1."
• Patient Zero -> Loses taunt.
• Ravenous Skelesaur -> Ice Elemental
• Scourge Potion -> Bloodboil Potion
• Blighted Blade Art Updated

• Ancient Runeblade Attack 3 -> 2
• Mana Reprocesser Health 1 -> 2
• Survival of the fittest Cost 2 -> 4
• Reckoning name -> Death and Decay
• Glacial Advance name -> Breath of Sindragosa
• Frigid Desolation name -> Glacial Advance
• Deathchill Blast name -> Howling Blast
• Glacial Bastion name -> Remorseless Winter
• Pandemic name -> Outbreak
• Dominate mind -> Grasp of the Lich King
• March of the Damned -> Army of the Dead
• Army of the Dead -> March of the Damned
• Awaken name -> Gathering Storm

• The first iteration of all 79 cards was finished on 4/30/17.