Hearthpwn

   Wild Crazy Hearthcards update!

    Just wanted to do a quick post noting that now Hearthcards' custom card border generator has gotten a huge improvement. It will now put the up-to-five classes you submit to the website through the link http://hearthcards.net/customsubmit/ on the card creation page for your account. So, for anyone using the more non-standard ones not included baseline, here's a twelve thousand trick that'll save you maybe three minutes total.

Step 1: Load the border you're using into Hearthcards through the usual method.

Step 2: Meticulously Right click and save each file (There's only six, I'm exaggerating)

Step 3: Put them into http://hearthcards.net/customsubmit/, give them a stupid name, and if Dnikko ever does put it on the site quickly deny you created the custom border

Step 4: Any borders you're using will appear at the top of your page by the choose a class bar, which may save you entire seconds of your life.

Here's an example!

You see how the Motherboard is lit up? Profit! And if those steps don't work, it's because I straight did not try them myself. I put in those borders awhile ago, and now that the codes are up, I can't reeeeally delete them. Soooo do your own experiments.

Warlord

    Warlord is a class built on combat. The roaring cries and clanging weapons of the Iron Horde, untainted by the blood of Mannoroth, give way to the thronging armies of Orcs that fall under the Warlord's banner. The Warlord is forged in combat, but is not a slave to mindless combat; They think ahead, prepare themselves not for the next victory, but the most important one. They amass permanent boons and fortuitous allies, all while making tentative strikes into their enemy's ranks. Raise your axe. Raise your banner. Raise your war cry. It's time to become a Warlord of Draenor!

 I hope you enjoy!

I'm dog tired but I figure if I want any feedback other than McF4rtson's, I gotta put this out there now. Also, he's the one who designed my card border for this set, so double thank you as always to him. I'm gonna try to get in some reviews as well.

Warlord (Of Draenor)

Obviously not the final formatting but god it's late at night. I designed the class to take advantage of many untapped possibilities in HS, most notably being different forms of combat we've seen in cards like Duel!, Mass Hysteria and less mass Hysteria. My class keyword, Rally, summons minions from your hand to attack enemies instead of the usual ways spells deal damage. However, I basically couldn't use any direct damage spells in Basic so as to not waste my design space, and given the other big theme of my class is slow but permanent buffs, I had a... fun time, to say the least, conveying my themes in the restrictions of basic. I'll list my classes' strengths and weaknesses in spoilers.

 Now, I'll look back through other classes from this page

- @Wintrmute I like the Scrying and deck manipulating aspects you're starting off with, and I'd be interested to see what else your class can do. I'd honestly say the ghoul could be 3/2 or 2/3, as I don't think the 6/6 gets drawn earlygame enough to be a mitigater to it's stats. I was going to caution you about unending winter but the durability clause is actually a smart way to get around the fatigue situation. That being said, if you have two you will never fatigue so that's worrying. Forbidden Research is kinda brick-y earlygame, so I think it could be reduced to 2 mana.

- @Klaytonio We love a good James Craig. I would say that designing half your basic set around your Hero Power itself as opposed to having a lot of cards that interact with it's effect is often not a strong baseline. I'd say prune back to 2-3 or perhaps find ways to rephrase some so they aren't bound inextricably to it's effect. That being said I think this is a good enough start.

- @Laurendor Plaguelands Clinician and Slimepocalypse are nutty removal tools. I'm concerned that I can't really figure out what your classes' weaknesses are from what I'm seeing, so having high end cards like Clinician and Pocalypse isn't outright bad I can't quite decide if they're balanced or indeed the class is. That being said, I like the design spaces you're working in, and I'm glad to see a limiter on your keyword. You may want to determine whether all your cards fit basic, as four lines of text on four different cards is pretty high. Also, RIP Stradama.

-@JollyCroquet If you want easy WoW lore, there were like fifty different decks you could get at Darkmoon Faire, and a few different Deck based trinkets. I think I even have one on my Monk right now. Plus there's Inscription which has a bunch of decks. Anyhoo. I think you've got a heavy draw theme but I can't tell what it's building to. I see a lot of health bonuses and draw, which has me split between stall and combo, but I'm not sure entirely where you're headed. That could easily be fixed in Core and onwards, but as of now I'd caution you on how much card draw you have (And I totally get it because my class has been hell to determine the amount of draw for)

@MvonTzeskegrad I'm gonna do a full post in a bit but I just needed to pop in to note Bang for Your Buck is currently broken. It's a one turn kill in wild with Malygos and three coins and probably not impossible in standard either. Seeing as it's a two card OTK that's insane. Maybe +1 or +2 for each coin?

   I wanted to bring to discussion Hero Powers once again, and specifically 3 Mana Hero Powers. I'm toying around with a few Hero Power concepts trying to get the effect I want, and at the moment I'm looking at a version that would necessitate a 3m HP. In my opinion, a 3m HP is within the spirit of the design space created with Demon Hunter, and while not necessarily a beneficial design space I think it wouldn't be against the spirit of Hero Design for these. However, historically it has been out of the cards, so i wanted to bring the discussion here

@LivingOrganism I'd caution you that custom minion types and/or spell schools sometimes do more harm then good, as historically voters haven't responded well to it. I'd say it's fine to do your own if you want but we'll see what McF4rtson thinks, just be careful

@MvonTzeskegrad I'd do all three for your class. Depending on which covenant you're based around one will be more frequent than the others. Having played Kyrian for most of Shadowlands I can say it's sometimes inconsistent what shows up the most in that covenant between holy and arcane. If you really want a concrete answer, I'd say Arcane because it shows up almost nowhere but Mage.

@Laurendor I like where you're going so far, but as far as I've seen cards like Rebuke and Mana Burn didn't see much use, so I'm not sure Slimed is particularly good.

@WhatTheHeck As a general rules, I think the spells are fine but at this point in Hearthstone a class minion with one keyword at balance parity with a basic set minion just strikes me as weaker than average. I would add higher stats, some effect or a keyword combo that gives them a unique design space.

@Livienna 1. Historically you can reuse any class that hasn't won. 2. I feel ya buddy I haven't played since Immortal Prelate was a viable rogue pick.

@LivingOrganism You're getting a lot of feedback and I didn't have time to read through all of their comments, so I'll try to give you a different comment and I apologize if it overlaps. In any case, even the minion heaviest classes had no more than 4 minions in their class. I'd say you could stretch it to 5 with good explanation, but 6 is definitely higher than I recommend you go. They also generally stick around the bottom half of the mana scale for spells, and while I like the effects presented here I'd reevaluate which fit basic set. For example, I think the rule was loosened this time around, but generally cost reduction didn't appear on cards until after basic set. 

For the record, I was trying to pass a card like this by McF4rtson and he probably, quite rightfully said no;

   I was trying to stretch some of the established 'deciduous' concepts to fit into my class frame. I'm of the mind that though we haven't seen examples of Quests or sidequests appearing in a single class only for an expansion, it's still within the spirit of Hearthstone design ethos. Quests, Heroes and few other minor effects tend to cycle in and out of design space, and with situations like Rogue secrets I believe that the team can easily expand their parameters to encompass a broad stroke of design space that we as creators tend to think of as inaccessible without a prior example.

   What I don't have however, is a way to point to what is and isn't a balanced use of that broad stroke. While I'm suggesting more freedom in design space, generally the motto that limiting design space promotes creativity holds true. And, in the end it's McF4rtson's contest so his wisdom will hold true. I'm advocating for more space to construct interesting new concepts in the vein of Hearthstone, but as I don't have a solid limiter and yardstick to hold ideas by I'm not going to be upset if we go ahead with the usual lockouts on design space. No doubt that running any given contest is hard enough without us bringing in some of the harder to police tangent ideas we all have.

   Looking forward to when the full contest starts off!

Warden

   This was a one-shot concept I did with technical support from my confidant McF4rtson two or so weeks back. I did a few touchups but the concept remains the same as that nights' concept was. Warden is a control class in the vein of old control Rogue, with a dash of Warrior and Demon Hunter... which considering the lore feels pretty nice. Warden does very little healing, but mitigates damage by stealing attack from minions, stalling out the hunt so they can overwhelm their opponents with well laid plans. This comes into play with their keyword...

   When building your deck, you can choose any number of Setups and Payoffs (Notably Hearthstone currently caps you at 40 cards but that's the sort of thing blizz would change if they had a good enough concept), but every Setup lowers the chances to draw non-Setup cards, and Setups baseline aren't as powerful. However, over time the Payoffs will increase the power level if you can outlast your opponent. I'm not gonna stand on ceremony too long however, it's card time.

Common

Rare

Epic

Legendary

Aaaaaaand here's the code if you want to do your own Warden. ({{CCLASS=warden1846}}) It's not the most up to date but I made the cardback like... two years ago now? Can't remember. Weapons old school, can't really do spell types well. I still like it however.

   If you like what you saw or have any questions, I'll probably check comments for the first week if there are any. I hope you enjoyed the concept! Have a nice day.

I voted Yay, but I would point out that Expansion comp might be interested with the new core set. Hell, if we're crazy we could do a core set competition. Either way, I'll be there.

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

Hunter

Mage

Paladin

Priest

Rogue

Shaman

Warlock (I apologize in advance)

Warrior

Neutral commons

Neutral Rares

Neutral Epics

Neutral Legendaries

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.

So uh, people may have noticed I don't post much for these forums even when I was still in the contest; I'm only here as a friend of McF4rtson IRL. That introduction aside, we collaborated on making a Prize for this contest (Yes, I know Hearthpwn doesn't really do prizes)!

So, the prize is the exclusive* new cardback we built together recently! Effectively we'll give you free reign and a headstart to mess around with a 100% unique class border. Whoever gets the most votes we'll send the code for (And we'll hold the png files for awhile so they can't just be copied), and you'll get like a month or three of unique access to it. We made these on a whim and don't have a tech class planned so we won't be using it for a bit either. Even if you don't feel like using it, they may make for a fun banner or profile image, or you could share them amongst your friends or forums (Provided you credit Jengus and McF4rtson, that goes without saying). I'll stop gesticulating, and show you the file for at least Minion.

Anyways, congratulations to everyone who made it this far! My favorite class from this competition was Fishermen, a real breath of fresh air (And also not a color in the spectrum between red and blue) in my opinion. Every class that got this far brought their A-game and they all look really fun to play.

   Hey @MvonTzeskagrad and @Klipce; McF4rtson reached out to see if the issue with the scholomance class border was showing up for different people and we're both experiencing it when trying to upload. I would reccommend at the moment just making neutral mockups. Worst comes to worst, we can line up the borders by hand (The legendaries will be fun but it can be done). To that end, try to crank those cards out first, we may need a night or two to line them up if we need to go that route.

Also good luck to everyone who's still going! 

EDIT: We fixed it literally five minutes later, shake my head. McF4rtson will probably contact you with next steps.

The Somnologist

So a lot of what I'll be showcasing in this set is Consume cards. We called them shrink last round, don't @ me, the name was in contention for a bit. Effectively, this class likes setting up very small buffs that it can remove; Negatives thoughts (Or positive character traits) to be consumed by the shady Somnologist. Consume  cards give incredible effects for their cost due to their set up nature. I'm showcasing four here and one payoff. And yes, you can consume opponent's buffs if you're feeling frisky.

Next round, we tackle Secret minions.

The Cards

 Mass Hallucination - This is the classes' answer to AoE; Put all your opponents in one place, and kill them as one. There's a token in the above spoiler that explains it. This nullifies Deathrattles or damage effects, but makes it so your board will likely die if you trade by minion damage. This is the sort of transformation effect I want to really show off how the Somnologist deals with problems, I'm very happy with it.

Narcoleptic Bothers - Yes, I know the six tokens don't do anything different but they're all so cute. This is an optional effect much like Magnetic is, and allows you to parlay your small buffs (Or your opponent's Blunders) into more and more Boogeyhounds.

Power-tripping Counselor - Did you know there's a whole graveyard in the game for enchantments? I learned that recently. Counselor capitalizes on those buffs taken off with Narcoleptic Bothers and others. Plus, it gives the Metagame decisionmaking of whether or not to consume really good buffs to save them for later.

While we wait for the voting to complete, I thought y'all might like this. My friend thinks it's pretty dumb but I think it's a giggle. It's just meant to be a minion with good keywords for buffing, with a flavorful affect. Stats and keywords may vary.

The Somnologist

    Reveal your pain to her. She can provide you with the answers to your questions; Why are your nights plagued with nightmares? Who are these foul beasts, arising from sleeping cities and tangled red vines, to devour your hope? And why is it getting worse?! Well, take a seat, and tell her how it makes you feel... the Doctor is in.

    Somnologist is, more accurately, a psychologic class. In grand card game tradition, you will present your opponent with hidden plans and choices, and watch them squirm. Somnologist relies on strong single target removal, minion buffing and sticky, if small minions. It has a strong, if situational Hero Power that works best when you either play minions to curve or return your opponents' minions to sleep. Other than their Hero Power, Somnologist has more complicated draw power, designed to make aggro a bit harder for them. Their other weaknesses include not having one step AoE and fewer options to regain life outside buffing lifesteal minions. 

   In the next set, I'm excited to work with a bunch of concepts I play with but haven't really shown off before; Secrets on minions (A la Morph from MTG), Psychological warfare and modal cards that can be used in multiple tactical scenarios. I also have a keyword, Shrink, which removes the oldest listed enchantment/buff from a minion for an additional effect. Often, I'll use it on buff cards for a larger buff, or as a minor silence that only negates opposing buffs. I'm really excited to play around with all these concepts.

The Cards

  Sleep Paralysis Daemon: So Sleep exists as a mechanic in Hearthstone, but it's only explored on a single Ogre from Uldum. I seek to correct this. The issue is, all minions wake up at the end of the turn, as far as my understanding of the game mechanic goes. So, the sleep effects I have implemented often have conditionals. Daemon will lock down a minion in the early game, and in the lategame after you have Taunts up. The Aberration tag isn't important to mechanics at the moment, but it is a species tag in WoW. Assume betentacled creatures in HS would be Aberrations in the context of this class for now. If it ever becomes important I'll make an actual list.

  Groupthink: This card emblemizes the small buffs that Somnologist likes to abuse for it's keyword, in hand or otherwise. This can smooth out your curve for playing a minion and a Shrink buff the same turn. The class has larger targeted buffs as well.

  Mind into Matter: The ultimate polymorph. Remove a minion, or if you're strategic, a weapon. Psychologists are great at disarming people like that. This class lives and breathes in strong, anti-resurrect single target removal options, and later on some spells and minions that will spread that love around.

Fun stuff coming later....

- 4 mana 4/4 minions... with a secret attached to them.

- Adding Dream cards... to your oppponents hand (With a twist!).

- "Replace your opponent's emotes with the Concede button."

- A spell that condenses all enemies into one... for a turn.

Quote from AnarchistMurloc >>

 

Hero: Naga Sea Witch

 

Hey uh, this is literally just Sea Witch from a few contests back. You probably didn't intend to just use the same concept, but the deck manipulation element was the whole core of the class. Also, the guy who made Sea Witch Co-runs these nowadays and also made the cardback from scratch, so it feels a bit tacky to just do what won before.