A'ight, i think i gathered my thoughts on the submissions for this round. I'm not going to give a highly detailed review of each as that would make for one horrible wall of text, but i'll try to summarize the facts that felt most important to me.
- Loaded Crossbow: I scrolled over that discussion over this and Hunting Rifle a bit and i'd honestly say one is as good as the other in benefiting aggressive playstyles - they just do it in slightly different ways. The crossbow is a huge damage accelerator that you have limited control over and that heavily benefits you if you're ahead on board - which basically already is Hunter's win condition at any given time. You are not necessarily winning if you are ahead on board by turn 4 - go play a bit of Hunter right now and see how that works out - but if you manage to connect 4-6 damage off of this to the face straight away, that sounds like it would pretty much seal the deal.
- Runeblade: I feel like this card is overdoing it a little on the value part. You are getting 6/6 worth of stats for 4 mana and any weapon upgrade makes this even stronger. Sword of Justice is doing the same "cheap cost for stronger board presence"-thing but this is way easier to pull off - even on one turn. It also has huge combo potential with Vicious Fledgling or anything with windfury. A little too huge for my liking.
- Boot Dagger: I'm with Zardoz here, this feels a little forced to fit the restriction. The effect is sort of like Raid Leader's but only active on your turn, but harder to remove as a weapon, but with less attack power than Raid Leader... so yeah, balancing is probably alright. I don't think the effect is really that exciting though.
- Vanishing Blade: I can't stress enough how much it bothers me that the art is just straight the Dagger of Time from the Prince of Persia series. I think the effect is an interesting idea but incredibly hard to balance and it definately shouldn't give permanent stealth. There's a reason why all stealth-giving buffs wear off at the start of your turn. Also the "if it survives"-part is not needed - good luck in stealthing dead minions :D
- Firesoul Axe: Another interesting idea in my opinion but it seems heavily underpowered. The Shaman HP is usually something you either squeeze in to fill your curve or take a chance with to maybe get the exact totem you need right now. What you usually don't want to do is spend your mana excessively on rerolling if you whiffed or clog up your board with (mostly) useless totems. The idea has it's appeal but Shaman seems to be one of the worst classes to use Hero Power refreshment in.
- Hellreaver: I'm really torn on whether this is balanced or not. On one hand this is constructed nicely to kill basically every minion that Pirate Warrior utilizes. On the other hand it still is a 20 (!) damage powerhouse on a weapon and charge minions don't really care about dying after they've dealt their damage. It is still slow, yes, but this is also a really huge sword of damokles hanging above you when you face it.
- Jade Blade: The counterintuitivity of this bugs me a little. You are attacking to destroy your minion, pass up the damage and then upgrade it and possibly get that damage in later. As counterintuitive and sluggish as it seems though, it still is some insane Jade acceleration you can generate off of this. The power level of that combination feels really hard to evaluate and the playstyle sadly doesn't really appeal to me that much.
- Fel Axe: I really like the idea and flavor on this. You can make this quite powerful if you're playing accordingly and the drawback of the weapon can also be utilized by specific deckbuilding. The balancing also seems fine as it can become a strong weapon but it takes time or at least some setup to get there. My only nitpick is that the formating is a tiny bit messed up but that can easily be remedied by slightly rewording the card.
- Netherbane: This also feels a little counterintuitive, as weapons are mainly and mostly used to protect or reinforce the board. On the other hand it can be used to push out a huge chunk of damage at once - you could even use this on the same turn as Leeroy Jenkins as another way to deal 13 damage from your hand. And i'm not sure if i want warrior to have even more burst that you have to play around.
- Omegablade: This is an interesting take on weapon design but it feels either too strong or too slow to be really viable. If you can activate it on the same turn you play it (meaning giving it 4-5 attack right after equipping it) it would probably be stronger than Arcanite Reaper, if not, you are extremely vulnerable to weapon removal. Also i'm not really sold on the flavour yet - is this an actual WoW-weapon or is there some different kind of reference i'm not getting?
- Dagger of C'thun: The flavor and power level on this feel way off to me. First of all - wouldn't you normally rather sacrifice minions to praise/buff your C'thun? Also because of that this is way to powerful as a C'thun accelerator: You don't have to sacrifice anything - no minions, no durability and you can just sit on this and keep buffing until your opponent finds some weapon removal. All of that added to the fact that C'thun Rogue does already need little more C'tun buffs than Blade of C'Thun makes me really question the balance on this.
- Elemental Striker: This on the other hand feels way too expensive for it's power level. You are either getting 5 1/2 bodies added only to your hand (!) or 10 really slow points of damage (or any combination between those 2).
- High Priest's Staff: This is another weapon that feels to slow - you are restoring a total of 6 Health for 3 mana spread in chunks of 1 on each target. Also notice that the heals are happening before the actual attack like with Truesilver Champion, so there's also a lot of potential to miss heals. And finally the wording is slightly off - Hearthstone cards usually use "restore X Health" instead of "heal for X".
- Corrupted Ashbringer: This is mostly a weaker version of Fel Axe. Since your board has to actually attack and die for the buff to happen, the card feels way too expensive at 5 mana. My first idea actually used the exact same wording but was a bit cheaper and a Warlock class weapon. As the effect heavily benefits zoo anyway, i also think this would fit a lot better in Warlock, but since Paladin can sometimes asseble quite the zoo itself, this is just a minor concern.
- Argent Defender: This was my take on trying something different with weapons. It was quite the task to balance this as i wanted it to be equally accessible to aggro and control decks without being broken or weak in either of the two. It's also neccesary to keep it out of the 4 mana slot since Truesilver pretty much rocks that one on itself. I think both worked out quite well though. In an aggressive deck you can face-tank a lot of trades to get or stay ahead on board while sacrificing a lot of Health in the process. As a control player you could use it to enable some favourable trades but also get rid of the weapon fast enough to prevent dying due to excessive health loss. I think flavor and balancing worked out quite well. Might turn out to be a little broken with Finja, the Flying Star though.
- Spectral Blade: As Zardoz already said: A recyclable weapon for 2 mana in Rogue? You already have that. You get 2 damage immediately instead of spreading it over two turns but the weapon really doesn't offer any new or interesting plays for the class.
- Sword of the Alliance: This seems to be very ambitious. Normally you'r not spawning that many dudes in one game and they also have to survive one turn and attack to become relevant for this weapon. I believe to get any guaranteed value out of this, you might even have to keep it in your opening hand - even though the meta has slowed down a little, that would be one heavy disadvantage to start the game with.
- Thorny Dagger: Since daggers aren't usually part of a Hunter's armory the flavor is slightly off on this one but the general effect is a neat face-damage acceleration that comes with a slight drawback. It might be more useful as a 2/2 since Hunter relies pretty heavily on the amount of damage he can do at once, but overall its a simple design that mostly accomplishes what it tries to do.
- Evolution Axe: As nurgling already mentioned, the wording and formating of the card are quite off. I'd also argue it is mostly disfunctional: The "Whenever" means that the evolution will happen before the actual attack (again, like with Truesilver Champion) - minions that come off of Evolve count as played this turn though, which makes them unable to attack unless they have charge. So you would basically attack, evolve and then the attack would probably be canceled. The general effect - even if not that original - is quite neat but the overall design looks really unpolished.
- Hunting Rifle: Although it doesn't push as much potential face damage as Loaded Crossbow, as i mentioned earlier, this one still benefits aggressive Hunters by heavily accelerating your "trade-damage", if you're forced to do some trades. For example this would make it significantly easier to get through some beefy taunts without having to sacrifice valuable burst or board presence. At 5 Durability however it might become clunky quite easily, as it would be quite hard to get rid of and might cause a bunch of wasted or unwanted damage on some small trades which might not be forced (like with taunts) but necessary to prevent any favorable trades for your opponent.
Finally - for anyone who is actually still reading this - i want to point out that i agree with thepowrofcheese: The voting deadline being one week after the submission deadline is way too long. I know this competition doesn't recieve the same attention as f.e. the weekly competitions, but i think we can expect people to decide on their favourites within less than one week. And again this overlong deadline really does a poor job on keeping up people's excitement for this tournament.
1
1
1
1
the hero power would also be called "Pick Pocket" :) hope you like!!
1
7
Raven Idol
4
Remember, not all giants are neutral!! (Snowfury Giant)
Hope you like.
6
Great read!! Well done and congrats again :D
14
yup, it's ridiculous. I DONT CARE I LIKE IT
1
my entry for the week, hope you like!