Hearthpwn

Quote from Pr1ncipe4i20 >>

Quote from Heidegger11 >>

runeterra is better in several aspects, especially about deck balance. The mechanics are better and, currently, there are at least 20 high-ranking competitive decks. I'll mention the ones that come to mind: aggro noxus-targon, pirate aggro, fiora shen, endure, midrange frostbite, go hard, plaza scout, zoe lee, zoe fiora, fearsome, discard jinx, nox-pil burn, warmother, soraka tahm, teemo, scargrounds...

 Do you have any site to netdeck good runeterra decks? I'm always find horrible sites with horrible lists. I like the game but don't have the same patience to deckbuilding there like i have in years of HS and still has in HS.

 I'm a huge fan of MegaMogwai for LoR decks.  He's super fun and engaging, and a really down to earth honest dude.  All the other people listed in the thread are great too, he's just my personal fave for this game.

I play so many card games...
It started with YuGiOh as a kid, which I picked up again senior year of High School.  That year I got my first smart phone and installed Hearthstone.

In 2020 I wasn't playing much HS, and one of my favorite LoL Champs got put into LoR with one of my favorite Regions (Bilgewater) and I downloaded that to try it out, and I fell in love.  A few months later, I started watching people play Commander (an MTG Format) to kill time at work and now I play that too.

And for good measure I have a Pokemon deck I don't play much lol.

Each card game has something different to offer imo.  LoR has a lot going for it.  It's crisp and clean, it feels satisfying to play and has fun, engaging mechanics.  Hearthstone feels classic, and has the best game feel of any CCG I've played.

LoR however is waaaay more accessible, which a lot of people on here are framing as like, a bad thing?  Like "oh people just like free stuff" - well yeah free stuff is awesome, and it makes it easier to play fun games.  Hearthstone in contrast is severely inaccessible, its so damn expensive to pick up a full collection, dwarfed only by MTG Arena's awful economy.  The season pass thing that provides tons of gold is a step in the right direction, but we're miles from where we should be.

I love Even decks!  I haven't been to Legend yet, but Even Hunter and Even Paladin both got me to Diamond 7, the furthest I've ever gotten.
I don't have Mage cards, unfortunately, so I would basically need to craft every non-neutral haha.

This looks like a really enjoyable theorycraft that I'd really dig playing.  I'll favorite this for the day I have Mage cards - or the day I decide to live out my fantasy of getting Legend with an Even deck of every class (except Demon Hunter aha).

It's been a popular community request.  I know Regis has been a vocal advocate for this for a while, and Blizzard knows that people are into the idea.  It's probably on the same list as "Upgrade to Golden", where they could do it, but they're just busy with other stuff at the moment.

Quote from AsclepiusMD >>

Nice ideas. Was really thinking about Shaman yesterday (toying with Elemental Shaman) and realized that Shaman just has too many mechanics going on at this point.

• Overload
• If you are Overloaded
• Murlocs
• Play a spell the turn prior
• Play an elemental the turn prior

The last of the two is a let-down since it probably would've been better if Marshspawn and Shattered Rumbler could trigger even if you cast the spell the current turn. Same probably with those that requires having used an Elemental (e.g., Liliypad Lurker and Arid Stormer) the turn prior (would've been better if it also allowed the use of an Elemental on that same turn). Maybe this could actually be a keyword as well like:

Recycle: If you did it this turn or last turn.

• Then maybe Landslide could read: "Deal 1 damage to all enemy minions. Recycle Overload, deal 1 damage again"
• Or Marshspawn. "Battlecry: Recycle Spell, Discover a Spell"

Although there might be a better keyword for it. Haha. Might help you with more ideas.

 I can dig using Keywords to shorten card text.  Frankly, I think Keywords are best used for simplifying card text for more complicated ideas like this.  It's trickier with this concept, since it needs to be flexible - applicable to both casting spells AND Overloading.  And more, frankly, since the game theoretically exists until the sun explodes haha.

If you Recall a Spell...

Maybe Recall?  Recall - If you've played a card of a specific type last turn, trigger X.
That way you can at least go between Spells, Minions, and Weapons.  When it comes to the cards triggering if you'd cast a spell the same turn, I think the design intent was meant to encourage you to plan out your turns like Elementals like to do; though both cards are pretty weak in payoff and rarely are able to be played in the sequence they like for one reason or another.  I think the "If you're Overloaded" text is fine, but limiting for whatever effects you want the card to do since it's so much text.

I dig the idea though - I'd probably have it as a Neutral ability so that the "plan your turns ahead" goodness can bounce between all the classes.

I've got some ideas brewing that I'm really into that further explore these mechanics.

Weirdly I've been struggling to make minions I'm excited about, all of the effects (if you couldn't already tell haha) seem to fit so easily onto spells in my mind.  All the same I have tried to come up with some minion concepts, as well as a very strange means of playing with Ramp over time.  Unfortunately I'm at work and can't really do the Hearthcards thing, so I'll try and do that tomorrow.  I'll have very little free time though, so we'll see.

Thank you for your insight!  I appreciate criticism, here is the only place I feel I can get input on my ideas - it's not good to just sit and stew on my concepts without any outside input. 

I guess if Ramp as a concept is something you're opposed to, I could see why the mechanic moving into another class might make you a little bit jittery.  I promise you that the design intent is to make Shaman more engaging, and play more with its mana - while giving the option for Control decks to Ramp regularly with the less efficient cards.  With the generally compact size of Decks in Hearthstone compared to MTG or LoR, I feel that with the right ratio of cards designed for that purpose being ran, a Shaman would consistently get value from popping their Mana as often as they Ramp to replace what they've lost.  The goal is to give Shaman powerful stuff to do that leads to more dynamic gameplay - though Ramp is a rickety rope bridge I'd need to be careful designing around in a class that's never had it before.

I think you've got a really good point about Enriched being the final piece of mana you spend rather than the first.  It'll also allow for more powerful "After this minion's mana is spend" effects, justified by being the final piece of mana you spend instead of the first one.  The pricing of Enriched minions is the trickiest aspect of their design, since they refund a Mana just by existing.  Their stats would mainly be defensive to make them harder to remove, though still being punishing if they do get popped by the opponent.

And I'm glad you dig Cleanse!
Thanks for taking the time to let me know what you think!

Quote from Hooghout >>

Quote from TheSpunYarn >>

 Several years ago I resembled Blizzard to the Romans. They organized games for the masses. To keep the occupied and satisfied. They gave them games. Aggro decks are like the gladiators. They rock.....I already see you scream..kil, kill, kill. But then Marcus Aurelius came around and stopped the mindlessness. 

Waiting for a Marcus at Blizzard.

 Don't you think it's a bit of a stretch to compare a digital children's card game to Romans literally enslaving people and having them fight to the death for entertainment?  The Colosseum is on the same level of morality as aggro decks?  Or are you just saying that the aggressive mentality of aggro decks is similar to combatants in the Colosseum?

I'm not sure what your point is here.

Aggro decks rock.  They're face paced, fun, and accessible to basically everybody who plays the game.
The relevant nuance that comes with playing an aggro deck well is something a lot of people either don't see or choose to ignore because they just want to believe that they're superior to people who play aggro.  It really bums be out how common this mentality is.

For those who are understandably upset at no announcement of balance changes, Alec Dawson announced on Twitter they'd be exploring them this week and implementing them the next week.  So give it two weeks and we'll see something, I hope.

In terms of value, allow me to put on my TrumpSC hat for a moment, clearly Warlock is the winner here.  Tickatus, Tamsin Roame, Soulciologist Malicia, and Y'Shaarj the Defiler are all craftable Legendaries in this deck, which is fantastic for people with lacking collections (like myself).  Unfortunately I don't play much Warlock (thus needing all of those cards), and the Demon Hunter list (the class I want to start collecting for) is pretty average.  2 Epics I don't already have is okay I guess, though Vengeful Spirit is no Cascading Disaster - though that's not really the decks fault is it?

Frankly I'd buy both if I could, but I can't, so I'll just get the Demon Hunter one and settle for it.

Just some final cards as an attempted proof of concept.  Sorry that this is formatted so strangely, this is the first time I've done something like this on here.  Would putting the cards in the actual post only work if I had them on an imgur album or something?  Let me know please.

Here's some Cleanse cards, as well as concepts for how Ramp would work in Shaman.

Hello!  As a passion project for the past couple months I’ve been conceptually reworking each class, imagining new Keywords and class mechanics to make each class feel more distinct, flavorful, and engaging to play.  I usually return to working on this when inspiration hits me, since I’ve learned that creative work doesn’t flow when you force it.

I started this project with Hunter, developing an embarrassingly long, diary-like Google Doc detailing my grievances with the direction of its card design in the Year of the Dragon and Year of the Phoenix, and creating my own custom Keywords and class mechanics to no particular end - I just enjoyed doing it.

Shaman was the second Doc I made, because it’s my second favorite class.  It has so much potential for awesome flavor and thematics, while being extremely engaging to play.  Unfortunately, nothing about Shaman in its current state implements that at all.  Whatever the current Blizzard design ethos for Shaman is, it’s done very little for the class’s benefit in my opinion.  Shaman tends to be a competitively binary figure, it either does extremely well, infuriating the community with a powerful aggressive/midrange deck; or it doesn’t see the light of day, lingering at or below tier 3 with burn lists that are begging for an ounce of card draw or consistency.

I had experimented with some ideas for Shaman before.  A card that opens up an alternative Hero Power (naturally inconsistent since you’d need to draw it); two different Keywords that would be new to Shaman, et cetera.  Eventually I settled on an initial ethos for how I wanted to approach the class:

Shamans are spiritualists chosen by the Elements, the quasi-sentient building blocks of the world.  They’re sagacious, using their wisdom to guide their decision-making.  They wield the Elements in battle, casting devastating spells and summoning powerful elementals to wipe out their foes.  The Elements are naturally versatile, and so they’re able to answer whatever problems the Shaman who controls them comes across.  Able to Overload their Mana with surges of Elemental might, summon hordes of Elementals, and Ascend their spells to recast them when needed, Shamans are versatile enough to tackle aggressive decks, midrange decks, and control decks each with some level of competence.

• Strengths: Damage spells, card generation, Tribal synergies
• Limitations: Tempo, minion buffs, card draw
• Weaknesses: High Mana Expenditures

I stuck to this concept rather faithfully for most of my work on the class, and some products of this line of thinking I’ll share.  Ascend was an old - now abandoned - Keyword concept that was essentially Buyback from MTG (for an investment of 2 mana when you cast a spell with Ascend, you’d add it back to your hand).  I remain firm in believing that Shaman should be versatile, able to build into aggro, midrange, or control.

Later on, a few days ago, I was struck with an incredible amount of inspiration after seeing the custom card “Harness The Storm” by FriendlyShadow on Hearthcards.  It gave me the idea that Shaman should be able to play around with Overload more.  Make it more than just a downside that tends to make the spell you cast less worth it.  I wanted Shaman to play with its mana way, way more.  And that was the impetus for a great deal of designs you’ll see here, as I’ll explain in a moment.

So in order to justify an addition to Shaman, I decided to double down on Overload as a mechanic.  I thought to myself, what if Overload could be more punishing, but the class provided more ways to work with and around Overload, rather than just cope with it.

Double-Overload is an adjustment to the Overload Keyword; if a Mana Crystal is Overloaded, and you play a card with Overload, that Overloaded Mana Crystal is destroyed.  For instance, if you Lightning Bolt turn 1, then Lightning Bolt turn 2, the Crystal that was Overloaded from last turn pops.  It’s gone for good.

Don’t worry though, since there’s two additions to Shaman that’ll help work around this issue.  First is a new Keyword that synergizes with Overload, and was directly inspired by “Harness The Storm”:

Cleanse - A card with Cleanse can only be paid for with Overloaded Mana Crystals.  Doing so restores the Crystals to an un-Overloaded state.

Functionally, Cleanse serves two purposes.  Firstly, it allows Shaman gameplay to be a little smoother, Cleanse wouldn’t be an insanely common Keyword (it’d be about 1/3rd as common as Overload is) and its effects would be helpful and strong because you need to be disadvantaged in the first place to play them.  Card draw and high tempo minions could have Cleanse, for instance, both reined in by the Keyword itself.

The other purpose of Cleanse is to deliberately step around Overload.  If you Cleanse before you cast another Overload card, you won’t Double-Overload and destroy your own Mana.

The second new feature I’d bring into Shaman might ruffle some feathers, but once I explain a little more (and show some cards to demonstrate how it would work) you might see where I’m coming from.

I’d want to put Mana Ramp in Shaman.  See, since Shaman is playing around with its mana with Overload, I asked myself why not go all in?  And what would Ramp in Shaman look like?  Of course, it would need to be and feel distinct from Druid.  This of course would come out in the Ramp spells themselves.  I didn’t want Shaman to have Druids routine mana curve, and Shaman already has a curve that’s different from other classes because of Overload.  So instead of steadily increasing over time like normal, or accelerating to 8 mana by turn 4, Shaman would be all over the fuckin place.

Shaman might pop its own Mana Crystals on turn 4 and wind up with 3 mana or so on turn 5, but could quickly accelerate past their opponent on the curve and follow up with another play, eventually losing more Crystals and dropping behind again only to Ramp back the next turn, and so on and so forth.  Shaman’s curve on a graph would look like the Stock Market in my ideal world.  Shaman uses its mana in weird ways, Crystals themselves have become a resource, so let them eat cake, I say.

One major part of my pet project has been designing Keywords.  When all is said and done, each class will have gained 3 Keywords, though only 1 of them will be class-specific.  I’m working with the same class-alignment/sibling class concept that was established in Scholomance with Dual Class cards.  A class will gain its own unique Keyword, as well as 2 Keywords that it shares with its sibling class.  Shaman, naturally, has these.

Mage/Shaman Keyword - Reverberate

I was trying to come up with how “Spell Tribal” would work now that Spell Schools exist, and I came up with this Keyword.  I gave it to Mage and Shaman as they have diverse Spell Schools; Mage using Arcane, Fire, and Frost - while Shaman had Fire, Frost, and Nature.  And it felt thematic for them both.  Reverberate is a spell-exclusive Keyword, which triggers when you cast a spell AFTER casting a spell of the same school.  So if you play a Fire Spell, then another Fire Spell with a Reverberate trigger on it, Reverberate resolves.

I had to come up with a clear idea of what each school was meant to do with Reverberate as an effect.

Fire Reverberations are focused on doing damage, having random targets or aoe, or maybe even temporary draw (in Soularium fashion).

Frost Reverberations are focused on defense, disruption, and freezing stuff.

Nature Reverberations are most likely focused on buffs, mana, healing, or summoning.

And finally with one new, and major, thing in common, the Keyword that Shaman and Druid share.

Druid/Shaman Keyword - Enriched

Enriched is simple enough.  A minion with Enriched is carrying a single-use Mana Crystal for you to use.  It would appear on the bottom of their portrait, and go away when you use it.  Like a Mana Dork in MTG, but one use.  When you would spend mana while an Enriched minion is on your field, its mana would be spent before the mana in your Mana Bar.

Of course this means that all Enriched minions need to be statted inefficiently, since they effectively cost (1) less than their mana cost says they do.  Regardless, it does function as mana you can access if the minion survives until your next turn, letting you skip ahead in mana as if you’d cast The Coin or Innervate, but it’s on a minion your opponent can destroy.

Druid takes more advantage of this mechanic than Shaman does in its designs, though Enriched has an opportunity for a new trigger effect: “After this minion’s Mana’s been spent”.  This opens up plenty of opportunities for card design with the Keyword between the two classes.

So that’s it, essentially.  Keep in mind, all of these Keywords, mechanics, and cards are all purely conceptual.  I’m not a balance wiz; when I design cards I prefer to balance around my designs, rather than design around balance.  I want my cards to be splashy and powerful and fun, I think any card in a game should be at least 2 out of 3 of those things.

I’ve been doing work around every class, though the ones I’m most familiar with are the ones with the most work put into them.  At this point all 10 classes have been worked on, and I’ve done a lot of Keyword development, though some classes need to be updated with Keywords they share with other classes.

I’m rambling.  Let me know what you think!
I'm absolutely baffled by how adding pictures to this post works - I don't know how everybody does it.  I'll just do it in a few separate posts.

Ah Alleria.  Back when I started playing and first realized Hunter was the coolest class, I bought this.  Must have been like 2017.  Back when she, Medivh, and Magni were staples of the shop.

Now I'm waiting for both of the Starseeker siblings to be available.  I probably won't start playing Demon Hunter until I have access to somebody who isn't *constantly angry*.

Alright I've typed up a draft of the post, though since I'm at work I don't have access to my many folders of completed card concepts and artwork I use.  I'll try and post it tomorrow, but I don't get to spend much time at home.