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- maxlot
- Card Design Champion
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Member for 7 years, 5 months, and 21 days
Last active Mon, Oct, 23 2023 20:27:34 -
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0
I imagine the concern comes from the power of the potion itself moreso than how easy it is to fetch it. 5 mana to transform a minion into a 6/6 with Taunt could just be a regular card, it could easily be cheaper. As of right now, it may be easy to fetch the potion, but there's not much reason for the player to do so. As a player, I'd like to feel rewarded for managing to reach my potion so many times in a game, so I feel it'd be a lot better at 1 to 3 mana, depending on personal fancy.
0
I get the point you're making but I don't see why this isn't just a 0 mana card with a battlecry? I'm probably missing something.
0
Well.
I'm not sure what to say except that this was unfortunate. That and, of course, good luck and good job to those who made it through.
0
I'd defend the comment on Spirit Claws in comparison to Mjolnir because that's not meant to do anything aside from point out that this falls under a very similar issue that Spirit Claws met. However I'll concede that the next two were in poor taste. The first one was to further emphasize the fault of the mechanic still lying in the Start of Game cards in general while addressing another issue, however on reflection it just goes back into being adding unnecessary rude comments. The second thing was meant to be an exaggeration to try and get you to understand my confusion, but again, ended up just sounding rude. The fourth thing wasn't supposed to be a cheap jab, though it does definitely seem like one and I apologize. Back about a year ago I made the King class, people weren't honest about its faults, and I ended up looking back at it a year later with nothing but embarrassment. I know it sounds like a bad excuse but I'm not trying to be hateful in any of this and I don't want any actual conflict here, I just decided to avoid being soft in said review because I really wanted to get my point across. Of course I'm able to give constructive criticism without feeling hurtful, I've managed to do that quite consistently in other places where I'm active, it's just that I didn't want to here. And it's not like I don't feel any remorse or whatever for being hurtful, I have made sure to check with people to make sure I wasn't going TOO far in it and I've been worryingly anticipating your reaction to it ever since I posted it half a day ago. I've felt sick to my stomach since I saw your comment about it earlier and honestly I don't want to get into an argument right now on crudeness. From the start I've only cared about you seeing what I thought were the main issues with the expansion and talking about them so I could get your insights and maybe have a meaningful discussion. Sorry about the cruder of the comments, though well meaning maybe they went too far, if you could address the arguments I made in the review itself I think both of us would feel better about this.
0
Dude. It's not like I was keeping track but I spent around an hour or so writing that review. I'm sorry that I was harsh in my review but I have to ask why you think I actually left it? It's not like I was just mindlessly hating on your stuff, I made sure everything I said had a basis and GENUINELY am only saying it because I think there are issues with what you've made and that you can improve on it. There's a difference between hating on things and trying to be harsh with criticisms, I wasn't intending to pussyfoot around things. If you want I can just not speak fully honestly about my thoughts in reviews in future, if that's what you want. I'm gonna put emphasis on what I say if I want you to comprehend my thoughts, and I'm sorry if you don't want to deal with that.
0
Oh that's cool, I like that. I think a couple of changes could be made, main one being a name change. Faction Points is pretty long and doesn't sound very interesting. How about something like Prestige or Loyalty? I think something like that conveys more, something that makes you sound respected or noble. I definitely agree with Vile that these should have some UI considerations posted, something elegant to show all this would really solidify this system in well. I prefer it over rings, it has more potential as said. I do like that the Flags are free but don't give you any benefit by themselves, meaning the synergy cards like the Elekk are basically cards you choose the conditions for.
0
Right, since I hadn't actually read through all this before and you've clearly done a lot, I thought I'd give out a little review. Obviously the first thing I want to address is the biggest part of the expansion, which are the Start of Game legendaries. They are, by a significant margin, the most badly thought out cards in the set thus it's important to talk about them the most.
Start of Game
If you look at all the current Start of Game cards in Hearthstone, you'll notice something. Prince Malchezar's effect is neutral, mainly detrimental even, and Baku/Genn have a purely positive effect though it only comes through severely limiting deckbuilding decisions. YOUR Start of Game cards all do something for you without any conditions whatsoever, and the effect is always almost purely positive, the only exception being some limiting your board size to 6 for a potentially long time, which is at most only a minor negative. A card that gives you a benefit at all that requires no sacrifice, not in mana, not in deck and not in draw is a card that's always going to be broken, unhealthy for the game and distant from any reasonable design philosophy. A card where said benefit is three guaranteed secrets that get you a broken card or a recurring 1 mana Drain Soul that ramps up in damage is so insanely overpowered that it boggles the mind.
Prince Charming
Also a few days ago I gave my opinion that Prince Charming was a mundane form of support for these Start of Game cards as the interesting aspect of said Start of Game cards happened at the start of the game and thus the remaining card to be left over would be less interesting. Demon pointed out that they had other effects so I apologized having not seen the actual Start of Game cards by that time. Now that I've actually seen them I'm gonna take it back. If I'm playing in a theoretical world where Wish of the Queen or some other Start of Game card isn't hopelessly overpowered, the reason I've put it in my deck and built my deck around it because I want to use the secrets it gives me and then the permanent spell lifesteal effect. The reason I'm running it is not to use Prince Charming to draw a strictly worse Shadow Bolt/Fireball.
I'm saying without a shadow of a doubt that Prince Charming is an arbitrary, mundane edition of Countess Ashmore and The Curator.
The Curator draws me three tribal cards, their connection to eachother is obvious. Tribes typically reward you for playing multiple minions of the same tribe, and thus this card that draws cards from three different ones is interesting, especially when Murlocs are typically small, Dragons are typically big and Beasts are very varied but mostly around the middle.
Countess Ashmore draws me three types of cards also, one has Rush, one has Lifesteal, one has Deathrattle. One of these is a passive effect that goes on a minion, one is another passive effect that goes on any card but mostly minions, the other is a trigger that triggers after the cards death that can go on a minion or weapon but mostly minions. These three cards drawn don't have nearly as much connection as the Curator, Lifesteal and Rush are included because they're new and kinda thematic, and Deathrattle is included because it's thematic.
Finally, we get onto Prince Charming. He draws three types of cards. Start of Game is a one-time triggered effect that already happened before you played this, Elusive is a passive keyword that goes on a minion, Legacy is a triggered keyword that goes on a card but mostly minions. Just as many thematic connections as Countess Ashmore, but even less mechanical ones, even if you disregard the fact that Start of Game means absolutely nothing on a card when you draw it. With Countess Ashmore or The Curator, you expect a common result from their effect; The Curator will draw three tribal minions, typically one big, one small, one medium and Countess Ashmore will draw a card that heals you, one that does something when it dies and one that has an immediate effect. When you play Prince Charming, you draw a card that counters spells, one that does something when you play cards which could be literally anything, and then... Uhhhh, probably a spell that does something? Draws cards? Maybe it does damage? Maybe it draws a strict upgrade over Twisting Nether for the class with the weakest board clears in the game?
Mjolnir & Legend of Camelot
For some of the individual cards, why have you printed Mjolnir? Have you not learned from Spirit Claws' mistakes? That thing was infamous for being a 1 mana weapon that had 3 durability and three attack a quarter of the time when you hero power. This has three attack every time you hero power. This thing's nuts. Legend of Camelot is one of the most parasitic and dumb cards here. Imagine unpacking this or getting it as your free legendary card of the expansion. Actually needing other cards to make this card functional is dumb. Oh well, now that I do have this parasitic and over-complicated card I guess I'll go find some way to activate it. I'll just need to go to the collection and get King Arthur huh? Awww, he costs 1600 dust, I don't have that. I guess instead of getting a 6 mana 4/4 with multiple Equality effects strapped to it with insane synergy with Excalibur itself that could lock my opponent out of the game, I'll instead go buy the 40 dust filth-ridden f2p hobo option of a fucking 5 mana Wisp that doesn't even have any purpose unless you own this legendary card. Sure is a sad day to be poor huh, guess this is what the story of the Sword in the Stone was all about.
Final Notes
The perplexing thing about this is that both of you have been making cards for a long time. Hell, Demon even came in the semi-finals in the class competition earlier on this year. The reason I'm commenting on this is BECAUSE I know both of you are better than this, there were loads of terrible submissions in the first phase of the competition and I didn't care, not everyone's good at this, a lot of people are new. But to me this feels like getting Da Vinci and Raphael into the room and watching them work together to make a 7 year olds art project, it's legitimately confusing to see it happen. I'm being as harsh as possible about this because I've decided I don't want to just sit around and wait for you guys to spend a whole load of time and effort making something that's not fantastic. Screw not fantastic, terrible. I don't hate either of you guys, that's a dumb thing to do when the conflict is imaginary cards, and you still have your other two expansions to go through. If you guys could turn this expansion around though, that'd be genuinely great. I wouldn't even be criticizing here if I didn't think you guys could do that, this has taken some significant time here to write. And hell, I'm not right about everything, not even most things, but I'm not going to back away from this due to doubt. I understand if you're mad.
0
Didn't even consider that about DK Rexxar, definitely needs a toning down then. I really do think Marsh Seer currently counters big cards moreso than it does combo decks. If you were to change it to say something like the card below instead I think it'd still deal with combo decks just fine but wouldn't ban your opponent from playing any card in their deck that costs 8 or more. Making Leeroy cost 8 is still going to ruin shit tonnes of combo's anyway, though I don't know what combo cards you're making admittedly.
You do have a good concept here definitely. The prophet cycle is really cool, really like how you're dealing with Ambush, if most of them are like that I don't have much problem with it. I'm not sure how I feel about Finley Seafarer, as I said before I don't like information for information's sake as I like it being technically secondary on a card, simply information that helps the effect of the actual card. Generally information for the sake of information isn't really how Hearthstone does things so I'm not confident in it.
I definitely agree with you that demonlock is too obvious, and mechlock totally wouldn't fit yet. I think in general you should use health less frequently in your burdens due to the fact that it pushes the burden towards an aggro playstyle more than it does towards a deck that builds itself to prevent the effects of said burden.
Unsure what you should do for the actual bonuses but for both mage and warlock I think their negatives should change. You can sacrifice more than health, and I'd say a negative effect for warlock could be destroying friendly minions at the start of their turn to play as an egg or cubelock that has little control over their sacrifices and a lot of risk, destroying mana crystals under some condition you have to build around, or discarding cards some way.
For mage, I don't get why you'd punish mage for running spell damage, it's not like they do that a whole lot anyway. Again, the way it currently is probably just pushes them towards aggro burn decks, and I think there are more ways to simulate magical withdrawl than just dealing damage to your hero. Though it's a little similar to overload, perhaps mana crystals that go unspent at the end of your turn could be emptied at the start of the next turn? This still suffers the same curvestoney problem the current burden has but I think it's more punishing for a deck of any type rather than a majorly non-issue in aggressive ones. Or perhaps the way you should have to play around the burden could be forcing you to play carefully and practice restraint, so doing the opposite of what it currently is. I'm unsure with what the best idea is I'm just throwing stuff out.
I don't have as much of an idea about what you could do with druid and hunter, I'd say those currently have the strongest burdens and should probably be changed, but I definitely think forcing a hero to attack every turn is only a significant penalty if the opponent of that hero anticipated it, meaning I think it works very nicely if you have a card that forces the enemy hero into it but less so one that forces yours into it.
0
Even if it's really early in the morning and I'm tired I think it's important to give my thoughts on the burdens.
First off I like the decision to make the penalties separate tokens, it makes the text a lot cleaner and it'd still be clear, like quests, so one of my main issues with the burdens is already dealt with.
Druid: This really doesn't feel like much penalty for the effect. With Druids hero power this allows your hero's attacks to be Powershots or simply just Steady Shots if you can't take the damage. This is a huge benefit, and the penalty just feels so minor. In an aggro matchup there basically isn't even any downside at all, and even against decks with taunt you're able to control the board so much easier that it's likely not going to be too harmful to you when they do play their taunts. It's also a little strange for taunt minions to be used as the counter for cleaving cards considering cleave can by used to bypass taunt walls with splashing damage. This feels like a card you play in quite a lot of druid decks rather than one deck built around this, just as extra control power as a slow deck or more consistent and extra damage in a fast one.
Hunter: I can't imagine this being bad at all. Having Darkbomb as your hero power is insane, you're able to kill off most 2-3 drops with that. Summoning a 1/1 Voidling every turn is a bad penalty but again, just feels really minor in comparison to the gigantic reward you're getting. Again, feels like something you just use in a lot of decks just because of how huge of a benefit it is.
Mage: Is this supposed to say to your opponent? Dealing damage to my opponent seems fine, not a great burden. But seriously though this feels like it benefits aggressive burn based mages a lot. Explosive Runes deals 8, Fireball deals 8, Frostbolt deals 5, Arcane Missiles deals 5, etc. You need to fill out a curve or take a small amount of damage, which is something that decks that fill out a curve tend to care little for. Losing health as an aggressive deck isn't too important and with the game ending quickly and your cards not costing a lot you're unlikely to get hit more than a couple of times. Doesn't seem healthy for the game.
Paladin: This is one of the more balanced feeling ones for sure. There's a huge detriment for a huge benefit. You can use your hero power as a 2 damage ping that can create a body, you can make any minion in your deck have significant immediate impact and then keep you alive with Taunt, yet only having one on the board at a time limits a paladin so much that that all seems challenging to take. If this were to stay exactly the same the whole way through I'd not be surprised.
Priest: Wait, don't the Hunter and Priest burdens just give you exactly the same benefit then? Hell, thematically it might even make more sense to change Hunters effect to "Cast 'Shadowform' twice." also. The main difference is one deals 3 to your hero every time you use it and one gives your opponent 1/1's over and over. The Hunter one definitely seems stronger than this, this feels a lot more balanced. Aggro priest seems like it could be a genuine scary thing with this and it still seems really strong but I'm unsure. I'm starting to think I'm missing something about the Hunter hero power or something.
Rogue: Wait, so you get a consistent 100% chance of obtaining a coin every turn and your opponent has to work for one? I get the benefit is supposed to outweigh the burden a bit but this feels too blatantly one-sided. I feel like most rogue decks would just run this because even if your opponent hit your face every single turn you'd still be the one ending up on top.Completely misread this, ignore for now.Shaman: Now that's a significant burden. Benefit feels powerful yet your hero gets frozen and you need to be careful with your minions so that you can mitigate the downside, which I think is reasonably achievable. I don't know if this is too weak but I'm feeling a lot safer with it existing than some of these.
Warlock: Feels like an obligatory inclusion into Zoolock. You stay maxed out on health 100% of the time but your max health eventually gets to 23 or so before you win. Honestly Zoolock disregards its health quite a lot but this allows it to disregard its health fully for no real cost. It's not like your maximum health is that important to you as a warlock OUTSIDE of the situation in which you own this anyway.
Warrior: Another example of genuine detriment for a significant reward. I'm unsure how good this is but I think I like it.
Just gonna sleep now, see you in 10 hours+.
0
Gonna give this a big ol' bump, sorry if that's annoying, but in the time it took me to edit it moved onto page 3 because it took a slight while to write all this out, and I finally finished it. I just want to make sure everyone who this would pertain to gets a chance to read it because I'm hoping it could be a help to some. I'm mostly just hoping Tox reads it so that he adds Ludicolo but also for the other guys to read also. Anyway I'll be back after I inevitably distance myself for another weeks or so maybe because I'm consistently inconsistent.
1
I'm quite confused now. I definitely agree that the cards you've shown are more interesting than Bolf, but I'm not sure what you mean when you say they would ideally have their own card type nor how you could say the same for Hero cards. I didn't see the previous discussions, I apologize as I won't have much context on them. I'll try and be more present in the discussions from here on out I just wanted to avoid the first phase ones.
Don't worry, I can appreciate the mistakes and that you've got work to do. We all make mistakes, pretty sure I've made more neutral weapons accidentally than class ones. It's just when compared to a lot of the other posts that went through yours seemed a lot more rough, and if you invest more time to make sure everything's nice and shiny next time I'll have no issues.
0
Ah, okay. I didn't realize that was the case for your Start of Game cards, but maybe if that'd been explained in the submission it would have been less confusing. Prince Charming would be a boring card had they all worked in similar manners to the start of game cards that already existed in Hearthstone beforehand for reasons already explained, hence the oddness of it. Regardless I meant connection between the cards actually drawn by the minion. I shouldn't have mentioned Ashmoore in it but honestly it's hard to defend that Elusive, Start of Game and Legacy have more in common with each other than Beast, Murloc and Dragon, so I'm not sure how that's "just objectively wrong". I'm not trying to be rude in my posts, I'm sorry if I accidentally said something wrong.
6
Gonna do a brief look at all the guys who passed and give my opinions. Can't be bothered to talk about Hall of Fame choices unless they're relevant to any of the cards.
Doctor Whoops' Year of the Frog
Right off the bat, the sets are quite diverse and well presented. The Infiltrate keyword is nice, I imagine there's quite a lot of potential design space for it and it only makes sense. Feed is already easy to imagine in-game because it's already in the game and Surface Hunter is a fine card to show off. Those two keywords are fine, but you've walked into an issue Tek found himself in while working on Treasures, which was why the inclusion of the Sandy Shores card was made. Essentially, if the Guest cards included in your deck actually count against card count without any chance of actually being drawn, then what you effectively have is a deck that has less cards in it. The vast majority of decks in the game would take a 28 card, 26 card, 24 card etc deck over a 30 card one if that was freely available. It's just more consistent, and there's absolutely no reason not to do it. This would lead to players using Guests purely as cards to lower deck sizes rather than making actual Guest decks.
The Guest keyword is very interesting thematically and I like the flavor of the Stormwind City set the most, so I'd like to see it still, I just think it should be reworked maybe in a similar way to Treasures. Of course, there's also the chance that I've misinterpreted the keyword and missed something like an idiot, so I'm sorry if that's the case. Overall I can definitely see why this was the most highly voted set, but I think Guest is a genuinely big issue.
Linkblade91's Year of the Kodo
The flavor for the first set is fantastic, I'm quite fond of the Burdens. They're a way of introducing massive changes to a deck that remain simple. I do feel like The Vigilant Crusader could be made more simple with just one keyword, the textbox is getting a little packed there, but with how much that would impact you don't need to worry too much. The cards showcased for the War of Sea and Sky could have been better. Though I like the idea of the expansion, I'm indifferent with Terror Drake, kinda unsure how it has Stealth thematically, but I dislike the Naga Siren. What you've said about the Naga is that they provide benefit to the 'Biggest' Naga in terms of Attack, Health or Cost, so a card with "The Naga with the highest X has..." should be a common occurrence. Despite that, the first Naga you show is a 5/5 that does that with Taunt which is Epic. That sounds more like a Common and it doesn't really show what the potential of the Naga's tribal shenanigans could be. It doesn't feel too different from a 5 mana 5/5 Taunt, and feels so boring and bad considering giving minions taunt isn't really valued very highly. Metal and Mayhem seems nice, the flavor's good. Encore is a great keyword, I like it a lot. Power Up is a little more meh, kinda odd to revisit spare parts in general. The cards you showcased are good for them, with Spirit Bouncer showing off some fantastic possible synergy with Encore effects off the bat by allowing its effect to be used by a much bigger minion, and Treant Harvester being flavorful and useful.
Overall, all three sets are very good but I'd really like to see the potential of the Naga tribe and the Challenge keyword.
KingKuba's Year of the Lion
I felt quite happy looking through all of this. I'm not generally going to talk about the people behind the cards that much in these reviews but you seem like the kind of person who's quite new to making custom cards but has some really good ideas. What I mean by that is that you've got some really fantastic concepts here among some simple mistakes and I'm excited to see this set potentially flourishing. Obviously the place to start with is Storage, which I think is a potential UI nightmare and unsure on how good it is CURRENTLY, but it has some serious potential. I think you should go over a brief summary of how you use Storage cards during deckbuilding and through that find a way to include as many copies of Storage cards as you want so I can run a warehouse deck (that's only 30% a joke) and I'd love this keyword and the set. I love the flavor behind all the sets by the way, just wanted to go over Storage first. Then I'm going to go onto the third expansion for a reason that'll be obvious soon after. I like the flavor of this set the most, it's quite light and jovial. Rent could have a lot of potential as a keyword, especially if you throw some Rent (1 turn) cards in there, which could be quite interesting for designs. I dislike Buyout however, it doesn't feel like it has too much of a purpose. Making a way of keeping your Rent minions feels uninteresting more than anything else as well as quite parasitic. I think just having the Rent cards is preferable. Right, set 2 is the one I have the most problems with by far. The faction mechanic just isn't interesting, it's just a tribe that locks you out of playing certain cards. The two cards you've showcased aren't doing it any favors either. Garona Halforcen is a legendary class tech card, which you really want to avoid. The general issue with that is that legendary cards, especially class cards, are cards that you put into your deck to promote an archetype in an interesting or powerful way. Tech cards are cards you use to counter OTHER archetypes. It's straight up just an overpowered assassinate with a body in most cases and that's not the reason why I dislike it. She doesn't do anything to help your Horde deck, she just might do something against Alliance minions with Deathrattles. That's probably not many cards. Othmar Garithos is far and beyond the most overpowered card in the game. He's an autoinclude in every paladin deck due to the way purely positive Start of Game cards work. When you don't actually have to draw the card nor use the card, it just provides a benefit to your deck unconditionally at the start of the game, the card shouldn't be printed. You don't even have to account for the technical risk of drawing this minion which is understatted in comparison to almost all the other broken start of game cards that people have made, it's an Alliance minion, it just draws itself at no cost when the game begins, as well as whatever other Alliance card you put in there is. I'd suggest a complete rework of the second expansion but if you don't want to do that at least just fix those two cards up. Sorry the review got negative towards the end, it's just that your first and third sets are on completely different levels to your second. I genuinely meant what I said about the year having some serious potential and I look forward to seeing what you make.
Tomerick88's Year of the Butterfly
I'm going to be blunt...
That is not an interesting keyword. It's not flexible, it's not got any potential design space, more than anything it's just a boring and bad version of taunt. I do not like the pet keyword, not at all. Keywords can mean so many potential different things depending on the cards they're on, and how singular this keyword is is mundane. Hemet's Petting Zoo itself could be interesting with good flavor but I'm not feeling it so far. Going into the second expansion, Fate's fine, there's some design space for it and it fits the expansion, though I'm starting to think you've rushed through all this a bit. The presentation for your cards isn't great and the actual cards are similar. Veteran Tracker is missing capitalization and is literally just using the Tracking art. Tactical Retreat is a great card that utilizes your rotation of Divine Favor well. The terrain cards aren't very aesthetically pleasing, I once again think you could have spent more time and precision with this. Regardless I do feel that the terrain should last for a set amount of turns and shouldn't be countered by enemies playing terrains. Having it last infinitely is insane value that forces people into playing terrains, and playing a really expensive terrain that goes away immediately isn't fun.
CheeseETC's Year of the Scorpion
First set is good. The factions are alright and I don't really have a lot to say about it other than I'm fond. Could open up a lot of interesting new decks. I'm not fond of the second set at all. Dividing things into a bunch of guys who generate resource and then a bunch of things that need resource is parasitic and hard to manage before you even account for the fact that the things that take your resource take up board slots. It's hard to manage in a simple manner, simple being one of Hearthstone's core themes, and it feels more like a nostalgia trip than a fun or functional expansion. Don't want to include more than 4 buildings in my deck because I don't want to ever collect dead buildings in my hand but then I want to have enough resource to play them otherwise they're just dead anyway so better distribute a bunch of resource gatherer's into my deck. Draw dependency is rampant here. In comparison I really like recipes. They're flavorful and quite similar to buildings in that they're permanent benefits except way more interesting and better because they don't take a parasitic new resource to exist, you just need to fulfill certain conditions to repeat effects. I certainly wouldn't include both buildings and recipes into the year, in my eyes one's just better than the other. I will say though, the way you've formatted the recipe card is stylish and cool but I think you might have to change it unless you don't want to write much on the cards. Small Drink is the epitome of a common of the effect with literally three words and then a basic condition, yet it ended up with 4 lines. How are you going to make Epic recipes?
Shatterstar1998 and Demonxz95's Year of the Dragon
Year of the Dragon sounds generic but whatever. Nightmare on the Nether is cool, though you could go over what makes the actual expansion itself interesting a little more, because I didn't really see anything about the expansion itself in the cards. I just got the context of the area and how it has a bunch of tribal minions. Legacy could be cool but King Arthur feels like a really bad way of showing it off. If I play three cards in a turn I get to change the Health of all minions to 1! Oh wait they've already all got 1 Health because I played the card. I'll wait till next turn and THEN use his effect. Alright, there, my opponent's played some new minions, now I can use his Legacy. Oh actually I think I'll just trade him in, that seems more efficient because I don't want to set my minions Health to 1. Why does Legacy feel so much like a redundant extra on the Legacy showcase card? Prince Charming well... I don't like him. How is he a start of game support card and how was he supposed to show off how each class is getting a start of game card? Wouldn't showing off a start of game card be more helpful for that? Why do I care about drawing my start of game cards, that's not what's interesting about those cards, the interesting part already happened. At the start of the game. Because it's a start of game card. Sure it thins my deck and I can play it to get like a 9 mana 7/8 body but that's hardly that supportive. Prince Charming just feels like a Curator card you made because you've got some new keywords. It's not got nearly as much connection between the themes as The Curator nor its Witchwood counterpart. It's boring. Caverns of Time seems alright, I like Future Strike, it's a very nice card. Temporary dormant cards are something I've seen a lot, in fact my favorite version of them I've seen was from DKPaladinMDL's Caverns of Time expansion that he finished some time ago. I feel like the showcase card you chose for it wasn't that interesting. In general I kinda wish there was more you were showing in your year, I've not been able to criticize a lot because I've not got a good grip on the expansions. Nether on the Nightmare will be dark and have demons and dragons and stuff as well as an effect that exists already. Once upon a Time will have legacy but you haven't provided a good example of a legacy card and start of game cards for every class but you haven't shown a start of game card. Caverns of Time has future stuff that could be quite cool, I'm fond of that, as well as collectible temporary permanents which are nice. I don't know, I just think your presentation was lacking with ideas that have already been explored a lot.
ThisOtherGuyTox, Cogito and Otovent's Year of the Chimera
Stitched cards could be cool, the one presented is simple and gives a good idea of what to expect, and I think I remember Tox talking about the choose one at the start of the game thing some time before and I've quite liked it as an idea. Border Patrol is also a nice simple idea for showing off how things are. Can't really see any faults so far, things look good. Weathers seem fine. I'd like to see cards that benefit off of weathers but it's understandable not to considering you only had two cards to show which did well to establish the flavor. Because I don't want to get through 2 sets without at least suggesting something I want to put in a personal request for you guys to include my favorite pokemon ludicolo in there somewhere, maybe something like this.
You don't have to call him Ludicolo or anything just please man I love ludicolo so much you'd be doing a great service for my family. Script is flavorful and quite nice, it's reminiscent of the new card type thing introduced to Magic recentlyish. I love the flavor of the set as a whole and I'm sorry that the new expansion kinda takes away some of the uniqueness of the set. In general this set seems the most refined so far... Suspiciously so. Gosh dang the mods and their ability to prepare three sets with unique flavor and keywords in a space longer than two weeks we need a revolution around here or something. For real though, looking forward to seeing the third set the most so if you go out before then I'll be angry. Good luck.
WaterwaIker's Year of the
holy shit I'm only 8 submissions through this is taking so long I'm gonna end it all also why is your name spelled with a capital i rather than an l whatHydraStarting off, Lights, Cards, Action! is gonna be a set I greatly look forward to. Great humor, very light, all good with me. Van Hellscream is a really nice card with a cool effect, though he honestly feels absurdly strong. He's got a really well statted 5 mana body for 6 that replaces your hero power with one that's worth about 2 mana, which is nuts. That said it obviously carries the downside of not working with Deathstalker Rexxar which you'd probably want to play in a more control focused Hunter so I imagine it's fine but it's certainly stronger than most hero power upgrade cards. I don't like Mildly Annoyed Max, punishing your opponent for not playing on curve isn't that fun for them, and if they do play on curve this is just a 5 mana 5/3 which isn't very fun for you. In general it kinda just doesn't feel like a fun card. Alleria Windrunner is fun but honestly I don't think trample is a good idea. Hearthstone's been existing for a while under the idea that trample isn't a thing so as you might expect stuff like Arcane Channeler suddenly being added can cause problems. What kind of problems? Problems of Meteoric proportions is what. For the next expansion, Marsh Seer is massively unfun as it can ruin so many decks. Oh, it appears I've discovered my opponents C'Thun/N'Zoth/Bloodreaver Gul'Dan/Emeriss/Alexstraza/BigGamechangingMinion/Yogg'Saron. Guess they lose. Also go to my Year of the Lion and/or Year of the Frog reviews for my stance on Tyr. I would include this in every deck because it's free consistency. I don't need to actually draw the card or use it, nor do I have to gimp my deck, yet I get benefits.
Dropdead's Year of the Manticore
Transforming effects already fulfill the purpose of Banish elegantly, include more transform cards rather than adding in a new yet redundant keyword. It might fit in the game better if Hearthstone had an actual graveyard and not a pool of cards being tracked for Big Priests sake, but as of right now it's just taking an effect that shows up in every card game with a graveyard and putting it into a game without one. If you're in Shadowform is a terrible idea that gets passed around a lot, can't wait to get this card in a pack when I don't actually own that epic card from the classic set. Oh well I guess I could still use it as a 6 mana deal 5 spell, fantastic. For 6 mana couldn't it just banish the minion regardless of anything else? Priest already got Entomb why is this a card? Your location card is okay. I think you should have done a better job showing off themes of the expansions because some of the cards just feel irrelevant to showing the actual expansion off. Yeah Hogger's Faithful is a pretty cool card but what does it tell me about the expansion?
Phoenixfeather's Year of the Phoenix
First expansion seems alright. Soulcast is nice, Elusive is Elusive. Rise from the Grave is a cool card that does well to show off the expansion. Apatheia's one of the least interesting ways of adding neutral decks theoretically possible. The thing is, I like the idea of neutral decks, but I think a game like Shadowverse is a game that could show you a good way of going about implementing neutral synergy. Rewarding you for having disproportionate amounts of neutral cards over only running them. Running decks without spells, only minions, with no class identity, very few interesting gimmicks and such is just uninteresting. What makes the matches involving this lady more uninteresting than most? Well let me briefly say why I like Elusive. It does well in countering an enemy who relies on spells to counter minions by making it harder to deal with your elusive minions, yet it doesn't make half their deck pointless because I still have the rest of my deck to go through and it's not like they're ALL going to be Elusive so they can just use their spells on those ones! Oh wait, my entire deck IS Elusive, guess my opponents hand is just filled with dead cards now. Boy, this game of minions slapping into eachother and nothing else sure is interesting. At least AoE's still exist. Second expansion is a lot better, love Solais, it's a great weapon with good flavor. Deus Ex Machina is also good flavor and a cool card. I don't know how much I like the return of Inspire but I don't hate it. Burn is a keyword that belongs in a class and not an expansion. Removing the top one or two cards of your deck is widely irrelevant outside of decks that go to fatigue because they're exceptionally slow, are running Aluneth or rely on specific cards like C'Thun and sometimes they're on the bottom and have to dig deep. The rare cases in which removing the top card of your deck is used as a downside do so in a way where it's escalated to the point where your deck might be shredded in seconds like with Fel Reaver. Being able to include a few cards that have above average power level in exchange for burn just means I'm running cards which are too good at no extra cost.
Vilegloom's Year of the Ram
I've been really indecisive of your stuff. I don't know what it is about it. Regardless I don't trust myself to force a review on this because I don't have an opinion of it really. I'm not trying to wuss out I swear, it's just that my input would be redundant. Take that all as you like.
ShadowsOfSense's Year of the Serpent
I don't like Ambush. I remember Phoenix explored it's potential some time before with Impulse and cards which manipulate how you draw it that makes it more skilled but even then it's still the "Did you topdeck this" keyword. It's good flavor and I'm happy about its use with Cephalopirate due to it not being objectively better, but I don't really like it. Explore is a nice keyword, one thing I think a lot of people make mistakes with while making Hearthstone cards is creating cards that give information for the sake of information, yet this uses it practically. Well, at least in the case of Murloc Pathfinder. If all the Explore cards will be like that, I'm very happy with it. If you make cards which just Explore and nothing else, I'll be sad. That's just not very Hearthstone. One thing of note, with both Ambush and Explore existing, deck manipulation better exist, it just makes them both so much better. Revenant is a keyword that feels nice due to how Undead synergy works, I like it. Mount is nice but obviously unfortunately timed due to Magnetic. Flanked is nice also, no real criticisms.
Teknician's Year of the Gryphon
Treasure's are looking nice and appropriately scary and the Plunderer is a good example of a Treasure fetcher, so I'm happy with how it's developed thus far. This might just be me but Sandy Shore looks a little too realistic, I think a wide shot of a beach would be better. Overall, good first set. Unsure about the second set, Sacrifice is an alright keyword, Plague is quite questionable. Not in the "This is probably bad" sense but the "I have literally no idea how to evaluate this" sense. I will say though that the Blood Beetle's Sacrifice option feels surprisingly low impact, considering you lose both an attack and the minion. I've gone over Red Mana briefly with you already I believe, waiting to see how you handle it, I think you can make it work well.
Mrobjectionman's Year of the Pegasus
I'm a strong believer that Hearthstone's RNG isn't as bad a problem as many like to say and that it's actually quite beneficial for the game, but having it as a core theme for an expansion doesn't seem like a great idea. GvG had that as a core theme and people hated it, so I'm unsure if people will like that. Good flavor though. Good flavor for the next set also, this version of Mount is pretty good, it's like reverse Magnetic. I don't like Dominance, seems very win more. Generally the person with the biggest minion is the one winning, so to me it kinda reads like "If you're winning, has an extra effect.", which means the cards don't benefit you while losing and benefits you while winning, which polarizes the game rather than having it be a back and forth.
Aaro54's Year of the Mech
Soulbattle's Year of the Cat
Hethiss is nice, does well to show off multiple potential themes of the expansion with both poisonous and death, and I like Invoke despite not really feeling like a keyword, though I can't really explain why. I like the idea of the Grimoire of Eternity and I'm willing to see how the mage spell tribe thing works out, though I think you've not exactly got the casual and goofy vibe down in the submission. I feel like Brutallus probably isn't that hard to build a deck around and stomps aggro into the ground, though that's obviously a card that'd need playtesting. Blazing Infernal doesn't really feel like a "Positioning matters" card all that much honestly, I feel like a card that requires a lot of pre-planning would be best to show it off. This is more of a "Place between two minions and attack" card that you want to play minions around.
Wailor's Year of the Tortoise
Draenei Wanderer feels like it could do something relevant to the swap beyond just swapping, like the actual swap being a necessity that functions as a bonus. Like Curious Glimmeroot giving information or something similar. I think a card which has the pure function of swapping feels too non-Hearthstoney, too niche, yet as a secondary effect it could fulfill its intended purpose elegantly while being more interesting. I think Dive has a similar issue, Hearthstone doesn't tend to have many effects that do nothing by themselves. If Dive actually did something minor for your hero and then synergies existed on top of that, I'd like the mechanic more. Fate and Future seems fine, but giving a minion Charge allows it to attack on its first turn, it doesn't allow a minion that already attacked to attack again. Everything seems pretty well connected in this year though.
NOVEX0R's Year of the Scarab
Not too fond of Ancient, it feels like it could be done more elegantly. Tracking digits in the cards text usually isn't how things in Hearthstone work. Also I'm not sure if I like that this encourages a less than active form of play. Active playing should be encouraged even in control decks in my opinion and Hearthstone typically favors it also in comparison to most card games. Tomb Relic is a boring card in standard and absolutely game breaking in wild. Shadowboxer exists ya know. Hearthstone effects tend to do something by themselves so I'm not really fond of the nightmare/dream mechanic, I think it could be better if the Dream or Nightmare states did something regardless of the synergy cards. Stolen Plans is insanely overpowered and would be included in 100% of rogue decks because there's no reason not to. As soon as you draw it you immediately cast it and draw another card. If it didn't reveal the opponents hand it'd still be included 100% of rogue decks, it's just a way of making your deck one which only effectively contains 28 cards, which is more consistent than a 30 card one.
Electronite's Year of the Serpent
Hibernate is a keyword that comes up a lot, but I strongly believe that it's a bad one. Hearthstone is a very active game and making cards that encourage you to not attack are only a few steps away from cards that encourage you to not attack. Attacking is already a very big part of the decision making in the game, one of the most important elements. Making cards that make you not want to do that isn't something I like. Royal Archivist is a nice card, I like it. Knowledge Corrupt could probably do with a better name but in general the second set seems way healthier than the first. Dreamwalker's not that interesting to play nor does it do much special, yet it still feels odd to have the word Immune on a common neutral card.
LarryMoments' Year of the Wendigo
Getting a new keyword and then making two new cards with the keyword to show off an expansion feels like a way better idea when the new keyword was already a mechanic in the game, I mean the flavor's nice but I hope to see some more themes than just minions killing minions. Possession is flavorful enough and the flavor of the set as a whole is quite good, but it's really a pretty small effect and I'm not really sure what to expect out of the expansion because of it. It's not a particularly debilitating effect but I think it works perfectly with other effects as more of a marker than anything, a chance for some richly flavored cards to flourish like perhaps a minion that moves into a minion, possessing it, and comes out when the minion dies. Silver Mirror is also quite good. Lots of flavor potential in that set, I must say. You're not gonna showcase murlocs for your murloc focused expansion? Odd, and the cards you've shown haven't given me much of a view on what the expansion is all about, if I'm being honest. They're good cards however.
TheProjenitor's Year of the Fox
I like Plan, it's a common concept that's been executed well here. I'm glad you've given such a clear example of what the expansion's all about. A simple common plan card and a card that has a trade off involving the information your opponent obtains, it works nicely. Seems promising. There seems to be a broken imgur link on the next set, don't know if that's just me. Regardless, I don't like the way you've set up the keyword. Iterating Battlecry just feels too wordy. I think if you were to put (Iterate) or (Iterates) in brackets after the battlecry, kind of like Fatespinner, it might look neater. Regardless, every card with Iterate is kind of like a more restrained Shudderwock, which means it's probably really hard to manage the power level. Even a weak common Iterating battlecry minion that does 1 damage will also summon a 3/3 golem, draw a card, maybe kill a couple of minions and burn the board in a firestorm or something similar, and it escalates with every card printed. Rebuilding Dalaran is really interesting yet Enter the Legion is really uninteresting. Obviously your legendary spells are going to be very bottom-up from a design standpoint but I definitely think a stronger focus on how interesting Enter the Legion is mechanically would be good. Destroying mana crystals at later turns just isn't much of a downside so it kinda feels like summoning a bunch of guys with an overload.
I was a little exhausted near the end because it's gotten late, so I apologize if I've said much that's nonsensical or too crude, I'm not quite myself just yet. Regardless, I hope the competitors in question at least read it, I've spent a lot of time on it even if a lot is just gibberish, and if any of your works were to improve due to all this effort it'd all have been worth. A lot of promising entries this comp, many with small mistakes made here and there (that might have came from having to make a three-set concept in the space of two weeks) and I'm hoping to see some great stuff by the end. Including Ludicolo, mostly that. Tox, this is a genuine threat, I will send over 7 spammy messages to you via Discord and Hearthpwn that'll contain some kind of puzzle that'll insinuate you smell bad when you eventually solve it unless you throw Ludicolo in as a minion in Set Fire to the rain. It doesn't have to be a Legendary, though he deserves to be one, not even an Epic, and he doesn't have to be called Ludicolo but... Just please you have to do it I need it.
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Right, since I'm not competing this time I think I'll try and put out a review of my thoughts towards most of these entries. I quite like a lot of the concepts that were explored here, many did a good job.
Good luck you guys, I'll try to be present over the course of the comp.
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Probably won't actually compete in this, but I'll be sure to see how things turn out and I'll bully some of my buddies into joining most likely. Sounds exciting!