Hearthpwn

thanks!

Trolls call Wisps loa, so can I submit a wisp.

ded people are animals too

For the purposes of this competition, all submitted Loas will be Beasts. The Loas act as the team mascots, and creating Beast/animal Loas remains within the spirit of the expansion. As far as we can tell Bwonsamdi is going to be the lone exception to this fact, and he will remain as such.

I see a few entries in the competition thread which are not beasts. And some don't follow the naming format. So are these rules strictly enforced? 

Rigidly enforcing the name format seems super anal to me; I would have liked it had they stuck to the formula, but I don't believe we're going to disqualify people over it. People who make non-Beast Loas will most likely be DQ'd.

That's not being anal though. It is enforcing the rules consistently. The rules clearly define what Loas and Spirits "are", including the fact their names are structured in a certain format. If you submit a card that is not structured in that format, then it is not a Loa or a Spirit and you should be DQ'ed. Perhaps next time you shouldn't include anything in the rules which you don't intend to strictly enforce, or at least make it clear that it is just an optional suggestion. The way you phrased the rules currently makes the naming format sound compulsory. 

People who break the rules and use other naming formats gain an unfair advantage. They get to inject so much more flavor through the name of their card, and stand out from the crowd. For example, instead of being forced to name my Mage spirit something boring like "Spirit of the Cat" (because I thought it was a strict rule), I could have given it a cooler name like "Spectral Familiar" or something like that. Or to use a Loa example, some contestants who ignore the rules were able to submit a badass character like "Hakkar the Soulflayer" as their Loa, whereas others might have ruled that character out to comply with the rules (not a beast and name in the wrong format). 

I would err on the side of being anal than being accused of selective enforcing rules and giving some players an unfair advantage. Serves them right for not reading carefully! 

While I understand your position, I would note two things:

1. When in doubt, we usually err on the side of leniency. I don't always agree with that call, but this is all for fun in the end. If leniency pushes some people to participate that would not have otherwise, that's a victory for us and the Fan Creations community at large - the more the merrier!
2. It's harder to tell from your end, but the data tells us that. in these situations, "the market" usually corrects itself. Even if we moderators proceed in the name of leniency, convention is still indirectly enforced by the voters. Currently, the Top 20 entries in scoring all follow the official conventions; unless that changes, this means no one that violates the naming "rule" will proceed to the Finals. Therefore, it will ultimately become a non-issue: "the market has spoken", and it deems those who break the convention as invalid.

This is nice and all but.. I would prefer if this is held after the set is released. Cos this may cause confusion to players that are not attentive to news and may think that the custom cards are the official ones. Plus, it may place a false idea about the set power level. Just saying.

What he said...regarding what I said hehe

We had to make a choice from the get-go regarding whether or not people would have to make one or both, and we went with the safer option. Multi-card competitions can be difficult for participants, both in time and creative effort required, and we see this in lower attendance and cooler reception.

I agree in-that I think it would have been really cool to create both the Loa and their Spirit, but there were numerous factors that held it back. Ultimately, we chose not to pull the trigger.

 I think the mods should make an exception for this competition and let people submit a spirit AND a loa.

The spirits and loa's revealed so far seem to be designed to synergize heavily with one another and by restricting the number of submissions per person to 1 the mods have inadvertently missed an opportunity for people to get really creative with their designs.

Anyone else agree?

Yeah, i removed my Loa because the admin told me to only choose one. So I picked the spirit card to submit :(

Quote from RazorOfArtorias >>

Also it seems that destiny let me choose the competition theme before a Troll & Loa expansion when a year ago my custom expansion, Servitors of the Loa (with the same theme) won the first Hearthpwn Custom Expansion Contest.

 Well the answer is clear: Blizzard stole the idea from you :D