Glory of the Zandalari - Custom Event

Inspired by ZardozSpeakZ's Screams of the Old Gods, I decided to do a buff event for Rastakhan's Rumble. Why this expansion particularly? For a last expansion of the year, it seemed to have very low impact. Sure, some cards like Da Undatakah or Zul'jin were really powerul (and still are), but mainly it was just a lot of support for existing archtypes or support for Gonk Druid, Discardlock and Healadin. But I'm not gonna go so much in detail because that's not really the point and also because I'll give a brief explanation of my choice on each card.

But first:

A new Loa, Rezan the King! And another use of the Start of Game ability. Similair to Sir Finley Mrrgglton, it gives you a new starting Hero Power, however you cannot choose which one. But if you don't like what you get, you can return your original hero Power by playing Rezan.	And a Spirit to accompany the Loa, Spirit of the King! The King gladly helps the meek. Useful in any deck that wants its low Cost cards or some drawing consistency .

And yes, all players get Rezan and two Spirits of the King for FREE!

Onto the buffs:

	Fair buffs	Interesting buffs
Druid	It seems unfair that one option is so obviously worse than the other one. It's not a big buff, but I think the card would start to see some play, if anything because of versatility.	Big Beast Druid seemed promising, but Undatakah was just better. The card has been lost ever since, but with this buff someone might stir up a viable Big Beast Druid.
Hunter	Halazzi is pretty useless now, even in casual decks. Reducing the Cost by 1 means you can play it turn 5 with a Lynx, but it would probably still see no serious ranked play.	There's some experimentation with this in Highlander Hunter,  but that's it. With 3 Attack, it becomes much better when played without a Weapon and great when played when you have one equiped.
Mage	Making Elemental support 4 months before Un'goro and Frost Lich Jaina leave Standard. At least now it's more versatile and comparable to Vendetta.	Not only is Dragon Priest arguably better than Elemental Mage, they also make Elemental Duskbreaker cost 6. It could see play if Elementals become Mage's class identity (like Beasts in Hunter).
Paladin	Spirit of the Tiger has potential, but it's too slow and Paladin doesn't have many good high-Cost spells. Reducing the Cost by 1 helps getting more value from it with midrange spells like Blessing of Kings.	Since the current Bloodclaw has too big of a downside, even in occasional Healadins, making it 3/2 would make it much better for early control as well as aggression.
Priest	Was designed mainly as CC nerf, but it's still a Nomi/Spell Priest buff. Also, Evolve Shaman can now get this from evolving 10-Cost minions. Take that as you want.	Surrender to Madness 2.0! Get 2 dead Keleseths, but pay 1 now and the other throughout the game! Probably still not nearly viable, but definitely much cooler.
Rogue	Although you might be lucky enough to get Twig or Dragon Soul in Wild, that chance is shrinking with every new weapon, not to mention how ineffective this is in Standard.	Theoretically, 5-Cost Gral is good as long as it eats a 3/4 or 4/3 or higher stated minion. So a 4-Cost Gral needs to eat a 2/3 or 3/2 or higher to be good. Again, just theoretically.
Shaman	Still bad, but hey, this wouldn't be realistic if there wasn't at least one badly thought-out change, now would it? *laughs in Flark's Boom-Zooka*	Easily one of the least played and known cards of the set. By reducing the requirement, the card becomes a lot more accessible and easier to play at any point of the game.
Warlock	A card occasionally used by Zoolock. Since Warlock sucks right now, having a better answer to big minions is fine. Best part is that it can now cost 0.	Definitely the biggest buff of all, and Warlock could really use it right now. Unlike Luna's Pocket Galaxy, this gives you no value, but it can easily mess up your opponent's deck.
Warrior	Rush Warrior isn't a great deck, and Spirit of the Rhino even there isn't worth a slot. With 0 Mana, it is much simpler to play Rush minions in the same turn, but it's still only good as a part of a bad deck.	The only Dragon Warrior card that wasn't played. With almost vanilla stats it can give you better control to play those copies. And with DoD coming up, this might just become relevant.

Thoughts are welcome!

Hey cool! I'm glad someone else tried this out. Makes me want to get back to a similar attempt I started for Goblins vs Gnomes. You've stuck to simpler buffs than I did, more in the style of the Boomsday event. With the recent reversion for Pocket Galaxy and Extra Arms, I do wonder if this kind of thing will happen again, or if they regret doing it.

Overall, I like most of the buffs. And I like the way you've divided it into Fair Buffs and Interesting Buffs.

Druid is great, I like the 3 cost Predatory Instincts. In a class with so much card draw, it just isn't appealing enough at 4 mana, despite their being decent beasts to draw like Amani Warbear.

Hunter I'm not impressed by. Bloodscalp just is a slow discover effect, with a conditional. It's kinda a garbage card, would need more than mana or attack/health changes to become 'interesting'. If you want to be bold, keep Hazalli at it's normal mana and give it Rush, just like the lynx tokens. The real reason Hazalli doesn't see play? Mech Hunter and Zilliax. It's also a 5 cost rush, way faster, way more defensive.

Mage: Lowering the costs on board clears is always dangerous, and Blast Wave was a decent card in Arena, where a combination board clear+card generation effect is very powerful. Also, maybe don't buff two board clear cards? I'd say what you've done to Arcanosaur already qualifies as Interesting.

Paladin: Bloodclaw is way more powerful now, a bold move. It'll clear most 2 drops and many 3 drops. The difference between 2 and 3 damage is huge on the first few turns of the game. Not saying this is OP, but you've certainly made a bad card much better!

Priest: Grave Horror is cheeky! And probably a good idea. Surprised we haven't actually seen a full nerf that puts this card at 13. Surrender to Madness... maybe it's playable now? Such a tricky card for an archetype that never worked.

Rogue: Stolen Steel is a 'fair buff' only because Rogue has no shortage of decent Rogue weapons in standard and wild, plus it's hero power and now the quest. It's fun to gamble on in wild though, I support the buff. Graal is such a weird card. It's a strange enough effect to warrant being legendary, but it's just a funny way to draw cards. Buffing it is probably fine, but Rogue has never had problems drawing cards, not sure this pushes Graal into playable territory.

Warlock: Demonbolt is fine. Void Contract is scary! The cost is also a turn limit. It's way easier to play this turn 5 and lose a bit of tempo than to play it on turn 8 when you're either winning or in desperate need of a tempo swing to avoid losing. I'm not sure I want to see this card played more often, frankly. It'd be interesting though!

Warrior: Spirit of the Rhino seems fine at 1 mana, why doesn't it see play? I guess warrior just has plenty of good cards. It ultimately fits into some kind of mid-range or tempo deck that has just never quite existed, in the current standard. 0 Mana is fair, makes it easier to toss out as fodder for traps, but im not sure it'll see play or qualifies as an 'interesting' buff.

The new cards: Not sure how I feel about that Raccoon. Feels like Patches but worse. Why doesn't every single deck run it as a way to increase consistency? Especially if everyone gets it as a free card. I do like the Shrine though! Neat idea. Not sure where to go with the legendary, but maybe try a few more itterations and see what you can come up with.

Overall, I really like it! Glad someone else tried this out. I think it's a good exercise for card balancing that isn't 'card balancing in a vacuum' like we so often do on custom cards. We've played these cards, or rather, we haven't played them because they suck. So buffing them is a fun way to think about the game.

Is Rain of Toads really that bad of a card? I know that most of my decks aren’t that great, but for that card I’ve never really felt like it was too weak

Thanks for the detailed feedback ZardozSpeakZ!

The division into fair and interesting is more aesthetic than real, but I did try to organize the cards properly.
[Hearthstone Card (Halazzi the Lynx) Not Found] with Rush seems interesting... I might change it if others agree.
I will probably remove Blast Wave soon, maybe with Scorch, but then I'm buffing two Elemental cards.
Glad you're happy with (mostly) all else.

About Khun, I don't know. Yes, it's consistent, but as a guaranteed Stonetusk Boar that could mess up your strategy if it shuffles a 2-Cost card. But didn't we all get Vargoth, "the best Legendary of RoS" for free?

p.s. I think the problem with Rain of Toads isn't the Cost or effect, but the big Overload, just like with Elemental Destruction or Crushing Hand. I didn't want to tamper with the Overload as it is an important part of the card's effect.

Vargoth is a good point to consider. It was the best legendary of the set, it fits into so many different decks, but it does require some forethought in the deck building phase. Your deck needs low cost spells that are meaningful when duplicated, not every deck needs vargoth. It was great they offered him for free, since he is so ubiquitous. I think giving Zilliax for free would have been a similar good move, since nearly every crafted him anyway.

Khun as you've got him, just goes in nearly any deck, excluding really niche stuff like Big Priest and Spell Hunter. Vargoth required other cards to be useful, Khun is just good on his own. I remember how often decks were running Patches, just as a deck thinning tactic, this does something similar, not deck thinning but increasing draw consistency. Think of how many decks just pass on turn 1. Now they'd all play Khun instead.

Aside from balance concerns, its just not very exciting. I can imagine game after game, "Oh, there's Khun again". Snip-Snap is a powerful card, but it doesn't go in everything, and it gets used differently. Aggro mech decks use him to deal with card draw problems as they reach turn 6 and 9 and often don't have enough cards to spend all their mana. Control decks use him for creating big sticky minions that are flexible, go wide or go big. In wild, there are entire infinite snip-snap combo decks too, in multiple classes. The variety is exciting. Khun will just make every game start the exact same way: I play Khun, you play Khun and they kill each other.

Mark of the Loa after your buff is now clearly way much better than Blessing of Kings. So this is a no-no buff for me.

Quote From Meteorite12

Is Rain of Toads really that bad of a card? I know that most of my decks aren’t that great, but for that card I’ve never really felt like it was too weak

Rain of Toads is fine as it is, it is played in Big Shama decks right now.

Other cards with OK power level - Halazzi, the Lynx (Quest Hunter card), Blast Wave (cool arena card), Demonbolt (token-zoolock)

Oh, not sure if this Khun character is an actual dude in WoW or something, but I kinda dislike the name because of how similar it sounds to Kun the Forgotten King.

I will say, designing the new legendary for my Screams of the Old Gods was the hardest part and I still don't really like what I ended up at. A Neutral Legendary needs a lot of versatility, especially if you want to give it away for free and for it to be exciting. Snip-Snap and Vargoth were successes, I think. Marin the Fox? Not so much.

Well, I don't want another Patchy, so I'll think of something in the morning.

Also, I'm just gonna throw this out there: The other idea i had for a free legendary was Zul (from WoW, unlike Khun) as a high-Attack low-Health Rush minion with "Overkill: Shuffle a Corrupted Blood into your opponent's deck." Something like 7 or 8 Mana 5/2. Eventually I dropped the idea because it seemed to be a BIG counter to any control deck, even if Elysiana started to be played as a counter. Do you think it's an idea worth salvaging?

I’m thinking just avoid using corrupted blood for another card. I’ve been using Hakkar a lot, and it can do a good job of forcing your opponent on a timer (since basically no decks run anything to get rid of the card), while still giving your opponent a chance to silence, poly, etc. Making it a guaranteed thing with Rush, while only affecting the opponent doesn’t seem like that great of an idea.

If you wanted to do a neutral loa, I’d say Rezan would probably be the best bet, since he’s one of the most important ones to my knowledge

Replaced Khun the Racoon with Rezan the King. The effect of the spirit stayed the same (might change to highest Cost instead). If anyone has better art for the spirit, please share.

Blast Wave replaced with Scorch.

Minor fixes in Mage and Warrior.

Rezan looks fun! Not a bad idea, surely good enough to see play. How many priest and warrior decks want their starting hero power? How many agro decks would like to gamble on steadyshot or lifetap? Sir Finley is still good in wild, I play him in lots of decks. This would be a fun way to bring it back to standard, and still a nice alternative in Wild.