My favorite part of Uldum is watching the rise of Eater of Secrets in wild, a tech card from 3 years ago. Crazy how a single set can bring back old stuff too.
Yeah, I suspect the reason why these things haven't been ripped out of the game yet is because they aren't stored as some kind of simple 2D image file. At the very least, many of them are 2D things stretched onto 3D objects, but I bet a lot are entirely generated within unity.
Hey, I'm looking to create some custom graphics, effects similar to Shadow Form or Cursed Blade, that appear over top hero portraits in the game. Has anyone pulled these various graphics out of the game in a usable format? Does anyone have homemade versions that approximate the visual effects?
Here's an image showing the stuff I'm talking about. Cursed Blade debuffing the hero and weapon with a red glow. The frozen and immune and shadow form hero effects too. Also, anyone have the reborn graphic?
Just want to add that I'd like this feature too! I'd use it over on the custom cards section to hide extra text/cards like token stuff or things that might need explanations.
You'd run the warrior one if you wanted more than 2 brawls. Currently Warpath is often run alongside Brawl in control warriors, wild and standard. Bouncing Blade and Plague of Wrath are other alternatives but they're too weak. Control Warrior wants to have more than 2 board clears.
Yeah, the general complaint seems to be that these are bad or are terrible coinflips. And yeah... that's kinda true? Only the Tyrant of Terror would see actual play as as an extra copy of brawl, with the chance of nuke yourself hard and not clearing large minions. The rest are pretty big gambles, so big you wouldn't intentionally include this in a deck unless you absolutely needed another board clear.
I kinda imagine these cards as being too bad to put a in a deck, but good enough to be picked off a discover effect in a desperate moment.
And yeah, flavor maybe over-ruled game balance in their design. At 4 mana, they're just too good to potentially crush an agro opponent. At 5 mana, they're highly questionable, you'd more likely run the card they cast (if it is standard).
Hey, made these cards while working on my Burning Legion set. Decided they didn't fit there, but I like them on their own. Something for a special event? Part of a new Old God's set maybe? I started adding the other 4 classes, but the flavor felt off and there are only so many interesting spells to do this with.
Hey, lots of new cards up. I think I'm nearly at the halfway point. Some classes are finished, or they have all their cards at least. Check out Druid, Shaman, Paladin 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.
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.
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.
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.
Good point on firestarter. I might make it like 'add this minions card text' or something. Use 'add' instead of 'gain', i dont want it to remove a creatures existing ability. Altar of Kings might be too powerful, you're right. I was actually considering removing the discover part, so you just get a legendary that died (friendly or maybe both sides?).
thanks! I think that's enough of a thumbs up for me to add the keyword into the set. It's simple, it's familiar, it's intuitive, it fits the theme and and opens lots of design space.
Added stuff for the remaining classes, Priest and Shaman. Also, I haven't worked everyone's feedback in yet. I wanted to get concepts down for all nine classes before I double backed to older classes too much.
BUT, I had a big breakthrough today. My set didn't have a new Keyword, which is unusual. Nothing had come into my mind, but I considered a 'Burning' keyword, since this set is about the Burning Legion after all. I looked over the cards I had made and realized, my keyword was already in my set! I just hadn't noticed it yet. So here is the Burning Keyword.
The great part about this keyword, it greatly shrinks the text of 'At the end of your turn' cards. I already had lots of these cards in the set, making them into self sacrificing cards just increased the demonic flavor of the set. This is effectively the same effect as Imp Master
Here's a bunch of them, I'm not going to pust them into the main post yet, as I want to think this through more.
Tough idea. On one hand, we do have things like Blackhowl Gunspire. This seems like a good way to big buildings with passive or activated effects.
But there might be room for other ways to do it. Passive Hero Powers or equipping a stronghold in the weapon slot. The Quest/Secret space, like you've suggested.
But if you want locations to affect a game, I think it warrants considering how best to accomplish that and be true to the concept of spaces. The battlefield currently is just divided into two segments, it fits 7 minions on both sides. What about cards that affect that space? Shrinking it, expanding it, adding other divisions and obstacles. I think that'd be better described as something like 'Battleground Cards'. I remember seeing a custom Deathwing card that had text like 'Battlecry: reduce the battlefield by two spaces', with the idea being that minion slots would fall into a black chasm, shrinking the battlefield.
A digression: the recent quests create passive hero powers. They're all themed as objects, books, jewelry, etc. I think it'd make more thematic sense if they went to the weapon slot. It'd make them more vulnerable, but it'd keep with Legendary Weapons with 0 attack like Aluneth. I'd guess a lot of players have kind of overlooked how the new quest cards create worn and held objects. They just see a quest card and a passive hero power. Maybe this is best for game balance, but it's a bit less satisfying for me when it comes to representation.
So, lots of options for where to put these things: Minions, dormant minions, weapon slot, hero power slot, secret/quest slot or actual adjustments to the battlefield. Maybe draw up a 'Stronghold' idea for each class, then rotate it through all these positions, see where it fits best?
I remember the Pokemon card game had Stadium cards. Check those out.
Ill give some more thought to Inferno Prince. I feel its similarly balanced to Cloud Prince and Blazecaller, but those do require some deckbuilding, even if the final mana cost/benefit seems similar. I want some powerful neutral demons in the set, just need to decide if this is way to do it.
Good catch on Warglaive of Azzinoth. Its supposed to be hunter, ill change it soon.
Thanks, probably going to rework some of them. One thing I'm certain of is that I don't need this man board clear and removal effects, I've got cards that are filling the same niches. Part of the point of the set is to fuse warlock mechanics into the other 8 classes, pretty sure I want to keep discard stuff in Warrior, though it is unusual.
Infernal Prince isn't comparable to Siamat. It's more comparable to something like Blazecaller. Unlike that card, you can't go face with it, so you might be required to blast your own minions if an enemy minion isn't available to target. Siamat is flexible, Inferno Prince really isn't flexible.
I think I'll keep God of War how it is. Much like UI or even the new Octosari (deathrattle draw 8), drawing that many cards is actually a problem. It's unlikely you'd have that as your only card in hand. And aside from overdraw problems, if this isn't played early in the game, you're likely putting yourself in fatigue. And yeah, it's pyroblast, but you're also taking the damage if you hit a minion and you can't skip over taunts.
Mannoroth, Pulverize and the Raider are likely going to get revisions.
Also worked a bit on Shaman and Priest, going to put some of that up later.
My favorite part of Uldum is watching the rise of Eater of Secrets in wild, a tech card from 3 years ago. Crazy how a single set can bring back old stuff too.
Yeah, I suspect the reason why these things haven't been ripped out of the game yet is because they aren't stored as some kind of simple 2D image file. At the very least, many of them are 2D things stretched onto 3D objects, but I bet a lot are entirely generated within unity.
Hey, I'm looking to create some custom graphics, effects similar to Shadow Form or Cursed Blade, that appear over top hero portraits in the game. Has anyone pulled these various graphics out of the game in a usable format? Does anyone have homemade versions that approximate the visual effects?
Here's an image showing the stuff I'm talking about. Cursed Blade debuffing the hero and weapon with a red glow. The frozen and immune and shadow form hero effects too. Also, anyone have the reborn graphic?
Just want to add that I'd like this feature too! I'd use it over on the custom cards section to hide extra text/cards like token stuff or things that might need explanations.
You'd run the warrior one if you wanted more than 2 brawls. Currently Warpath is often run alongside Brawl in control warriors, wild and standard. Bouncing Blade and Plague of Wrath are other alternatives but they're too weak. Control Warrior wants to have more than 2 board clears.
Yeah, the general complaint seems to be that these are bad or are terrible coinflips. And yeah... that's kinda true? Only the Tyrant of Terror would see actual play as as an extra copy of brawl, with the chance of nuke yourself hard and not clearing large minions. The rest are pretty big gambles, so big you wouldn't intentionally include this in a deck unless you absolutely needed another board clear.
I kinda imagine these cards as being too bad to put a in a deck, but good enough to be picked off a discover effect in a desperate moment.
And yeah, flavor maybe over-ruled game balance in their design. At 4 mana, they're just too good to potentially crush an agro opponent. At 5 mana, they're highly questionable, you'd more likely run the card they cast (if it is standard).
Hey, made these cards while working on my Burning Legion set. Decided they didn't fit there, but I like them on their own. Something for a special event? Part of a new Old God's set maybe? I started adding the other 4 classes, but the flavor felt off and there are only so many interesting spells to do this with.
Hey, lots of new cards up. I think I'm nearly at the halfway point. Some classes are finished, or they have all their cards at least. Check out Druid, Shaman, Paladin 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.
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.
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.
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.
Good point on firestarter. I might make it like 'add this minions card text' or something. Use 'add' instead of 'gain', i dont want it to remove a creatures existing ability. Altar of Kings might be too powerful, you're right. I was actually considering removing the discover part, so you just get a legendary that died (friendly or maybe both sides?).
Thanks for the Imp Master!
thanks! I think that's enough of a thumbs up for me to add the keyword into the set. It's simple, it's familiar, it's intuitive, it fits the theme and and opens lots of design space.
Added stuff for the remaining classes, Priest and Shaman. Also, I haven't worked everyone's feedback in yet. I wanted to get concepts down for all nine classes before I double backed to older classes too much.
BUT, I had a big breakthrough today. My set didn't have a new Keyword, which is unusual. Nothing had come into my mind, but I considered a 'Burning' keyword, since this set is about the Burning Legion after all. I looked over the cards I had made and realized, my keyword was already in my set! I just hadn't noticed it yet. So here is the Burning Keyword.
The great part about this keyword, it greatly shrinks the text of 'At the end of your turn' cards. I already had lots of these cards in the set, making them into self sacrificing cards just increased the demonic flavor of the set. This is effectively the same effect as Imp Master
Here's a bunch of them, I'm not going to pust them into the main post yet, as I want to think this through more.
Tough idea. On one hand, we do have things like Blackhowl Gunspire. This seems like a good way to big buildings with passive or activated effects.
But there might be room for other ways to do it. Passive Hero Powers or equipping a stronghold in the weapon slot. The Quest/Secret space, like you've suggested.
But if you want locations to affect a game, I think it warrants considering how best to accomplish that and be true to the concept of spaces. The battlefield currently is just divided into two segments, it fits 7 minions on both sides. What about cards that affect that space? Shrinking it, expanding it, adding other divisions and obstacles. I think that'd be better described as something like 'Battleground Cards'. I remember seeing a custom Deathwing card that had text like 'Battlecry: reduce the battlefield by two spaces', with the idea being that minion slots would fall into a black chasm, shrinking the battlefield.
A digression: the recent quests create passive hero powers. They're all themed as objects, books, jewelry, etc. I think it'd make more thematic sense if they went to the weapon slot. It'd make them more vulnerable, but it'd keep with Legendary Weapons with 0 attack like Aluneth. I'd guess a lot of players have kind of overlooked how the new quest cards create worn and held objects. They just see a quest card and a passive hero power. Maybe this is best for game balance, but it's a bit less satisfying for me when it comes to representation.
So, lots of options for where to put these things: Minions, dormant minions, weapon slot, hero power slot, secret/quest slot or actual adjustments to the battlefield. Maybe draw up a 'Stronghold' idea for each class, then rotate it through all these positions, see where it fits best?
I remember the Pokemon card game had Stadium cards. Check those out.
Ill give some more thought to Inferno Prince. I feel its similarly balanced to Cloud Prince and Blazecaller, but those do require some deckbuilding, even if the final mana cost/benefit seems similar. I want some powerful neutral demons in the set, just need to decide if this is way to do it.
Good catch on Warglaive of Azzinoth. Its supposed to be hunter, ill change it soon.
Thanks, probably going to rework some of them. One thing I'm certain of is that I don't need this man board clear and removal effects, I've got cards that are filling the same niches. Part of the point of the set is to fuse warlock mechanics into the other 8 classes, pretty sure I want to keep discard stuff in Warrior, though it is unusual.
Infernal Prince isn't comparable to Siamat. It's more comparable to something like Blazecaller. Unlike that card, you can't go face with it, so you might be required to blast your own minions if an enemy minion isn't available to target. Siamat is flexible, Inferno Prince really isn't flexible.
I think I'll keep God of War how it is. Much like UI or even the new Octosari (deathrattle draw 8), drawing that many cards is actually a problem. It's unlikely you'd have that as your only card in hand. And aside from overdraw problems, if this isn't played early in the game, you're likely putting yourself in fatigue. And yeah, it's pyroblast, but you're also taking the damage if you hit a minion and you can't skip over taunts.
Mannoroth, Pulverize and the Raider are likely going to get revisions.
Also worked a bit on Shaman and Priest, going to put some of that up later.
Added Warrior cards tonight and made adjustments to a bunch of rogue cards. Also some new neutrals.
Ah, that explains my problem. I was trying to make a card that summoned 6 Silver Hand Recruits, plural. Good to have the workaround!