Hello everybody and welcome to another Fan Community Spotlight. This week, we've got Shatterstar1998 again whom we featured 2 weeks ago to talk about a custom expansion, Love is in the Air. This time however, we've got a custom Duels hero which, of which we featured on this series for the first time just a little over a month ago and this is now the third one we're featuring. Our focus this time is on a Twisted Cornelius hero, which is a dual-class Paladin/Warlock hero. Incidentally, all 3 Duels heroes we've featured on this series have all been dual-class heroes that all feature Warlock as one of the classes. This particular incantation of Cornelius appears in the Book of Heroes stories for both Tamsin and Cariel.

I mentioned in the last Duels hero installment that if you were still apprehensive about trying your hand at Duels designing after the first one featured on the series, then you had an extra boost with the second one. If you were still apprehensive after that, then here's yet another boost to get you going.


Describe Corenlius's design for us. How were you inspired to design him in the way that you did? How did you arrive on the current Hero Powers and Treasure cards?

Shatterstar: "Cornelius design arrive since I was in a roll from my expansion of Love is in the Air and wanted to revisit one of my favorite storyline from this year: The sibling rivalry of Tamsin and Cariel with Cornelius in the middle. I know I wanted to be a whole Duel hero instead of just a minion since there is ground to explore him more. The first Hero Power arrived inspired by the board flood potential of both Paladin and Warlock already had in Duels that is underplayed because of their lower power level. The second and third Hero Power is inspired by the insane card draw in Warlock, as well as taking full advance of the famous good 4 drop in Paladin as well as the now 3 spell school available with the combination of the two classes. The Treasure is designed to support and go with the deck and Hero Power already designed"


Paladin/Warlock strikes me as a troublesome combo to work with given that the two classes are diametrically opposite to each other in terms of flavor. How do you work around this or perhaps even use it to your advantage?

Shatterstar: "I know I wanted Cornelius to be a Paladin and Warlock from the start! It's because Cornelius when he was alive is pretty heavily implied to be a Paladin. I even ignored the fact that he used Warrior card mainly in his encounter! The clashing in flavor of the two classes I think actually add to the class design because this clashing helped me go down very interesting design space, like the Imp that disguised / benefit from Silver Hand Recruit synergy or the Blessing that also activate on discard. I look at the card pool of the two classes and thinking that which attribute that they have in common and which can they supplement each other to create unique Treasures and gameplay."


Do you have any advice to share for people who have never made any Duels cards?

Shatterstar: "The Power Level in Duel is really high, so I would advice people if they want to design stuff in Duels to go nut with the Power Level. Things like Mozaki the hero would never be allowed to go through testing."


Do you have anything behind the scenes that you wish to share?

Shatterstar: "I really had a hard time trying to create the Sister Rivalry card. I know what I want the effect to be, but because it has to fit both Paladin and Warlock because of the effect I have to brainstorm a lot. It was originally has something like Legion Consume All! as the name before I scrapped it because it didn't fit Paladin. The namesake arrived after a day of taking a break and revisit the idea of what I want to do with the hero in the first place: The clashing of paladin Cariel and warlock Tamsin."


Another short one for this week. Duels installments just naturally sorta work like that. You can find more details about how everything was designed in the project's forum thread which you can get to by clicking the banner down below.