Herald of Trickery

So I uploaded this Satyr Race yesterday and got some feedback on it from another player. He (or she) alerted me on the fact that the race and in particular the Herald of Trickery was really underwhelming. So I looked back at the cards I crated yesterday and came to the same conclusion. 

In the first concepts, the Herald of Trickery was a 2/3 Taunt for 2 mana. Which is rather strong if you compare it with the Frostwolf Grunt. So that's why I downgraded him a bit. This was before i wrote the ability down: You lose Taunt if you have less than 15 cards. Which is a negative ability by itself. So what I should have done is make it a 2/3 again and give it the negative ability instead of it being 1/2. So with this message im correcting my mistake. 

I'm not going to upload the 2/3 variant I just described, but instead i'm showing you a 1/3. This is because of the Frostwolf Grunt. If this card would be a 2/3 it would mean that the Grunt would be useless and this card would dominate him early-game. So, I hope this cards functions better this way. All with all I’m starting to doubt if Satyrs (that revolve around discarding) are a real possibility.

Introducing: Satyr tribal

So today I’ve created a new Race Hearthstone. Well, not a new race, but I added an existing race called the Satyr. Satyrs are very cool humanoid demons that resemble goats. They can be found in numerous zones throughout Warcraft and have a small cozy place in my hearth. That why I wanted to add them to my other hearth, Hearthstone. :P

So before I describe the cards I should immediately notice two problems. First of all Satyrs are Demons but in order for them to be a in-game race, you can't call them Demons. If you did, it would be very strong and amusable. So you can just call them Satyrs, but's that's equally saying that a Golden Delicious is not an apple but it's just a Golden Delicious. There is another thing: The cards I created seem to align best with the stars of the Hunters and Warlocks. This, while these classes already have strong racial minions. Warlocks play Murloc and Hunters play Beasts.

That said, I still wanted to share these cards because I really like Xavius xD. Xevius is the Satyr Lord. As far as I know he's not in Word of Warcraft, but his sons (the Satyr princes) are. That's why the epic Racial is called the Satyr Prince. All Satyrs revolve around discarding cards. This makes it very usable for Warlock players. They synergise well with: Soulfire, Succubus, Doomguard and even Tracking (for Hunters) 

Not all cards benefit directly from discarding. Some require you to have less or more than 15 cards in your deck. This ability is rather similar to how the Zendikar Vampires from MTG work. That might seem weak, but I calculated that with a perfect scenario that is already achieved at turn 6. 

Please let me know what you think of the Satyrs. I really like them myself and would love to play them. Maybe they’re a little bit strong at the moment, I don't know. Let me know what you think of that.

Update: Playing Gnomes

So I’ve been playing Gnomes for like two weeks now. My mage deck is decent, but since several days I’ve been playing this weird Warlock Gnome tribal deck. And geez that one's crazy. For some reason it wins more than a fair amount of games. (Still it's not insane much, but it wins a lot) The main reason this deck wins a lot is not because of the Gnomes, but because of one strong combo. A filthy combo in my opinion. So let's say I’ve played 30 games so far with the deck... in 27 of them I’ve managed to play Jaraxxus. The only reason is because of the card you see below: Sense Demons.

Seriously, they should have rewrtitten the text, because this is exactly what you want to use the card for. It almost garantees you have Jaraxxus at turn 9. Combine this with the early damage of the Gnomes and you got a mean little machine going on. I think a lot of player don't see this simple combo, or don't like it enough to play it. I don't know. In my opinion its sick. Real sick. I might upload some video's of it soon. (I’ve promised to make some Hearthstone vids for my bro's Youtube channel) 

At the moment I’m not really popping out as many Custom Cards as I should, but I do need to work on my school projects once in a time. So please be patient, new cards are coming soon! 

Enter the Scarlet Crusade

Yeeey. Inspired by the new Adventure mode preview, I created my own little adventure. It's based on the famous Scarlet Crusade. I really like the style of this dundeon, so why not make it into a adventure.

I started out with one of the Bosses the adventure offers. The boss i chose is High Inquisitor Whitemane. In the game she's known for putting all the players to sleep while reviving her ally Durand (Which quickly became the legendary of this encounter) The ability Deep sleep came from this in-game event. She basically gives a minion Summoning sickness again (notice the ZzzzZ's above their heads). But you could also just call it freeze. Since it's basically the same effect. just like the the preview showed a neutral adventure card to the left side of the boss, the picture below shows a new spell. It's one of the abiliy's Whitemane can use. She saves minions from the dead an returns them to their owners hands.

Then followed the new cards. This is what made the official preview so exciting for me. I wanted to know what curious minions I could encounter. I wrote down what every minions role was. All cards (except for the epic shade) revolved around Deathrattle. Only two cards had deathrattle themselves and two cards abused that ability. This is what I wanted to recreate. However, I didn't choose for a passive ability, but a activated ability: Return to hand. 

What I wanted to do is to push the player into a corner where he has to choose. Would he play minions and get negative effects, or avoid playing minions, but losing board advantage. I don't know it this really came to show in these cards. I hope so...

I hope you like the little adventure I made. I don't know if it's balanced because I didn't have too much time to think about it. (I have this school assignment which I should be working on atm ;P) Let me know what you think about it in the comments below. 

PS: I know the epic card is missing, but i'm very tired atm and need to get up early tomorrow morgning. So maybe I'lll look at him later this week.

Update: Birthday Absence

Hey everybody. It's been some days since my latest card creations. (Two days to be exact) This is due to my birthday and all the quests coming by. In the time of my absence, Blizzard has previewed the new Hearthstone expansion. Which contains the first adventure. I'm very excited about it! Not only because of the adventure itself, but because I now have a better understanding of what they mean with adventures. 

It's very interesting to see how they used Deathrattle as main ability for this "raid". and then they used cards like: Baron Rivendare as a Corpsejack Menace. This has a really cool synergy with Nerubian Egg. It has some cool undead flavor to it. Which made me think about some other cool adventures that might be coming Like the enrage ability that really fits the trolls, the Freeze ability of elementals and the discard ability Demons bring to the table, It just made me look at it all on a rather different way.

I think that in the coming days I will be tinkering about different adventures that might be possible. However, I got some stuff coming up for school as well, so I hope I have enough time to tinker about it. 

Father Christmas (fun-card)

Yeey! It's my birthday today! Twenty-four years have past and I'm still here trolling the internet. I'm in a very good mood at the moment, so I wanted to create a funny and cool card that revolves around giving or getting some presents. And well... who gives better presents than Santa Claus? Well I know. Sinterklaas does! Oh I didn't meant him, sorry. I meant that guy from World of Warcraft. What's his name again? Oh! Father Winter. That lovely Orc that makes your Hearth melt each year. 

Well today I created this funny season reward. It would be really cool to obtain such a card by playing ranked in December or something. The real joke is that this card actually has some synergy with other cards. If you play him on turn three, right after playing Lorewalker Cho, you might get some presents yourself. It spawns a minion, and let's you play a spell. Which might be useful for your deck. The present you give away would probably contain some random Gnomish inventions, a Chicken or a Dog..

Oh and I don't know if the universe of Warcraft has "Help-Santa Clauses", but notice that he's actually not a legendary minion :P As alway's I hope you like the card(s). Leave comments to let me know what you think about them. I've been doing this for three days now and I intent to make that a lot more. I'm signing off for today, I need to go to the supermarket and buy some party food!

Thinking Tribal: Blood Eleves

In World of Warcraft, I mostly play as an Orc or Blood Elf. I really like these races. Orcs are well represented in Hearthstone. However, Blood Elves seem to be less present in the current game. As always, I start this article with summing up all the minions that belong to this tribe / race. I got the following list:

Secretkeeper | Neutral | 1 Mana | Buffed by Secrets.
Mana Addict | Neutral | 2 Mana | Buffed by Spells.  

Doomsayer | Neutral | 2 Mana | Destroy ALL minions.
Sunfury Protector | Neutral | 2 Mana | Adjacent get Taunt.

Blood Knight | Neutral | 3 Mana | Absorb Devine Shield.

Spellbreaker | Neutral | 4 Mana | Silence minion.

Silvermoon Guardian | Neutral | 4 Mana | Devine Shield.

If you look at these minions, you may notice they revolve around three things. Playing spells, playing secrets (which are spells) and devine shield (which you get from minions or.. you guessed it, from spells) Another thing you notice rather quick is that the Blood Elves lack a leader at the moment. There are no racial legendaries. Finally, you might notice that none of the Bood Elves has a strong body to start with. They all need something to work. Either spells or Devine Shield.

Since there is no leader and the 5 mana slot isn't used for this race, I started thinking. According to Wowwiki, Lor'themar Theron is the current leader. So I wanted to implement him into the game. Blood Elves are a strong magic wielding race. So I felt the ability had to do something with magic and spells.

Besides all this, I want to create minions that are resilient to those high mana-costing Legendaries that are so popular. It seems everyone plays Ragnaros these days. (and why not...) But I wanted something to resist him. something that doesn't die from his magical ability. And then it came to me. Why not add a very special Faerie Dragon. Faerie Dragon can't be targeted by spells. What would happen if you slightly change this ability. So that he CAN be targeted, but that those spells don't effect it. This could definitely chance play. And this is how I created the Lor'themar Theron card your seeïng here. 
His 5/4 body makes him a decent minion that's not to overpowering. If it would have been 4/5, he would have replaced the Yeti, which we don't want. So players are able to kill this with decent creatures, however ability's don't work on him. Making him able to survive a Ragnaros, but die against an Ysera. And for those who didn't noticed the combo: Doomsayer + Lor'themar Theron.

I really like this card and absolutely love the artwork. It would be awesome to play with this card. What do you think?  

Servitor Shade

So, late last night this ability popped in my head. It's a bit similar to the Void Terror's ability, except that this minion keeps using that ability over and over. The first ability seemed rather overpowered and that's why I had to tweak the ability a bit. Resulting in the cards your looking at.


This Servitor Shade absorbs the power of all minions that die. Except, they have to die one by one. So using a Hellfire or Abombination won't make this minion so huge that you can instantly kill the opponent. Besides that, whenever the minion gets buffed, he loses one Health. Bringing him within Burn rage of most small spells. I think this is a nice and cool minion. I love Shades / dark themed elementals.

At first I wanted this minion to be Shaman, but I think it's way more favorable for Warlocks. Besides that, I don't think absorbing power fits the Shaman's theme. That would rather be the nature giving power to an minion.

Applebough (fun-card)

Everyone loves apples, right? Well for the Hearthstone IPad release I thought it would be funny to create this card. Maybe it's not the best choosing Wisps to transform, because you can interpret that as: All dead people want Apples... However, it refers to the fact that Wisps in Warcraft 3 could be put into trees. Awh who cares, it's just a fun card. Enjoy!

Northsea Duelist

I'm Dutch and that means I live very close to the North Sea. So, when I browsed through the Wowhead database and found the Northsea Duelist, I got a smile on my face. I wanted to create a Heartstone card using that name. So I got tinkering. Pirates live on the sea. However, the Pirate tribe is already complete. So I need a card, that can function on it's own, but still had synergy with some of the Pirates. 

This made me think of those old movies where you see people dueling. Not having an full-scale battle. No just two people fighting out of pure rivalry. A "fair" fight. And I’m saying "fair" because you can absolutely abuse an mechanic where you give the opponent the same weapon as the one your wielding. If you're playing Pirates, you have more advantage of having a weapon equipped. Besides that, you can immediatly destroy the opponent's weapon using a Bloodsail Corsair or Buff your weapon by playing Captain Greenskin. So yeah, giving your opponent the same weapon is really nice right? :) 

This is how I came up with the cards your seeing below. I like that you can  abuse the mechanic, however I still think the Northsea Duelist needs a bigger body and a higher mana cost. Now I’m writing this, I think it would be better if she had a [4] mana cost and a 3/4 body. That way she hits the board one turn before Captain Greenskin and gives you a bit more power on the table. Which the pirates could use in my opinion. However, with only 2 Health, the idea is that the Cutlass you're giving your opponent, can kill the Northsea Duelist.

Class Concepting: Monks

It's very plausible that in future Hearthstone expansions they will add the missing classes: Death Knight and Monk. In this article I’m tinkering about what might be the ability that would be that the Monk brings to the game. According to Wowhead, Monks are masters of Hand to hand combat. (Only using their weapons for devastating finishing moves).They're also good healers. However they can't be to much of an healer, because that's what the Priest is for.

During the developer interviews, they made it very clear that they didn't want to chance the HUD. They didn't like adding all these weird bars and icons. And that’s excellent, because that's exactly what the HEX tcg is doing. Adding all these weird bars and icons distracting you from what's actually happening. (Which is terrible for casual and newer players) 

So Monks shouldn't bring anything new to the HUD. So doing something with Chi / Energy might not be possible. Besides that, Monks are known for Melee attacks and having three different Stances. Those stances could be utilized as spells (similar to the Shadowform spell) You play the spell and chance your Hero ability with it. Essentially giving your three different Hero abilities and tree different play-styles. It is possible to make the Hero ability similar to the Shaman, where you get an random totem stance. But I think Hearthstone has enough RNG as it is. I think Blizzards will choose for this RNG path, but I really hope they don't.

I would like to see the following; Monks will be attacking through hand to hand combat. Thus they need some form of protection. Or else they'll take really much damage or end up as an clone of the Rogue class. The Stance of the Sturdy Ox might give the solution to this. It reduces damage that the Hero will receive. So, by evading two attack each turn, you essentially have the weaker version of the Warrior ability. Why weaker? Because you can't stack 'evasion'. That's why I thought about the possibility of preventing one WHOLE attack. But that might be the opposite side of the coin and be to overpowered.

Using spells, it should be possible to implement the two other stances the Monk has available. Stance of the Fierce Tiger resembles the ability of the Druid and Stance of the Wise Serpent represents the Priests ability. Thus it would be cool to see a class changing between these stances allowing the player to drastically change his playing style during the game. This should make up for the somehow lesser ability the Hero has for default.

Decrepit Necromancer

I have no idea why I just came up with this crazy minon. It's really weird and I don't know if I really like it.
Let me explain you the Decrepit Necromancer. 

In Warcraft 3 you had these Necromancers that could summon a Skeleton for you. You could send in that Skeleton into battle while your Necromancer stayed back. So for some reason I wrote down an ability that does exactly this. You send in a minion before your real minion does damage. I haven't thought about the actual use of it... It might be useful to ping 1 Health minions, but who knows. I don't even know if it's possible with the mechanics in the current Hearthstone.

Dread Skeleton has a Enrage ability. Preventing it from activating abilities like Flesheating Ghoul. every time he attacks. Again, it's a weird card and I really don't know if I like him or not.

Thinking Tribal: Undead

If you know me well enough, you might know I love tribal decks or theme decks. That's why I've been playing this Gnome tribal deck for the past days. Not because it's so strong, but because it's really fun. In my Thinking Tribal articles, I'd like to brainstorm about playing certain tribal / theme decks. This time I’m thinking about the Undead.

Undead are a interesting race to think about. The amount of undead minions is a bit scarce, but they all seem to have a great synergy amongst each other. Just like the Draenei revolve around healing, Undead revolve around dealing damage to themselves or killing themselves. The list below shows all undead minions that are in the current Version of Hearthstone (and from which I know they are undead). Btw I count the Acolyte of Pain as a undead minion. That's because the Acolyte of Pain minions in WoW and the Acolytes in Warcraft 3 are equally undead, even though this art clearly shows a human.

Bloodmage Thalnos | Neutral | 2 Mana | Spellpwr & Deathrattle draw.
Crazed Alchemist | Neutral | 2 Mana | Swap the attack with defense.
Wild Pyromancer | Neutral | 2 Mana | When castspell, deal 1 dmg to all.
Acolyte of Pain| Neutral | 3 Mana | When damaged, draw a card.
Flesheating Ghoul | Neutral | 3 Mana | When damaged, +1/+0Cult Master | Neutral | 4 Mana | when other friendly minion dies, draw card.
Abomination | Neutral | 5 Mana | Deathrattle deal 2 dmg to all. 
The Black Knight | Neutral | 6 Mana | Battlecry destroy minion with taunt.
Sylvanas Windrunner | Neutral | 6 Mana | Deathrattle: Mind Control a minion.
Kidnapper | Rogue | 6 Mana | Combo return minion to hand.

When we put the undead into two piles, you get the following:
Seeders: Wild Pyromancer & Abomination.
Leechers: Bloodmage Thalnos, Acolyte of Pain, Flesheating Ghoul, Cult Master & Sylvanas Windrunner.

You can add some more "Seeders" like Hellfire, if you play Warlock or Windfury if you play Warrior. Warlock is really flavorful for undead, but it seems that the Warrior class brings more dirty tricks to the table. Allowing you to play an Commanding Shout, Battle Rage or even Brawl (if you have Sylvanas Windrunner on the Battlefield). Yes warrior brings some really dirty tricks to the undead. So what I would like for Hearthstone is to add some Undead flavor to this warrior class.

There are alot of cheap 2 - 3 manacost Undead out there and the 5 -6 spots are taken by some nasty Legendaries. Adding any undead would mean it should fit either the one mana or four mana slot. After some tinkering, I came up with the following concept: 

Don't mind the dull name. I didn't know how to name him because he's not modelled after an actual in-game NPC The idea behind the Overseer is that he can get two attack by having damaged minions by his side. You can achieve this ofcourse by using all those AoE spells.

I hope you liked this article and the Undercity Overseer. Let me hear what you think about it in the comments.

Thinking Tribal: Draenei

If you know me well enough, my might know I love tribal decks or theme decks. That's why I've been playing this Gnome tribal deck for the past days. Not because it's so strong, but because it's really fun. In my Thinking Tribal articles, I'd like to brainstorm about playing certain tribal / theme decks. This time I’m thinking about Draenei.

In my opinion Draenei seem unrepresented by Hearthstone. Yes they are in a lot of Spells, but for a tribal deck you need minions as well. And those seem to be very scarce. The minions below are the Draenei I’m aware of in Hearthstone:

Prophet Velen | Priest | 7 Mana | Doubles heal and damage spells.
Windspeaker | Shaman | 4 Mana | Give a minion Windfury.
Defender of Argus | Neutral | 4 Mana | Give adjacent minions Taunt.
Aldor Peacekeeper | Paladin | 3 Mana | Reduce a minions attack to 1.
Shieldbearer | Neutral | 1 Mana | 0/4 Taunt
Lightwarden | Priest | 1 Mana | I something is healed +2/+0
Auchenai Soulpriest Priest |  5 Mana | Heal becomes damage.

Looking at these cards, it's easy to notice that Priest has the most and rarest Draenei minions. That doesn’t say too much of course, but they all seem to have synergy with each other as well. All revolve around health, healing and taunt. Which is a great combination, because you can heal those taunt creatures while your Lightwarden is cowering behind them.

There is however one problem if you want to play Draenei only. There are no draenei for the 2, 3 and 6 mana slot. This might not look that problematic, but if you think about it... Why would you play Defender of Argus if you don't want to give anything Taunt. It has no use to give Shieldbearer taunt and you don't want your Lightwarden to have it. Therefor a strong 2 or 3 drop is missing.

Aldor Peacekeeper would be perfect for the job, however he's only playable by Paladin decks. Besides that, the 3 drop shouldn't be an rare, epic or legendary card, since this holy tribe seems to be rare. 

Earthen Ring Farseer is perfect. He heals minions, is a wreckingball combined with the Soulpriests and has e decent body to use for Taunt. However, he's still an Orc and not a Draenei. So why isn't there a card similar to that? This brought me to the following card. 

Aldor Champion is similar to Misha. They both cost 3 mana and give you a 4/4 body. However, you only get a chance of drawing Misha with the Animal Companion, but you will always get this minion. But it doesn't have Misha's taunt ability and comes with the downside of giving our opponent 3 health. But is that really a downside? If you combine this with the Soulpriest or with the Defender of Argus, I think you have a decent card for your Draenei deck. 
I hope you liked this article and the Aldor Champion. Let me hear what you think about it in the comments.

Mankrik (fun-card)

I think almost all World of Warcraft players (or at least a lot of players) know Mankrik. Well if you don't know Mankrik, you probability know his wife. Mankrik's wife is famous, because a lot of players had trouble finding here. Everywhere on the web topics popped up asking where she was. Players got so bored of these topics, that they started giving wrong and absurd locations where you might find her. This led to even more hysteria. That's why I thought it would be funny to create this card. Good luck finding Mankrik's wife xD I don't think she's in the game. But if you DO find her, you instantly win the game. How awesome is that!?

Searing Ghoul

Who has played World of Warcraft, might know the Searing Ghoul. It's a Ghoul that set anything near it ablaze. Thus, it can't be frozen, because if just unfreezes itself. 

I really like the Freeze ability in Hearthstone (because I play Mage alot), but I understand it might be very annoying. That's way a minion that can unfreeze itself might prove useful. 

Searing Ghoul allows you to destroy one of your opponent's minions and then attack with the unfrozen Searing Ghoul, or if your opponent attacks one of your minions, the Searing Ghoul will be unfrozen next turn. 

Enslave Demon

Who has played as a Warlock in hearthstone, may have noticed the abscence of one particular ability. Enslaving demons. I would really like to have a card in the game that embodies this ability. In World of Warcraft, this ability let's you enslave a Demon for a certain amount of time. Sure, Mind Control is in the game, but Warlocks can't use that. (and that effect is permanent)

The enslave Demon spell I came up with is rather underwhelming, but it seems fair to play. For 5 mana, you can take control of an opponent's Demon. Now you might be thinking, what's the chance of playing this on an opponent's Demon, right?  But what would happen if you played this on your own Demons? Then you suddenly get an Demon with haste. You can play an Pit Lord and drop this card on it the same turn.
If this card would be in the game, I would definetly run one in my Demon deck. If gives my control against opponent's Demons and gives me an Charge.  

Scarab Tribe

We all know Blizzard will be adding adventures to Hearthstone. Cool adventures full of interesting opponents and unlockables. Sounds interesting right? Well I thought so and started plotting out some encounters I wanted to play against. One of these encounters were the Scarabs under lead of Anub’Arak.

The Idea I had is that all these small insects swarm around this leader. They all protect their king / queen at all costs. Not only yours, no ALL scarabs protect the king. This is how I came up with Anub’Arak’s ability. It’s like a alternative Taunt ability: “ALL damage done to this Minion is done another random Scarab instead.” This means you have to destroy all Scarabs in the game before you can damage this bad-boy. However, you can still silence, destroy or return it to the hand.

In order to make his ability’s work, you need Scarabs in play. This is where the other Scarab cards are used for. Other Scarabs like Vile Scarab, summon 0/1 scarabs either to the board or to your opponent’s deck. Like the Broodkeepter does. Common, I can just see those small scarabs crawling into your opponent’s deck! ^^  
I posted this tribal on Hearthhead before and one used recommended not putting them in your opponent’s deck but in their hands. I think that used was actually correct. That would seem much fairer because it doesn’t waste your opponent’s draws. This way you’re filling your opponent’s hand until he has two choices. Don’t draw new cards, or play those 0/1 Scarabs, which all take Anub’Arak’s damage.  
Personally I think this rare would be really fun. They can easily be combined with cards like Whirlwind and Conceal. It just looks fun to me.

The following cards are part of this race:
Anub'arak - All other scarabs 'swarm' around him
Sapphire Scarab - Gives Scarabs a Doran-like effect.
Vile Scarab - Creates the necessary tokens.
Swarm Scarab - Bugs your opponents.
Scarab Hatchling - The necessary token.
Nerub'ar Broodkeeper - This guy get's really nasty if you don't deal with him.

Ghoulish Epidemic

Ghouldish Epidemic is an 8 mana costing spell exclusive to Warlocks. I really like the idea of abusing the discard funtion. However I don't want it to be used in the same way MTG does (allowing you to reanimate certain creatures). It seems much more fun to reanimate a small legion of tokens instead of certain minions. 

you might think this card wouldn't give you much for it's cost, but I think you can get very much power out of it. Considering there is quite a lot of discard in Hearthstone already: 
Deathwing, Doomguard, Soulfire, Succubus, and Tracking all let you discard cards. (Tracking is not a a Warlock spell)

So if you play Doomguard, Soulfire and Succubus, you have a discarded lot of eight cards. Ofcourse not all of those cards are minions, but let's say you discard 4 minions. Then this card gives you four 3/2 minions on the battlefield. Now that I think of it, maybe it's even to overpowered. Maybe giving 2/2 Ghouls would be strong enough..

Fine, the text is not set in stone yet, I just wanted to share the idea of this card with you.