Just another random thought

I think I've stated it before on this Blog but I really would like to be able to play a Dinosaur deck. Why? Because it's just cool. It’s that simple. Now, the problem is that there are too few Dinosaurs in the game. It would be easy to think of another minion, but I'm trying to think of spells. 

Hunter has this card called Lock and Load. It gives the player a random Hunter card when you cast a spell. I wanted to create a spell that has synergy with this card and add some Dinosaur flavor to the game. So the effect I was thinking of was: "Each time a beast is put into your hand, it becomes a Dinosaur". Which was a bit odd because there currently is no Dinosaur race and it never will be because of the beast label. So, instead I wanted it to summon Mounted Raptors, which was also odd because that card is made for Druids. 

I have thought of just buffing the beast you draw, but it felt boring and not great flavor wise. Because of these things, I was thinking about two options. Either design a new Dinosaur that could be summoned with this card or choose from the existing cards. Because of time reasons, I choose the latter one (for now).

So without really thinking about it, my Dinosaur of choice became the Devilsaur. To be honest I think the Devilsaur has a too high cost and I should create another dinosaur for it to summon, but for now its fine. I could reduce the mana cost and then let it summon Bloodfen Raptor's which have a lower mana-cost. However, I don't know if that is the sollution.

I'll let the idea rest for now and pick it back up when I have ideas for the Dino it could summon. In the meantime, let me know what you think of such a spell. Is it dumb? Would it be useful? Let me know!

If you're not smart you'd better be annoying

You know what? Yesterday I posted about educating the Ogres; making them smarter. Well today I want to punish those who are smart :D Let's annoy the pro-players!

Almost all pro-players tend to think for a long time before they act. Other people pretend to think for a long time and use 'turtling' as a tactic. Now those are the annoying people. So in return; let's give them a reason not to do this. Why not add a card that would punish people for waiting for the rope. 

Abilities that trigger when the rope appears should be easy enough to avoid for anyone. Just be a little quicker with your thinking. Also, such abilities would works nicely combined with Nozdormu. When these two get combined, you will trigger the ability every turn! Now that would make this card strong and would make Nozdormu more powerful. 

So when I thought about this, that would mean that the minion should have decent stats

on it's own (the ability doesn't work in most cases). It also would mean that the card should have some link to the Bronze Dragonflight. So, i decided to make the card a Timewalker.

The first idea was to create a Timewalker warrior that gives Taunt whenever the rope appears, but I couldn't find any good art for it. My next idea was to have a Warlock Timewalker, that would Shadow bolt a random minion, but there wasn't any decent Timewalker art for that either. So then I found this art and decided to make it a Mage for now. I mean, common it's Winter Veil; let's freeze some stuff!

I didn't really focus that much on the stats. I just wanted to try some new idea's out that would help Nozdormu and revolve around time (the rope). Let me know what you think of such abilities. Would they work of be much to situational and thus be bad?

Tinking Tribal: First Broken concepts

Hi there! Today I'm uploading my first concept for the Broken tribe. Like I’ve said in a previous article: It's very difficult to find enough (and fitting) art of Broken Draenei. But.. if we cheat a little bit here and there (I hope you don't notice it :P) we might be able to pull it off. 

The idea I had revolved around Akama. He's known for his chain lightning spell and calling in elemental wolves. I noticed how all current Hearthstone cards with lightning on them; (Lightning Storm, Lightning Bolt & Forked Lightning) and the Feral Spirit card, all have overload. So it would be perfect for Akama to revolve around that ability. 

I wanted to recreate the Rebound mechanic from MTG but it would not fit the small Hearthstone cards.  That’s when I tried this set up for Akama. It might be a little bit overboard (I mean overpowered with that), but for now it's okay. The other Broken should revolve around this same mechanic. Most of these spells deal "small" amounts of damage against multiple enemies. However, I didn't knew eny better ability atm than to make them stronger against weakened enemies. I might change that if I know something better.

Then there is the last card in this concept set. Deathsworn Soulseeker makes ALL Broken minions 2 mana cheaper. It's probably broken as hell... I know. But it seemed nice in combination with the Overload cost. So yeah. I think the current set-up is really BROKEN. hahaha :D It might give these cards a second look in the near future. 
Please leave comments. Tell me how overpowered they are. Do you have any good alternatives? 

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.

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.