47 out of 50 Possible Design Stars?! What a Week! Top Custom Cards of the Week  

@@camerondevoe4700 "More than 11" and "12 or more" are equivalent given that we only care about integers (true in the case of mana!), so yes. I think you are right about that reading more clearly to most people.

I would write it as “as soon as you can afford to”. Would be slightly different in the case that the card gets discounted but that’s fine for me.

@@KambEight Imo that would work, because you still probably wouldn't want a 12/12 on turn 10 without doing anything else. Although I have to wonder how it would interact with Embiggen since it would increase it's cost over your maximum mana threshold...

ok but why even run it in druid if you are just gonna play guff

@@napho5451 I can't think of a good reason, but you are allowed to do it, so game designers need to account for it.

❤️

Same here

yeah the druid change is weird, it buffs their hero power lol. also tbh the card is weak, the battlecry barely matters

As he said gruul would heavily impact your winrate against midrange and aggro decks so its okay

@@personallyunknown4670 demon Hunter has the second-best, arguably the best hero power of any class. a downgrade for one of the worst hero powers making it a straight upgrade on either the 2nd or 1st best hero power is not a downgrade, lol

@@personallyunknown4670 it buffed because it costs 1.

Would also make Shaman's summon a 'drained' or 'weakened' totem, with max health reduced, rather than it being damage.

Reckless Apprentice after two wildfire casually dealing 24 self damage

Even with the strongest evolve shaman of all time right now I still fundamentally don’t like that game plan. Way too many battlecry minions with low stats and high costs or generally few minions that exist merely for stats.

Another comment on Sir Finley of the Sea: maybe if your opponent had a Hero Power that wasn’t their starting one, it would be reset?

I believe Patient Strike is made that way because it's flavorful, since only DH have sigils If Idle Recruits had to be changed, I'd make it add a Silver Hand Recruit to your hand, or simply make it cost 3

@@sonarchy5158 idle recruits taking a turn to be summoned is super flavorful…

@@xicy133x My apologies, flavorful wasn't the correct word I get that an idle, late recruit coming a turn late makes sense ; but cards that (in their text) do something next turn isn't a Paladin thing, neither are Discard or Destroy for example Admiteddly, 0 attack minions do not feel very Paladin either, regardless of balance

@@sonarchy5158 neither does lot of the other hero powers for that matter IMO, adding a recruit to the hand seems decent, and may actually be an upside in some circumstances for handbuff, but not too much so might be the better one

It still costs two mana

@@LostOnceLefthanded no it cost 1. It says in (1)

It costs two. Transcription error.

The act of Catching a Wave is also perfectly fine surfer lingo as well. I think Trump has just never heard of that term before, given the fact the he proposes that the wording should be change to "Ride a Tidal Wave", but it's fine as it is.

For real, and it is really situational, because you could be in a match up where the enemie's hero power is super important for their game plan, like quest hunter, or, you could run into someone that don't care for their hero power at all. Whereas the other hero power related Finleys would do something for YOUR hero power, so you are 100% sure if the effect is worth for you to include in your deck or not. Really cool upsidedown multiverse idea tho, would be extra cool and flavorful if he had been introduced in the original Old Gods expansion, as a corrupted Finley, it would perfectly fit the theme of corruption and twisted effects such as Lightlord Ragnaros healing allies.

I feel like finley is basically a tech card ONLY for those cases where the opponents deck relies on its starting hero power (which imo is fairly rare), because in normal matches the trade off of singleton is a greater sacrifice than "you cant use your hero power". Even then you still have to draw and play finley, and the opponent still has a minor power available. It doesn't seem any unhealthier than say Reno countering an entire genre of deck (aggro) and Reno was neutral.

I mean, it's a weird tech card that's only really good against quest hunter and some weird decks. Aggro decks basically already lost if they're wasting tempo on a basic hero power and control/mid-range decks almost always run hero cards so it's really not that strong for a highlander card.

Just described a tech card lol

"This card just released guys - Skulking Geist!! How broken, it counters Jades out of the game entirely - how could they print this!!?" Why would Trump dislike this card...? He's always enjoyed well-designed tech

he mentioned that soon after, this is why you dont make comments before finishing hte video.

yeah add includes draw

Trust me there is nothing more obnoxious than Time Warp mage. Also, you need to play 4 garbage minions, not die, and then play your 10 drop ogre(presumably, trump said that the card would be a bit more balanced at 10) that only majorly disrupts combo decks, slightly disrupts control, and doesn't affect aggro at all. I'm pretty sure it's fine, just that you need to have a lot of aggro so that it couldn't become too prevalent.

@@somedudeontheinterwebs45 It can affect aggro, since the attacks are random. Slamming the entire board into an 8/8 ogre and then throwing burn damage onto your remaining minions can lose you the game. It's just, you're probably losing anyway if it got to turn 10 and you're aggro.

At least Tess Ficasso would be limited by board space

That is a bizarre way to read that

Do this with shudderwock shaman, your opponent never gets to play the game ever again lmao

@@somedudeontheinterwebs45 I'd love to see that.

That's one of the biggest reasons I've made cards haha, and it's finally been realized, my cars having been "Fueled By Anima"

Comparing to Magic, which literally has Mindslaver, an artifact that you can keep getting back to take control of your opponent multiple times, without giving them an extra turn.... nah, MtG isn't a great comparison

A better comparison to mtg would be the "Kindslaver". Which doesn't let you take an extra turn.

Reminds me of Painter's Servant from MtG

i just wonder how easily that would be integrated. trump told about the game dev complexity in the last episode & i don't know how easy it would be to have 9 more versions of every neutral card. if they can just flip a switch, sure but idk also, this might be more difficult to balance than expected. you just get any neutral effect minion e.g. colossals from your 5 mana spell & tess seems like an absolute flavor win & a potential balance issue idk

Does shaman have access to silence, outside of the freshly nerfed (but now on curve) Smothering Starfish?

@@sonarchy5158 who knows, it'd be interesting i mean there is the classic earth shock (though i don't remember if thats in standard, dun play shaman)

Sounds like Priest's original design when Hearthstone released - too reliant on other effects for quite little pay-off

I believe that it was only supposed to affect starting hero powers, much like upgrading hero powers

@@pokemonmaster6016 but like it functions by changing their hero power to a worse original one. That’s the same as any card which changes hero powers just negatively.

@@DeeFourCee But Justicar and Uldum Finley don’t upgrade hero card hero powers, do they? Pretty sure they work differently from something like League of Explorers Finley, which replaced your hero power. Regardless, the card designer has clarified in on the reddit post that it reverts upgraded hero powers to the base ones, and does nothing to other ones

Yeah that feels like a mistake

No reason for finley to have druid and priest cost 1 less. Just keep them at 2.

@@bakublader1999 yeah, the designer might’ve gotten hung up on making them still usable? But Paladins hero power is basically useless and wasn’t changed either. For such a tech card the reward better not be a sidegrade or even an upgrade for druid

I don’t think Trump was super clear, but I think the meaning is that it doesn’t instantly discount Gnoll to 0 if you’re holding Neutral cards since you’re not “adding” them to your hand. The card is a little unclear if it should apply only to neutrals in hand, or in hand and deck

It says cards added to hand they weren’t added to hand they were already there

@@skrubstar9056 Well that makes sense of course, I'm just saying Trump immediately discounted the gnoll when in reality it would be pretty good with it.

That would likely turn the card into a "Play this to lose the game against half or more of the decks" card. Even a control-type deck could just straight up kill you or at least guarantee killing you next turn if it happens to play like 1 or 2 big-ish minions that don't ultimately die during the 'Ogre turn' and then has a whole another turn to both hit you with those minions and establish itself on the board even more. Against most aggro or mid-range decks it would be straight-up unplayable, being basically that one Priest legendary which gives both players 2 turns, but here it would not only not have the 'reward' part of it, but it would have a requirement to use it in the first place. TL;DR: No, just don't.

It could work - since frozen minions only unfreeze if they have an unused attack token, once you freeze the Thawing Elemental it would stay frozen as long as it keeps spending those attack tokens.

Since it could also be silenced, you'd want it to be on par with the classic "can't attack" cards. 2 mana 4/5, 3 mana 4/8, 4 mana 7/7.

ok so my bad i didnt watch the thing he said next

It doesn't play until you first arrived at 12 available mana crystals. Druids can Wild Growth on turn 11 (leaving them on 9) and only have Sapphiron play itself at the start of their next turn. Same principle.

He can attack heroes, but only if the opponent has a minion.

That's fairly hard to do. You have to draw the minion before turn 12 and consistently have enough discard effects and also hit the card.

There are almost no classes that can willingly discard cards besides exactly Warlock though

Creator of that card here: I disagree, I think powercreeping is just printing a version of an existing card that is strictly better. No, it's not guaranteed that this version is better, but considering how easy it is to get denathrius to high numbers, I'd believe this to be better.

@@noragilman2643 How easy it is to get Denathrius to high numbers... In classes that aren't Warrior. Honestly, the card should cost 2 mana. Since, you have to consider it's competing against other armor cards like Iron Hide (1 mana 5 armor) or Heavy Plate (3 mana 8 armor) which don't need to be stacked. It's one of the main problems with the original card, 4 mana requires 10+ armor gain to be a somewhat reasonable gain for the cost. At 2 mana, getting around 6-7 armor is a reasonable investment, with the potential upside still being super stacking possibilities if running a minion heavy control deck (AND drawing the card early to be able to stack it).

@@tarille1043 would you say if it was the same and just started at 10 armor it'd be worth it? Because the biggest downside I see this card being is a dead draw.

@@noragilman2643 If it started at 10 armor, it'd probably be okay, if a little clunky to use (4 mana on just armor kind of will be) It'd feel similar to Unidentified Shield when it gets the +10 armour bonus (Wherein it becomes 6 mana gain 15 armour)

I forget which episode, but some episode he explained 'if a card looks like it intended to be designed in a certain set, then I'll rate it as though it retroactively existed then' or something like that

Gruul the Ogrelord is an incredibly difficult card to put in a deck. This card is fine. You likely aren't just playing 4 ogres in your deck so you need to sacrifice deck slots for this combo. And Gruul is very slow.

@@wsmiles8677 Gruul is fine, I was talking about his reasoning.

I have no idea how you arrived at this conclusion. Sure there were disruption effects that pretty much won the game when played, like far-watch post against aggro, but aggro still had a chance if the slower deck draw poorly or it pulled got some insane start itself. The only true rock-paper-scissors came with matchups like control vs combo or control vs control with a guaranteed win condition. Those were the games where it would make sense to concede since there is almost a 100% chance you lose if you are on the wrong side of the matchup. This card targets precisely those matchups and gives some fighting chance to regular control decks against combo. And it's not like the effect is easy to achieve summoning 4 ogres which are generally pretty bad and then playing a finisher on the turn where you can still stop the combo is not at all guaranteed, combo would still probably have a favorable matchup but there would be a reason for the control deck to stick around and try to win. Also, you may not realize but 4 ogres is a lot for a tribe that is quite rare, you would need to run at least 6 ogres for consistency, and with the Grull that is a 7 card package which will make you a lot weaker to any deck that plays faster. All of that just so you can have a chance against combo and some control, it still might not be a tradeoff many decks would make.

Almost every card game is rock paper scissors because that's the end state of powercreep. Powercreep sells packs and makes money, so companies do more and more until they terminally fuck up the games balance and reach a point of no return. From there the best thing you can do is maintain rock paper scissors, because the damage has been done and no amount of bans or nerfs will improve the game. People will look at new sets comparing them to older, more powerful ones and asking why they should play any of these cards, at which point they quit. It's all about profit, and what makes money in card games is powercreep, no matter how toxic and anti-consumer it is.

Yeah, but is THAT already a bad design? And we’re just repeating it in this case?

Since it's being "played", it could also be given a good battlecry. Like "deal 6 damage to all minions" or "gain 12 armor" or something.

Oh no I have to play a 12/12 from my deck and I get two more mana for the rest of the game what a horrible downside

@@benlarson6031 A 10 mana minion that doesn't stop the opponent from doing anything is often referred to as a "10 mana do nothing". If your ENTIRE turn consisted of just putting a 7/14 on the board (which is why that minion was considered bad), then it's not a good turn. You could literally double those stats and put a 14/28 on the board, and it's still barely good. When you have 10 mana, you're nearing the endgame. Even moreso when you have 12 mana. You might be low on health. If all your mana went toward a 12/12 that doesn't prevent anything, you might just die to the opponent's board presence next turn. And, everything I just said is EVEN MORE true with this card. From the very beginning of the game, it is ANNOUNCED that your turn 12 will be "do nothing". The opponent can purposefully put down a huge amount of threat on turn 11 knowing that you literally CAN'T do anything about it. Overcomitting to the board is often seen as bad because your opponent might (and probably does) have an AoE answer. But, when you know they literally CAN'T AoE next turn, overcommit away!