Fanmade Hearthstone Cards, Part 2: Return to Naxxramas

 A while back I did a little dump of a bunch of custom fanmade Hearthstone cards! This time around, I just wanted to focus specifically on a single expansion's adventure mode and adapt everything there into a potentially playable card. So I'm going to start off with Curse of Naxxramas, the first adventure mode, and we're going to try and be as exhaustive as we can! 

Again, a bit of note-keeping: I'm giving every single card a tribe tag, because I did this Great Tribe Tag Revision for all the existing cards -- other than the 'canon' tribes, none of them will receive too much help and most of the cards revolving around them will be mostly for flavour, sort of in the way that Pirates and Dragons started off. 

Also, in my head, I'm assuming that you just get this card from adventure modes or duels or completing heroic mode or something, so I while I made an attempt, I prioritized flavour over balancing how many cards are in this new additional set. Without further ado...

Noth the Plaguebringer is a boss that summons skeletons when you kill minions. I guess this is the style of synergy that I want to bring with some of these 'non-canon' tribes. Noth's effects will still happen regardless of the minions that die, but if Undead creatures are around you get an extra bit of boost to the ghoul he brings back. (He brings back Ghouls)

Gothik the Harvester is kind of overtuned, I think, and there are ways to abuse him, but he basically just expedites you getting Deathrattle cards from your deck. It's kind of random and I don't think even Deathrattle-synergy decks will run all Deathrattle cards. Maybe the text could be modified to Deathrattle minions costing less than 4 or something, but... eh. 

I really think they dropped the ball in Knights of the Frozen Throne by not making a dedicated Death Knight class like they did for Demon Hunter. I'm still going to make any legendary that's explicitly a Death Knight with the cooler-looking Death Knight border, but they're meant to be neutral, I guess, since all classes get to be Death Knights. 

Razuvious is honestly kind of forgettable of a boss in Hearthstone. I basically adapted his Runeblade as a double-damage weapon that he equips. 

Mark of the Four Horsemen doesn't have a rarity gem, and it's supposed to be added to the pool of Death Knight cards that you can get from Knights of the Frozen Throne, like from Lich King or Arfus or whatever. In lieu of a proper Death Knight class, I suppose these sort of cards that are added to the pool do have a precedent in the Lackeys. Anyway, in addition to the existing Baron Rivendare, the other three Horsemen are collectible.

They could all just simply be Death Knights, but that's no fun! Sir Zeliek is explicitly a paladin so powerful his faith persists in death. So he's a Paladin legendary that's so powerful in the Light that he keeps healing you even as you beat the enemy to death. All the Horsemen are 4-mana minions, by the way. 

Thane Korth'azz is a Warrior because he's a dwarf warlord or something. Again, not a whole ton to say here, he just casts fireballs in his card art so he just launches fireballs at all the other minions other than him. 

Lady Blaumeux, I think, casts protective spells on the other Horsemen in their WoW fight? She gets to be a Priest, then, and she gest her Curse of Naxxramas boss card effect, except it extends to both the hero and other Horsemen cards, which will only really come in play when you highroll with Mark of the Four Horsemen. None of the Four Horsemen really buff eqach other and whatnot because they're in different classes, so I thought that at least one of them should do it. 

Does Hearthstone not like Darion Mograine or something? His card art gets reduced to the very underwhelming Unrelenting Rider in Naxx, then he becomes a token in Frozen Throne. This one is still a neutral card (like Lich King), I just like the fancy Death Knight borders. Probably should be a Knights of the Frozen Throne card, but I like the battlecry/deathrattle combo here. He adds some tempo as a battlecry, and shuffles in a potential late-game value card at the end that's good for most classes. For Illidan, he shuffles a randomly selected one out of the nine KOTFT cards. (I thought about doing a Cursed Ashbringer thing, but nah)

Patchwerk is a big boy. His original Naxx boss fight has him destroy a random enemy minion with his hateful strike hero power. This one is a bit different, he's an expensive taunt that deals damage whenever someone tries to hit him. Patchwerk smash! 

I originally had Grobbulus immediately summon Stalagg and Feugen, but that really doesn't work well flavour-wise. Since he's got huge injections, I ended up playing with him being a Defender of Argus style buff, but adds the Poisonous tag onto minions. 

So instead it's Gluth that gets to interact with Feugen and Stalagg! Or, well, just Feugen. I thought about making the deathrattle summon both Feugen and Stalagg, but that's just too powerful and abusable; especially since I wanted to keep the deathrattle of destroying all weak minions. Gluth eats them! Also, he summons Feugen because he canonically gets fed by Feugen. Not much else to say here, I think I tried to do too much in this card. 

My favourite WCIII NPC, Sapphiron! Blue dragons tended to be Mage legendaries, so yeah, why not? Sapphiron has typical 9-mana 8/8 big dragon stats, and her battlecry is basically a polymorph effect with a bit of a bonus. Since a simple battlecry isn't going to make her legendary-worthy, I added the Spell Damage bit. The Frozen Champion is a minion that can't attack, but it will constantly freeze the minions next to it -- something that can be trivial depending on your deck composition. 

Web Wrap, based on Maexxna's hero power, is a Rogue secret! Basically it causes the 'Freeze' effect to be applied on a minion, except since it's supposed to be webbing and not ice, the flavour is a little bit different. I initially had it just be Freezing Trap like Hunter's, but it felt kind of lame that it's just a repeat of the same thing in another class. 

Another Rogue card, Necrotic Poison is sort of similar to Goblin Prank from Boomsday, but it's a delayed death while also making your minion into a Poisonous removal tool. I debated between 3 or 4 mana. Making your minion die is also probably going to be beneficial with all these Naxx cards. 

Artwork from Noth's Plague; name borrowed from a Shadow Priest ability in WoW. It's not the most practical card, granted, but it's basically sustained AoE over multiple turns. I originally had it a bit cheaper but decided it's probably a bit too unfair for zoo decks. Not really sure about the cost, honestly. 

Mindpocalypse always sounds like a Priest spell, but its effect is more like a Druid's. I wanted to keep the Priest card and the symmetrical effect, so I swapped the mana ramp for a Thoughtsteal effect. 

Card art from Eruption, and the name from the spell of a Warlock's pet imp, Felbolt is a cheaper Shadow Bolt that will also damage one of your minions. If you have no minions it's just a cheaper Shadow Bolt, and if you have... maybe it's an egg and you're happy doing that. 

Art from Unholy Shadow, and its original WOW TCG card is the Urn of Lost Memories, which is the one I turned into a Warlock weapon. Basically somewhat similar in one of the Mage or Warlock weapons in K&C, although this one loses durability with each Discarded card you regain. Sort of like Sphere of Sapience. Maybe too slow for Discard Warlock decks, though, again, I'm just here for the flavour. 

Mind Control Crystal is actually a Healthstone. So here, have a Healthstone that restores health, but in typical Warlock fashion, you lose something -- a card, in this case. 

No, Understudy's not a Death Knight yet, he's still learning! Death Knights are basically like, a weird mixture of Paladin, Warrior and Warlock, so Razuvious's Understudy here is kind of a bit of a value deathrattle card for warrior. Probably a bit too weak, but oh well. 

Demon Hunter, obviously, wasn't around during the time of Curse of Naxxramas. I can't really think of anything in Naxx that flavour-wise fit Demon Hunter too, so I put in a generic 'generate cards from this set' spell card for Demon Hunter, using this trailer image. 

Locust Plague, based on Locust Plague, is a sort-of different version of Starfall. Not particularly powerful, it's sort of a 'filler' card for this one. Originally I had envisioned this to be basically summoning a bunch of 1/1 Rushers, but I forgot Swarm of Locusts exists.

I knew that I wanted the Enrage card to be basically the now-removed Enrage keyword, but on a hero. It's a bit tricky balancing this around Heroic Strike. Alternatively I had it be 3 mana, 1 damage and 5 attack, but I went for bigger numbers. 

Technically probably shouldn't be a Naxx card, but I did borrow the artwork for Maim (a WOW feral druid ability, natch) from Jaws in the Gluth fight. Not much to say here, it's either a higher temporary buff or a less-mana-effective permanent minion buff.

Originally this was just "summon Feugen and Stalagg", because the artwork was from Supercharge in the Thaddius fight. I decided to just make it a Shaman AoE spell, though. It's basically slightly-more-powerful Lightning Storm on all enemies, including the hero, and you get an additional lightning spell to boot -- it's basically spells like Forked Lightning, Crackle, Lightning Storm, Stormstrike, etc. 

I know dual-class cards aren't around in Curse of Naxxramas, but I really couldn't decide on making this a Paladin or Warrior card, so I said 'fuck it why not both'. Borrowing the card art from Spectral Rider and its name from the WOW-TCG card it's originally based on, this is my attempt at a debilitating-deathrattle weapon. It's probably a lot stronger as a weapon because you can choose to simply not attack with the final charge... but also a lot riskier because maybe you just get a 6 damage off, then your opponent plays an Ooze and deals 10 damage to you and breaks your 6/4 weapon. 

I originally had like three different Spore cards for Druid, but ended up trimming it into just this one. Deathbloom is a damage dealing spell that's overpriced, but also gives the minion the deathrattle of summoning a Spore. The Spores from Curse of Naxxramas are a bit too powerful, and I was trying to figure out how to give the enemy Spores that die and buff your own field... but the idea of a permanent Spore that buffs your side of the field is also tempting. So yeah. I also thought that the Spell Damage aura is a neat twist of WoW Loatheb's anti-healing aura. 

Borrowing card art from Unrelenting Warrior (and his name from a Naxx mob), I like the idea that after this Death Knight dude dies, the undead powers that brought him to life is so powerful that it infuses his weapons and turns them into monsters. Otherwise, not much to this one. 

Baron Rivendare's Runeblade basically has a watered-down version of his own double-Deathrattle effect. Nothing much otherwise, it's a bit of an expensive weapon. 

Spawn of Loatheb has a self-destructing Doomsayer-style effect that casts a mini-Loatheb effect. Probably impractical, but I find it pretty fun. Art from Sporeburst.

Soul Weaver (art from Spectral Warrior) is an interesting one. It's one of those 'huge stats, drawback in deathrattle' cards, but in this case the deathrattle is a delayed Overload! I'm not sure if I made the card too powerful since the Overload is delayed, but since your opponent can dictate when the Overload happens, I think it's okay. The name's borrowed from yet another Naxx mob. 

Didn't want to adapt all the 'Unrelenting' cards in Gothik the same way, but Unrelenting Acolyte and Haunting Acolyte (Trainees in the original Naxx) are more or less adapted faithfully, up to the zero attack of the debilitating ghost. 

Bile Retcher borrows its art from the Abomination in Searing Totem and Hateful Strike's art. Its name is also from a Naxx mob. Not much to say here, it's just an Abomination that spits out goop on anyone that comes near. 

Another Poisonous-support card in Mutating Injection. Not much to say here, it's just a buff and gives them the ability to summon little Slime buddies when they die. 

Did you remember that Warcraft III Liches used to buff their minions? I do. Borrowing art from Frost Blast is Frost Armor here, which I did feel to be a bit expensive. It could be 3 or 4 mana, I feel, but I just like the flavour of this one. 

Mr. Bigglesworth! KITTY! It's a deathrattle, but if your enemy kills the kitty you will piss off all the Kel'thuzads in your deck and they will jump to your hand. The cost is obviously overpriced, but he's just a meme legendary. 

And finally we end this with another Kel'thuzad reprint, with the artwork of his boss variant. A controlled one that is a lot slower, summons only one minion at a time, but you can control who you get! I had debated on having him be a hero card with that effect as a hero power, but then they went and released an actual collectible Kel'thuzad alternate hero. Whoops! So you get this one. Not sure about the balance, since it's arguably a power-creep on Cartina Muerte, but... eh. It's Kel'Thuzad. He's supposed to be badass. 

Fanmade Hearthstone Cards: Azeroth Grand Tour, Part 1

 So I've been doing little card concepts over the past couple of years, but never really... shared them anywhere? It's a bit of a dump of cards as I cleaned up my concepts (most of these I made in like, 2019-2020) and gathered them together here. One thing that I want to emphasize is that I prioritize flavour over meta balance, and the numbers can always be tweaked. 

For the most part, one thing that I do want to note is that all these cards have appeared in Hearthstone in one way or another. Some might be more familiar, some might be less familiar -- but for the most part, I drew the artwork for most of these cards from adventure modes, tavern brawls and battlegrounds. And for the most part, my ideal idea is to get every single art piece that Hearthstone's wonderful art team has done into 'collectible' cards in constructed. I dunno. I really liked doing these. 

For the most part, I will try to keep the spirit of the original adventure/battlegrounds/what-have-you card there, but otherwise, it's fair game for anything.

New Keywords and Stuff!

All fan-made expansions I see online tend to have a new keyword or whatever, and... I don't have one, not really, but I'll be making extensive usage of older keywords that were one-and-done in their own respective expansions. I've did turn the "can't be targeted by hero powers or spells" ability that Faerie Dragon and the like have into "Evasive", after the recurring adjective given to Evasive Feywing, Evasive Wyrm and Evasive Drakonid in Descent of Dragons.

Also, while the pre-existing Hearthstone tribes will still bear the brunt of synergy (to wit: Dragon, Murloc, Pirate, Beast, Demon, Mech, Totem) I've gone and done a bit of a little Great Tribe Tag Revision for the entire bunch of existing cards. I won't talk about that too much in this since this is mostly a showcase of the new cards, and I did talk about a lot of my own personal hang-ups with Hearthstone tribes and a bit of an organizational challenge there. Back in the day I was like 'nah, they're not going to ever change anything with the tribes' but after the huge spell tag update in the Barrens update... yeah, why not? 

This will mostly be for flavour (and 'Pirate' will overlap with the race tags) but I'll try to sneak in some minor synergies here and there. For the most part, these 'human' or 'blood elf' or 'ogre' tags will apply to cards that summon a random member of their tribe, and we won't have any over-the-top synergy for most of the new tags. 

Thanks to hearthcards.com for allowing anyone to make custom cards easily!

Based on Deathcharger in the Curse of Naxxramas adventure, this is a simple one -- the Deathcharger in Naxxramas is already a pretty versatile card that many bosses use. It's a cheap Charge cards, and we all know those are terrifying (Stonetusk Boar, anyone?) but I guess limiting it to a single class would make it a lot more manageable. I imagine this would see a bit more play in Zoo lists? I fiddled with the numbers a bit to make it feel not quite as broken, and briefly thought about making it unable to have the attack stat changed, but ultimately kept most of the card's spirit the same. The Deathrattle is still a bit harsh, but it's maybe something that Warlock could work with. 

Another one that's very faithfully based on his adventure mode counterpart is Necroknight. I really do like the idea of a deathrattle that's pretty detrimental that it destroys the minions next to you, but making it a simple 4-mana 5/6 is way too terrible! So I swapped numbers around and added Rush. There might be a world where the deathrattle is beneficial, but any deck that wants to trigger deathrattles certainly has better ways to do it. So I erred on making Necroknight just a bit more powerful in order to compensate for his debilitating deathrattle. Maybe a 6/4 or a 5/5 might be a better statline? Eh. We're here for flavour, not balance. 

One of the original concepts was actually just to buff up older, unused Legendary cards, but that's boring! So instead of buffing Maexxna, one of the first-ever legendary cards I ever got, I took Grand Widow Faerlina and gave her the ability to summon Maexxna and buff her by giving her Rush. That's kind of a lot of a way to make Maexxna stronger, and also tie into the fact that Faerlina is supposed to be the head honcho of making all the spiders in Naxxramas. 

Again, we're going more for flavour than actual meta ability, so I also decided to adapt the little Worshipper goons that Faerlina summons in her boss fight both in Hearthstone and WoW. Take it as a way for me to sort of apologize for not actually adapting Faerlina's actual boss fight into her card. It's not very good, a conditional buff that only adds bland stats, but I do like the flavour here that the worshippers make their cult leaders stronger. Since the in-game dialogue indicates that the worshippers also have a thing for Kel'Thuzad, I decided to toss him in too. Not the best synergy, but, again, flavour! 

Another one from early on in Curse of Naxxramas is the first boss, Anub'Rekhan. Not all the cards are Naxxramas cards! I imagine that the way to add all of these legendary bosses would involve playing the adventure mode. Maybe beating them in heroic mode, or beating them two or three times, and they don't come in packs since there will be a good amount of legendaries here. Or maybe something involving the old-school weird quests like how we used to get Old Murk-Eye and Captain's Parrot?

My version of Anub'Rekhan's a pretty simple legendary card, he cocoons the minions next to him and turns them into 4/4 tokens. I made a lot of these concepts a long time ago, around the time of Rastakhan's Rumble or something, and my original concept has him give neighbouring enemies 'Deathrattle: summon a Nerubian Egg' with the idea that he's implanting eggs into his neighbours, but that's way too slow. He's neutral, so any aggro deck can put him in -- I tried to do a balanced class distribution of cards but gave up pretty quickly. The Crypt Reaver token borrows artwork from one of the tokens unique to the Anub'Rekhan boss fight, and borrows the name from one of the mobs in Naxxramas.

Heigan's boss fight in both Hearhtstone and WoW revolves around positioning. And we need more positioning effects in Hearthstone anyway! The logistics is a bit tricky (I think the Hearthstone board is mirrored on your opponent's side?) and it probably should read "your opponent's left-most minion (your right)" or something, but that's basically the idea. Heigan becomes like a mini-Ragnaros in that regard, except he fires off his bolts every turn instead of just your turn... but is also pretty easy for your enemy to play around. 

It's not all Naxxramas -- I did do all of the Naxxramas bosses into cards, but I won't put everything in a single page just yet. I just had a bunch of them ready. We'll be jumping all over the place, this time with Blackrock Mountain. Here is one of my favourite bosses, Atramedes. One of the Tavern Brawls actually made Atramedes a playable card, but I feel like simply gaining attack just isn't powerful enough. Atramedes' gimmick is that he's a deaf dragon, but he can hear you when you move and will aggressively attack. Originally I gave him the "Can't Attack" tag, but I suppose for power level reasons he probably shouldn't have it. I don't think this card is super-meta or playable, and reminds me a bit of a less-destructive Swamp King Dred (Atramedes doesn't take damage, for one) but not too overpowered compared to a lot of other 9-mana dragons. 

Nefarian is one of the worst high-cost dragons in the game. Dragon 'human guises' don't get the Dragon tag, so his Victor Nefarius form has the 'Human' tag instead. This basically gives him Stealth for a while, buffing up your spell damage -- cause he hides in the shadows and lets his goons do all the dirty work, right? I felt Spell Damage worked well since Nefarian has always been associated with spells in Hearthstone. Then when he dies, he 'transforms' into Nefarian, by adding the original Nefarian card to you at a discount. Sure, the spells Nefarian generates are still random, but at least it's not as huge of a cost as original Nefarian. 

Razorgore the Untamed is another Blackrock Mountain boss, and he's an egg-keeper in WoW! So since I'm already giving eggs a tribe tag anyway, Razorgore is a support card for that tribe and gameplay. A bit too powerful, maybe? But on the other hand you do need a bit of a setup, and Razorgore himself is just a vanilla minion if you don't have a lot of eggs, and he definitely comes in a bit too late for most zoo decks. Again, more flavour than anything, and the fact that Razorgore can make your eggs suddenly powerful is a neat idea. I flitted between making it a battlecry effect or an aura effect. 

A bit of an overtuned card, but the original Majordomo Executus was such a loser and memetic card. So the Battlegrounds card gave me a fancy new artwork. He's now kind of a huge, wonky Sunwalker at 9 mana, but the deathrattle summons a Ragnaros that is guaranteed to fire off at least once. Maybe he's a bit too strong and could have done with just Taunt? Eh.

Lucifron is this card from Tavern Brawls. His effect is basically Corrupting Mist, so his card is basically just Corrupting Mist on a body. 

Speaking of which, new eggs! Which are taken from the Corrupted Egg and Chromatic Drake from the Razorgore boss fight in Hearthstone. I felt like this might be too powerful, but considering how delayed it is and the large health that Corrupted Egg has, I feel this one is relatively balanced. 

Chromatic Drake was my attempt at making a different effect that's sort of similar to 'Battlecry', but since it's summoned from the egg, it can't have a battlecry. So I guess if you resurrect or duplicate the Chromatic Drake, the effect triggers over and over again? It's the Nefarian effect with a little extra boost, which I feel fits with the instability of the chromatic dragonflight. The Chromatic Drake is not collectible, it doesn't have a rarity gem. I feel like these two might be just a mite too overtuned, but eh. 

Battlegrounds gave us a lot of great artwork for Old God cultists! Which means I get to try and make C'Thun synergy cards. Now, original Whispers of the Old Gods C'Thun isn't a particularly great card nowadays, but maybe Acolyte of C'Thun can be an engine that adds other buff cards and discounts them? Minions that buff C'Thun are your Beckoners of Evil and Disciples of C'Thun, basically the 13 cards from Whispers of the Old Gods that buff C'Thun. Theoretically, this would mean that your deck isn't as overloaded with cards that are just 'vanilla, but also buff C'Thun'. 

I didn't want to just make cards that say "Give C'thun +10/+10", because I kind of want to preserve the idea of the deck. It might need some help, though, which is where Arm of C'Thun (art from Champion of Y'Shaarj in Battlegrounds) comes in. In itself it's just a crappy oddly-statted taunt, but it doubles the buffs granted by Beckoner of Evil, Doomcaller and the rest of its ilk. Perhaps it's a bit too much, but on the other hand C'Thun isn't really being played anywhere in Wild, so. 

And maybe sometimes you just need better buff cards than silly ol' Twilight Geomancer. Qiraji Brainwasher (art from Qiraji Harbinger) adds a keyword that didn't exist back in the day, and is meant to replace Skeram Cultist and Dark Arakkoa as the premier mid-game C'thun buffer. 

Tormented Ritualist (art and name from Battlegrounds) is basically a potential snowball card to buff C'Thun. Not too much to say here, again, the balance might be off, and this guy might work better as something like a 2-mana 3/2 or something, but the art doesn't really scream someone particularly high-statted. 

Black Empire Cultist (based on Arm of the Empire) is another slightly over-tuned C'Thun-buff card. Not too much to say here, it's basically a Restless Mummy that also does buffing duties for C'Thun. It might be too powerful? Maybe the Echo should be conditional on having C'Thun in your deck? I'm not sure how to word it well, though. 

Warden of Ny'alotha (based on Warden of Old in Battlegrounds) is something that I envisioned as a tutor tool for C'Thun (since Ancient Harbinger isn't particularly good) but since she's holding a N'Zoth banner, maybe she just tutors whatever Old God is in your deck? Just to help the much-needed C'Thun synergy, though, she also gives a minor buff to it. We've got a bunch from both Whispers and Darkmoon Faire, and I feel like her lower stats does sort of make sense considering how powerful some of the Darkmoon versions of the Old Gods are.

The other Hakkar is also in the game, but most of us will never see it. So yeah, here's Hakkar as a legendary card. Not a whole ton so say here, he shows up as a minion that summons 2/2 rushing tokens. Probably not the most powerful big demon out there. I made him a dual-class card, because, well, Scholomance Academy showed us that it's a thing!

The Nathrezim Dreadlord (art from the Nathrezim Overseer) is my attempt at making a Dreadlord that buffs other demons make a bit more sense. Dreadlords are kind of dicks, and it makes sense, I think, for it to basically give a buff that bites the Warlock later on in the game. 

Evolve didn't actually start in Whispers of the Old Gods, it started off as a boss mechanic for Lady Naz'jar from League of Explorers. This one is a pretty simple one, I just took the Evolve hero power and made it a repeating effect. Evolve is always a bit of a tricky mechanic to balance, but since the effect goes away if Naz'jar is removed (and she's not the most durable minion) I feel like it's an okay one. Probably could use some tweaking in numbers. 

Zinaar is another boss from League of Explorers. Technically all the League of Explorers boss does exist in card form in the final boss battle in that adventure, but I balanced Zinaar out a bit. Zinaar will give you two Wish cards from his boss fight (0-mana spells which either reads 'Discover a spell', 'Discover a 4-mana card', 'Discover a minion' or, very rarely, 'gain 2 wishes'). Not a whole ton to say here, he's just a cheap-spell generating card but he's not too cheap to be as practical as someone like Zephyrs.

I toyed around with Giantfin a lot. His card version in the Rafaam fight made him into a draw engine. I tried to make him into something that summoned lots of Murlocs or buffed Murlocs, but we already have a lot of Murloc synergy cards that already do those. Like Megafin or something. But then I realized... why not just make him just one big Murloc? It's probably not the best statline and I could've gone a bit further on that by giving him Taunt or making him cost like, 6 mana or something. But hey, he is a big boy Murloc, and that's the whole joke here. Not the most powerful legendary, but I like that it's a joke. So. 

Rafaam's original fight has him steal your entire deck! I debated putting it on a card, but that's a bit too much. So I used the seldom-seen first-fight ragged-cloak Rafaam artwork and have him steal just one card from your opponent. Which could be devastatingly powerful, or you might whiff and take a Southsea Deckhand or something. Not much here, he leaves behind a coin like some hammy thief (sort of like Gallywix) and I always thought it's appropriate that Rafaam is a Rogue legendary since he's an Arch-Thief before he got the fancy gauntlet and became a Warlock in Rise of Shadows. 

Khadgar's Pipe (the full name is from Warcraft III) is one of the treasures you can get in the Rafaam fight, and I basically transplanted most of the effect other than the brief addendum of changing it to mage spells and giving it a mana cost. Not the most powerful card for sure, but it's card generation. 

I also really like the idea of a cursed goblet that turns people into snakes and the Hakkari Blood Goblet retains its effect from the adventure. I gave it to Rogue, and it's kind of interesting that you can use it to essentially silence the enemy, or turn one of your minions into a poisonous token. Not the most powerful card and 4 mana is a bit pricey, but, again, flavour! 

Karazhan now! I feel like we could've gotten a lot of cooler legendaries from Karazhan. Especially dragons! Nightbane is a conditional Malygos. Originally I played around with mana crystals like the in-game boss fight, but decided to make him a legendary that gives Spell Damage to multiple dragons. It does make him conditional and perhaps not the best dragon out there, but I do want to make some of them feel at least unique. We don't quite have enough 'dragons buffing dragons' cards, anyway. 

I feel like they could've expanded a lot more on the menagerie gimmick. Illhoof is perhaps not the best character to do this, but I really couldn't think of anything to do with Illhoof. He makes portals anyway, right? You get the three Karazhan Menagerie tribes (beast, dragon, murloc) as well as a free Imp. Not entirely sure about the statline since you do get a bunch of cards generated, but there is such a huge margin in the available beasts and dragons. 

I originally made Netherspite completely immune until your opponent draws the portals, but that is probably very un-interactive on the opponent's side. Then I made him shuffle random Karazhan portals into your deck, but then Blizzard actually made Ysera Unleashed, which did the same thing but summoned dragons, which is cooler. So I ended up combining the two concepts in a way. "Evasive", if you forget, is my shortening of the Faerie Dragon effect.  

I actually kind of like this one. You get a free Portal spell (only Karazhan ones) every time you draw one of the five Netherspite portals. Karazhan Portals is kind of fun, even if it targets the wrong enemy you still get a free minion out of it. If you manage to keep Netherspite alive, he gets to basically 'phase out' like his WoW/Hearthstone boss and get a free trade and be immune for a turn.  

Flying Monkey is the Beast in the menagerie formula here, while having a decent Rush body (it's like that one Galakrond cultist). It buffs the other two tribes in the Karazhan menagerie trio. Not much to say here, I just wanted to make a bunch of extra Menagerie support. 

The Crone is a boss whose mechanics and story really doesn't make sense unless you give Dorothee to the opponent or whatever, so since witches are coded as Shamans in Hearthstone, I just made her a super-Menagerie buffer that also gets to buff a Totem. Sort of like Terestrian, but she buffs instead of generates. 

Even more Mage Secrets! Karazhan's Flame Wreath is basically an over-tuned Flame Ward, which is actually already a secret. So I made this do a slightly different effect -- a fair bit more impractical and you probably wouldn't run this over Flame Ward or Ice Barrier, but it's still a nice little surprise for unexpected lethals, maybe? And a fun one to get out of random Secrets?

Borrowing its card art from Stampeding Beast, Menagerie Escape tries to build up on the Beast Druid theme of Karazhan. You basically get a board of Beasts for 5 mana and buff them. I limited the beasts to those that cost 4 or less, otherwise the variance for 'summon a random beast' is way too large. 

Borrowing its art from a Kobolds & Catacombs treasure, Robe of the Magi is my attempt at making more weirdo weapons for non-weapon classes. This was before the Spell Damage synergy in the Dalaran expansion brought a lot of new Spell Damage weapons. Might actually be a bit more fair with a higher cost or a regular Spell Damage +1, but... eh, I still think 5 mana for no immediate impact is still kind of a huge cost.

The original Greedy Pickaxe is kind of a boring 'ramp fast' card. I try to go for a bit of a story with a cursed, glowing skull headed axe, where you seemingly get a great bonus but get damaged by a curse after the pickaxe has finished doing its job. Of course, if your opponent has weapon removal, you really get punished for your greed. Not a whole ton to say, I suppose I could've tweaked the numbers a bit? Eh. 

Kobolds & Catacombs now! I always liked Gnosh. My original idea is that Gnosh summons Violet Worms, either with a battlecry or a deathrattle, but that's not quite what the Gnosh fight in K&C's Dungeon Run was, which was more about Gnosh eating other minions. Having it be a continual effect seems a bit too much, though. So I ended up just making yet another huge Hunter beast that destroys a minion as a battlecry and becomes more powerful after doing so. You have to feed Gnosh, though, and the wording does mean that if your side of the board has minions and the enemy board is empty, Gnosh has to eat one of yours. 

Another dragon, another 9-mana 4/12. No real huge gimmick for Vustrasz the Ancient here. Maybe he could add the dungeon run treasures to your hand a la Ysera, but I didn't want to add like six extra uncollectible cards at the bottom of Vustrasz. I do like the idea that these cards are sort of supplementary additions to the original expansions, and a card that gives you access to the Legendary weapons (which was a focus in K&C) is neat. 

The Dungeon Run type modes have always been the one that gave me the most material to work with, for the simple reason that there's a lot of bosses and each of them sort of already come with an idea of what to make their card into. Like Seriona here, who I envisioned as basically a combination of her Shrinkmeister hero power as an AOE and the 'hold a dragon' gimmick. It's not the most powerful effect (otherwise cards like Eadric would've seen more play) but the Lifesteal and the stats might just be enough to push her enough over the edge? 

We have Brann and Rivendare, so it's hard for me to make anything with the 'battlecry triggers twice' bosses, but Voodoomaster Vex is both. I priced him a bit more highly with rather terrible statlines for the cost because of the double effect pileup. Technically it's really not the best card since it's a bit too low of a tempo swing. An alternate concept that I felt is 'unrealistic' by Hearthstone standards is 'your battlecries also trigger as deathrattles, and vice versa', which would raise a lot of logistical questions in terms of handling targeting. 

Elder Brandlemar has a constant-Counterspell gimmick going on and I never quite got why a furbolg druid can do that. But okay, sure, why not have a legendary that just counters spells entirely? I gave him taunt to make your opponent's minions have a way to actually reach Brandlemar and kill him and make the effect fair. 

Pathmaker Hamm is an interesting take on the Mad Bomber gimmick. It's a continuous effect that mostly targets the enemy board, but also has the chance to damage Hamm and only Hamm on your side. It's a lot more one-sided if the enemy has more enemies on the board, but if it's just Hamm and the enemy hero's face, then Hamm has a 50% chance of dropping a dynamite on himself. It probably makes Hamm unplayable? I dunno, I just like the flavour of the effect. 

Speaking of battlecries and deathrattles, the whole point of Lyris is that she really really really likes fire spells. I can respect that. So she now is the best generator of Fireball spells, even if her own body as a card isn't the most ideal.

I thought 'what if Cutpurse had Stealth?' And so Thaddock became exactly that. She's one of the first bosses and is pretty weak anyway, so it fits. 

"So many legendaries", you say? Well, the Witchwood expansion is something that is going to have a bit less of them because while there are still a lot of bosses in the Monster Hunt, there's also a lot of Monster Hunt exclusive cards that we can use. Like Frenzied Trapper! No one ever remembers these cards and they have some of the best looking card art in the game, too! I toned down the Frenzied Trapper's effects a bit and made him specific to Hunter, but it's an interesting way to have Secret synergy without actually putting Secrets into your deck. 

There aren't actually any cannon synergies, so Grizzled Reinforcement doesn't really make sense. But as you can see in my little Great Tribe Tag Revision, there aren't a whole ton of Worgen cards, even with Witchwood. And so this is sort of a slightly-more-specific version of an Abusive Sergeant buff, but only to Worgens. No reason why I changed the name other than I just don't like the adjective 'grizzled'. 

Speaking of delightful Witchwood art... Murloc Holmes! Another one whose card effect is too powerful in Monster Hunt, I changed it to basically just an information-gathering card. It's got premium vanilla stats and is a murloc, and is able to basically tell you everything your opponent draws as long as it's on the field. 

Naala the Redeemer is another 'treasure' card from Monster Run. I originally just had this as a simple Paladin card, but the flavour fit both Paladin and Priest, and Scholomance Academy did bring us dual-class cards. So... yeah, we've got Naala, who probably works a lot better in Priest with its on-demand healing. But hey. 

Monster Hunt's Hunter of Old has some weird Spell Damage synergy and I never quite got that. He's a cool monocled dude with a gun, why does he affect your spell damage? My version changes him quite a bit. Originally it had higher stats, but casted spells randomly, but I swapped things around after seeing what they did with Solarian Prime. 

Gilnean Vigilante in Monster Hunt was pretty overpowered, meant to be a huge tempo swing. I try something a bit different, highlighting the whole Vigilante aspect and Batman homage. It's a more expensive and more poorly-statted Vilespine Slayer, but it is an Assassinate on a body and it has Stealth because... well, werewolf Batman. It's not a particularly good deal, but Rogue does have Stealth synergies. 

I never cared for her since I am exclusively a Wild player, but Toki, Time-Tinker is a pretty cool character and a pretty cool card effect that is stymied wholly by her terrible cost-to-stat ratio. She's a time-traveler, though, and Witchwood had Echo as a mechanic, so this is basically an 'Echo' of toki through time that you can play as a vanilla echo minion... but she puts cheap Tokis into your hand. Again, I don't think it's all that game-breaking, sure, you still have to spend mana to play Toki, but also the mana to play the past Legendary minion as well. (Card art from Impetuous Companion)

Gustave is basically an adaptation of his Hearthstone boss fight. Not a whole ton to really say here, it's just a minion that constantly destroys and eats other weak minions. Just make sure that your side of the field actually has high-attack-statted minions, y'know?

Cult of the Wolf is sort of based on Poison Seeds from Curse of Naxxramas, but it takes a while for the cult to operate and spread the curse. It takes place at the end of your opponent's next turn, leaving them ripe as 2/1 tokens for your hero power to take out, but also allows your minions to basically bypass the summoning sickness. It takes a while for the effect to happen, however, which is why it's not that practical, and your opponent has a turn to do something about it.

Only in Hearthstone does Warriors have such a huge focus on explosives and cannons, but Warrior's basically the 'big boom' class as much as it's about swords and armour, huh? Crowley's Cannon, based on the cannon from Darius Crowley's part of the Monster Hunt, is an auto-attacking mech. Not much to say here, it's just another one of those 'synergizes with an old, underused legendary' cards.

I could've worded it better, but essentially this is a Voodoo Doll style 'bind'. Based on Forlorn Lovers from Witchwood, this minion will basically be a decent buff, but both minions become extra-fragile. In a pinch, you can also 'bind' the Lover to an enemy minion and then destroy them both in some way, although unlike Voodoo Doll, the Forlorn Lover does buff them and have a much less fragile statline. 

Still one of the creepier but most stylish Witchwood bosses is The Mute. She will silence everything. Again, one that's perhaps a bit over-tuned, but she also silences your own board, which might be a boon. I briefly thought about making her exclusively a Silence Priest card, but she doesn't feel like she should be a Priest, and I care more about flavour. So. 

No, not the Battlegrounds Herald of Flame. This card is based on the one from Rastakhan's Rumble. It's a vanilla dragon with no keywords, but it'll keep tutoring dragons from your deck! Not much to say here, I don't think simply drawing cards is enough, but a simple 'draw a dragon' battlecry seemed to be pretty lame. So here. 

Remember those annoying little Kirin Tor Elementals from the Dalaran Heist? What if they're collectible, but only gain their terrifyingly annoying effect when you do the Un'goro Elemental gimmick? They're impractically costed, and the Un'goro elemental effect isn't something that most streamlined mage decks can pull off easily. I dunno if this is too powerful, maybe it could be 5 or 6 mana? 

I had these specific artwork from WoW TCG as custom cards before Battlegrounds was even a thing! One of my first custom card attempts is just making loads and loads of Murlocs. Originally called "Murloc Lightbringer" in my first custom card drafts, he's now Holy Mackerel from Battlegrounds! The effect in battlegrounds is actually kinda cool, but I feel that it doesn't quite fit the constructed Murloc theme too well. My version just turns it into a simple buff card, somewhat equitable to the Gentle Megasaur. Unlike Megasaur, you get a guaranteed effect, and Mackerel himself is also a Murloc, which is why I toned down the stats a bit. 

The original legendary Murloc from the WoW TCG, I also had an idea for King Bagurgle before he debuted in Battlegrounds. The effect in Battlegrounds could actually be transplanted to constructed with some stat-finaggling, but one thing I really loved and remembered from the earliest days of Hearthstone was that Murloc Warleader used to buff ALL Murlocs, even on your opponent's side of the field. While that's understandably kind of broken and made Murloc mirror-matches pretty annoying, and I understand the nerf, I kind of want to bring it back in a way with King Bagurgle. The original draft for this had him just have the old Warleader effect, but Hearthstone has since introduced a bunch of 'playerbound' buffs like Dark Pharaoh Tekahn and Goru the Mightree, so I changed Bagurgle into this! +1/+1 is fair, I believe, especially considering how easy it is to summon Murlocs.

Also this is just a huge drop of random cards, but my idea is that you earn Bagurgle similarly to how you used to earn Old Murk-Eye, except that you have to own one of each Murloc card in the Standard year. 

Final Gambit (card art from Mrgl Mrgl Nyah Nyah) is basically another Murloc card I thought for Murloc Shaman, playing with the reincarnation themes. These get reincarnated into stronger, rushing bodies! Like all Murloc related spells, there's a 'fin' hidden in the name there. I made the cost a bit cheap, because you need to have 3 murlocs die. 

Murgatha is still one of the more terrifying-on-paper disruption cards in the adventure mode. I increased the cost a lot, and Shaman isn't a class that can spam out that many cards in a single turn, but if you are able to then you'll be rewarded with a pretty huge disruption tool! Not much to say here, it's mostly a straight-up adaptation of an adventure mode card. 

Oh, hey, old Secretkeeper! I always had the idea of sort of a 'deck reload' for a Secret deck, by reloading your deck with the Secrets you've played earlier. I had originally wanted to do this with a Faceless One art, but I think using the old Secretkeeper art is kind of perfect.

Since we're doing old, removed artwork, I decided to sneak in good ol' Succubus, too. She's so angry at being replaced with a Felstalker, she gets rush now! Not too much to say here.