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!
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.
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.
Lucifron is this card from Tavern Brawls. His effect is basically Corrupting Mist, so his card is basically just Corrupting Mist on a body.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The card's artwork appears in Hearthstone as Mukla's Big Brother in the tutorial, but the character it's supposed to be depicting is the Mighty U'Cha, a boss from Un'Goro Crater. I basically sort of made this card as a meme for the 4-mana 7/7 statline, and tied in the effect to King Mukla's. It might be useful in some situations, although giving your opponent four free spells is a lot less good than simply overloading for 2 mana. You might do it to try and mill your opponent, though!
Oh man, I so overestimated this card. The original concept was a reversion of Skeletal Smith (the name is from a Naxx mob that the card art originalyl depicts in the TCG) from Naxxramas, but it shuffled a destroyed weapon into your deck. Turns out that Hoard Pillager exists, and if you forgot about it, well, it's a neutral card and one that never sees play! Soldier of the Wastes has better stats, but it's a class card. It's also got its effect on a Deathrattle, which is a lot slower but hopefully plays well into all the Deathrattle theme of Naxx.
Demonic Domination is based on another removed card, Bind to the Cause. It's essentially Warrior's Gather Your Party, but focused specifically on Demons and costs 1 mana more. The original 'Bind to the Cause' gives the recruited demon dormant, which is kind of fun, but I wanted one that just is practical for a control, huge-demon Demon Hunter deck.
We didn't have much druid cards here, huh? None of the bosses really correspond well to druids. So have this card, using an unused artwork from Un'goro. It's a simple one, you either try your luck and adapt twice (making it a more well-statted Volcanosaur) or just go for an Ancient of War double-buff which is two adaptations. Since it's a class card, I decided to make the stats just a bit higher-tuned.
And here are a bunch of more... 'filler' cards, I suppose! This was back when I thought I had to do what everyone was doing and make a full 130-card expansion, but... eh, filler cards are kinda boring to design. I did make them out of some of the less exciting cards, so here they are.
See you guys next time, maybe, after I clean up some of these. Again, I did everything from the Naxxramas, Blackrock Mountain and Karazhan expansions a while back, and I did a bunch of cards based on Dungeon Run and Monster Hunt too, as well as a bunch of randoms from the WOW TCG. I'm just basically curating the ones that I feel are the most decently-done, I suppose.
Just because Hearthstone has to obey censorship laws doesn't mean fanmade cards have to! Deadly Barrage (using Deadly Shot's old art) is my attempt at doing a damage-over-time spell. It's honestly not something that's particularly practical, and I keep trying to find a way to make this feel better compared to instant destruction. But, hey, I made it, and there it is.
Harpy Storm-Witch is using Windfury Harpy's old art, and named after a WCIII neutral creep. It's meant to be a more powerful Fire Elemental... though thinking about it now, maybe I should've made the battlecry 'add Lightning Bolt to your hand'. Oh well.
This one has been in my little 'custom cards' folder since forever, borrowing its artwork from the Naga Myrmidon token in the tutorial. The original idea was that this was supposed to be a replacement for Azure Drake in the Classic set when it got Hall of Fame'd, as a mid-game draw engine that's a bit slower and weaker than Azure Drake, but has its own advantages in having Taunt. It's a bit slow for sure, but I'll still include it here.
Sort of a far-less-economical cousin to Sludge Belcher, the Riverpaw Brute (artwork from Massive Gnoll, also in the tutorial; name from one of Hogger's minions in WoW) is just there as another decent card in the Classic set, and one that I intended to put in to replace some of the Hall of Fame cards before Blizzard, y'know, actually did it themselves. I'll still put it here anyway.
Appaerntly Crazy Monkey's original artwork has him holding a bomb. So I went from making the card from a cheap card that gives the enemy Bananas (since it's a bit overdone) into just a monkey that blows up upon death. Again, this is very much weak compared to a lot of other rush cards like Scion of Ruin or Restless Mummy, but I think the idea here is to toss in a bunch of the more 'evergreen' keywords like Rush into the Classic set.
Guardian of Icecrown is just a boring cheating-stats card in the Curse of Naxxramas adventure. This one is me putting the Dancing Swords deathrattle-that-benefits-the-enemy on an actually useful body, i.e. one with Taunt.
Plagued Champion (based on the original WoW TCG name of this Skeleton token from the Noth fight) is a slow value card that brings back an old, forgotten card in Shade of Naxxramas. It's honestly a bit too slow to see constructed play, but I thought it was a fun little gimmick.
Based on Old Horde Orc, turns out that Blizzard had a similar idea to me and made the "Gurubashi Berserker effect on a taunt minion" on Bonechewer Vanguard in Ashes of Outland. Okay! That saw a bit more play, and Old Horde Loyalist here comes into play much earlier. It's a very orc-y thing to do for sure.
Flameheart is the cheating reload card that every single Blackrock Mountain boss has, and later extended to most other adventure mode bosses too. A simple one here, I didn't change the effect, just ramped up the cost a bit (a comparison would be Shield Block) for the extra draw and made it Warrior-exclusive.
League of Explorers and a bunch of the dungeon runs, meanwhile, gave everyone Looming Presence, which I decided to adapt into a Shaman card because it's got lightning bolts all around it. Instead of gaining armour, though (which Shamans don't do) Looming Presence gives them a free Rockbiter Weapon instead. I guess it could've been a bit more balanced? Eh.
This borrows its name and art from a card that has been removed from Hearthstone before its release, and replaced with Stranglethorn Tiger when they decided to limit most Demons to Warlock. Simple Stranglethorn Tiger stats really won't work in the current meta, but I didn't want this one to be too powerful, so I just make it summon an Illidari Satyr upon death. Not the strongest card here by a long shot, but I kinda wanted to toss in a bunch of new Demon Hunter cards to pad out the Classic set.
Queen of Suffering (artwork from Xia, Queen of Suffering; name from WCIII creep) is honestly... kind of a card that I created pretty early on in Ashes of Outland as an example of a more balanced card compared to the pre-nerf Battlefiends and stuff. Not much to say -- with the whole Core set system, I wouldn't think that it's too far off to see new minions printed just to fill in a niche differently than previously-existing cards.
Summoning Ritual is basically the exact same card from Duels with one less demon -- which is, by the way, very similar to the rejected 'Bind to the Cause'. Interesting how this one card is apparently reused for Duels! Not much to say here, I just like the flavour of summoning demons but they become dormant.
I just really liked the artwork for Gluth's hero power, and Decimate is just Lightning Storm with the numbers tweaked a little. It costs more, but Overloads for less, and has the chance of hitting for a higher damage. In likelihood you won't use this over Lightning Bolt, but hey, I do like the general aesthetic of these more old-school WOW-TCG artwork.
Abyssal Flamebringer (borrowing its art from a Karazhan adventure token and its name from a WoW mob) is just a pretty simple Warlock minion, essentially Dread Infernal with an extra deathrattle. Not a whole ton to say here, it's just there to help out in self-damage synergies.
Using another unused artwork from Un'goro (EDIT: now Wildfire Elemental in Battlegrounds), and borrowing its name from a mob in Un'Goro Crater, Scorching Elemental is kind of a 'filler' elemental. Eventually I do plan to try and make fanmade 'fixes' to the now much-outdated Elemental ramp-up playstyle of the Journey to Un'Goro elementals, but maybe Scorching Elemental here is one of the elementals that is just solid and you want to play, sort of like a Fire Plume Phoenix or Tar Creeper before you get the benefit of 'played Elemental last turn'.
An adaptation of Stasis Elemental from the Arena event, and I guess it's a Battlegrounds minion now. I really liked the design of this one, though I'm pretty sure this isn't actually all that great. I had a bunch of custom Elementals in my folder (basically what gets put on this page are the ones that are the most cohesive) and I think at some point I had tried to make the Un'Goro curve-elemental synergy work a lot better.
Skywall Djinni (artwork stolen from Gentle Djinni in the Battlegrounds, who doesn't look gentle at all) is basically just my attempt at making the elemental synergy work. Maybe if you're not restricted to playing an elemental every turn, and just benefits from the elementals you've played in the entire game, he'd be a bit more flexible?
Based on Party Elemental, Party Rager is my attempt at trying to make an elemental support card that's still also using the Rager gimmick of terrible 5/1 stats. Perhaps he's a bit overtuned, but considering the elemental synergy does kind of need a lot of work, eh?
Not much to say about Mistress of Pain, other than that 1/4 Lifesteal for 2 mana is kind of unplayable. And, well, after being essentially replaced from the game, I kinda feel bad for ol' Mistress, so she gets to be a pretty well-statted card here.
Borrowing card art from Battlegrounds' Deflect-o-Bot, he always looks more like a Gadgetzan jade ninja/samurai card. So I made him into one that adds those two Shurikens he's holding to the Rogue player's hand.
Mama Bear! Well, "Ironfur Matriarch", in any case. Which is a big version of Ironfur Grizzly that also buffs another beast. Not much to say! The designation comes from the WoW mob 'Ironfur Patriarch'.
___________________________
That's all the cards I am doing today. Again, I did do a lot of these back when I was a lot more enthused about Hearthstone, and seeing them and revising some of them made me get just a bit more excited for Hearthstone again. I think I'll do a part 2 sometime soonish, and that will hopefully be a bit more structured, theme and character-usage-wise. Next up, I think, I'll try and finish out the Naxxramas adventure cards in its entirety and go expansion-by-expansion to convert every non-playable card into what I envision them if they were playable.
No comments:
Post a Comment