A Special Introduction
This post is thanks to the creative genius of Redditor Corpit. He created an entire album of all original 151 Pokémon as Hearthstone cards. (Check it out, they’re amazing.) You can see the Reddit post here.
I talked to Corpit before writing this article to ask for permission to use his creations, and I asked him if he had anything he wanted to say to the community. He told me this:
“If anything, I would just like to encourage other people to try designing cards as well. It’s a lot of fun to discover the limits of what you can do with existing mechanics in a game like Hearthstone.”
The Good Stuff
Looking through Corpit’s album, a few cards in particular stood out to me, especially because of the abilities he gave them. Corpit developed several new mechanics, as well as altering some existing mechanics to create truly unique cards. I’ve cherry picked some of my favourites and I’ll talk a bit about why each is so unique.
Pikachu!
We can’t deal with Pokémon without looking at Pikachu, can we? Luckily, Corpit made Pikachu quite interesting. ‘Can’t Attack’ is obviously already a mechanic in Hearthstone. In fact, we even have it for our opponent’s minions, but we call it Frozen, and it lasts one turn. Adding in something that deals with certain minions is very interesting. It creates an entirely new strategy, based around locking down your opponent’s entire board. If you put seven ‘Can’t Attack’ minions on their field, it stops them from playing anything else. Very interesting mechanic to work with.
Beedrill
I think this sort of downside on a card is something that Hearthstone is missing. We see a lot of cards that are vastly understated to avoid potential abuse. Adding in lines like this, that avoid abuse, open up a lot of avenues for new cards. Beedrill here is subpar at best, while using an incredibly overpowered mechanic. This is something I’d love to see the Hearthstone developers experiment with in the future. And not only with Windfury. Imagine something like Nerubian Egg that creates a 6/6 when it dies, but also included a line that says “the owner of this minion cannot target it.” It becomes an AoE prevention card without being incredibly overpowered with buff spells. There’s a lot of potential there.
Omastar
Omastar is another intriguing card, and introduces yet another entirely new mechanic. Recently Hearthstone has introduced some mechanics in the Forbidden cards that use all your mana. However, there’s nothing that inherently gives you a boost for having extra mana. It provides a great way for Control decks to truly differ in skill, deciding when to play cards for tempo vs. value. I’d love to see more of this style of card, or perhaps cards that allowed you to pump mana in. Something that creates finishers or allows Control decks to adapt.
Koffing + Weezing
These two go together, and they are the perfect cards that Mill Rogue has been missing. Milling in general is an archetype I wish had been delved into further, and these seem the perfect answer. Koffing is the perfect finisher, forcing your opponent to take an extra 8 or even 16 damage when you double Coldlight them. Weezing allows for much faster Coldlight plays, particularly against Control decks. It may need some refinement, as it doesn’t handle what happens if their hand already has six cards. However, these two are incredible mechanics, and I would love to see something similar implemented.
We’d like to challenge our readers to go out there and try and make cards of their own–they don’t have to be Pokémon-themed, either. Just post ’em on Twitter and tag us (@EsportsEdition) to make sure we see them. We’ll feature our favorites in a future post!