Introduction
When I was playing Magic: The Gathering years ago, one of the most fun experiences I had with the game was creating custom cards. My older brother found some program that allowed to do it and downloaded it (it was back in 2005, mind you). We went ahead and designed tons of cards, then printed and played around with them. Cards were terribly imbalanced – some of them were too weak, others were completely broken, but the fact that we could create the cards ourselves was amazing.
Creating custom cards in Hearthstone is also relatively popular. There is a big “Custom Hearthstone” community on reddit and I’ve been following it for a while. It’s a very active subreddit, where people share their own Hearthstone cards – lots of them. Let’s just say that the majority of them aren’t noteworthy, but then there are some really great, interesting, well-balanced cards that I would just love to play around with in the actual game.
I’d like to take a look at some of those well-made custom cards. I’ve browsed hundreds of submissions from the last month (I wanted to keep things fresh) and picked the best ones. Of course, everything is subjective and you might not like those as much as I do, so if you want to take a look at all the custom cards yourself, just check out the link above.
Custom Cards
Funeral March
Created by /u/Jagganoth
It’s really hard to balance Paladin Secrets. On the one hand, you want them to be useful. On the other hands, they’re only 1 mana spells, so they can’t be too powerful. Giving them interesting effects that are a bit stronger than 1 mana, but not too strong, is pretty hard and most of custom cards fail at that task. Heck, I’d say that even a lot of actual Paladin Secrets fail at that task. But this one is amazing.
Lost in the Jungle has gave a sort of baseline for how much Silver Hand Recruits are worth. You can summon two for 1 mana. This Secret summons 3 of them, which is – like I’ve mentioned before – a bit stronger, but not too strong. It’s also a Secret, so it might mess a bit with your opponent’s plays. But at the same time, you have no control over when it happens. It’s a bit similar to the Snake Trap, but the Hunter’s Secret has no requirement. In this case, a Silver Hand Recruit needs to die in order for this Secret to proc, so if you don’t have any on the board, it simply won’t proc. So in terms of balance, it seem to be in a perfect spot. It’s not weak by any means, getting three 1/1’s for 1 mana is really good. But on the other hand, it’s not broken and hard to abuse. Especially since those Silver Hand Recruits can often be ignored if you absolutely don’t want to proc it – after all, most of the time they’re 1/1’s.
I also like it for the potential Recruits synergy. I’d say that it’s one of the most unexplored Paladin archetypes. Blizzard is like “let’s give Paladin some buffs, some Dragons, some healing, some weapons, some whatever”, but so far they seem to ignore Recruits as the potential viable way to build the deck. Sure, they’ve added good ways to spawn them in last expansion – Lost in the Jungle and Vinecleaver – but Lightfused Stegodon is honestly a bit underwhelming and you can’t build around it. It’s easier in the Wild thanks to the Quartermaster, but I really hope that they will add more Recruit synergies next expansion.
Jandice, Mistress of Illusions
Created by /u/clrnt3z
I really like the idea of mixing two Secrets together to make one, more powerful version. For example, I’ve played around with Counterspell and Mana Bind in a single deck and I love the interaction between those two. It feels really amazing when your opponent plays a powerful spell and it first gets copied and then countered. Of course, him playing some 0-1 mana trash suddenly feels more punishing, but that’s another story.
I like the card for its flexibility. You have anti-minion option, anti-spell option and value option, while each of the options is great for 3 mana. It could also fit into a slower Secret deck if you could get them out for free with Kirin Tor Mage. In theory, you could get an infinite value rolling with Jandice + The Prestige, but at the same time, it would mean that you have spend full turn for that combo every turn and you wouldn’t be able to play any other minion, not to mention that you would need to kill off that random 7-drop you’d get from the Secret first too. It would definitely be powerful in slow matchups, but it would be possible to play around it. I mean, Anub’arak is also crazy good in slow matchups, but it doesn’t mean that it’s broken in general.
Millhouse, Lord of Dust
It’s a Whispers of the Old Gods-themed Legendary. I mean, a corrupted version of the cards we already had in the game. This time it’s a variation on one of the classics, Millhouse Manastorm. Often called the worst Legendary in the game. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that it’s worst, but it’s definitely the most punishing. This, on the other hand, is much more interesting.
On the one hand, the punishing factor still stays. Your opponent can cast the spells for free, which means that he can tempo out, or draw a lot of cards, or maybe do other things. But this time around, it’s not completely punishing the player who plays Millhouse, now it works both ways. Since the spells cost health, yes, your opponent can play a bunch of spells, but that will cost him A LOT of life. If you play this card in a semi-aggressive deck like Zoo, then your opponent might think twice about playing a lot of spells. Let’s say this minion gets removed by the 4 mana spell like Fireball. Now you’ve traded a card and 3 mana for a card and 4 health. It’s still probably worth it for the Mage in that case, but it’s far less punishing than trading card and 2 mana for a card.
The card still might see no play, because it would most likely be worth to get that health disadvantage and play something like Firelands Portal to kill it (the tempo advantage would be big enough to justify the initial health loss), but it’s a much more interesting version of the classic and, let’s be honest, unplayable Millhouse.
Soul Urn
Created by /u/Jazz_ahHH
A minion that stores the Deathrattles to unleash them all at once? Count me in! It’s a really cool concept which might actually work in the game. You play it just before triggering a bigger Deathrattle. Let’s say that you have Cairne Bloodhoof on the board, you play it before trading it into something. Now this minion summons a 4/5 on Deathrattle. You have another Deathrattle you can pop? Fine, another thing in the Urn! After a while, it gets really broken, if you can store 3 or 4 Deathrattles, now the Urn dying means that you get tons of value for just 2 mana.
But since it’s a 0/4 minion, you can’t even proc it yourself. You have to buff it. Then it’s not a viable 2-drop, getting it early or when you have no Deathrattle minions on the board is really bad. It can also get hard-countered by Silence. It might be even too weak to see play at all, because it’s almost useless against Aggro, but at the same time, if it would work, it would work wonders.
I also love the dynamic between you and your opponent. Since it’s a 0/4 minion, you can’t proc it easily. Your opponent could ignore it and hope to get a way to deal with it later or simply hope that you have no way to activate it. At the same time, when he’s doing that, he’s giving you more and more value in the long run. He could also try to pop it immediately after it stores only 1 or 2 Deathrattles, give you guaranteed value, but not risk having to deal with 5+ Deathrattles at once.
Journey to the Tomb
Created by /u/Jagganoth
Alternative Warlock Quest, and I honestly like it more than the current one. Lakkari Sacrifice has a theme that simply doesn’t work with the Quest’s reward and the deck you want to play it in. I mean, Discard theme fits the fast, Zoo-like decks in general, but at the same time, the Quest doesn’t fit into those. You don’t want to start 1 card down, you don’t want to play a 1-drop that only starts getting value on like turn 8 and you don’t need to start rolling the quest reward when you want to finish the game already. But this one is more interesting. While it would have the same problems in Zoo (too slow, hard to finish), you could actually build a slow, Demon-themed deck that would want to play it.
The reward itself, Sargeras, would be insane in any slower matchup. It would be a great snowballing tool. It probably wouldn’t be THAT strong the first time you play it, maybe like 8/8, but it would get more and more powerful as the game goes by. And you would be able to play it as many times as you want. It seems to be hard-countered by Silence, but hey, there SHOULD be some way to counter it after all. It would be like the Anub’Arak, but much, much more powerful. The difference between 5 and 9 mana is insane, and this would grow even bigger.
Warlock has A LOT of Demons, but not much Demon synergies. Blizzard is probably waiting for some expansion where the Demon theme will fit, but I think that they should really develop it. We didn’t really get any powerful Demon synergies since Voidcaller and Mal’ganis, and that’s a bit sad.
Soul Link
Created by /u/olteonz
Warlock self-damage cards are generally… bad. I mean, some of them are still good (e.g. Flame Imp in Zoo), but the general problem is that Warlock has a lot of ways to damage self (especially since Hero Power does exactly that), but not too many ways to replenish health. Now with Reno Jackson gone from Standard, it’s hard to run any slower Warlock list with self-damage effects, because you simply die even in the slow matchups when you have no way to heal.
But this card is interesting and it suddenly makes the self-damage effects much more appealing. You can use them as a removal! Let’s take this card + Pit Lord for example. If you plan to play those two together, this becomes “deal 5 damage to a minion and heal yourself for 5” for just 1 point of mana and Pit Lord is simply a 4 mana 5/6. Pretty broken, right? Yes, but you need to play those two cards together, and each of those cards is pretty bad by itself (this one is useless and Pit Lord deals too much damage). It’s a bit like the Auchenai Soulpriest + Circle of Healing combo in Priest. Imagine having a 3/1 4 mana minion that “deals 4 damage to every minion”, that would be broken as hell, but it’s not, because 2 cards combo are harder to get.
Then again, the card has much, much more potential with Bloodbloom. You can play this, then Bloodbloom, then play some more expensive spell. Not only you save health, but you also deal that as the damage. Let’s say Bane of Doom – for 3 mana you deal 5 + 2 damage and summon a random Demon. It takes 3 cards, but it’s an insane tempo move.
The card might be a bit too powerful, maybe it should cost 2 mana and not 1, but I love the concept and hope that something like this will get released. Warlock class really needs some healing and this is a perfect “flavor” to make it fit the class.
Netherocalypse
Created by /u/Nanophreak
First of all, sorry for putting so many Warlock cards this time around, but /r/customhearthstone seems to prioritize designing cards for the classes that are bad at the time and now it’s Warlock’s time.
Oh, what a card. It fits the Warlock’s flavor perfectly and it seems very balanced. It’s a big board clear, similar to Twisting Nether, but it only costs 5 mana instead of 8… at the price. You need to discard a minion. You obviously want to play this in the deck that runs expensive minions. And this is a perfect anti-Aggro option. 5 mana for a guaranteed board wipe is really good – yes, you have cards like Hellfire or Shadowflame, but the first one only deals 3 damage (which might not be enough) and the second one requires a minion on the board. This would pretty much always wipe the whole board on turn 5. At the cost of an the expensive card (most likely a minion) that you most likely wouldn’t want to play vs Aggro anyway. Let’s say you discard Mountain Giant which is pretty dead in fast matchups and you clear everything. Great, right?
It would be even more interesting in slow matchups. You wouldn’t be able to “just play it” whenever you want, because there are definitely some cards you don’t want to Discard, like Jaraxxus. Sometimes you would need to wait and play the expensive card first. Or sometimes you would need to make a sacrifice and discard that expensive card in order to clear the board you wouldn’t be able to deal with otherwise. A very cool dynamic that would make the slow matchups more skill-intensive.
It might also be interesting to run Cruel Dinomancer with this being the only discard card in your deck (or well, 2 copies of it). Now, this card would guarantee discarding an expensive minion and then Cruel Dinomancer would bring it back.
False Prophet
Created by /u/60and80
I’ve seen a bunch of cards that “disguise” themselves as something else, but this one might be the best one so far. Best as in the coolest one, maybe not necessarily strongest. The first question you might have is – why would you ever want to run this over the Doomsayer? And the answer is, you probably wouldn’t! As of right now, I see two main uses for this card. First, play it ALONGSIDE the Doomsayer to run “4” Doomsayers in your deck. Now you could toy around with people and force them to attack each one of them to check out if they’re real or not. That said, I think that it should reveal at the start of the turn, not when it takes damage – this would make it even better at doing its job. But that’s not the main reason why you would want to use it.
The main reason are actually the Divine Spirit + Inner Fire shenanigans. You could play 2x Doomsayer and 2x this in Priest and now opponents would be pretty much forced to kill each one of them. Otherwise you’d get a 7 health minion on the board, and you know what happens next turn.
There might be some other uses for the minion that I’m missing. And there is a way to add more cards to synergize with it, or maybe make “disguise” as the theme of a new expansion and add a bunch of cards that benefit from disguises. E.g. have a Patches-like minion for Disguises – “if your opponent didn’t see through the disguise, summon this minion from your deck”. It could be a simple 3 mana 3/3 minion or something, but it could add some tempo to such decks. And obviously, there could be multiple other synergies, now that I think about it there are tons of cool options!
Closing
That’s all folks. What do you think about those cards? Would you like to see some of them in the game? Or maybe you have other favorite custom Hearthstone cards that you’d like to share?
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comment section below. And if you want to be up to date with my articles, you can follow me on Twitter.
Good luck on the ladder and until next time!
