Note: I am not employed by Blizzard Entertainment.  All characters and Intellectual Property belong to Blizzard.

This scenario was designed before the release of The Grand Tournament expansion and as a result does not take into account any cards in that or later expansions.

Project Overview

For this project, I wanted to diversify my skill set by designing a new Tavern Brawl scenario for Hearthstone to push my creativity and revise some existing cards to show that I can contribute within Hearthstone's existing framework.  The Tavern Brawl is a grudge match between Illidan and Arthas as they vie over the Frozen Throne.  I was inspired by the climactic finale of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne and one of my most important goals was to incorporate the flavor of that fight into this Tavern Brawl.  The revised cards  bring older cards up to date with new mechanics and address existing card niches.

Face Off at the Frozen Throne Design Document

Revised Cards Design Document

Tavern Brawl: Face-Off at the Frozen Throne

Tavern Brawl Overview

• Features a new objective: the four Icecrown Obelisks
• Arthas is designed around maintaining his mighty Frostmourne through killing his minions on his turn while constantly drawing cards
• Illidan is focused on his demonic metamorphosis that always occurs turn 8 and his array of high cost minions and powerful spells that overload him
• Iterated off of multiple paper prototype tests to get an actual feel of the scenario's gameplay
• Check out the document for detailed discussion on the cards, the scenario and gameplay examples for Arthas and Illidan

Face Off at the Frozen Throne Design Document

Objective Design

• Designed brand  new win condition
• Increased interactivity by emphasizing importance of board state
• Focused on incorporating flavor from the conflict in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne
• Each player starts with two Icecrown Obelisks on their side of the board

Hero Design

Overview

• Ensure that each hero's gameplay is based on the respective character flavor and lore
• Create two different gameplay narratives for each hero
• Design each hero to have different strengths and weaknesses

Arthas Menethil

• Core gameplay involves him rubber-banding his relatively low health pool, bouncing between low and high values
• The use of certain spells and minions, and his weapon, Frostmourne, deplete his health
• His Hero Power, Death Pact, restores health by sacrificing his allies
• Has a head-start over Illidan with an extra mana crystal and the mighty Frostmourne equipped

Illidan Stormrage

• Core gameplay involves his Metamorphosis transformation and use of his hero power to gain a board advantage
• In his night elf form, Illidan uses a weapon that summons minions as a deathrattle

• Illidan draws and plays Metamorphosis on turn 8, transforming him into a powerful demon.
• In his demon form, Illidan wields a weapon with Mega-Windfury, allowing him to attack four times in a single turn

Deck Design

Overview

•  Prepare each hero's deck to complement their hero design
• Represent the various creatures who battled on the Icecrown Glacier and maintain their flavor
• Ensure that the decks play out differently: one stronger early and one stronger later

Arthas' Deck

• Several spells and minions cost Arthas health to play
• Generally has a low-curving deck without too many large minions
• Has several ways to draw several cards
• Minions often have beneficial deathrattles, synergizing with Frostmourne and Death Pact
• Lacks high damage AOE spells, forcing him to use Frostmourne effectively

Illidan's Deck

• Filled with high value but expensive cards
• Has multiple spells that overload him, forcing him to plan out his turns carefully
• Lacks effective card draw options early game
• Has effective AOE spells and big minions like Dragon Turtle to quickly destroy multple Icecrown Obelisks in a single turn
• Has high burst and when combined with his demon form hero power, he can deal immense direct damage to Arthas

Testing and Iteration

• With the core design completed, the next step was to actually playtest the scenario.
• I drew a mock-up of the hearthstone  game board and printed out each deck to play.
• I played the scenario with a friend and adjusted game balance and certain parameters based on the testing.

Card Revisions

Design Goals

• Help cards better fit into their intended role
• Give cards  with an unwanted niche a new one that maintains their flavor
• Reinforce existing design principles
• More details in the document

Revised Cards Design Document

Secretkeeper

• Quality of Life improvement designed to allow her to benefit from Mad Scientist's deathrattle, which is the primary way secrets are currently put into play
• Encourages players who construct secret-themed decks to include a secret-themed minion

War Golem

• Helps give War Golem a new niche different from the one that is currently dominated by Dr. Boom
• This change makes War Golem immune to kill cards like Shadow Word: Death and Polymorph, but still vulnerable to battlecries from Big Game Hunter and Aldor Peacekeeper

Captain's Parrot

• Change designed to maintain established design principle that cards with more specific effects should have higher stats than cards with more versatile effects
• Gives the Captain's Parrot higher stats than its more flexible cousin: Novice Engineer
• May help viability of pirate-themed decks

Illidan Stormrage

• The change to Illidan Stormrage better encapsulates what is unique to him, a demonic transformation
• It shows off in gameplay why he is at odds with his brother, Malfurion Stormrage

King Krush

• The current version of King Krush suffers in filling an unwanted niche: an expensive charge minion for a relatively low amount of damage
• The proposed change still keeps the flavor of a big charge minion, but one that can combo with other cards like unleash the hounds.
• Creates more interesting gameplay by scaling King Krush's attack power with the Hunter's beast count.

Post-Mortem

What Went Well  

Strong concept: From the start, I thought it would be awesome to have an Illidan vs Arthas showdown and the new tavern brawl mode seemed like the perfect opportunity to explore that idea.  

Testing the idea: After I finished my first pass on all the cards, I actually played the game several times on paper with a friend to see how the idea actually played out, which helped inform iterations on the idea.

Understanding the game: As a x5 legend player in Hearthstone, I was able to draw upon my depth of knowledge to design a compelling scenario.

What Went Wrong

Getting past the idea phase: Although I effectively brainstormed lots of ideas, I spent too much time on it before I started just ironing out the idea and doing all the Photoshop work needed to complete it.

Lack of Focus: Originally, I was going to include a set of new cards for each class, but I dropped that after I realized it was risking muddying the project and taking time from more promising ideas.

What I Learned

Photoshop Skills: In order to create sample board states of my scenario, I had to improve my Photoshop skills in manipulating existing art.

The importance of presentation: As I kept polishing my document, I received increasingly positive feedback from others regarding my idea, reconfirming that the package of the idea can be as important as the idea itself.