In the past I did a video series on my Ahn'Qiraj Adventure, and while the video series was fun to put together, I found that the r/customhearthstone community didn't really take to the format. For my *New* adventure, tentatively titled "From Azeroth With Love: A Hearthstone Adventure", I thought I'd approach it more in a blog style.
As the first entry in the series this will cover the premise of the adventure, which is inspired by the League of Explorers adventure, as well as the themes and mechanics I will be exploring.
The Premise
League of Explorers is a great set that introduces a new kind of format to adventures. Where the others follow the path of a raid, LoE feels more like an adventure through Azeroth. Most interesting is that LoE latches onto the Indiana Jones series, as well as other adjacent properties like Tomb Raider and Uncharted to be the thematic backbone for the adventure. After seeing this, I instantly was inspired to spin off of the initial idea and use other popular film genres to build an adventure around.
After some deep thought, the one that tickled me most was the Spy genre.
I mean, what's not to like?! You get dangerous heroes and villains, exciting battles, crazy inventions and a host of tropes a mile long to play with. What's even better is that the World of Warcraft has some nice, quasi-established lore already built up around the spies of Azeroth, so, just like LoE, we have an underdeveloped part of the world that we can take and flush out a little bit.
This adventure revolves around your hero, as a member of SI:7 (His Majesty's secret service) taking instructions from Mathias Shaw, and getting help from some invented members of the agency as you attempt to unravel a plot by a shadowy organization to bring Azeroth to its knees. Are you hero enough to save the day for king and country?
Here are the themes I'll be exploring with the cards and adventure:
Spy Stuff
This adventure is about the spies and assassins of Azeroth. You, as the principle character take on a James Bond-esque role as you walk through a classic spy movie plot. This adventure is about spy stuff as we imagine it in Hollywood. All the trappings of the genre are there, but in true Hearthstone fashion are cranked up a few notches: it's about fantastical gadgets, memorable henchmen, bad puns, sharp suits and diabolical super-weapons.
^ What Adventure is complete without a hat? I mean... what would Ben Brode wear on stage while introducing it?! Note that the only class dapper enough to wear a Bowler Hat is the (fatigue) Paladin.
Surveillance
Spies are all about gathering intelligence, and this set introduces a new mechanic that give you insights into your opponent's deck and cards. There is no specific Keyword for this effect, since it will manifest in the set in slightly different ways. Here's a basic example:
Note that the opponent doesn't get to know which two cards were revealed. This next card also looks at random cards from your opponent's hand, but what if we wanted something more specific?
We can't use a Keyword for the mechanic because of all of the ways it could manifest. What if we wanted to reveal 2 random Legendary minions in your opponent's deck, for instance? What if we wanted to reveal the top card of an opponent's deck and decide whether to put it back on top, or shuffle it into their deck? This mechanic is intended to be a low-cost method of getting more information about their opponent's current deck and hand, generally associated to minions that are offer good Attack and Health for their mana cost.
Bluffing
This set is about information, covert operations and bluffing. Secrets provide a bluffing mechanism, but the bluff depends on multiple secrets in a class. What if there was a mechanic that allowed a player to bluff with their unused Mana Crystals?
This is not a new mechanic in the r/customhearthstone community. Others have bandied different versions of this around, but I feel that it's time for a mechanic like this to exist. With Gambit, players will have reason to pause when an opponent uses their hero power and passes. Do they have a Gambit in their hand, or do they just have a weak hand?
Some points on Gambit:
- For the purpose of this set only Priests, Rogues, and Warriors will receive Gambit cards (though this does not preclude other classes from getting them in the future.
- In terms of power and balance Gambit should lie between just playing a card and playing a secret. Consider Consecrate and Explosive Trap. Explosive Trap has half the cost of Consecrate. A theoretical Gambit card would cost 3 for that 2 damage to all characters effect.
- As with Secrets, Gambits only trigger on your opponent's turn.
- All Gambit cards are spells.
- Gambit cards are triggered based on the order that they appear in your hand. If you have two possible Gambit cards that could be played the one drawn first will occur. If there's still enough mana left over and the condition/target is still valid the second Gambit will occur.
- Gambit cards will cost a minimum of 3 mana. If there were a 1-Cost Gambit card it would be very difficult for the player to spend all of their mana every turn to control when the Gambit card might be triggered.
I'm very eager to start to output the meat and potatoes of this set, but am still building the skeleton. Even the cards that you see above are potential cards in the set. The blog format is going to let me be more sequential - I'll likely only be releasing one blog article per Boss, meaning that the series is expected to run a total of 15 articles (One on Premise and Theme, One on Cast, and 13 on each of the different bosses). Where there are Class Challenges, I'll include them in the individual boss writeups, as well as the detailed breakdown of balance on the cards you've likely come to expect from me. Since this is the LoE format, there will be 2 cards revealed per boss, plus 2 cards for beating a Wing.
In the next article we'll cover the Cast of this adventure, led by Mathias Shaw himself, as well as more specifics on the initial setup, and also I'll reveal the two cards that you unlock just for owning the adventure. I look forward to getting into this, and the conversation that it sparks.
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