A.F. Kay -- Mage (Hearthstone)

This post is part a series wherein I've been designing Hero cards for Battlegrounds heroes who lack direct representation in Hearthstone proper -- or did at the time of publishing.

The Finished Product

The Process

This is actually the first Hearthstone Hero card i ever designed, and I think it kind of shows.

From the start, I knew the battlecry was going to be skipping your next turn. That's what A.F. Kay is known for, and while that's obviously heinously bad in Hearthstone, it seemed like it would be possible to compensate the player for that with a sufficiently powerful Hero Power -- or set of them, in this case.

I'm not sure that part of the design really landed. It takes a while for these Hero Powers to really do anything on the board, as she does start out on the Procrastinate side. While free mana biscuits are insane in some matchups, there's plenty where you're simply going to have died after playing a card which did nothing for two turns. Clearly, the battlecry needs to do something positive after you take the turn off, much like the A.F. Kay hero does, but it's not clear to me what that should be, so I'm posting this as-is, with the caveat that I already know it's too weak in it's current form, and needs something else on the Battlecry.

I'm also well aware that Caldera Drake does hilarious, potentially stupid things with this, and I'm ok with that. If you want to spend a turn putting 5 cast when drawn Drakefire Amulets on top of your deck, go for it!

There is another concern which I think is more pressing than the Drake, though. What kind of deck do you want to run this in? There's a bit of internal tension between the mana biscuits -- which you'd think might fit into some kind of burn or miracle shell -- and the "big spell" second Hero Power. Depending on the support present in Mage when a card like this would be released, I could see it definitely being awkward enough that it sees no play, if only because it's kind of sitting on a few too many fences without really pushing the boundaries on any of them too much.

Final Verdict

4/10

It's just straight up unfinished and unplayable as it is, and I'm not sure what the pathway to making it appealing while not also making it feel like bullshit even is. Would it be stronger if it skipped a turn, then nuked the board the turn after? Sure. Is that in flavor for A.F. Kay? Not really. Is discovering some kind of strong minion to pay you off for waiting -- much like A.F. Kay's BG iteration -- in flavor for Mage? Kind of? And maybe that's the direction this should go. A free Arcane Guardians or Power of Creation after the wait period is over.

I'll probably update this one again one day, and try to do my girl justice.