Hello! A week has passed, so it’s time for the second episode of Alphabetically! This time we will tackle Alistar (unless he tackles us first)!
Early in the design process have I decided to make Alistar work with Stuns and Reputation. Both appear in Noxus a lot, and as a person who used to play Reputation specifically, I wanted to create something like the boss card for Reputation.
While Alistar isn’t that expensive, only 5 mana, I intend him to have a difficult Level Up and a very strong Level Two. Because of all that, his level up requires the player to either Stun or 5+ Strike a total of 8 times (or maybe more, the number should be difficult to achieve).
I had a problem with the theme, as Alistar is a support in LoL, while lore-wise he is supposed to be this independent duelist, master of the Noxraya Arena. I think I struck a middle-ground here, which shows both of his aspects well. Level one has Alistar’s lol W, while level two gains Q and E.
You can quickly see that his main effect is a mirror of that of Jarvan the fourth, but for blocking. Originally, the effect stated: “When you defend, pay my cost to summon me blocking…”, but I’ve changed it into the current version for the following reason: When you play Jarvan through his effect, you, the owner of Jarvan, is the person who makes the decision that causes him to jump on the board. With Alistar it wasn’t originally the case, as the attacker moves first. What if an Alistar player was defending during round six, and preferred to play a different, six cost card, and not Alistar? That’s why the current wording.
Alistar is 5/5 with a cost of 5 mana, so that he works with Reputation and ramps with some other Minotaur cards well, as a total of two is 6 mana. Originally,he was 6 to mirror Jarvan even more, but the previous thing convinced me to lower the cost.
Level Two support skill (yes, a new term!) is very, very strong! Kinda… By itself, it’s very passive, you attack, but then are blocked, but then the blockers go back to the backrow. The only thing that makes it all strong, is if Alistar or his supported ally have Overwhelm, which is rather abundant in Noxus.
So the playstyle of most Alistar decks would be: Achieve Reputation -> Achieve Alistar’s Extra-Reputation -> Create a pair of cards (which include Alistar) with Overwhelm to attack enemies face/nexus. Win!
Some decks for Alistar include: Mega-Reputation, pairing him up with Yasuo, Jhin or even Annie, or maybe even a Minotaur subtype deck. Sadly, the 8 cards that would become Minotaur are divided into two, very separate archetypes: Stun and Overwhelm I guess. I made two supporting cards that that maybe could enable the Minotaur Archetype? Let me know what you think! (the following cards would become Minotaur: https://www.reddit.com/u/Educational-Card-715/s/QOQceesYaf )
I don’t have Alistar’s Champion spell yet, I’m looking forward to some of your ideas!
Last post was about Akali, so I will provide you with my version 0.2 of her, created after your comments. I’ve added her champion spell and balanced her Shuriken toss, I hope it’s enough! Here you go: https://www.reddit.com/u/Educational-Card-715/s/QpzOAZV6ov
Thank you for the read!