We're back with the winners of the Cenarion Contest! We had a lot of great entries this time, but narrowed it down to our top five - which we'll feature in a moment. First, let's talk about the next competition.

Season 5 has been a soaring success, adding the Darkmoon Faire and Blingtron's Bounties as weekly events. With the launch, Blizzard has handed out even more goodies to pass onto our readers, in the form of 5 codes containing:

  • 1 Random Beast Leader
  • 2 stars of 1 Random Beast Mini
  • 1 Major XP Tome

To enter, design a mini troop or leader for the Darkmoon Faire, and submit your design to [email protected]. Deadline for submission is the 4th of May, Anywhere-On-Earth.

What goes in the Darkmoon Faire? Well, it can be anything featured in the corrupted carnival, from Crooked Carnies and Tainted Toys to Old Gods' Minions and Crazed Cultists!

Here's a quick example of the theme we're looking for:

Name: Darkmoon Chest
Cost: 2g
Traits: Alliance, Unbound
Health: 220
Ability: Glittering Gold When broken, grant 2g to that player.
Talents:
Murderous Mimic When killed by an enemy mini, destroy it.
Bank Vault Every 5 seconds, store an extra gold in the chest.
Baleful Polymorph When opened, transform nearby minis into random Beasts!

Without further ado, let's see the winners!

First, we have MaXi, with the Ancient Protector:

Name: Ancient Protector
Cost: 6g
Traits: Cenarion, Melee, One-Target, Tank, Treant
Health: 3000
Dps: 100
Speed: Slow.
Ability: Take Root - When not at full HP and out of combat, Ancient Protector takes root, slowly regenerating HP and gaining ranged attack. When at full HP, uproots and marches towards the enemy base again.
Talents:
Nature's Defender - Takes root immediately after spawning and stays until attacked and restored to full HP.
Eat Tree - Can consume nearby Treant corpse to restore HP.
Fortifying Roots - Gain Armored when rooted.

I like this design because it's a big expensive mini that really feels worth it to play. Unlike other expensive minis which slowly get chipped down before they ever make it to the base, the Protector acts as a super-ghoul, forcing you to deal with it once and for all.

Next, we have Brad with the Wisp:

Name:Wisp
Cost:1g
Traits: Can’t attack, Miner, Cenarion
Ability: Natural Mining - Attaches itself to a gold mine permanently.
Talents:
Spiritual Attunement - After a wisp dies, the next wisp played gains 33% move speed
Nature’s Wrath - When destroyed, deal damage to nearby enemies.
Cenarion Efficiency - Mines 33% faster

We actually had a few wisps submitted this time around, seems like a popular idea! I like the idea of exploring the miner space a bit more and featuring some more elements of WC3 is always a plus. The original submission mentioned it had the same health as the kobold, and that's really the only thing I would change, given the strength of Natural Mining.

On Three, we have Omeleet with Cyclone:

Name:Cyclone
Cost:2g
Ability: Lifts all minis in the area into the air, making them untargetable and unable to attack. Talents:
Hurricane - Enemy units take light damage over time while in the Cyclone.
Stasis - Winds last 3 seconds longer.
Windswept - After Cyclone ends, affected minis gain Vulnerable.

Cyclone fits somewhere in-between Smoke Bomb's Strangers in the Night talent and Polymorph with Stable Transfiguration. I like that it can be used on friendly minis to protect them, for example keeping your General Drakkisath alive if the opponent tries to Polymorph and nuke it down. Fits the flavour of Cyclone well and a good design space to explore.

Followed by Porcinet with the Hippogryph:

Name : Hippogryph
Cost : 4g
Family : Cenarion
Health : 420
DPS : 155
Traits : Single target, Flying, Cenarion

Ability :
Defender - Hippogryph is stationary and remain at its deploy location.
Dive - Hippogryph will dive any mini that enter a 7 range radius around it and make it Bleed (not reduced by armor or resistant) for 50 damage over 5 seconds. It will attack its target until it dies and will return to its deploy location.

Talents : Territorial - Deals double damages to flying minis (Bleed is not doubled)
Ultravision - Increase dive range by 3 and gain detect invisibility.
Rider - Lose the defender and dive ability and gain a ranged attack (9 range, same damage)

I like the Guard minis (Grunts, Skeleton Party, Drake), and it's a shame that alternative deployments haven't really caught on a great deal in Rumble yet. I'm a little concerned about the range on Rider or Ultravision, but otherwise a very cool design.

Finally, we have Jacobaqi with Mass Entanglement:

Name: Mass Entanglement
Traits: Cenarion, AoE, Spell
Cost: 3g
Ability: Roots and Poisons minis in an AoE. 1 tick of poison every second. Roots for 5 seconds.

Talents:

  1. Applies 2 poison stacks.
  2. If Mass Entanglement kills an enemy mini, your next Cenarion unit costs 1 gold less.
  3. Enemy Minis that touch rooted minis spread the roots.

Another case where the design is relatively straightforward but I would expect the Cenarion to receive a mini just like this. The possibility of maintaining a poison stack for a long period offers some interesting solutions to PvE encounters. The main issue is the damage output is going to be too high for a 3g spell, though it does have the limitation that it can't hit structures.

That's all for now, see you next time.