Signature Cards were first introduced in March of the Lich King expansion. They are a special type of cosmetic card that showcases full, alternate card artwork. While very rare, they were overall positive for the economy, because they don’t take any Legendary slots from your packs. If you get a Signature card, it replaces a random Common you would get instead in a card pack, so it’s a clear win for the players. Even though they are rare, they increase the pack value ever so slightly.
And how rare they are, exactly? Let’s start with the fact that you can only open the Legendary Signature cards (non-Legendaries are available through the events or rewards track). And those are as rare as Golden Legendary cards, so 1 in 181 packs on average, 1 in 361 packs pity timer. You can expect 1 (or less than 1) per expansion depending on how many packs you open. The odds are much higher in Golden Packs – you can expect 1 per 20 packs on average, with a guaranteed one every 40 packs. But given how expensive Golden Packs are, they are more of a whale magnet. At least the non-Legendary Signature Cards are easily accessible to an average player (as long as you’re playing during the expansion they are from).
However, long story short is that the first batch of Signature Cards wasn’t liked by most of the players. Between the lack of color, weird-looking borders (especially when on board), and the fact that you couldn’t get rid of it even if you wanted, the reception was mostly negative. That’s why Blizzard has decided to remake them only one expansion later (in Festival of Legends). Not only can you disenchant them now (for the same amount as Golden Legendaries), but they look WAY better than the first ones.
While some people think that Badlands signature cards are a slight downgrade compared to TITANS ones, most can agree that they still look really nice. This time Blizzard has also revealed how they look on the board, after you play them. I think it’s great because that’s how you will see them more often than in your hand. In case you haven’t seen them yet, we’ve gathered all of the Showdown in the Badlands Signature Cards in this post (with a regular version for comparison). You can find all of them below (in alphabetical order):
Drilly the Kid
Fye, the Setting Sun
Gunslinger Kurtrus
High Noon Duelist
Howdyfin
Kobold Miner
Pile of Bones
Pip the Potent
Pop’gar the Putrid
Reska, the Pit Boss
Sheriff Barrelbrim
Skarr, the Catastrophe
Slagmaw the Slumbering
Spirit of the Badlands
Tae’thelan Bloodwatcher
Theldurin the Lost
Walking Mountain
Wishing Well
STILL looks loads better than those dim Lich King Signatures. *shiver*
I think it’s safe to assume most of the commons and rares on here will be Reward Track items – curious which Epics though. I think they had two on track last time? I may be remembering wrong though.
Why are some of the arts of two completely different characters? Skarr, the Catastrophe is a cool giantic sand tornado in its normal art and its signature is just an default air elemental! Did the art director just say “make a big faerie dragon” to two different people and that’s why we have Fye, the Setting Sun in two colours, one with neck fin and dragon wings and one with a fin on top and butterfly wings? Theldurin the Lost and Slagmaw are mismatching too.
I think that Skarr IS a “default air elemental”, he just sucked in the sand when going through the desert, and that’s why it looks like that from the outside. The SIgnature card has the view from “inside” the tornado. So that one can easily be explained, but I agree that the base one looks better, more unique, fits the expansion theme more. It’s one of the few artworks I like better on the base version.
As for Fye, it could possibly be explained by the lighting (regular artwork has strong orange lighting from the setting sun), but maybe not to this extent. I think this is one just a mistake.
But in general, that’s how I think it works. They give two different artists the same set of instructions, but the instructions are vague enough that they need to fill in the details. I’m not a big fan of this – I think they should let one artist make the regular version first and then give that to another artist so they know how the base card will look. I like that Signature cards have different styles, but they shouldn’t depict what looks to be completely different characters.
In terms of Fye I’d like to think about her base version depicting her during the day and how she looks before the sun is setting.
Her signature card might be how she looks at night, starting to grow brighter in color again after the sun starts to rise.
Especially since her signature has the night sky above her head.
True, but there’s also a huge sun right behind her head 😀 So I’d say that it’s still day. The night sky above her was probably supposed to show that it’s already setting and it’s right before nighttime.
Anyway, I don’t think that Faerie/Fey Dragons change color based on the time of day/night in Warcraft lore, but it’s a cool interpretation.
Love the artwork, as always. Too bad they’re so rare I can hardly get excited. I’ve never seen one that wasn’t a reward.
pretty good artwork, some of them are insane actually very nice
I figured they’d go all in on the Wild West theme and make them look like Wanted posters. These a cool, too. Nice art.
It would be boring if they made all of them this way, but I wish they made at least 2-3 wanted posters for some of the Outlaw characters. Kurtrus, Tae’thelan and Theldurin for example. I like those “unique-looking” Signatures the most (like Ra-den or Mimiron from TITANS). That’s why High Noon Duestlist is my favorite this expansion I think.
Have to concur. For instance, the Old Gods signatures in Caverns. The wall motif is a creative idea and that ambient, subtle, candle-like lighting is a cool effect, but I think it loses a lot of what makes the Old Gods so crazy and Lovecraftian in the first place.
Oh nevermind me. I didn’t see you already had posted the Rewards track.
HOW DARE YOU BE ON TOP OF THINGS?! XD