Talk: Patashu/Advanced rulebook outdated tests

The purpose of this page is to store mechanics tests from the Advanced rulebook that were useful in a previous version of the game, but due to card or mechanics changes no longer apply.

Playing/summoning a minion

(Warsong Commander was changed in Patch 3.2.)

• You play Recombobulator targeting a Harvest Golem. During the Battlecry Phase, the Harvest Golem transforms into a (pre-nerf!) Warsong Commander. During the After Summon Phase, the new Warsong Commander triggers and grants the Recombobulator Charge.
• If you play a Lightspawn with a (pre-nerf!) Warsong Commander on the board, by the time the After Summon Phase has been reached, the Aura Update (Health/Attack) Step has been called multiple times between outermost Phases and Warsong Commander sees a 5/5 and cannot give it Charge. If instead of playing you summon it such as via Resurrect or out of an enemy Deathlord, because it is inside of a parent Phase, the Aura Update (Health/Attack) Step is not running, and so Warsong Commander sees a 0/5 and grants it Charge.

Coldarra Drake and Garrison Commander

(Totally overhauled in 5.0.)

Related Video for this section: [Hearthstone Science] TGT Science #02: Coldarra Drake/Garrison Commander - Trigger or Aura?

In addition, Coldarra Drake and Garrison Commander refresh your Hero Power at the following two timings:

• After being Played, Summoned or Transformed into, at the following Summon Resolution Step. (This is after Aura Update (Health/Attack) but before Death Creation Step).
• In the Inspire Phase, as though they were Inspire trigger minions.

Examples:

• If you use Mind Control to steal a Coldarra Drake, it does not refresh your Hero Power, because neither the 1st nor the 2nd case occurred.
• If you summon Coldarra Drake or Garrison Commander, no matter how quickly it dies, your Hero Power is still refreshed. The only way for your Hero Power to not be refreshed is if the minion leaves play in the same Phase it's summoned (such as by being bounced back into the hand).
• If you kill Coldarra Drake or Garrison Commander using your Hero Power, either directly or indirectly (such as by killing an Explosive Sheep, your Hero Power is not refreshed, because it was going to trigger in the Inspire Phase but was removed from play first.
• If you summon One-eyed Cheat, Garrison Commander and another One-eyed Cheat in the same phase, when it ends, the first One-eyed Cheat triggers, then your Hero Power is refreshed, then the second triggers.

Garrison Commander can only refresh your Hero Power if it was used just once this turn. However, if you replace your Hero or Hero Power, this counter is reset, and Garrison Commander will give you two uses of your new Hero Power.

Playing a spell

(The Targeting Phase changed in Patch 4.2.)

1. Targeting Phase: Dragonkin Sorcerer, Spellbender, Eydis Darkbane and Fjola Lightbane Queue and Resolve here. (If the target is changed by Spellbender, anything that already queued to trigger in this Phase still will.) [the Death Creation Step and Summon Resolution Step is skipped following this Phase.]

Combat

(Snake Trap was changed to be High Priority instead of Low Priority in an unknown Patch - probably 4.0.)

• If an Ogre Brute targeted a minion but Clumsy triggers and redirects it to target the enemy Hero, regardless of order of play, the enemy Snake Trap never triggered, because the High Priority Greedy Queue finished before the Low Priority Greedy Queue started.

Also, Cutpurse used to be a trigger on the Proposed Attack Event, not the Attack Event.

Also, it looks like before GvG, Vaporize was a trigger on the Attack Event, not the Proposed Attack Event ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk6W-zt4yv4 ).

Copy effects

(As of Patch 7.1 this is no longer observable due to changes to Mirror Entity.)

• The 'pending destroy' state isn't copied. For example, if you play Sacred Trial then Mirror Entity and your opponent plays a minion that triggers both, your copy will not die.

Dominant Player Bug

(Snake Trap was changed to be High Priority instead of Low Priority in an unknown Patch - probably 4.0.)

• You play Blessing of Wisdom, your opponent plays Snake Trap then Misdirection and you play a final Blessing of Wisdom. Blessing of Wisdom and Snake Trap Queue in the Low Priority Queue, so if you are the dominant player your two Blessing of Wisdoms go off before Snake Trap, but if your opponent is the dominant player, his Snake Trap goes off before your two Blessing of Wisdoms. (Misdirection always goes first because it is in the High Priority Queue.)

(Because Enchantments no longer change Controllers when the attached minion changes Controllers in Patch 5.0, Shadow Madness/Power Overwhelming always works correctly now.)

• You cast Shadow Madness on an enemy minion then Power Overwhelming on it. At the end of your turn, during the End of Turn Phase, if you are the Dominant Player, Shadow Madness queues and resolves in the Dominant Player's Queue, invalidating Power Overwhelming that also queued. Then, in the Secondary Queue, the Power Overwhelming is eligible, queues and resolves, and the minion is destroyed on its original side. However, if you are the Secondary Player, the Shadow Madness queues and resolves in the Secondary Queue, so the Power Overwhelming remains untriggered until the next End of Turn Phase.

'Force play' and play order bug

(This bug was fixed in an unknown patch - 3.2 to 4.1. https://github.com/HearthSim/hs-bugs/issues/67#issuecomment-167433350 )

Deathlord, Voidcaller, Alarm-o-Bot, Ancestor's Call and Varian Wrynn all have in common that they forcefully move a minion from your hand or your deck into play. They all also have a bug in common that the minion thus summoned is the oldest in the order of play, not newest, when considering simultaneous Deaths. The order of play is non-bugged when considering triggers, such as end of turn trigger order or on-Death trigger order, or when considering other Events, such as simultaneous Damage.

More specifically, for the purposes of simultaneous Deaths, their 'timestamp' (which is updated when an Entity is generated (including summons, effects like Gang Up or at the start of the game) or played) is not updated when force played for the purposes of simultaneous Deaths, but is updated for all other simultaneous ordering purposes.

Examples (bug):

• You have a Harvest Golem out and destroy an enemy Deathlord, putting into play a Piloted Shredder, then play a Haunted Creeper. Your opponent casts Flamestrike. Despite the expected order of play being (Golem, Shredder, Creeper) the Deaths are considered and their Deathrattles triggered in the order [Shredder, Golem, Creeper] due to the force play/play order bug. The same bug happens with Alarm-o-Bot and Ancestor's Call.
• Similarly, if Duplicate was in play, the Deaths are considered in this bugged order which is why the Deathrattles triggered in that order, so you would get two Shredders, not two Harvest Golems.
• You play a Clockwork Gnome, cast Gang Up targeting Explosive Sheep, play a Leper Gnome then bring a Gang Up'd Explosive Sheep into play by destroying a Deathlord. All 3 of these minions die simultaneously. Because of the force play/play order bug, the Explosive Sheep has the timestamp from when it was created by Gang Up, and so the order of Death Event resolution is Clockwork Gnome/Explosive Sheep/Leper Gnome, rather than the expected Clockwork Gnome/Leper Gnome/Explosive Sheep ordering.

Examples (no bug):

• You have a Healing Totem and Mana Tide Totem and destroy an enemy Deathlord, putting into play a Vitality Totem and end your turn. The expected order of play is (Healing, Mana Tide, Vitality) and this is what we observe.
• You have a Flesheating Ghoul and destroy two enemy Deathlords. Each one summons a Flesheating Ghoul, and they activate in the order they were played/summoned.
• You and your opponent play Frothing Berserkers and Armorsmiths, sometimes force playing them using Alarm-o-Bot instead of playing them directly. For the purposes of simultaneous damage, the Damage Events will be resolved in the 'expected' order.

Moving between Zones

Fixed in Patch 4.0.

• You have 9 cards in hand, Baron Rivendare and either The Skeleton Knight or Anub'arak on the field. When the minion dies, it bounces itself to your hand on the first Deathrattle resolution, then attempts to move from your hand to your hand, sees that your hand is full and discards itself from your hand.

(Shadow Madness ignoring the 7 minion limit - also fixed in 4.0.)

Fixed in Patch 4.2.

• You cast Shadow Madness on a minion then kill an enemy Sylvanas Windrunner so it is stolen back to the same side. When Shadow Madness ends, if your enemy has 7 minions including the un-stolen one, it thinks the destination is full and the minion is destroyed.
• Using Djinni of Zephyrs plus Mind Control/Shadow Madness or Brann Bronzebeard plus Cabal Shadow Priest, you can take control of a minion that is already on your side of the board. This will give it summoning sickness and if your board is full, kill it and send it to the Graveyard Zone. In the case of Shadow Madness, Djinni of Zephyrs will be given Charge, effectively removing the summoning sickness.

Fixed sometime between 5.0-7.0.

• If you play The Mistcaller then Gnomish Experimenter, the Chicken will be a 1/1, because The Mistcaller's on-draw trigger resolves before Gnomish Experimenter interacts with the card.

'Pending destroy' bugs and effects

100% fixed in Patch 5.0.

We know from Rule 5 that many minions, triggers and effects ignore mortally wounded Entities, or abort if their target is mortally wounded. However, all of these things have a bug in common, which is that they don't also check the pending destroy flag. This leads to a number of bugs and seeming inconsistencies, such as:

• You play Vaporize then Freezing Trap. Your opponent plays a Stonetusk Boar and attacks into the traps. First Vaporize marks the Stonetusk Boar pending destroy, then Freezing Trap (which would NOT go off if the Stonetusk Boar was mortally wounded) triggers and returns the Stonetusk Boar back to his hand. Misdirection also triggers after Vaporize has gone off.
• Prior to Patch 3.2.0.10604 (2015-10-20), a pending destroy minion bounced to your hand, when re-played, would still be pending destroy and would die in the Death Creation Step following the On Play Phase, meaning that it would briefly emit Health/Attack Auras, trigger its Deathrattle, its Battlecry would resolve after it had already died, etc. The tag is now correctly cleared when you replay the minion, and the minion remains alive.
• A 3/3 Grim Patron attacks a 2/3 Emperor Cobra (or vice versa). Regardless of order of triggers, the damaged Grim Patron will spawn a new Grim Patron before the pending destroy effect kills the damaged Patron. The on damage trigger checks that Grim Patron is not mortally wounded; it ignores pending destroy.
• You play a Stonetusk Boar, play Bestial Wrath on it to make it Immune then attack into an enemy Vaporize. While Immune ignores damage, it does not ignore pending destroy, and your Stonetusk Boar is destroyed and removed from play in spite of its immunity. Big Game Hunter also works.
• Your Hero is Lord Jaraxxus and you play Ice Block. Your opponent plays Sacrificial Pact targeting your Hero. In spite of Ice Block preventing fatal damage, pending destroy is not counted as fatal damage, and you lose the game.
• You play Bouncing Blade on a board with Acidmaw on it. Each time Bouncing Blade hits a minion, Acidmaw triggers and sets that minion 'pending destroy'. This does not end Bouncing Blade early, and it also does not prevent Bouncing Blade from hitting the 'pending destroy' minion again. Bouncing Blade will only end when it finally reduces a minion to 0 Health.

(Internally the flag is a tag called TO_BE_DESTROYED)

Exceptions:

• Fist of Jaraxxus seems to be specially coded to ignore 'pending destroy' minions, such as if you play Deathwing with one in your hand.

Instant weapon destruction

Fixed because pending destroy grim patrons no longer summon new patrons.

• You play a Death's Bite and Grim Patron. Your opponent combos Sabotage. Regardless of order of play, the Death's Bite goes off first, damaging the Grim Patron and summoning a new Grim Patron, and damaging other minions on the board but not killing them yet, then the originally targeted Grim Patron (which was marked pending destroy) and any other mortally wounded minions are killed in the Death Creation Step following the Spell Text Phase.

Mid-Phase removal and triggers

(This was fixed in Patch 5.0.)

Rule MPR2: In addition, Deathrattles become immediately ineligible to trigger if the minion is not in the Play, Hand or Graveyard zone (such as due to Malorne's Deathrattle).

• You play Malorne and cast Ancestral Spirit and Soul of the Forest on it. When it dies, Malorne's Deathrattle goes off first, shuffling it into your deck - and then the remaining spell-added Deathrattles are detached and no longer go off. However, if Baron Rivendare is on the field, Malorne's Deathrattle goes off twice, presumably because it's checked in the code of the Deathrattle to go off again, rather than adding a second Deathrattle to the minion. (As of Patch 4.0.0.10833 (LoE patch), Malorne's Deathrattle shuffles the original Malorne into your deck, so resolving this twice has no additional effect.)

Summon Resolution Step

Commanding Shout, Garrison Commander and Coldarra Drake stopped being SRS triggers in 5.0. They now seem to trigger in Aura Update (Health/Attack).

• You play Commanding Shout, Grim Patron and Bouncing Blade. Because the Summon Resolution Step is not run inside of a Phase, and Commanding Shout is a Summon Trigger, the newly summoned Grim Patrons do not have the Commanding Shout Enchantment and can be reduced to 0 Health by the Bouncing Blade.
• Conversely, if you play Commanding Shout and attack with your Grim Patron into an enemy Chillmaw, mortally wounding it, the newly summoned Grim Patron gains the Commanding Shout Enchantment before the subsequent Death Phase, and thus survives Chillmaw's Deathrattle.
• Because Commanding Shout is a Summon Trigger, the effect persists if stolen from you (such as by Sylvanas Windrunner, is not granted on a minion you steal (such as by Shadow Madness) and can be silenced off. It also effects minions transformed by Battlecry effects, but not minions transformed by Spell effects.
• If you play Commanding Shout then a self-transforming minion (such as Faceless Manipulator) that will have 4 or less Health post-Transform, it will be mortally wounded by and die to Snipe. This is because it will gain Commanding Shout's effect until the Battlecry Phase, when it transforms - and the post-transform minion won't have it until the Special Summon Resolution Step following the After Summon Phase, and the damage occurs during this window of vulnerability.

Cobalt Guardian/Murloc Tidecaller Presummon Triggers

Murloc Tidecaller stopped triggering on its Mirror Entity copy sometime between Patch 5.0 and 7.0.

Cobalt Guardian and Murloc Tidecaller, despite having the wording 'Whenever you summon a minion', do not participate in the "Summon Resolution Step". Rather, they trigger just before the minion is summoned and enters play.

This has an interesting interaction with Copy effects such as Mirror Entity. Since the trigger happened before the copy effect finished, the copy would have the stats too.

Rule PSR1: When a Cobalt Guardian or Murloc Tidecaller is copied by the effect of Mirror Entity, the Presummon Trigger goes off before the copy even begins, and when the copy happens, it copies the post-trigger state rather than the pre-trigger state.

Examples

• Your opponent plays Mirror Entity then you play a Murloc Tidecaller. The Mirror Entity goes off, but before a copy is made, the Murloc Tidecaller buffs itself, and the copy is of the post-buffed state.

Additional notes:

• Presummon Triggers used to have a bug that allowed them to trigger on minions created by Transform effects, such as Faceless Manipulator or Mirror Entity. Since the trigger happened before the copy effect finished, the copy would have the stats too. Using Recombobulator to transform a friendly minion into a Target Dummy also causes friendly Cobalt Guardians to trigger. Cobalt Guardian and Faceless Manipulator has the same bug.

Controllers of Enchantments and Minions

In Patch 5.0, Controllers of Enchantments no longer change when the minion they are attached to changes Controllers.

Rule CEM1: Enchantments have a CONTROLLER tag equal to the player who put them into play (such as with a Battlecry or Spell). This can be different from the CONTROLLER tag of the Entity (usually a Minion) they are attached to. Its current CONTROLLER value is used whenever an Enchantent needs to know one of the following things:

Rule CEM1b: Which player's Start of Turn Phase to trigger in (Conceal, Finicky Cloakfield, Corruption, Nightmare)

Rule CEM1c: Whether to queue in the Dominant Player's queue or the Secondary Player's queue (all Enchantments with triggers).

Rule CEM1d: Which player's battlefield to look for an Auchenai Soulpriest effect in (Power Word: Glory).

Rule CEM2: However, the Enchantment's CONTROLLER tag is NOT used for the following:

Rule CEM2a: Which player to heal/which player to draw a card for (Blessing of Wisdom, Power Word: Glory)

Rule CEM2b: For Enchantments that add Deathrattles, who gets the effect and whether to queue in the Dominant Player's queue or the Secondary Player's queue. For both of these things, the minion's CONTROLLER is always used instead. (Ancestral Spirit, Explorer's Hat, Soul of the Forest)

Rule CEM3: Whenever a minion changes CONTROLLERs, all attached Enchantments also have their CONTROLLER set to the minion's new CONTROLLER.

Examples:

• If you cast Nightmare on a minion, it will be destroyed during your next Start of Turn Phase. But if it is cast on a friendly minion and stolen from you, it will be destroyed during your opponent's next Start of Turn Phase. A similar effect occurs with Conceal.
• If you cast Blessing of Wisdom on a minion, regardless of who originally controlled the minion and how many times it is stolen, it will always give you cards. But if you cast Power Word: Glory on a minion, while it will always heal you, it will look on your side of the board for Auchenai Soulpriest effects - but if stolen, it will look on your opponent's side of the board for Auchenai Soulpriest effects, and so on.
• If the Secondary Player owns a Webspinner and the Dominant Player casts Explorer's Hat on it, regardless of whether it dies or Feign Death is casted, the Webspinner Deathrattle will resolve before the Explorer's Hat, because the Explorer's Hat uses the minion's controller, not its own controller, to decide what to do.