Upcoming Hearthstone Rule Changes - Copy Cards, Transform, Shadowboxer Nerf and More
Blizzard is introducing some more mechanical changes to the game starting with the Boomsday Project patch.
- Ghostly Charger is losing the Beast tribe.
- Ixlid, Fungal Lord is losing the Elemental tribe.
- Shadowboxer will now only deal damage when a minion is healed, not any character.
- Shifter Zerus, Molten Blade, and Shifting Scroll now all lose enchantments when they transform.
- Voodoo Doll's curse is removed on a minion if it transforms.
- Voodoo Doll's curse is also removed if Voodoo Doll itself is silenced or the minion with the curse is silenced.
- Copied cards will get all enchantments the original card has unless the card is in the graveyard.
Shadowboxer will be disenchantable for full dust for two weeks when the patch hits.
Discuss Card Changes
We've made threads for each of the three main card changes. Click on any of the buttons below to visit their dedicated threads.
Discuss the Nerf
Discuss the Change
Discuss the Change
Blog Post
Here's Blizzard's full post. It's worth the read!
Quote from BlizzardDr. Boom’s bringing more than just mayhem to the Netherstorm. The 12.0 update will also come with several rule changes to Hearthstone’s gameplay. Read on to learn about another minion Type update, the copy a card rule change and the transform rule change.
More Minion Type Changes
There was a ton of feedback following the last minion Type update we posted, and after reviewing all of it, we realized that there were a couple more minions that needed changing. Here are our decisions following the full review of your feedback.
Ghostly Charger
We made a decision that, at least by default, spectral/undead/ghost/spirit versions of animals are not considered Beasts in Hearthstone. There are quite a lot of these sort of cards, most of which are already not Beasts, and changing them would have extensive balance implications.
Ghostly Charger is one of those cards. Clearly a ghost in both its name and art, its Beast tag has also not been relevant in any significantly used interaction. As a result, we’re planning to remove the Beast tag in a future update.
In the much rarer case of spectral/undead/ghost/spirit versions of Dragons, Murlocs, Pirates, and Elementals, they will still remain their Type. There aren’t a whole lot of these cards, but there are a few, and they’re already consistently their type. Examples of these are Ghost Light Angler, Cursed Castaway, Bone Drake.
Ixlid, Fungal Lord
World of Warcraft uses a looser definition of Elemental than what we decided to standardize on for Hearthstone. In Hearthstone, an elemental is something that has been brought to life by being inhabited by an elemental spirit, but is otherwise not alive. These are easy to recognize: a Fire Elemental looks like a living creature made out of fire; A Water Elemental looks like a living creature made out of water.
One of the biggest outliers to this definition are plant creatures. There are a ton of minions in Hearthstone that are some sort of plant. We’ve decided that these do not count as Elementals in Hearthstone. Examples of these include The Voraxx, Fen Creeper, Biteweed, Vilespine Slayer, Rotten Applebaum.
Ixlid, Fungal Lord, is by this definition, a plant creature. Although we’re committed to consistency, there are also other criteria that we consider when changing card Types. One of them is how often a card’s current Type matters when it comes to interacting with other cards. Ixlid’s Elemental tag is not significantly used in current decks, so we’ve decided to remove it in a future update.
We also looked at the following minions but decided against making any changes. We’ve included our thought process as to how we came to our decisions with these cards.
Kindly Grandmother
Kindly Grandmother/Big Bad Wolf looks like a Worgen (which are not considered Beasts) but is actually some other sort of wolf-like creature that is a Beast. The Beast tag is also extremely relevant to its gameplay, and defines most of the card’s intended usage. With this in mind, we will not be changing Kindly Grandmother’s/Big Bad Wolf’s Type. In the future, we’ll be more careful to make the art clear when it comes to Worgen or similar races.
Arcane Giant / Arcane Golem
On top of Elementals and plant creatures, there’s another category of things that have been brought to life via magical animation. These are creatures like War Golem, Arcane Giant, and Avian Watcher—which are not Elementals.
Arcane Giant, Arcane Golem, and The Curator are all examples of another sort of creature collectively referred to as Arcane Golems. These mechanical constructs utilize arcane energy as a power source, with The Curator being a Mech Type as part of his character in the One Night in Karazhan Adventure. This is actually subtly different from something like War Golem, which is carved from stone and then magically animated. While the “golem” definition refers to something that has been magically animated and is therefore neither a Mech nor Elemental, both Arcane Giant and Arcane Golem’s card art don’t clearly show them to be one or the other. Since the correct type for these creatures is so unclear, we will be leaving them unchanged for now, but would love to hear what you think.
Bogshaper
Bogshaper seems to be the same type of creature as Ixlid or Fen Creeper, and that would logically lead to removal of its Elemental tag. However, as mentioned above, we look at more than just the fantasy of a card when determining if it needs a Type change. While Bogshaper’s fantasy criteria checkbox is filled, it’s currently heavily utilized in the meta, and features in many decks, including that of the 2018 Summer Champion, Bunnyhoppor.
We are holding off on changing Bogshaper’s Type for now, but would love to hear what the community thinks we should do in this case. We’re also considering making this sort of change when a card rotates to Wild.
Copy A Card Rule Change
Card copies currently only retain enchantments when both the original card and its copy are in play—think Molten Reflection. In Update 12.0, this rule will be updated to match the one regarding enchantments being retained when a card transitions zones.
Zones in Hearthstone are defined as areas where cards are hosted: your deck, your hand, in play, and in the graveyard. In Hearthstone, there is a general forward-moving flow through zones. Whenever a card moves forward in that flow (Deck -> Hand, Hand -> Play, Deck -> Play), it retains enchantments. If a card moves backwards in zones (Play -> Hand, Hand -> Deck, Play -> Deck, Play/Hand/Deck -> Graveyard and Graveyard -> Play/Hand/Deck), it loses enchantments.
With this update, card copies will retain enchantments in the following scenarios.
- Cards that are resurrected currently do not and will continue not to retain any enchantments, unless specifically stated otherwise.
- If you copy a card from a deck to a deck, the copy retains enchantments. (eg. Archbishop Benedictus)
- If you copy a card from a hand to a hand, the copy retains enchantments. (eg. Mind Vision)
- If you copy a card from play to play, the copy retains enchantments. (eg. Molten Reflection)
- If you copy a card from a deck to a hand, the copy retains enchantments. (eg. Thoughtsteal)
- If you copy a card from a deck to play, the copy retains enchantments. (eg. Mindgames)
- If you copy a card from hand to play, the copy retains enchantments. (eg. Kobold Illusionist)
Transform Rule Change
When transformed, a Hearthstone card typically loses all of its enchantment. Most cards in game already obey this rule. However, there are four cards that we are changing to keep in line with the rule, as part of this consistency pass.
Shifter Zerus, Molten Blade, and Shifting Scroll all transform in your hand at the start of every turn. Following the 12.0 update, they will no longer keep any enchantments when they transform. This includes things like hand buffs and Emperor Thaurissan mana-cost discounts.
The impact on Voodoo Doll is a little different with the update. If you transform the minion that’s already been cursed by Voodoo Doll, the curse will be broken, and the transformed (and formerly cursed) minion will not be killed when Voodoo Doll dies. Silencing the cursed minion will also break the curse, in addition to silencing the Voodoo Doll.
Shadowboxer Update
Since the creation of the Lifesteal keyword, Shadowboxer has been a high risk card, in that it can trigger off of itself and deal up to 30 damage in one turn if you ever give it Lifesteal. Because of this, we have changed it to: Whenever a minion is healed, deal 1 damage to a random enemy.
Once Shadowboxer’s card change is live with Update 12.0, players will be able to disenchant it for its full Arcane Dust value for two weeks.
Great change with shadow boxer, it would be broken with the new magnetic rusher lifestealer and was an obnoxious strategy, would be better if it just didn't work with itself though.
So Priest buff?
Kingsbane explicitly states that it retains enchantments so i dont think any of this will affect the card
Might already be stated somewhere, but does this:
Mean that a double Valeera Keleseth saronite chain gang is 4x a 3/4 body?
"Oh, there's a cool interaction that can deal up to 30 damage? We better kill Shadowboxer. It's not like that there are so many things that have to go right when you're trying to kill your opponent with this combination."
I mean, it can only deal 30 damage if you're really low on health and you've played Amara so your max hp is above 30. That already requires some work. And what's the problem with dealing 30 damage in a single turn? OTKs are a thing. You don't have to kill the combo just because it exists. Make it harder to pull off. Make shadowboxer a balanced 6 drop. Now you can't do both on the same turn and heal, so now you need some cost reductions. Now this card is just unplayable. That's not fun.
All I'm saying is, if you don't want broken combo that's easy to pull off, I get you. But you don't have to kill it. Just make it a broken combo that's hard to pull off.
Usually when they are making a change like this it means that it limits the design space for future expansions.
Even if we don't get the card that would make this combo super easy to pull off in this expansion, keep in mind that they know what kind of cards will be included in the game for the next two expansion(so 3 with Boomsday), just because there is nothing that makes this card broken in the game at the moment, it doesn't mean there wouldn't be in the future.
It’s not hard to pull off because it’s a two card combo that can kill your opponent the turn you play it without any setup besides having less health than your opponent. Seems really degenerate, why do you want this is the game?! If they can remove it with a small nerf then that’s a good thing. changing shadowboxer into a 6 drop would be a silly nerf that changes the card too much, would you change the stats too? So every aspect of the catd would change to preserve the ‘character’ text?! What are you smoking?!
Likely we will be seeing a lifesteal enchantment type effect either this expansion or the next. I'm sure there is no problem with the current interaction, but because of how easy the two-card combo would be to pull off with say "2 mana priest spell: Give Target Minion Lifesteal" or any sort of battle cry buff type effect of similar nature it would need a nerf.
Shadowboxer + Zillax. The most likely reason why they're making this change.
Its entirely possible (although very unlikely) that they may be introducing a legendary that allows Priest to heal past their max health. If that's the case, then it'd be an OTK regardless of board state (except in that rare instance your opponent doesn't have a minion).
Its still early in the release cycle, but they've probably determined that Shadowboxer would be considerably OP with another card coming down the pipeline.
You see the thing is,.. you can also just play 2 shadowboxers. This effectively doubles the potential damage done.
Since Zilliax gives one of the shadowboxers rush you no longer need the two extra mana (for the hero power) to get the pain train going.
This removes the necessity of playing the quest and Amara.
Granted it will still require you to get to a very low level of health (10) just to do 30 damage (which can and will hit enemy minions too). On top of this your opponent can very easily predict (not using face heals in any way) and play around your strategy by leaving you at around 15/13 health and bursting you down when the opportunity arises.
Perhaps there would have been a weird deck in the future that ran Shadowbomber, Spawn of Shadows, and Shadowform / Shadowreaper Anduin, that would focus on getting both players low in health early game and than bursting your opponent down while healing yourself with the combo. (actually an idea of a friend of mine)
The problem that due to this early nerf we will never know if the combo was really that viable and it ruined a fun card so i largely agree with you.
I guess we should just trust on blizzards play-testing and assume the combo was really that broken after all... :9
there was already a trolden video showing this exact thing happening on ladder, it definitely does happen and i figured this nerf was coming once i saw how easy that combo was to pull off with circle healing/pyro combo.
''We've made threads for each of the three main card changes. Click on any of the buttons below to visit their dedicated threads.''
Actualy this is a mayor change:
But would Bane rogue not also benefit from the copy change? seeing as the Valeera the Hollow will now probably copy the buffs placed on Kingsbane?
They hate people like us here.
They don't want to think, They only want to consume what they present them and they consume them with their own money.
Humans are so weird-motivated creatures.
They are lying about Spectrals.
They keep Witchwood Treants as Treants even they are wicked or not.
Blink Fox still a beast. Why? Its art still represents as a spectral.
Ghost Light Angler is a spectral murloc too but have its murloc tribe. Why they could be murloc and spectral together and beasts not? I can understand this for dragon and pirate but not for murlocs.
Same as Brrrloc, Deadscale Knight,
Also they have changed Witchwood Grizzly's art because they would change Ghostly Charger and Witchwood Grizzly's art was an spectral too but they did not say it like that.
Why is Bearshark still a beast? It is an undead beast as you say that above.
Why is Arfus still a beast? Yeah I know you need some fuel to feed Deathstalker Rexxar.
Why is The Beast still a beast ?
Why is Core Rager still a beast?
Cat in a Hat is a spectral or a beast, I don't really even know.
Same for Enchanted Raven.
Addled Grizzly is an Undead.
Infested Wolf is Undead too.
Duskboar is Undead too.
Mukla, Tyrant of the Vale is Undead too.
Grotesque Dragonhawk is Undead too.
Vilefin Inquisitor is Undead too.
Bilefin Tidehunter is Undead too.
Corrupted Seer is Undead too.
Also Sheep from Polymorph, Frog from Hex and Boar from Polymorph: Boar and Witch's Apprentice are technically not beasts.
Spirit Wolf was never beast because you did not want to make Spectrals beasts but you announced and released Ghostly Charger, Witchwood Grizzly, Bearshark, Arfus and so much more as beasts. Why?
Because you have to sell some pre-orders and some packs, don't you ? Funny bli$$, really funny...
Change them all or keep your lore bleeding.
Also, Shouldn't removing a tribe be a nerf? There are so much mistakes Blizzard. As you did in hots and overwatch too.
this isn't a first party website dude... Blizzard probably won't ever see that.
It's a Hearthstone-based website with full of Hearthstone community. This site is for netdecks, community thoughts etc.
Do you really think that they don't check these websites ?
Check some fan-made cards and after that check how they produce them.
A lot of the cards you mention are NOT undead. They are corrupted by the Old Gods. (Every card from WotG.)
And they just started doing the changes to keep things up to the lore and get consistency, we had two rounds of that now and i expect more to come.
How exactly are they going to sell preorders and pack with this kind of change?
They are corrupted by N'zoth.
and they are undead according to Blizzard's definition.
Also removing a tribe is a nerf, people hypes when they see new beasts, new legendary elementals, new synergies, new tribe minions etc. They make people buy their preorders like this and then they are changing them without a refund. it is a fraud.