Hearthstone Heroes Of Warcraft / Tropes M to R

Tropes found in Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft
Tropes A to B | Tropes C to D | Tropes E to L | Tropes M to R | Tropes S to Z

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M

• Mad Scientist: Has its own card, though a few other characters like Dr. Boom and Professor Putricide also count. According to the Boomsday Project Lab Logs, every head scientist at the Boomsday Labs is one.
• Magic Eater: The Blood Knight is a standard 3/3 minion for 3 mana. Upon play however, he removes all Divine Shield effects and gaining 3/3 for each removed. There are also the Mana Wyrms and various Troggs, which gain attack whenever a spell is cast.
• Magikarp Power: Many cards get buffed every time a certain action is performed by its player (or both players), like +1/+1 for Questing Adventurer every time a card is played or +1 attack for Mana Wyrm every time a spell is cast (which is very often for mages). It's important to kill these cards fast before their stats/bonuses snowball out of control. These sorts of cards are often called "soft taunts"- nothing is actually making you focus them, but only a fool would let them live for a moment longer than possible.
  • As far as decks go, some decks focus heavily on late game and don't try to dominate the board early on and just try to control the board and turtle (often called "control" decks). The risk of running such a strategy is that if one cannot hold off the enemy onslaught early on and they gain a significant advantage, the game might be lost before any heavy-hitters get a chance to be effective.
  • Say a Priest drops a 1/5 or some such creature with no taunt. Doesn't seem like it's worth taking out. Then on the next turn: double health (2 mana), double health (2 mana), attack = health (1 mana). Now it's a 20/20. This trope is why savvy players will kill each and every weak minion they can if their opponent might buff them. A 1/1 Silver Hand Recruit is laughable in the late game, but not if Uther buffs it with Blessing of Kings then Blessed Champion to make it a 10/5.
  • Special mention goes to Gruul, a legendary minion that starts 7/7 for 8 mana BUT gains +1/+1 at the end of every turn. Yes, both your and your opponent's turns. Either silence/eliminate him immediately or be prepared to face a behemoth.
  • Bolvar Fordragon, a Paladin legendary minion with 1/7 stats for 5 mana. While he's in the player's hand, he gains +1 attack every time a friendly minion dies. When played normally, he's crap, but after a half dozen or so turns of holding him the opponent suddenly has a 9/7 to deal with.
  • C'Thun has a unique spin on this in that the buffing can happen while he's in your deck. In fact, it's the entire purpose of his deck, using his cultists to power him up to the point that playing him wins you the game on the spot.
  • The Jade Golems from Gadgetzan has an unwritten ability where its size depends on how many Jade Golems you have summoned throughout the game. The first Jade Golem you summon will be a measly 1/1, but once you've summoned enough, they'll start to show up with double-digit Attack and HP.
  • Pogo-Hopper is a humble 1-mana 1/1 that gets stronger for each other Pogo-Hopper you've played in the game. Between Rogue's many bounce cards and even Lab Recruiter to shuffle in more copies of it, it's not unusual to see a Pogo-Hopper exceed 15/15.
  • Ironically, Murlocs in Battlegrounds are at their peak in the late game. They have a middling early game and a bad mid-game, but late game their board-wide Battlecry buffs give the entire warband gigantic stats and can one-shot enemies with Poisonous. Dragons are a close second, where their scaling minions takes time to build up, but over time the stats add up and their board-wide Divine Shield lets them go two-for-one on other minions.
    • Some Battlegrounds heroes fall under this as well. For example, George the Fallen's Hero Power gives a minion Divine Shield for a whopping 2 Gold, but this heavy investment pays off very well in the late game. Mr. Bigglesworth is the most extreme version of this, where he basically has no Hero Power until someone else gets eliminated, where he can then Discover one of their minions, with any buffed stats and Golden status.
• The Magnificent: A wide variety of characters have names like this, such as a djinn called Zephrys the Great, an ethereal called Raza the Chained, and a dragon called Nozdormu the Timeless.
• Mama Bear: Some sticky minions have Deathrattle that involves calling out their parent. Did you just kill that Raptor Hatchling or Direhorn Hatchling? Wait 'til their bigger, nastier parent appears.
  • There's also Mama Bear in Battlegrounds, which gives any summoned beasts a huge stat boost.
• Manipulating the Opponent's Deck: There are several cards designed to mess with the opponent's hand and deck, or make them reluctant to draw more cards:
  • Cards such as Coldlight Oracle and Naturalize make the opponent draw cards. This can be utilized as part of a 'mill' strategy to force the opponent to discard cards because they've hit the hand size limit, and make them take fatigue damage by having them draw from an empty deck.
  • The Rogue spell Beneath the Grounds shuffles three Nerubian Ambushes into the opponent's deck. When drawn, they each summon a 4/4 Nerubian for the player that cast the spell. This is a bit of Early-Installment Weirdness - there have been many similar Rogue cards released since, but with the caveat that they shuffle beneficial cards into their own deck.
  • Iron Juggernaut, Clockwork Goblin, Seaforium Bomber, and Wrenchcalibur shuffle bombs into the opponent's deck that explode and do damage when drawn. Similarly, Hakkar the Soulflayer shuffles a Corrupted Blood into both player's decks - when drawn, it does 3 damage to the player and shuffles another two Corrupted Bloods into their deck. Death Knights also got in on the action in TITANS with cards that shuffle Plagues into the opponent's deck; when drawn, these damage that opponent for 2 and either summons a 2/2 token for the Death Knight (Unholy Plague), make their next card cost 1 more (Frost Plague), or heal the Death Knight for 2 (Blood Plague).
  • Weasel Tunneler and Bad Luck Albatross add weak 1/1 minions to the opponent's deck, leading to wasted draws.
  • Excavated Evil deals 3 damage to all minions and shuffles itself into the opponent's deck. Not only does this slow down aggro players, it also puts a completely dead draw into their deck. Likewise, another Priest spell, Psychic Scream, shuffles all minions on the board into the opponent's deck, which can include useless tokens.
  • Prior to her rework, Mindrender Illucia forced you and the opponent to swap hands and decks for one turn, giving you a chance to take waste or even make use of key cards from their deck. Thanks to some unforeseen usage,^note Namely, it being played in aggressive decks so they could put lethal on the board then give their opponent an empty hand and worthless top deck the card was heavily nerfed in patch 21.3 to just give the user a copy of the opponent's hand rather than actually swapping them.
  • Glide causes you to shuffle your hand into your deck and draw four new cards. If you can cast it from either of the outermost positions in the hand, it forces your opponent to do the same. Potentially this lets you go +4 while they go as much as -6.
  • Flik Skyshiv destroys a targeted minion and all cards with the same name as it, regardless of whether they're in play, in players' hands, or in their decks.
  • Whirlpool destroys all minions on the board and all copies of it the same way Flik does.
  • Skulking Geist destroys all 1-mana spells in both player's hands and decks.
  • King Togwaggle swaps you and your opponent's decks around, but gives the opponent a 5-mana card that switches the decks back. If you can find a way to burn that card (read: playing him while the opponent has a full hand) or get a copy of that card yourself, you can make the switch permanent.
  • Warlocks have a number of cards that can destroy cards in their opponents deck, including Gnomeferatu (destroy the top card), Altar of Fire (destroy three cards from both decks), Tickatus (remove five cards from the opponent's deck if corrupted), Void Contract (destroy half the cards in both decks), and Azari the Devourer (destroy all remaining cards in the opponent's deck).
  • The Darkness summons a dormant 20/20 minion, then shuffles three candles into the opponent's deck. If all three are drawn, The Darkness awakens.
  • Deathlord and Hecklebot can force an enemy to summon a random minion from their deck, which has the potential to be both beneficial (if it cheats a giant minion into play for your opponent) or detrimental (putting a key combo piece into play for the player to destroy, or denies the minion's Battlecry) for the opponent. One of the uncollectable Lich King cards, Death Grip, is a much safer version of this that steals a random minion from your opponent's deck and adds it to your hand.
  • Algalon the Observer's Battlecry gives you a Hero Power that lets you look at the top card of your opponent's deck, then either put it back on top or place it on the bottom.
• Mass Card Removal: Board clears in come in two varieties: cards that deal a certain amount of damage to all minions, and cards that destroy or remove minions directly. Class identity is a big deal in Hearthstone, so every class has their own unique way of keeping the board clear - with Druids, Hunters, Paladins, and Rogues being in part characterized by a relative lack of board clears instead.
  • Raw damage board clears:
    • Mage goes the Boring, but Practical route, featuring simple "deal X damage to all enemy minions" for the most part. Other board clears involve shooting damaging missiles at random enemies - great against a board of 1-health minions, but not so useful against a board of 4-health minions.
    • Shaman has much like Mage, but they can be played much earlier. However, they have an Overload cost to them, causing the Shaman to have X less mana on the following turn. Early on, Shaman AoE also dealt variable damage, although this was dropped in an attempt to iron unfun RNG out of the game.
  • Unconditional minion destruction:
    • Deathwing, a 12/12 minion for 10 that destroys all minions, but also requires you to discard your entire hand.
    • Warlock's Twisting Nether, an 8-mana spell that simply destroys all minions.
  • Demon Hunter board clears generally involve summoning a number of tokens that can attack minions immediately. This gives them the most flexibility where the damage goes, but the least overall damage per board clear. They also have a handful of straight damage Area of Effect spells that hurt their own minions as well.
  • Priest has the most effective, most efficient, and most expensive board clears, with their AoE rarely costing less than 7 mana but almost always leaving the board empty. They also have a light theme of stealing minions or Manipulating the Opponent's Deck with some of their effects.
  • Warlock likewise has cheaper board clears than other classes, but they come with even worse downsides like discarding cards, damaging your own hero, or removing cards from your deck.
  • Warrior board clears are cheap and plentiful but much less effective per card, often requiring them to combo several cards together to answer boards. They're also always symmetrical, which is actually more of an upside since many Warrior cards benefit from damaging their own minions.
• Mechanically Unusual Class:
  • The Demon Hunter, being the first ever new class, is one of these. They have a 1 mana Hero Power instead of the normal 2 mana.
  • The Death Knight class requires selecting three Runes with any deck they build, using any number of Blood, Frost, and Unholy Runes. Many Death Knight cards require you to have chosen a specific Rune in order to add them to your deck, with more powerful cards requiring two or three of the same Rune.
  • The standard win condition is to bring your enemy Hero's HP to 0 by hitting their face with minions, spells and maybe weapons. However, there are certain archetypes that aim to win the game in a different manner:
    • Mill Decks also aim to deplete the enemy health, but through Fatigue rather than direct damages.
    • "Exodia" decks rely on certain card combinations that when unleashed, are supposed to finish off the enemy in one turn. Exodia Paladin in particular rely on summoning four token minions who will then kill the enemy Hero regardless of health or even Immunity, something Exodia Mage can't do.
    • Mecha'thun from Boomsday has a Deathrattle which will kill the enemy hero if you have no cards left in hand, deck and on board. The most mechanically unusual card printed so far, since its activation condition is something considered to be very bad in normal play.
  • Millhouse Manastorm in Battlegrounds has a very unusual Hero Power: he pays 2 Gold to buy a minions instead of 3, but rerolls cost twice as much and tavern tiers cost 1 extra. He has a lot of buying power on a good roll and can use token minions to "bank" Gold, but having a much more costly Reroll means he has to buy aggressively in order to not fall behind.
• Medium Awareness:
  • Some cards seem to actually be aware that they are cards in a game, at least according to their card descriptions.
    Abusive Sergeant: PUT ME IN YOUR DECK, MAGGOT!
  • Kel'Thuzad also blurts out a meta comment if his underling Maexxna plays Sea Giant.
    Kel'Thuzad: Sea Giant? Maexxna, that is NOT on my approved card list!
  • C'Thun has a couple meta comments if you buff him enough times.
    C'Thun: Your deck betrays you.
  • The Lich King is pretty much made of this, from threatening to disenchant the player for Arcane Dust to complaining about someone nerfing his weapon. Even his card description gets in on the fun.
    All that I am: anger, cruelty, vengeance, 8 attack - I bestow upon you, my chosen knight.
• Metagame: Mostly manifests in popular opinion of which deck(s) are strongest, which changes fairly regularly. Averted for the most part, since opponents are chosen randomly, it's a matter of luck whether one deck's central strategy counters the others', so even a "win against everything" deck is likely to run into a counter. Most of the meta-strategy comes from knowing the possible cards a particular hero has at their disposal then playing accordingly.
• Monster Clown: Carnival Clown. Although in his defense, he is trying to be a Non-Ironic Clown. He only becomes monstrous if you can Corrupt him.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • Because the animation and voice over of each minions is independent of each other, you and your opponent can end up playing several minions with voice over work clashing widely in tone and feel with each other. For example:
    Shrinkmeister: Let us see if this works. (Hilarious)
    Cabal Shadow Priest: Let me change your mind (Creepy and unsettling)
    Sylvanas Winrunner: Let none survive (Proud and combative)
  • In a specific example, the cinematic trailer for Curse of Naxxaramas was gritty and mysterious until the last 5 seconds featuring the Innkeeper.
  • Blackrock Mountain has a threefor. At first it tries to be intimidating, but Ragnaros' Large Ham and Nefarian's Deadpan Snarker back and forth keeps it amusing. Then you start Blackwing Lair and learn that Vaelastrasz's fate is basically the same, forced to fight you by Nefarian's brainwashing while still being completely mentally aware of what he's doing, and nothing is done to remove the emotional pain of the fight if you know his backstory. And then after that heading to Chromaggus, the game's mood gets lighter again, though Nefarian continues to grow more angry and sinister than Ragnaros at his worst.
• Mook Commander: Certain minions such as Stormwind Champion and Southsea Captain provide aura-type buff to other minions on the field. This can result in interesting interactions, such as Silencing the buffed minions does nothing, or a 1-health minion not losing health if pinged with only one damage.^note A 1-health minion with a +1 health brings it to 2. Pinging it with 1 damage brings it back down to 1... except since it's an aura buff, it's always active, and since a minion cannot have 0 health, the buff is instantly re-applied, bringing its health back to 2.
• Mook Maker: Several heroes have plenty of cards/hero powers to make mooks, while some minions such as Onyxia can summon additional mooks.
• More Dakka:
  • The general result of having 2 Knife Jugglers on board and summoning multiple minions at once. Or having a Flamewaker on board and casting a number of cheap spells.
  • Augmented Porcupine's Deathrattle deals 1 damage to a random enemy equal to its attack. Buff them, field multiple copies of them (or minions who copied their Deathrattle), use Deathrattle activators, aaaand...^note Note that 'brrrr' can be seen as the sound a gatling gun makes.
• Multi-Slot Character: There are a number of Legendary cards that get released with different variants across different card sets. For example, the original Deathwing from the Classic set is a 12/12 dragon that, when played, destroyed all monsters on the board but forced you to discard your entire hand. The "Whispers of the Old Gods" expansion added Deathwing, Dragonlord, another 12/12 dragon with a deathrattle effect, summoning all dragon minions in your hand when it was killed.
• Mutual Disadvantage:
  • The legendary minion Nozdormu limits both players' turns to 15 seconds, a potentially useful effect if one is very quick at thinking on their feet.
  • Several cards will have a detrimental effect to all minions on the field (including yours). Destroying all minions (called "board-clear" or "wiping") can be beneficial if your opponent has a significant advantage.
  • Mogor The Ogre from GvG causes all minions to attack the wrong target 50% of the time. The game is about carefully trading minions to gain board control, but once Mogor is on the board, all bets are off. You may want to use a spell to remove him due to how disruptive he is.
  • Mayor Noggenfogger is Mogor the Ogre to the next level. He'll randomize all minions attacks and all targeted spells and hero powers. The only thing that can reliably remove him is a big AoE spell.
  • Mojomaster Zihi cuts both players down to 5 mana crystals when she's played. Mutual as it is, a well-timed one can cripple an opponent's combo deck without really affecting yourself.
• Mythology Gag: Nearly all the bosses of the Naxxramas expansion are lifted directly from the original Naxxaramas raid in World of Warcraft. As such, there are several references to the characteristics of each boss and how each was fought, including some Ascended Memes like Heigan shouting "Dance, fools, dance!" in reference to the "Heigan Dance" re-positioning strategy.
  • One Night In Karazhan has a few, usually coming from Moroes, Medivh's butler, who laments that Majordomo Executus has arrived too soon, he is not prepared for Illidan's arrival, and Reno Jackson tries to loot some silverware. In the same adventure, Prince Malchezaar uses Gorehowl in his boss fight, a reference to the long unexplained and confusing source of the weapon drop in World of Warcraft.
  • In the first mission in Knights of the Frozen Throne against Tirion, despite claiming he's assembled "the finest warriors of Azeroth", resembles more of a terrible raid party, including a DPS who can't deal damage, a tank who can't Taunt, and an AFK party member. It also references the olden days of World of Warcraft raids, including a Warlock that kills themselves with fire and a Hunter that rolls always rolls Need on a "hunter weapon".

N

• Name-Tron: Annoy-o-tron is definitely the most well-known. There's also the V07-TR-0N and Omnitron Defense System, both taken from World of Warcraft. Rise of Shadows introduced Oblivitron, a tank built by mages.
• Naturally Huskless Coconuts: There's a coconut tree on the Stranglethorn battlefield. If you click on the huskless coconut a few times, it falls down and you hear a monkey screech, implying that it was hit on the head.
• Nerf: Blizzard used to take a very, very hands-off approach to balancing the game, preferring to allow the players to find ways of dealing with Game-Breaker decks or releasing new cards in the next set that counter previously strong strategies. As a result, on the rare occasions that they do make any changes to existing cards, they would only nerf, never buff, because they don't see a card being too weak (or even completely and utterly worthless for any purpose whatsoever) as a "problem" and try to keep any changes minimal, but on extremely rare cases they might give it a minor compensatory buff (such as giving a minion +1 HP to compensate for increasing its mana cost, which is a severe nerf). They've also earned something of a reputation for a "sledgehammer" nerf style where they will deal with a problematic card (most infamously Warsong Commander) by utterly destroying it and rendering it completely unplayable. Blizzard has been more lax with sledgehammer nerfs since 2019, however, making balance changes more frequently and have started to actually buff weaker cards and even un-nerf cards that have been sitting in Wild for some time, and also have begun reverting nerfs for cards rotating out of Standard since the nerfs usually corresponded to them being overpowered in Standard but balanced in Wild.
• Nice Kitty...: Cornered Sentry summons three 1/1 raptors for the enemy when played. Her summoning quote?
  Cornered Sentry: Nice little raptors...^note Run for it!
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
  • Some cards that are original to Hearthstone fall under this category. Examples are N'zoth's first mate, who is an Old God-related Pirate insectoid and the Mech-bear-cat, who is half mech, half bear, half cat, or was it half mech, half bear-cat....
  • This is the gimmick of All-type minions, which, naturally, count as all minion types. They tend to have comically fitting card art◊ to boot.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • Harrison Jones, a fedora-wearing explorer wielding a whip and goes "That belongs in a museum!" when he nabs the enemy's weapon. We can't imagine who he might be a reference to.
  • Reno Jackson looks an awful lot like Tom Selleck, who auditioned for the role of Indiana Jones and would later play a spoof of the character on Magnum, P.I..
• Non-Indicative Name: Stealth minions are just as visible as other minions, they just can't be targeted by enemy spells or attacks. Untargetted and Area of Effect damage can still hit them though.
• Noob Cave: Practice mode, where players can face an AI of each hero using their basic deck. It's good to unlock the heroes and dry-run new decks, but can't be used to unlock most daily quests.
• Not Completely Useless:
  • One of the most surprise useful cards is Purify. Purify is a two mana spell which Silences a friendly minion and draws a card, and became one of Hearthstone's biggest memes on release. It turns out, it's pretty damn good with Humongous Razorleaf, as the Un'goro meta demonstrated.
  • During part one of the Ice Crown adventure, Lady Deathwhisper will open each of her turns by reducing all of your minions' health to one, thus rendering high-health cards designed for tanking damage utterly worthless. The best minions to pick when fighting her are cards with particularly low health in exchange for high damage. Of course, this perfectly fits the description of Magma Rager, with its singular hit point and five attack, costing only 3 mana to summon in.
  • Blood Knight is a forgettable soft counter to Divine Shield minions, which destroys all Divine Shields in play and gains +3/+3 for each one. It became a lot less of a joke when Giggling Inventor was released, a 5 mana minion that summoned two Annoy-o-trons. Granted, Giggling Inventor got a well-deserved nerf, but there was a legitimate time when people were running Blood Knight for an easy 3 mana 9/9 wall-buster.
• Now It's My Turn: How Aggro counter decks or strategies often play out. The opponent simply takes the early-game punishment while steadily setting up their board, then late-game, clear the opponent's field and dole out punishment of their own with a nigh impenetrable board, often while at low health.

O

• Obvious Rule Patch: Several adventure and mission bosses disallow card effects that could very easily trivialize the boss fight. Examples include Naxxramus bosses preventing you from using Alexstrasza to blow away their 60-90 Health to 15^note perhaps unsurprisingly, future adventure bosses get high armor (which isn't affected by Alexstrasza) rather than high health. All Hero Power disrupting cards like Mindbreaker and Grizzled Wizard were designed to not work against adventure bosses as well. There's also Prince Malchezaar, who was specifically made to not get insta-killed by Sacrificial Pact (at least, when targeted directly).
  Prince Malchezaar: Hahaha! That could never work on a true Eredar Lord!
  • When SN1P-SN4P, a minion with built-in Echo^note Can play unlimited copies of the card until the end of your turn and Magnetic^note Add the minion's stat and effects to a Mech instead of summoning it was introduced, it immediately caused concerns for abuse. Theoretically, if you could give a Magnetic minion Echo and get its mana cost down to 0, you could Magnetize it onto any existing mech an infinite number of times until the timer runs out, not to mention with Coppertail Impostor, you would have a Mech with Stealth that could much more easily survive the next turn to have a mech to Magnetize onto. There was already one card that could easily create a 0-cost SN1P-SN4P in Standard: Reckless Experimenter. As a result, Blizzard prematurely nerfed Reckless Experimenter to not reduce cost below 1 just to prevent easy infinite damage setup... but it didn't stop people from abusing this in Wild, where you could just use Summoning Portal and Mechwarper instead. It became common enough that Blizzard decided to flat-out prevent Echo cards from having its cost reduced below 1.
    • Unstable Evolution is a spell that can be cast multiple times on the same turn. It's functionally identical to Echo, but doesn't have the keyword because Blizzard is very fussy about adding non-evergreen keywords outside of the set they were introduced in. Blizzard then later added the Echo keyword into Unstable Evolution because a new card, Radiance of Azshara, would otherside make its repeatable copies cost 0 mana^note As mentioned above, Echo cards can't cost less than (1). Pre-Nerf Unstable Evolution, which technically doesn't have the keyword, wouldn't abide by this rule.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: A brief riff of heroic-sounding chanting plays when either Tirion Fordring or Archmage Antonidas (the Paladin and Mage legendaries, respectively) are summoned. For those who are curious, the clips come from the Call To Arms theme.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • A few different spell cards flat-out destroy a minion without registering damage, and every class has a unique one. A couple of minions will also instantly kill any minion that they deal damage to (whether by attacking or being attacked). Amusingly, Lord Jaraxxus is still considered a Demon when he replaces your Warlock hero, so he is vulnerable to another Warlock's Sacrificial Pact spell, ending the match on the spot.
  • Poisonous minions instantly kill anything they damage, regardless of health. Notably, they need to deal actual damage, so Divine Shield will protect their target from the Poison effect. If you can somehow give a Minion who damages all enemy minions (such as Despicable Dreadlord or especially Dreadscale, thanks to Deathstalker Rexxar) Poisonous, your enemy is going to have a very bad time. The Dungeon Run boss Ixlid can summon Extremely Poisonous minions, which works on Heroes.
  • Battlegrounds card Leeroy the Reckless has a Deathrattle that instantly kills a minion that killed Leeroy. This works even through Divine Shield.
  • Uther of The Ebon Blade's Hero Power summons a 2/2 Horseman of the Apocalypse, a boost from his previous 1/1 Silver Hand Recruit. But see, if he manages to summon all four of the Horsemen, the enemy Hero instantly loses regardless of Health, Armor, or even Immunity.
• Original Generation: Hearthstone started based almost entirely off of what the Warcraft series established, but gradually started adding flavor and characters unique to Hearthstone. Nexus-Champion Saraad and Bolf Ramshield, a pair of legendary minions introduced in The Grand Tournament, were two brand new characters that aren't able to be found anywhere in World of Warcraft, and by Mean Streets of Gadgetzan we start seeing expansions with an entire ensemble of original creations for Legendaries, with most future expansions following this trend. Journey to Un'Goro even added an entirely new sapient species to the mix.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: Buffing your enemy's minion? Using that removal spell on your own minion? Forcing your enemy to draw more cards than he can handle? The possibilities are endless.
• Overt Operative:
  • The Draconid Operative. He's supposed to be an infiltrator for the Kabal, but not only does he make it obvious he's a dragonkin, he also has a habit of announcing his presence by yelling "SECRET AGENT, COMING THROUGH!"
  • Happened again in Rise of Shadows. Convincing Infiltrator is a Faceless One wearing a cloak and wooden mask, who enters the battlefield saying "Greetings, fellow humans!" To make this even more ridiculous, Faceless Ones are shapeshifters.

P

• Palette Swap: The Book of Heroes single-player content re-uses some cards with the same effect but with a different art and even a different name in order to match the narrative more appropriately.
• Pirate: One of the minion types. They're generally aggressive and focus on board flooding and weapon synergies, and are most common in Warrior and Rogue.
• Pirate Parrot:
  • From the original launch of the game, there's Captain's Parrot, a 2 mana 1/1 that simply draws a Pirate from your deck.
  • The Deadmines introduced a series of parrot minions that repeat something that happened on a previous turn (geddit?), such as Mage's Grey Sage Parrot that repeats the last spell you cast that cost 5 or more mana or Paladin's Sunwing Squawker that casts the last buff you played on itself. These effects even carry over between turns, letting you really cheat mana potentially.
• The Plague: Hakkar, the Soulflayer tries to simulate the infamous Corrupted Blood incident back in World of Warcraft. His Deathrattle shuffles a Corrupted Blood to each player's deck, which deals 3 damage when drawn and adds two more copies of itself to the deck. With enough bad draws, it will quickly multiply and ensures the victim to take more and more damage before succumbing.
• Player Archetypes: Hearthstone was originally designed to appeal to the more "Casual" Timmy and Johnny, as a large number of cards released each expansion seems to lean towards Cool, but Inefficient when considering the game's competitive "meta". This has lead to many complaints from the game's more "hardcore" Spike-type fans, who often complain about the competitive scene being dominated by two or three optimized deck archetypes.
• Play Every Day:
  • Daily Quests actually avert this, since they get added automatically whether you log in or not, and that you can save up to three daily quests in your quest log. This means you merely have to log in and play every third day to get everything, unless you want to reroll the Daily or Weekly Quests.^note It used to actually automatically add an extra quest if your log was full and you hadn't gotten one yet for the day (allowing people to only have to log in every four days), but that was patched out.
  • The Daily Tasks in Mercenaries mode play this very straight, with a daily task that has to be completed every day. This is not counting the other mercenary-specific tasks that reset themselves every day if nor completed. Thankfully, abandoned mercenary-specific tasks can come back with enough luck instead of being missed forever.
• Playing with Fire:
  • Naturally, mages have a variety of fire magics in their arsenal, including Fireball (4 mana, deal 6 damage), Flamestrike (7 mana, 4 damage to all enemy minions), and Pyroblast (10 mana, deal 10 damage) in addition to their hero powers. If a mage possesses Archmage Antonidas (their legendary), every cast will generate another Fireball card. Including the newly spawned Fireballs.
  • The Wild Pyromancer. "Do you like to play with fire?"
• Power at a Price:
  • The Warlock in a nutshell. Gul'dan has access to Demons that are very good for their cost in Mana, but cost him in other ways like HP, discarding cards, or breaking a Mana crystal. As a result of having access to heavy-hitters earlier than he ought to, the general strategy of Warlocks is to rush them and dominate the match before an opponent can catch up.
  • The Overload mechanic for Shamans. Cards that Overload cause the player to be short X number of Mana crystals next turn to balance out how abnormally strong the card is for its current cost.
  • As for Warriors, they have a lot of cards that are contingent on one's own minions being damaged.
  • Some Neutral minions also have high stats for their mana cost but with a catch. Some cause the enemy to benefit (giving them extra mana crystals, for instance) while others just impede your future turns (like jacking up your minions' mana costs).
  • Some Battlecry effects can become more of a disadvantage to the player if they wish to play the minion anyway, which might result in them having to silence one of their own minions or returning a minion to their hand without the usual benefit.
  • The Lich King grants powerful Death Knight cards to his controller, but a few have extreme drawbacks that would make you think twice from using them. Namely Doom Pact^note Destroys all minions on board, and remove cards from your deck equal to the number of destroyed minions; good when there's only few, powerful minions on board, but against a full board it will bring you that much closer to fatigue., Army of the Frozen Throne^note Remove 5 cards from your deck, and instantly summons any minion such removed; uses up 20% of your deck in an instant, it can generate a lot of board swing if you draw 3 or more minions, but just as often it simply discards 5 potentially powerful cards for nothing. The effect also bypasses Battlecries., and Obliterate^note destroys a minion and take damage equal to its health.
• Power Copying: The Epic minion Sideshow Spelleater replaces your Hero power with your enemy's. While it doesn't work versus AI, it does work on the empowered Hero powers and especially beneficial if you manage to copy Lord Jaraxxus' or Ragnaros' Hero powers.
  • If you want to create a true Mirror Match situation, what you do is copy the opponent's deck with Archbishop Benedictus after emptying your deck, copy their hand with Azalina Soulthief, and copy their Hero Power with Sideshow Spelleater.
• Power Creep:
  • In its early incarnation, Boring, but Practical minions with excellent stats such as Chillwind Yeti and Boulderfist Ogre were commonly used. Nowadays there are minions with equal stats but also come with other effects, making them superior to vanilla versions. In general, incremental value has been largely overtaken by combos or fast, aggressive lists. Even value staples like Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom have largely phased out in Wild.^note Also realise that Piloted Shredder and Dr. Boom themselves were examples of power creep, since they completely blew every 4 or 7 mana minion out of the water at the time.
  • In the vanilla game, a minion's subtype mattered. You could put Wild Pyromancer in your deck; a 3/2 with an ability, or Bloodfen Raptor; a 3/2 that was a Beast. The trade-off was that the minion would be better with synergy. Nowadays, neutral Beasts are frequently printed with vanilla stats and upsides, making their Basic counterparts pretty bad in comparison. It's even doubled over power creep, since tribal synergy has only gotten stronger.^{More detail}Mechs introduced this rule, since Goblins vs. Gnomes was built on Blizzard throwing in as many Mechs and synergy cards as they could and seeing what happened, without much regard for how strong each Mech was alone. Pirates are quite rare and weren't printed much during 2017 thanks to Patches the Pirate, but Rastakhan's Rumble introduced a few 'better than vanilla' Pirates. Dragons are a reverse case, since they started as Rule of Cool but actually gained tribal effects in Blackrock Mountain and are now printed with those effects in mind. Murlocs are still heavily restricted because of how synergistic and swarm-focused they are. Elementals run on the rule of "If it's standalone, it has vanilla stats. If it has Elemental synergy, it takes a stat penalty". Neutral Demons went from barely existing to done for flavour, although Demon synergy is still restricted to Warlocks and Demon Hunters. Totems are Totems, and are incomparable to normal minions, at least until they became a proper tribe for Shamans.
• Power Equals Rarity: Zig-Zagged. Rarer cards tend to have better effects, making them more mana efficient than Basic ones.^note Compare Bloodfen Raptor, a 2-Mana 3/2 Basic Beast with Wild Pyromancer, a 2-Mana 3/2 Rare minion deals damage to all minions when you cast any spell, and Recombobulator, a 2-Mana 3/2 Epic minion who can transform another friendly minion into another one of its same cost. However, some Basic cards are considered very mana efficient for their cost, to the point that they are considered the gold standard for their category. ^note Chillwind Yeti and Boulderfist Ogre are 4-Mana 4/5 and 6-Mana 6/7 respectively, very cost-efficient for their power, and Flamestrike is the single most feared Board Clear in the game. Plus there are a LOT of "Legendaries" that are complete and utter unplayable trash only good for the 400 dust you get for disenchanting them, most infamously The Boogeymonster.^note An abysmally under-statted and overpriced piece of drek with a terrible ability that wouldn't even nearly be worth its absurd cost even if you DID ever get to use it, which you won't.
• Power Makes Your Voice Deep: All Murloc cards say the same thing on being summoned, but the more powerful Murlocs (especially the Murloc Warleader and the legendary Old Murk-Eye) have deeper voices.
• The Power of Rock: Putting down the Elite Tauren Chieftain puts one of a handful of Magic Music riffs into both players' hands.
• Power Up Mount: There's a few spells that are this in flavour, which work by buffing a minion by +X/+Y and giving them an effect, as well as a Deathrattle to summon an X/Y minion with said effect. For example, the paladin spell Spikeridge Steed gives a minion +2/+6, Taunt, and summons a 2/6 Stegodon when it dies. United in Stormwind added a whole cycle of spells like this.
• Practical Taunt: Minions with Taunt force opponents to go through them before minions without taunt, forming a very important line of defense for Glass Cannon creatures. Hero powers and spells go right by them, though.
• Pre-emptive Declaration: When summoned, Medivh's Valet says, "Excuse me, you are on fire." If his battlecry activates, he will then toss a flame at a designated target.
• Promoted to Playable: Illidan Stormrage was promoted from a crappy and hopelessly Power Creeped Classic Legendary to the base hero of the new Demon Hunter class. This promotion also lead to his original card incarnation to be replaced with Xavius, who is mechanically almost completely identical to the old Illidan^note The 2/1 tokens he summons are Demons instead of Elementals. Also, the effect now triggers after playing a card and not when playing a card, which removes a lot of extremely buggy interactions..
  • Arthas the Lich King also became the base hero for the new Death Knight class in March of the Lich King.
• Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage:
  • Golden copies of Gelbin Mekkatorque and Elite Tauren Chieftain were given out for free to players during the beta (Gelbin was for making a real money purchase while ETC was for attending Blizzcon 2013). Both cards are next to useless, with symmetrical and very random effects. To make them even worse, they're restricted to Wild format as well. Even before the introduction of formats, neither of them could be drafted in Arena.
  • Marin the Fox, given out during Blizzcon 2017, is in the same boat. Although in his defense, he's much more Awesome, but Impractical than outright terrible, but he's still too impractical to see play in any real deck. He likewise became Wild-only once K&C rotated out.
  • Sathrovarr, given out during Blizzcon 2019, gives you three copies of a minion for your battlefield, hand, and deck. Only problem is he costs a whopping 9 mana and requires you to have the minion already on board. The only decent practical use for him is with a strong 0-cost minion like Shirvallah or in Wild Malygos Druid combo decks where the Aviana/Kun combo makes his cost not matter.
  • Averted big time with SN1P-SN4P. That card is very strong, to the point where it might be a little overpowered. Of course, that was the point - adding a new card to the game to shake up the meta. Unlike Gelbin and ETC, he was given to every single player for free, so everyone was on fair ground.
  • Later expansions also gave away promotional Legendaries to players for obtaining a pack from that expansion, though unlike many of the previous ones, they tended to avert this by being at least decent if not outright good.
• Punny Name:
  • Some cards, such as Dark Wispers (Druid card, summon five Wisps or give a minion +5/+5 and taunt) and Arfus (legendary minion that is an undead dog). The description of the former assures us that the person who named the card was promptly fired. Then we got Wispering Woods, whose description states that they didn't actually fire the person who named Dark Wispers.
  • The Maw and Disorder mini-set combines The Maw in World of Warcraft with Law & Order, to say nothing of the cards in said mini-set.
• Purposely Overpowered:
  • A lot of the Tavern Brawl game mode-exclusive cards would be downright Game Breakers if played in regular matches.
  • The Treasures you get Dungeon Run and similar PVE modes are absolutely gamebreakingly powerful. But given it's a Roguelike, you'll need these uber-powerful items.
  • Being a PVP version of Dungeon Runs, Duels features extremely overpowered treasure cards and hero powers to use. It's balanced by both the constantly growing semi-random decks and the fact that everyone has cards that are just as broken.
• Puzzle Boss:
  • Some bosses in the Solo Adventures can feel like this, but the best example is the third mission of Osris Temple from League of Explorers; The 'boss fight' (running away from a crumbling temple) lasts exactly 10 turns with an exact specific pattern, with only one randomizer ^note the spike pit which, if you take the risky option, may either deal 10 damage to your hero or leave your hero alone aside from your draw.
  • The whole concept of the Puzzle Labs, where you're given a predetermined board state and hand, with the goal of either defeating the enemy hero that very turn, replicate their board state, clear the board, or to survive a load of incoming damage.

R

• Random Effect Spell: Hearthstone fully embraces its digital design space by introducing lots of cards with very random effects.
  • Examples go as far back as Unstable Portal in GVG adding any minion in the entire game to your hand and reducing its cost by 3. This is usually garbage, but could easily win you the game if you roll high enough, which is why it saw play in oldschool Tempo Mage decks.
  • The Mad Bomber card (and later its bigger cousins, Madder Bomber and Maddest Bomber) deals multiple damage spread out randomly among everything on the board. If the Random Number God is in a good mood, it can easily turn a game in your favor. Most of the time, it will just nuke everything on your side of the board.
  • Yogg-Saron, Hope's End, has been officially christened by the Hearthstone fanbase as the Random Number God. He's a 10 mana 7/5 that will cast a random spell with a random target for every spell you've cast that game. On average he will clear the board (including himself), draw a ton a cards from your deck, discard all of yours, summon more minions, kill those, and then throw Pyroblasts who-knows-where.
  • The Mage spells Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron and Rune of the Archmage as well as the legendary Solarion Prime are beautifully chaotic examples. The first casts 10 random spells at 10 random targets, Rune casts 20 mana worth of Mage spells that attempt to target enemy characters, and Solarion casts 5 Mage spells that also target enemies.
  • Yogg-Saron returns in Madness at the Darkmoon Faire as Yogg-Saron, Master of Fate. If you played 10 spells, he'll spin the wheel for one of six totally wacky effects: His old Battlecry effect, filling your hand with spells that cost 0 for the turn, destroying every other minion and gain their stats, stealing three enemy minions, filling the board with random minions and giving yours Rush, and a small chance to cast Pyroblast at random targets until you or the enemy dies.
  • Yogg returns again in TITANS as Yogg-Saron, Unleashed. After using one of his three abilities, Yogg-Saron will cast two random spells, and one of those abilities fills your hand with Chaotic Tendrils whose Battlecry casts a random spell of a certain cost, starting at 1-cost but increasing with each Tendril you play.
• Randomized Transformation: Shamans have access to various evolve and devolve effects, which transform minions into random ones that cost 1 more or 1 less respectively. While a higher-cost minion will generally be better, it's still a highly variable effect. You could turn your 3-drop into an 8/8 Nozdormu the Timeless, but you could just as easily turn it into a 1/1 Wicked Skeleton.
• Randomly Generated Quests: The game uses a daily and weekly quest system, which you complete to earn rewards. You get one daily quest every day and three weekly quests every Monday, and can reroll one of each per day if you don't like the requirements. Quests are usually things like playing enough cards of a specific type, dealing damage to the opponent, playing games as specific classes, or winning games in certain gamemodes.
• Random Number God:
  • Many cards can deal random numbers of damage or target a random enemy. The RNG is affectionately referred to as RNGesus among streamers, and you can expect prayers before a major play.
  • The overuse of RNG-based mechanics is actually the game's biggest criticism from people who don't like it and is a source of constant arguments about whether it's a good thing or not. Although all CCGs use an inherent amount of RNG by default, Hearthstone openly embraces randomness on a previously-unseen scale, with cards drawing from potentially dozens of possible effects, some of which can win or lose you an game in an instant (just ask anyone who ever saw a Doomsayer pop out of a Piloted Shredder).
  • Mayor Noggenfogger, for a whopping cost of 9 Mana, will randomize every target. It doesn't apply to just minions like Mogor the Ogre, it applies to every spell and hero power, too. Anything that can be targeted will be random. He can make your opponent hit Deathwing with their weapon, attack face through your Taunt, heal the opponent's completely healthy minion, or cast Fireball on themselves, or he can do the exact same thing to you. Also, he completely randomizes Emotes. There's even a small chance to use the removed "Sorry" emote!
  • If you thought Yogg'Saron's random spells were wacky, why not have one go off every turn? With The Amazing Reno, his Hero Power does just that. Sure, the chain of events won't be as chaotic, but he can just as easily give you or screw over the board at just the right or wrong time.
• Raptor Attack: There are a handful of raptor minions, most famously the Basic vanilla 3/2 minion Bloodfen Raptor.
• Read the Freaking Manual: There have been a good number of recorded instances of misplays due to bad play order involving The Coin. A great example of this involve Haunting Vision and Kalecgos, which provide a mana discount to spells right after playing it or the first spell of your turn, respectively. You can guess what happens if you try to coin out a Kalecgos at 9 mana or a discounted spell you just discovered and you're 1 mana short. An even worse example is if you use it with Electra Stormsurge. Even the flavor text mocks you for playing The Coin right after Electra. This also shows up in the Puzzle Lab, where one puzzle gives you a Coin and a Celestial Emissary (gives +2 Spell Damage on your next spell). It's very possible to mess up this puzzle by wasting Celestial Emissary's Spell Damage on The Coin, ending up 2 damage short.
• Record Needle Scratch: Hitting the “Cancel” button while waiting for an opponent causes one of these, albeit a very short one.
• Reduced Mana Cost:
  • This is one of the strongest effects in the game, since it removes the chief limitation you have each turn. Mana-cheating staples like Sorcerer's Apprentice and Shadowstep see tonnes of play. Emperor Thaurissan, a 6-mana legendary that simply reduces the cost of the cards in your hand by 1 at the end of your turn, is considered one of the best cards ever printed and still sees Wild play. Mana cost reducers are some of the most frequently nerfed cards as well.
  • One very notable example is Robes of Gaudiness, a Passive treasure introduced in the Dalaran Heist that halves the cost of every card, rounded down. Far and away the best treasure ever, it lets you steamroll bosses by itself, since your highest-cost cards will be five mana at most. It had the honour of being slashed to almost never occurring in single-player, and was banned from Duels in less than 24 hours.
• Resurrective Immortality:
  • Dreadsteed is a 4 mana 1/1, but returns to the board at the end of the turn whenever it's destroyed. Prior to an Obvious Rule Patch due to Defile, it instead resummoned itself instantly^note Defile is a 2 mana spell that deals 1 damage to all minions and repeats each time it kills a minion. With Dreadsteed, the Warlock would have been able to clear any board for 6 mana and leave a Dreedstead in play, and also cause an extraordinarily long animation until the card hit its action limit.
  • Zerek, Master Cloner is a Priest Legendary that resummons itself on death so long as you cast a spell on it while it was alive.
  • The Reborn mechanic is a limited version of this. The first time a Reborn minion dies, it comes back with 1 health.
• Reset Button: The practice of "Board Clear", where you try and clear the enemy's (and sometimes, your own as well) side to put a stop on the enemy's momentum and let the minion development phase to begin anew. Incredibly vital when the enemy has the advantage, and clearing a fully-developed board can often break the enemy's back, ending the fight there and then.
  • On a more specific note, the Druid's Tree of Life spell restores all characters (minions and heroes) to their full hp.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Paladins can get the Avenge Secret by completing Naxxramas. If any of your minions die during the enemy turn, one of your minions get a +3/+2.
  • And from Blackrock Mountain adventure, we have Emperor Dagan Thaurissan. Kill his wife, and he can use his hero power. That hero power deals 30 damage.
• Robot Names: V-07-TR-0N's name may at first glance appear to be a collection of random letters and numbers, but it's actually a reference to Voltron.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: The Blood Magic Tavern Brawls cause all spells to be Cast from Hit Points. Between Mage's direct damage spells, Paladins unloading a lot of buffs on a cheap Charge minion, and Druids having fantastic draw power and the ability to attack the opponent directly, games end as soon as turn 1 or 2, with one player burning through their health to kill the opponent as fast as they can or die trying.
• Roguelike:
  • The Kobolds and Catacombs expansion gave the single-player Dungeon Run mode, which is basically a card-based Roguelike. You start with 10 cards and 15 health, and as you progress, you get more cards to fill your deck and more importantly, absolutely powerful treasures to help you along the quest. And given that Roguelikes in general are Nintendo Hard, you'll need those treasures. Finally, the cards you get, the treasures, and even the bosses you fight are randomized every time, ensuring no two Dungeon Run experience will be the same. The Witchwood and Rastakhan's Rumble had their own variations, albeit less replayable ones than the original.
  • Rise of Shadows introduced the largest version of this yet, with multiple wings and unlockable Hero Powers and decks. Saviors of Uldum further added to this, with each explorer having a large set of unlockable items.
• Rube Goldberg Device: A popular genre of Hearthstone videos. Set up a complicated sequence that gets triggered and watch the ensuing hilarity. For example, summoning Jaraxxus triggered Knife Juggler that killed Explosive Sheep that killed Sylvanas that Mind Controlled Jaraxxus...
• Rule of Funny: Most of the cards' flavor texts are written to be funny one way or another.
• Running Gag:
  • Any card with an unclear name (such as Lightspawn and Spellslinger) will have flavor text asking what exactly the name is.^note "Light's Pawn or Spawn of the Light" and "Does he fling spells or do his spells linger around?" respectively
  • There's been a minor fixation with the comically bad Magma Rager ever since The Grand Tournament. Its infamy for its incredibly awful Health gave a rise to Rager spinoffs that are mostly only slightly better than it. Then there was League of Explorers, where in your first battle against Rafaam he'll make fun of you for having Magma Rager in your deck. Some of the Magma Rager's cousins include:
    • Ice Rager from The Grand Tournament, who has the advantage of having double its health at 2 Health. Its flavor text jokes that he's cooler than Magma Rager.
    • Am'gam Rager from Whispers of the Old Gods, although it's equally terrible for the opposite reasons; it's a 1/5 instead of a 5/1. Yet, the flavor text jokes that it's "peerc rewoP".
    • Shadow Rager from Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, a Rogue-specific version. This one has Stealth to make up for its horrible health, so although it will die from a Maelstrom Portal, it can't be killed with a Fireblast.
    • Wax Rager in Kobolds & Catacombs's Dungeon Run has all the stats of Magma Rager, except that it's a rare Treasure card that it revives itself instantly on death.
    • Steel Rager in The Boomsday Project, while it costs 1 more mana, it's got Rush to take advantage of its attack. It's also a Mech.
    • Faceless Rager in Rise of Shadows has Magma Rager's crappy stats by default, but it has a Battlecry that copies a friendly minion's Health, making it the first Rager card to be actually good.
    • Divine Rager from Scholomance Academy, another 4 mana Rager that adds Divine Shield to the mix but is still pretty much unplayable.
    • Madness at the Darkmoon Faire throws in Rock Rager, which is doubly better than Magma Rager as a 5/1 Taunt for 2 mana, and yet is still woefully underpowered.
    • March of the Lich King has Scourge Rager. It has a whopping (for a Rager) 4 Health and Reborn, but its Battlecry makes it kill itself when played, effectively turning it into a vanilla 5/1 that can be healed (and gives Death Knights an extra Corpse).
    • Showdown in the Badlands continues the trend with Cactus Rager, a 2-mana 5/1 with Poisonous. Given that the usual Rager's inability to kill things comes from having pathetic health rather than not hitting hard enough, this does not make it any better.
  • The Grand Tournament expansion introduced Refreshment Vendor, a card that talks about buying funnel cakes when played. Later sets gave us Undercity Huckster and Priest of the Feast, who also talk about funnel cakes. Even hidden flavor texts are not safe from this: Kabal Trafficker also mentions funnel cakes in her flavor text, and the Devilsaur Egg's flavor text claims that it's a key ingredient in the recipe. Then, the Audiopocalypse mini-set introduced an actual Funnel Cake card as a dual-card for Druids and Priests with the flavor text saying: "After all this time… I thought it'd be bigger!"