Taken from other thread and Heaviestflow. Surprised he didn't transfer it to open Beta, but let's share it until he opens up the rules shall we? I'll add any others you have. Let's get this stickied!! (click request sticky on the right of this text)
please keep this post alive by posting thoughts or insights. It may not be helpful to you, but it will be for others :)
This is a really fun read for veterans and new players. Please enjoy!
1. Battlecries only activate if the minion is played from a card in your hand.
2. Abilities and Spells that do not allow you to choose a single target can hit stealth minions, and minions that can not be explicitly targeted.
3. Faerie Dragon and Laughing Sister can be targeted by battlecries.
4. Stealth minions can be targeted by friendly spells/battlecries. They cannot be targeted by enemy spells or battlecries. Additionally, any damage dealt with a stealth minion will take it out of stealth. (Knife Juggler/Ragnaros, sorry no dice)
5. Returning a temporary stolen minion to your hand will give you control of that minion for the remainder of the game, and allow you to replay the card for it's full effect. (Shadow Madness)
6. If a minion with taunt also has stealth, the taunt can be bypassed.
7. Summoning a minion means a minion enters the battlefield in any way.
8. Playing a minion means it is played from your hand.
9. Spells like Animal Companion and Mirror Image are not considered to be playing a minion. This will bypass secrets like Mirror Entity.
10. The weapon Truesilver Champion will heal your hero before taking damage, so you can attack even a minion that will kill you, as long as the 2hp heal will save you from taking lethal.
11. You can target your own minions with spells and battlecries, but you cannot target them with an attack.
12. An attack is defined by the hero attacking with a weapon, or a minion attacking with itself. Anything else is not considered an attack and will not trigger secrets like Snake Trap.
13. You can silence debuffs off your own minions. This includes freeze and humility. Keep in mind, it will also silence any beneficial text or buffs.
14. Using Wild Growth on turn 10 will grant you a 0 cost card called excess mana, This card allows you to draw a card. This will not happen with innervate, the coin, or the opponent using an Arcane Golem. You can use innervate turn 10, to a good effect, if you use it after spending at least 2 mana first. It will replenish the empty crystals.
15. If you overload an amount of mana as a shaman, that will be higher than your total mana the next turn, if you use the coin the additional mana will be overloaded. (IE two dust devils turn two will overload you for 4 mana. The coin on turn 3 will grant you an additional mana, it will still be overloaded.)
16. Minions with 0 attack power cannot attack at all. Therefore, if your 0/4 nat pagle is silenced he is taking up a minion slot, and can only be removed by buffing, or if the enemy chooses to attack.
17. Using Crazed Alchemist on a minion with 0 attack will destroy it.
18. Using a Crazed Alchemist on a minion that is being buffed by a constant aura from another minion (IE Stormwind Champion) will make the initial buffs permanent, and then rebuff the minion. IE. a 2/3 minion is being buffed to a 3/4 minion by Stormwind Champion. The Alchemist would change it into a 4/3, then Stormwind Champion would reapply the buff and it would become a 5/4.
18a. Using a Crazed Alchemist battlecry on an Enraged minion will swap the current attack and health it has, and make them permanent. Then, you can damage that minion again to make it enraged once more! IE. 3/3 worgen enraged to 4/2. Crazed Alchemist to make it 2/4 not enraged. Hit it and it becomes 3/3 enraged. Science!
19. Using a buff or debuff on a lightspawn's attack rating will not change his attack rating unless he is silenced first. Silencing a lightspawn turns him into a 0/5.
20. If your hero is frozen, he or she cannot attack. This will not prevent the use of his or her hero ability, it will only prevent them from physically attacking. The Hunter Shot is considered an ability, and not a physical attack.
21. The new Warsong Commander limits giving charge to minons with 3 attack or less. It considers Aura Buffs after giving charge, so a Stormwind Champion that turns a 3 attack into a 4 attack will still allow Warsong to give it charge. Same goes with battle cries.
22. "Return a minion to it's owner's hand" means it will return to the player currently in control of it, not who originally played it!
23. alarm-o-bot, faceless manipulator, bane of doom, mind games, and any "take control of a minion" card will not trigger the newly summoned/controlled minion's battle cry.
24. Pyromancers effect always occurs after the spell cast has resolved. This means if you destroy a minion with a spell it's deathratlle will activate before Pyromancer, a fun way to kill a Harvest Golem. Cards like Gadgetzan Auctioneer however, will activate before the spell resolves. You can see the difference due to the word "after" in the Pyromancer's description.
25. If you take control of an enemy minion that has charge, you will be able to attack the same turn you took control of it! (The minion will always be able to attack with shadow madness, regardless of having charge or not)
26. Two Windrunners dying at the same time will have their deathrattle effects occur at RANDOM, NOT which one was played first or died first etc. It is currently bugged. It is supposed to have the first played Windrunner activate first.
27. If you attempt to draw cards when you don't have anymore in your deck, you will trigger fatigue. So if you use Lay on Hands but have no cards, you will heal for 8, but then take the next 3 fatigues worth of damage, increasing with each card drawn!
28. You have a hand size limit of 10 cards. Any card drawn when your hand is full will be instantly destroyed, and shown to the enemy. This includes cards drawn in any way (novice engineer, cult master, etc...)
28a. If you have no cards left to draw you will instead take 1 damage. The damage taken from drawing with no cards left increases by 1 each time, so the second time you'd take 2 damage, then 3, etc... It's possible to kill an opponent this way by abusing draw mechanics like Naturalize, or if they have a northshire cleric/cult master by board manipulation.
28b. The warlock cards that discard (soulfire/succubus/doomguard) will show the discarded cards to your opponent.
29. You can only place 7 minions on your board at a time. Automatic summoners like Imp Master will still activate if you are at your minion limit, yet the minion will not appear.
30. A shaman can only have 1 of each totem from their hero power on the board at any time. If you have all four you will not be able to summon another one.
31. If you are attacked with a Water Elemental, yet the damage does not go through your armor, you will not be frozen.
32. Effects that use the word "Destroy" will bypass Divine Shield, and will not activate abilities that are triggered upon damage. (Acolyte of Pain)
33. If you cast Sense Demons with no demons in your deck you will receive a Worthless Imp card, which is a 1/1 demon for 1 mana.
34. If you play Captain's Parrot with no Pirates in your deck, you will get nothing except the parrot on the board.
35. If you cast Mindgames and the enemy has no minions you receive a Shadow of Nothing card. It is a 0/1 minion for 0 mana. If you play Mind Vision on an empty hand or Thoughsteal on an empty deck, you will get no cards. If you play Thoughtsteal against a deck with one card, you will only get one card (not the same card twice).
35a. If you happen to Mindgames a Wild Pyromancer, the pyromancer's effect will trigger and do an immediate 1 damage to all minions.
36. If the enemy hero is replaced by Lord Jarraxxus, Sacrificial Pact will instantly kill him regardless of his HP. This is due to the card specifying the word Demon instead of Minion. Demonfire will not work on him.
37. If Jaraxxus is summoned by other means than playing him from your hand, his battlecry will not activate and he will be a 3/15 minion.
38. If Jaraxxus is played while Repentence is active, his HP will be reduced to 1 first, and then he will take over the hero and remain at 1HP.
39. When you steal an enemy minion or transform your own minion (such as with Tinkmaster), that minion will have summoning sickness. The one exception is Shadow Madness, due to the fact that the card would be useless otherwise.
40. Shield slam, savagery, blade flurry, and shadowflame benefit from spell damage, but betrayal does not.
41. Betrayal will activate damage effects (water elemental, emperor cobra) but does not qualify as an attack (blessing of wisdom)
42. A water elemental will not freeze an enemy if the attack does no damage to their HP (IE only hits armor). Frostbolt however does not care about damage and will freeze the target.
43. If you attack a minion with freeze during your turn, you will not unfreeze until the end of your next turn.
44. Faceless Manipulator makes a copy of the FULL current state of a minion. The only exception is that the copy will begin with summoning sickness, unless it has charge. If the original minion is frozen, the copy will be frozen as well.
45. Normally when attacking a champion who has a weapon, the weapon will not deal damage back to the attacker. However when Misdirection causes a minion to attack its owner's champion, it will take damage back from a weapon.
46. You cannot dispel Mind Control or the Cabal Shadow Priest effect because there is no lasting effect to dispel. If you cast Shadow Madness on a minion then cast dispel on it, the minion goes back to the other player - you don't get to keep it.
47. Cards that divide damage randomly between multiple targets such as Arcane Missiles, Avenging Wrath, and Mad Bomber will not do more than lethal damage to a minion. Also, each packet of one damage will be considered separately, which means the first point will remove a divine shield before the rest of the damage has resolved, minions like Gurubashi Berserker that trigger an effect each time they take damage may trigger multiple times, and triggering Eye for an Eye will make it retaliate for only a single point of damage. Use all of this to your advantage when deciding if you should damage or remove anything before playing any of these cards.
________________________________________________________________________
Whew that's a big list. Also, health buffs work differently in Hearthstone than some other games due to damage being persistent. I will try to explain it as simply as possible.
HP is defined in two ways: Current HP, and Max HP.
We will ignore Attack for this explanation and represent health as Current HP / Max HP.
Current HP can be affected in the following ways:
1. The initial application of a buff. This will add the Current HP and Max HP, and can essentially be considered a heal in addition to a buff. So a 2/3 (this is read 2 out of 3 health) minion that receives a 1HP buff will become a 3/4 minion.
2. A direct healing ability/spell. This will only affect the Current HP, and not the max. So a 2/4 minion that is healed for two will become a 4/4 minion. Any healing over the max HP is lost.
3. Taking damage. This will only affect the current HP as well. If the current HP ever hits 0 the minion will be destroyed immediately. So a 3/4 that is hit for 3 damage becomes a 0/4 and dies.
Now Max HP can be affected the following ways.
1. With a buff. As stated above this will affect both current and max hp.
2. With removing a buff. Here's the meat of the tricky part. Removing buffs, unlike buffs, only affect max HP, and never current hp. So if you have a 3/4 minion that has a +1hp buff active, and it is silenced, it will become a 3/3 and take no damage. So in Hearthstone, always silence first, then do damage.
3. The exception to the above rule is when the max HP is lowered below the current HP. So a 4/4 minion with a +1hp buff will become a 4/3. The game will then realize this is against the rules, and will bring the current hp down 1 making it a 3/3.
So, in short, Silence, then damage!
please keep this post alive by posting thoughts or insights. It may not be helpful to you, but it will be for others :)
This is a really fun read for veterans and new players. Please enjoy!
1. Battlecries only activate if the minion is played from a card in your hand.
2. Abilities and Spells that do not allow you to choose a single target can hit stealth minions, and minions that can not be explicitly targeted.
3. Faerie Dragon and Laughing Sister can be targeted by battlecries.
4. Stealth minions can be targeted by friendly spells/battlecries. They cannot be targeted by enemy spells or battlecries. Additionally, any damage dealt with a stealth minion will take it out of stealth. (Knife Juggler/Ragnaros, sorry no dice)
5. Returning a temporary stolen minion to your hand will give you control of that minion for the remainder of the game, and allow you to replay the card for it's full effect. (Shadow Madness)
6. If a minion with taunt also has stealth, the taunt can be bypassed.
7. Summoning a minion means a minion enters the battlefield in any way.
8. Playing a minion means it is played from your hand.
9. Spells like Animal Companion and Mirror Image are not considered to be playing a minion. This will bypass secrets like Mirror Entity.
10. The weapon Truesilver Champion will heal your hero before taking damage, so you can attack even a minion that will kill you, as long as the 2hp heal will save you from taking lethal.
11. You can target your own minions with spells and battlecries, but you cannot target them with an attack.
12. An attack is defined by the hero attacking with a weapon, or a minion attacking with itself. Anything else is not considered an attack and will not trigger secrets like Snake Trap.
13. You can silence debuffs off your own minions. This includes freeze and humility. Keep in mind, it will also silence any beneficial text or buffs.
14. Using Wild Growth on turn 10 will grant you a 0 cost card called excess mana, This card allows you to draw a card. This will not happen with innervate, the coin, or the opponent using an Arcane Golem. You can use innervate turn 10, to a good effect, if you use it after spending at least 2 mana first. It will replenish the empty crystals.
15. If you overload an amount of mana as a shaman, that will be higher than your total mana the next turn, if you use the coin the additional mana will be overloaded. (IE two dust devils turn two will overload you for 4 mana. The coin on turn 3 will grant you an additional mana, it will still be overloaded.)
16. Minions with 0 attack power cannot attack at all. Therefore, if your 0/4 nat pagle is silenced he is taking up a minion slot, and can only be removed by buffing, or if the enemy chooses to attack.
17. Using Crazed Alchemist on a minion with 0 attack will destroy it.
18. Using a Crazed Alchemist on a minion that is being buffed by a constant aura from another minion (IE Stormwind Champion) will make the initial buffs permanent, and then rebuff the minion. IE. a 2/3 minion is being buffed to a 3/4 minion by Stormwind Champion. The Alchemist would change it into a 4/3, then Stormwind Champion would reapply the buff and it would become a 5/4.
18a. Using a Crazed Alchemist battlecry on an Enraged minion will swap the current attack and health it has, and make them permanent. Then, you can damage that minion again to make it enraged once more! IE. 3/3 worgen enraged to 4/2. Crazed Alchemist to make it 2/4 not enraged. Hit it and it becomes 3/3 enraged. Science!
19. Using a buff or debuff on a lightspawn's attack rating will not change his attack rating unless he is silenced first. Silencing a lightspawn turns him into a 0/5.
20. If your hero is frozen, he or she cannot attack. This will not prevent the use of his or her hero ability, it will only prevent them from physically attacking. The Hunter Shot is considered an ability, and not a physical attack.
21. The new Warsong Commander limits giving charge to minons with 3 attack or less. It considers Aura Buffs after giving charge, so a Stormwind Champion that turns a 3 attack into a 4 attack will still allow Warsong to give it charge. Same goes with battle cries.
22. "Return a minion to it's owner's hand" means it will return to the player currently in control of it, not who originally played it!
23. alarm-o-bot, faceless manipulator, bane of doom, mind games, and any "take control of a minion" card will not trigger the newly summoned/controlled minion's battle cry.
24. Pyromancers effect always occurs after the spell cast has resolved. This means if you destroy a minion with a spell it's deathratlle will activate before Pyromancer, a fun way to kill a Harvest Golem. Cards like Gadgetzan Auctioneer however, will activate before the spell resolves. You can see the difference due to the word "after" in the Pyromancer's description.
25. If you take control of an enemy minion that has charge, you will be able to attack the same turn you took control of it! (The minion will always be able to attack with shadow madness, regardless of having charge or not)
26. Two Windrunners dying at the same time will have their deathrattle effects occur at RANDOM, NOT which one was played first or died first etc. It is currently bugged. It is supposed to have the first played Windrunner activate first.
27. If you attempt to draw cards when you don't have anymore in your deck, you will trigger fatigue. So if you use Lay on Hands but have no cards, you will heal for 8, but then take the next 3 fatigues worth of damage, increasing with each card drawn!
28. You have a hand size limit of 10 cards. Any card drawn when your hand is full will be instantly destroyed, and shown to the enemy. This includes cards drawn in any way (novice engineer, cult master, etc...)
28a. If you have no cards left to draw you will instead take 1 damage. The damage taken from drawing with no cards left increases by 1 each time, so the second time you'd take 2 damage, then 3, etc... It's possible to kill an opponent this way by abusing draw mechanics like Naturalize, or if they have a northshire cleric/cult master by board manipulation.
28b. The warlock cards that discard (soulfire/succubus/doomguard) will show the discarded cards to your opponent.
29. You can only place 7 minions on your board at a time. Automatic summoners like Imp Master will still activate if you are at your minion limit, yet the minion will not appear.
30. A shaman can only have 1 of each totem from their hero power on the board at any time. If you have all four you will not be able to summon another one.
31. If you are attacked with a Water Elemental, yet the damage does not go through your armor, you will not be frozen.
32. Effects that use the word "Destroy" will bypass Divine Shield, and will not activate abilities that are triggered upon damage. (Acolyte of Pain)
33. If you cast Sense Demons with no demons in your deck you will receive a Worthless Imp card, which is a 1/1 demon for 1 mana.
34. If you play Captain's Parrot with no Pirates in your deck, you will get nothing except the parrot on the board.
35. If you cast Mindgames and the enemy has no minions you receive a Shadow of Nothing card. It is a 0/1 minion for 0 mana. If you play Mind Vision on an empty hand or Thoughsteal on an empty deck, you will get no cards. If you play Thoughtsteal against a deck with one card, you will only get one card (not the same card twice).
35a. If you happen to Mindgames a Wild Pyromancer, the pyromancer's effect will trigger and do an immediate 1 damage to all minions.
36. If the enemy hero is replaced by Lord Jarraxxus, Sacrificial Pact will instantly kill him regardless of his HP. This is due to the card specifying the word Demon instead of Minion. Demonfire will not work on him.
37. If Jaraxxus is summoned by other means than playing him from your hand, his battlecry will not activate and he will be a 3/15 minion.
38. If Jaraxxus is played while Repentence is active, his HP will be reduced to 1 first, and then he will take over the hero and remain at 1HP.
39. When you steal an enemy minion or transform your own minion (such as with Tinkmaster), that minion will have summoning sickness. The one exception is Shadow Madness, due to the fact that the card would be useless otherwise.
40. Shield slam, savagery, blade flurry, and shadowflame benefit from spell damage, but betrayal does not.
41. Betrayal will activate damage effects (water elemental, emperor cobra) but does not qualify as an attack (blessing of wisdom)
42. A water elemental will not freeze an enemy if the attack does no damage to their HP (IE only hits armor). Frostbolt however does not care about damage and will freeze the target.
43. If you attack a minion with freeze during your turn, you will not unfreeze until the end of your next turn.
44. Faceless Manipulator makes a copy of the FULL current state of a minion. The only exception is that the copy will begin with summoning sickness, unless it has charge. If the original minion is frozen, the copy will be frozen as well.
45. Normally when attacking a champion who has a weapon, the weapon will not deal damage back to the attacker. However when Misdirection causes a minion to attack its owner's champion, it will take damage back from a weapon.
46. You cannot dispel Mind Control or the Cabal Shadow Priest effect because there is no lasting effect to dispel. If you cast Shadow Madness on a minion then cast dispel on it, the minion goes back to the other player - you don't get to keep it.
47. Cards that divide damage randomly between multiple targets such as Arcane Missiles, Avenging Wrath, and Mad Bomber will not do more than lethal damage to a minion. Also, each packet of one damage will be considered separately, which means the first point will remove a divine shield before the rest of the damage has resolved, minions like Gurubashi Berserker that trigger an effect each time they take damage may trigger multiple times, and triggering Eye for an Eye will make it retaliate for only a single point of damage. Use all of this to your advantage when deciding if you should damage or remove anything before playing any of these cards.
________________________________________________________________________
Whew that's a big list. Also, health buffs work differently in Hearthstone than some other games due to damage being persistent. I will try to explain it as simply as possible.
HP is defined in two ways: Current HP, and Max HP.
We will ignore Attack for this explanation and represent health as Current HP / Max HP.
Current HP can be affected in the following ways:
1. The initial application of a buff. This will add the Current HP and Max HP, and can essentially be considered a heal in addition to a buff. So a 2/3 (this is read 2 out of 3 health) minion that receives a 1HP buff will become a 3/4 minion.
2. A direct healing ability/spell. This will only affect the Current HP, and not the max. So a 2/4 minion that is healed for two will become a 4/4 minion. Any healing over the max HP is lost.
3. Taking damage. This will only affect the current HP as well. If the current HP ever hits 0 the minion will be destroyed immediately. So a 3/4 that is hit for 3 damage becomes a 0/4 and dies.
Now Max HP can be affected the following ways.
1. With a buff. As stated above this will affect both current and max hp.
2. With removing a buff. Here's the meat of the tricky part. Removing buffs, unlike buffs, only affect max HP, and never current hp. So if you have a 3/4 minion that has a +1hp buff active, and it is silenced, it will become a 3/3 and take no damage. So in Hearthstone, always silence first, then do damage.
3. The exception to the above rule is when the max HP is lowered below the current HP. So a 4/4 minion with a +1hp buff will become a 4/3. The game will then realize this is against the rules, and will bring the current hp down 1 making it a 3/3.
So, in short, Silence, then damage!
Edited by Abzeroth on 1/24/2014 12:57 AM PST
