Hearthstone Heroes Of Warcraft / Tropes E to L

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

---

E

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Before the full release of the Goblins vs. Gnomes expansion set, the cards from the sets were made able to be drafted in Arena mode 4 days before the official release.
  • A few cards have been given out to all players before their proper debut in their respective set and were allowed to be drafted freely in constructed decks, starting with a golden Volcanosaur for Journey to Un'Goro. Other cards that joined the list are Marin the Fox, Archmage Vargoth, Sathrovarr, Kael'thas Sunstrider, Transfer Student, and Silas Darkmoon. Other than Vargoth and Kael'thas, most of them were average Arena or meme tier cards that didn't make much of a splash in the constructed meta.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Almost every Basic and Classic card that affects both sides of the board has the word 'ALL' written in caps like that. This was immediately dropped, although older cards haven't been updated.
  • The earliest sets (pretty much everything until Whispers of the Old Gods) recycled art from the discontinued World of Warcraft TCG for almost every card. This gave the game a much grittier look, compared to the slightly more cartoony style players are familiar with now. It also meant the early sets didn't have as strong of a theme or location.
  • Dragonkin Sorcerer, Eydis Darkbane, and Fjola Lightbane all had the word you bolded to denote that their effect only worked for their controller. No future cards do this.
• Eat Me: Can be invoked during gameplay. One boss in Adventure Mode, Gnosh the Greatworm, has a Hero Power which allows him to devour your minions whole. If he eats a Poisonous minion, he'll die instantly.
• Embarrassing Alibi: Out of the ten suspects for Sire Denathrius' murder in the Murder at Castle Nathria set, two couldn't have done it because they were stealing from Denathrius at the time of death. Xy'mox keeps coy about his alibi until he's forced into admitting that he stole relics from the vault, while Rafaam practically boasts about how he was stealing spellbooks from the library.
• Enemy Summoner:
  • The Grim Patron card from Blackrock Depths is a 3/3 for 5 mana. Substandard for its cost, but if it survives any combat damage, it summons a fresh copy of itself, which can summon yet another fresh copy if it's damaged as well...
  • Imp Master will summon a 1/1 imp at the end of each turn, and Murloc Knight will summon a random murloc as an Inspire ability... including the possibility of another Murloc Knight.
• Epic Fail/Spanner in the Works: A mainstay of Hearthstone videos. The Random Number God in this game can easily screw you over, with Doomsayer as its preferred harbinger. It's one thing when your enemy has that one card that dismantles your strategy, it's another when something you yourself summoned absolutely ruins you. Watch this streamer Go Mad from the Revelation during one Tavern Brawl, for instance.
• Epic Hail: Varian Wrynn's Battlecry lets you draw three cards and summon any minions from them for free.
  Varian Wrynn: [against anyone except his son] Behold the armies of Stormwind!
  • This becomes somewhat anticlimactic when said armies of Stormwind turn out to be nothing more than, for instance two Loot Hoarders and a Cruel Taskmaster, or if you draw only non-minion cards and get nothing on the board.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The innkeeper's name is actually Harth Stonebrew. This was never mentioned in the game until he became a collectable Legendary for the game's 10th anniversary.
• Evil Is Hammy: Lord Jaraxxus, Eredar Lord of the Burning Legion is memetic for how ham-tastic all his lines are (minus his "Sorry" emote).
  • The Tiny Knight of Evil from The Grand Tournament attempts to compensate for its size with pure ham (and evil):
    Tiny Knight of Evil: Small in size, HUGE IN EEEVVVIIIL!
• Evil Versus Oblivion: The reason Boommaster Flark is a boss in Dalaran Heist - The League of E.V.I.L. wants to steal the city of Dalaran, while Flark just wants to blow it up.
  • In the finale of the League of E.V.I.L. story in Galakrond's Awakening, after Rafaam succeeds in awakening Galakrond and uses him to wipe out the Alliance and Horde, he decides to defeat Galakrond himself so that he doesn't end up wiping out all life on Azeroth.
• Exact Words: Failure to read a card's effects in-depth can lead to some nasty surprises. Most cards that affect all minions or characters will specify this, but otherwise unless a card specifies you or your opponent, assume it applies for everyone. For example, the legendary Kel'Thuzad brings allied minions that died each turn back to life once the turn is over. This includes both your and your opponent's turns!
  • Special mention goes to the warlock spell "Sacrificial Pact". Its card text simply states, "Destroy a demon, your hero gains 5 health." It doesn't specify whether or not that demon must be a minion (or, despite the name, whether it even needs to be your demon), thus it becomes trivially easy for a warlock to kill JARAXXUS, EREDAR LORD OF THE BURNING LEGION
  • Also noteworthy are cards that have the "50% chance to attack the wrong opponent" effect. "Attacking the wrong opponent" can occasionally result in bypassing minions with Taunt.
  • The difference between playing and summoning a minion is key to several card effects—playing means selecting a card from your hand, spending its mana cost, and, well, playing it. Summoning is much more flexible: it just means a minion enters the board, whether it was played, generated by a hero power or another minion's battlecry, generated by a spell (like Animal Companion or Muster for Battle), pulled from your deck/hand (e.g. Patches or an enemy Deathlord), popped from a deathrattle (e.g. Sludge Belcher or Cairne Bloodhoof), etc.
    • An example of this distinction can be seen in some of the Quests from the Journey to Un'Goro expansion. The Hunter quest requires playing one cost minions, otherwise you could cheese it with just two copies of Unleash the Hounds. The Priest quest, on the other hand, just requires summoning deathrattle minions—so you can drop a few throughout the game and then finish the quest by re-summoning them with Priest's myriad resurrect effects or with N'Zoth in Wild.
• Explosive Breeder: Can be done with Shaman's Ancestral Spirit^note Give a minion Deathrattle: Resummon this minion, Reincarnate^note Destroy a minion, triggering its Deathrattles and return it to life at full health and Baron Rivendare^note Your minions trigger their Deathrattle twice. Watch it in action. Alternatively, the Grim Patron card from the Blackrock Mountain adventure.
  • Similarly, Dreadsteeds summon a new copy of themselves whenever they die. Combine that with a way to bring dead minions back to life like Kel'Thuzad and you can quickly build yourself a Dreadstable.
  • Spiritsinger Umbra activates any Deathrattle minion that is summoned, so Deathrattle minions that summon a minion are spawned instantly. If you do this on a Deathrattle minion that summons itself like say, a Cruel Dinomancer with your only discarded minion being another Cruel Dinomancer, then your entire board gets full with them.
• Explosive Overclocking:
  • If you raise a minion's stat too high, the game's number-calculation mechanic^note You may want to read about signed and unsigned data types in Wikipedia or Google; it's a rather geeky stuff will suddenly treat that number as negative. If that stat is health, this means the minion instantly dies. Of course, the maximum limit is a little over 2 billion, so it's not exactly likely to happen unless you're messing around with a friend.
  • Another example is the hand size limit. You are allowed to keep up to 10 cards in hand; if you must draw cards but you already have 10 cards in hand, the cards that you would have drawn are automatically discarded. And also revealed to your opponent as they burn, to add insult to injury.
  • The Warlock card Power Overwhelming fits this trope perfectly; it gives a friendly minion +4 Attack and Health, but that minion will die at the end of your turn. Horribly.
  • Aluneth, the Legendary weapon for Mage which draws you three cards at the end of your turn. This amount of draw power is borderline absurd, and can be hugely powerful if you can play that many cards and not overdraw. But there's also no way to turn it off and Aluneth can't be used to attack, meaning that it'll quickly deplete your deck and then keep drawing, resulting in massive fatigue damage that'll kill you in around two turns.

F

• Feathered Fiend: The Angry Chicken. It's normally a docile 1/1, but gains a massive +5 attack if you can injure it without killing it.
• Fictional Zodiac: The game uses a Zodiac symbol to designate each yearly rotation for Standard format. Each year is named after an animal (usually a fictional one from the Warcraft universe), and the animal typically has something to do with one of the expansions for that year.
  • The Year of the Kraken references the squid-like N'Zoth from Whispers of the Old Gods.
  • The Year of the Mammoth is for the Lost World setting of Journey to Un'goro (although the set itself has no mammoths, but it does have a mastodon with Flavour Text poking fun at it not being in the right year).
  • The Year of the Raven calls to mind the Gothic Horror setting of The Witchwood.
  • The Year of the Dragon was an early reference to the year's finale Descent of Dragons.
  • The Year of the Phoenix pulls a double-duty reference in Ashes of Outland, first to The Phoenix rising from the ashes, but also because phoenixes are a symbol of the blood elves and for Kael'thas in particular.
  • The Year of the Gryphon refers to United in Stormwind and how gryphons are used by the Alliance as transport and aerial troops.
  • The Year of the Hydra is based on the colossal ocean monsters from Voyage to the Sunken City, Hydralodon in particular.
• Finishing Move:
  • Nearly all decks have some high-damage spell(s) or other instant damage to act as a finisher, such as the Leeroy Jenkins minion. This is especially important for rush or aggro decks who need to beat an opponent's HP down then finish the match ASAP.
  • One of the purchasable cosmetics in Battlegrounds is special animations for getting a finishing blow on your enemy.
• First-Player Advantage Mitigation: The developers knew that the first player would have a tempo advantage, and experimented with ways to give the second player their own advantages to compensate. They ended up going with two: The first is that they start with an extra card in their hand. The other is that they start with a copy of "The Coin", which gives them an extra Mana Crystal for one turn.
• Fission Mailed: The fight against the Lich King, where you are given a deck that cannot play a single card with the exception of Magma Rager before he kills you. He then resurrects you as a Death Knight, and you get a Curb-Stomp Battle against Tirion.
  • Also the fight against Dragonslayer Skruk in Galakrond's Awakening. The enemy is intentionally overpowered, with 200 health and increasingly buffed minions, but when he destroys your hero, it's not game over: Chromie rewinds time and transforms into her real dragon form, with 60 health and the ability to take an extra turn for every normal turn.
  • Also the fight against Malfurion in the Demon Hunter's Book of Heroes, which retells the penultimate Night Elf mission of The Frozen Throne. The goal is to spend 50 mana to channel the Eye of Sargeras and destroy the Lich King... which, as per canon, is totally impossible because Maiev comes in and destroys it after turn 7 (at which point you'd only have spent 28 mana if you spent all your mana every turn). Also as per canon, this leads into the second phase of the fight where Malfurion and Illidan team up to rescue Tyrande.
• Forced Transformation:
  • Mages can use Polymorph to turn minions into a 1/1 Sheep and Shamans can use Hex to turn a minion into a 0/1 Toad that has Taunt. In The Grand Tournament, Mages also got Polymorph: Boar; while it can be used to neutralize minions the old-fashioned way, it's also usable as a buff since the boar is a 4/2 with Charge.
  • The Shaman's Devolve transforms all enemy minions into ones that cost 1 mana less than the originals, usually meaning that the opponent ends up with something weaker than what they started with. Of course, the wide range of minion stats available means that results can vary; woe betide the player that transforms their opponent's inoffensive 3/3 Antique Healbot into a 4-mana 7/7.
• Forced Tutorial: The player is put through a series of "quests" - battles against fixed opponents with stacked decks - to show them the ropes in a controlled environment. Finishing this unlocks the main menu.
• Foreshadowing: Occasionally, an expansion will contain hints to the setting or events of next expansion:
  • The Elven Minstrel, a card from "Kobolds and Catacombs", has an entrance quote foreshadowing the location of the next expansion, "The Witchwood":
  Elven Minstrel: There once was a man from Gilneas...
  • When facing Experiment 3C in The Witchwood's "Monster Hunt", Hagatha will remark that it's not one of her creations. Playing Dr. Boom against this boss makes them beg not to be taken back to the lab. Sure enough, the next expansion, "The Boomsday Project", takes place in Dr. Boom's lab in the Netherstorm.
  • The Mogu Cultist states that "The storm is coming..." when played. While her effect summons Highkeeper Ra, the next expansion, "Descent of Dragons", happens to feature the world-shaking awakening of Galakrond.
  • For non-expansion foreshadowing, there are hints to Reno Jackson being a blue dragon:
    • The trailer for "One Night in Karazhan" features Reno in a jacuzzi with a cow and a murloc. Shortly after, the Curator jumps in. Keep in mind that the Curator's card effect is locating Beasts, Dragons, and Murlocs. The cow is the beast, the murloc is the murloc, which means only one person in that pool could be the dragon...
    • Reno briefly appears as a minion twice in the Galakrond's Awakening campaign. His statline? 4/12. You know, the same one used by several Legendary dragons, including the big daddy blue dragon Malygos.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: The Lich King in the Knights of the Frozen Throne missions takes his card game very, very, very seriously. Word of God says they went with this approach instead of making him more comical.
• Flavor Text: Every card (except ones created by other cards, such as token minions or Ysera's Dream cards) has some kind of joke for its flavor text, as befits this Lighter and Softer game. Some of them are even funny.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Some cards that were previously considered laughably weak can become game-breakingly powerful with the addition of new cards and synergies. Stonetusk Boar, a 1 mana 1/1 with Charge? Weak. Stonetusk Boar after The Caverns Below or Dire Frenzy fills your deck with massive Stonetusk Boars? Start running.

G

• Gathering Steam:
  • Mana accumulates at one crystal per turn until a maximum of 10 is reached.
  • As part of their class identity, Druids have ways to accumulate more mana crystals early through the use of specific cards.
  • Emperor Thaurissan is a card which reduces the cost to play any cards in your hand by 1 each turn he is in play, effectively reducing the time needed to gather enough steam to play those cards. However, most decks using Thaurissan only need his effect to go off once at the end of the turn he's played; whether he actually survives to the next turn with his below-average statline is irrelevant in most cases.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Hero-exclusive cards all fit the hero's theme, like having Beasts for Hunters/Druids, but Neutral cards are fair game for any deck. This can lead to some blatantly lore-defying situations like a Warlock having some holy knights fighting alongside his trademark demons or a Horde general having his forces composed of mostly cards aligned with the Alliance. It's even lampshaded with Cairne Bloodhoof's flavor text:
  Cairne was killed by Garrosh, so... don't put this guy in a Warrior deck. It's pretty insensitive.^note Not that it's ever stopped anyone
• Game-Breaking Bug: Nozdormu is famously broken. He's an 8/8 for 9 mana that causes both players to have a mere 15 seconds to complete their turn. It should be a simple gimmick, but because of how Hearthstone's mechanics work it becomes deceptively lethal. See, two Blackrock Mountain bosses, the Dark Iron Arena and Chromaggus, use this card in their decks, and if they play it you might as well concede because by the time the entire animation and the AI's actions finishes, in actuality the AI has already pressed the End Turn button long before Nozdormu even hits the board, which means your turn somehow has started before you even see the card you draw for the turn, giving you 3 seconds to take action at best or lose your several next turns immediately at worst. What’s worse is while they patched it for the Dark Iron Arena the glitch is still present for Chromaggus, causing untold frustration upon many. Most importantly, players can pull off the glitch too.
  • What's more, it is easier for players on the desktop to queue up commands than it is on a tablet, leading Nozdormu to be considered "tablet/phone player loses."
  • It is also considered somewhat anti-accessible- players who are visually impaired need extra time just to see what has happened and what new cards have been drawn. Some just concede if Nozdormu appears, as the game is no longer playable. Needless to say, for all the above reasons there are a lot of cries to have the card changed or removed.
  • The League of Explorers expansion gave us the Rogue minion Unearthed Raptor, a 3/4 for 3 mana that has the Battlecry of copying the Deathrattle of a friendly minion. What a potentially fun and flexible card is quickly discovered can potentially crash the game if used to many time when combined with Brann Bronzebeard (double your minions' Battlecry) and several returning effect. It got so bad that the game designers limited the potential to copy to 16 Deathrattle, and it still can freeze the system.
  • Journey to Un'Goro replicates the Nozdormu exploit. Priest gets Shadow Visions^note 2 mana spell that lets you discover a copy of a spell in your deck - like another Shadow Visions for instance and Radiant Elemental^note 2 mana 2/3 Elemental that reduces the costs of your spells by 1. Two Radiant Elementals makes Shadow Visions completely free, letting the player constantly discover Shadow Visions over and over again. The combo does allow for silly things like insanely large Questing Adventurers, but looping Shadow Visions enough times can skip the opponent's turn due to the lengthy Discover animation. Unsurprisingly, this was hotfixed very quickly.
  • Deck of Wonders can really expose the spaghetti code behind Hearthstone's game logic. What makes Deck of Wonders "buggy" is that when a Scroll of Wonders gets drawn, it uses the random spell then draws a card, but minion deaths don't get resolved before drawing the next card. So what can happen is if you draw multiple Scrolls of Wonder in a row, it will cause clearly unintentional effects like, for instance, dealing damage to a minion that's already dead several times then Vanish returns it to the opponent's hand and cancel out its death.
  • If Majordomo Executus (who replaces his controller's hero with Ragnaros on death) and his controller are killed at the same time, the game soft-locks. The intention was for the player controlling Executus to lose without becoming Ragnaros if this happens, but it was never properly implemented.
• Generation Xerox: If Cairne Bloodhoof gets killed, he's immediately replaced by his stat-identical son Baine. ^note Identical in all but mana cost; Baine costs 1 less Mana than his father.
• Giant Spider: The Arachnid Quarter of Curse of Naxxramas is absolutely crawling with them. As for the final boss...
  Kel'Thuzad: Maexxna is a GIANT SPIDER! MUWAHAHAHA!
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • Some cards have powerful effect combined with severe drawbacks that can easily backfire on you. But in times of desperation, these drawbacks can be made moot, and playing these cards might give you a fighting chance or even win the game outright. The most iconic is perhaps Deathwing, who causes you to discard your entire hand and kills everything on the field. When you're down to only a few cards in hand and the enemy has strong board control, there's nothing to lose.
  • For Dungeon Run mode, there's Rod of Roasting which casts Pyroblast randomly until one of the heroes die. It's even lampshaded in the one of the loading tips.
    When everything else fails, there's always the Rod of Roasting.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: There isn't even an Excuse Plot, it's just Alliance and Horde (and neutral characters) in an inn, playing games with each other. Who says being sworn enemies on the battlefield means you can't enjoy a good drink and some trading card games?
• Gold-Colored Superiority:
  • Golden versions of the heroes can be unlocked by winning with them 500 ranked games. Each. While Golden Heroes don't actually add any abilities, it can be used for strategic intimidation since your opponent will know immediately you have won a lot of ranked matches with that hero.
  • In Battlegrounds, obtaining three copies of a minion will give you a golden version of that minion with their combined stats (including buffs) and a stronger version of its ability. Playing a golden minion also lets you Discover a free minion from the next Tavern Tier, meaning you usually want to grab golden minions whenever possible.
• Gone Horribly Right: Card draw is vital in any card game, but overdrawing would burn your card and bring you that much closer to fatigue, or if you are already in fatigue, death. Northshire Cleric is a prime culprit of this if your enemy has an AoE heal effect, and having 2 Northshire Clerics on the board is.... not recommended.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Courtesy of RNGeesus and the key component of the many Epic Fails that are the mainstay of Hearthstone videos. Have fun summoning a Doomsayer who will wipe your board clear, summoning a big fat minion for the enemy for free, playing a Yogg only to have him Pyroblast himself on the first cast, getting your card draw mechanic turned against you and mill you into fatigue... The possibilities are endless.
• Go Through Me: Taunt minions must be destroyed before you can attack cards without taunt or the enemy hero - with the exception of hero cards and spells, which make fair game of anything on the field. The Demon Hunter legendary Kayn Sunfury lets himself and anyone else on his side go through anyone.
• Graceful Loser: Most heroes (with the exception of Garrosh) are this when they acknowledge their defeat in their Concede quotes. It's also customary to exchange "Well Played" emotes as a substitute for the time-honored "gg" or "good game".
• Gratuitous Disco Sequence: Subverted with One Night in Karazhan. The trailer for the adventure made it look like a fabulous disco party, but in the adventure proper these elements take a backseat to showcase Hearthstone's interpretation of what Karazhan might have looked like in its earlier days. There's still some disco-inspired stuff in there, of course (the getup for the Medivas, the music, etc.) but not as much as the trailer made out.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The Hearthstone design philosophy for card text is to make the card text as simplistic and easy to read, but have decidedly leave out any detailed explanations for special cards and effects. If a card spawns another random card with widely varying effects, then it gets given some category but no mention of what it does. The only way to know what any of these cards do is to actually experience it yourself. Fortunately, this is now largely averted; when viewing a card that spawns other cards in the collection, the game now shows you a "Related Cards" list that show exactly what cards can be spawned, as well as any cards spawned by those cards, and so on. The Related Cards section also show cards that interact with a specific card (such as ones that Invoke Galakrond), so most of the confusion of the examples below no longer exist as you can now see everything.
    • Even the most common and ubiquitous cards don't even get an explanation. The Hunter has the basic starter card "Animal Companion", a spell that summons a random Animal Companion. Unless you look it up, you have no idea what Animal Companions are, which ones there are, and what each of them do.
    • Also difficult for new players is the Shaman's hero power Totemic Call which says summon a random totem. What totems can it summon? How many different totems are there? There's also nothing that tells you you'll never summon a totem you already have on the board—or that as long as you have one of each, your hero power is disabled.
    • The Goblins vs Gnomes expansion added a new keyword that's described when you hover over cards: "Spare Parts - Spare Parts are 1-cost spells with minor effects." Which is great...except the game doesn't tell you what these Spare Parts actually are, and how many there are of them. The game doesn't provide any of way of figuring out what these are; they can't be seen in-game unless you're already in the middle of the match, so if you want to be prepared for these randomly summoned spells, you're gonna have to look it up elsewhere. Likewise, the Lackeys added in Rise of Shadows have a similar issue which is exacerbated by the fact that Blizzard added more of them throughout 2019.
    • The in-game text also forgot to mention that the Jade Golems from Mean Streets of Gadgetzan has an intrinsic ability: The size of the golem you summon directly depends on how many Jade Golems you have summoned throughout the game, so while the first golem you summon is weak, as the game drags on the golems become gigantic. The only thing that outright indicates this is a footnote.
    • Adapt is a new keyword in Journey to Un'Goro. What is it? A choice from 3 different buffs from a pool of 10. The hover text explains it as "Choose one of 3 bonuses." Very helpful.
    • Quests are written out as "Quest: Do something. Reward: Some uncollectible card." The only way to see what the reward actually does is to play the quest and then hover over it while it's on the board.
    • Hero cards do the following: Change your hero into that card, activate a Battlecry, gain the listed Armor, and give you a new Hero Power. The problem is the doesn't mention that it comes with a new Hero Power. You can see what the Hero Power is by examining the card from your Collection, but at a glance it tells you nothing about it. That's fine, but the more complex Hero Powers have it even worse. Valeera the Hollow adds a Death's Shadow to your hand. Well what's a Death's Shadow? What are Zombeasts and how do you craft a custom one? The game also doesn't make it clear that Uther needs to control all 4 unique Horsemen for the effect to work.
    • The worst is probably Dr. Boom, Mad Genius from The Boomsday Project, whose Hero Power in both the Collection and when hovered in your hand is unhelpfully described as "Activate this turn's Mech Suit power!". No mention of the five different powers or the fact that it randomly switches between them each turn.
    • The Lich King and Arfus give you something called a "Death Knight card". Are they talking about those new Death Knight hero cards that was prominently featured? Nope. It's a random selection of 8 cards that all do something completely different. They're called Death Knight cards because they're based on the skills from Death Knights in World of Warcraft, so don't expect to give you Frost Lich Jaina on a Hunter or anything like that. Averted with the addition of the Death Knight as a class, as the cards spawned by these two are now labeled as "Lich King cards" and the exact list is now shown in the collection like other card generation effects.
    • The Invoke keyword is probably the worst instance in the whole game. Each of the five classes that use Invoke get a different effect when the card is played, based on which version of Galakrond they have available (it activates their Galakrond's hero power). This means every neutral Invoke minion has five different ways its effect can be interpreted. The ability is also written as "Use Galakrond's Power", which is an okay reminder but does nothing to help if you don't know what Invoke does. It also doesn't necessarily explain that you need to have a version of Galakrond in your deck for the effect to actually work, although thankfully all five were given out for free. Fortunately, Blizzard took measures to make the Invoke keyword as intuitive as possible: Invoke cards' in-game tooltips say what they actually do, and putting an Invoke card in a deck without Galakrond will cause the game to remind you that they only work with Galakrond and offer to put Galakrond in for you.
  • Some card interactions that change in specific, usually rare, circumstances go unexplained until you try it out. Wild Growth says it gives you an empty mana crystal, but if you use it at full mana you suddenly get an Excess Mana card that costs 0 mana and lets you draw a card. This, along with Astral Communion, are the only ways to get Excess Mana, so without online help the only way to know that happens is to just try it out of curiosity. Likewise, Sense Demons will generate 1/1 Imps if you have no Demons in your deck. They stopped doing this later on and instead just made unsuccessful spells fizzle, probably to avoid this trope.
  • The Grand Tournament brings us a card that flat out lies about what it does in an attempt to be concise. The Mistcaller claims to give all minions in your hand or deck +1/+1, but in fact it if cards are brought out of your deck and put onto the battlefield directly, they will not get any bonus. To be accurate, the card would need to read "Give all minions in your hand +1/+1. For the rest of the game, all minions you draw gain +1/+1." Similarly, Knight of the Wild reads "Whenever you summon a Beast, reduce the Cost of this card by (1)." The card never specifies that you have to be holding it while summoning a beast for the discount to apply. To their credit, the dev team picked up on this and used more accurate abilities for Prince Keleseth and Arcane Giant, which have similar text.
  • The Blackrock Mountain expansion brought a new legendary card: "Majordomo Executus", with: "Deathrattle: Replace your hero with Ragnaros, the Firelord." So, when he dies, you'll have Ragnaros as your new hero. Now, most players think of Ragnaros as a really powerful and game-changing legendary minion capable of winning games on his own; so of course, letting him replace your hero would be just as good, right? Nope. While becoming Ragnaros does give you his minion ability "Deal 8 damage to a random enemy" as your new hero, he also has a measly 8 health, meaning you're VERY easy to kill. And unlike Jaraxxus, you don't even get Sulfuras, Ragnaros' weapon, to back you up. Ragnaros also overrides any Armor you had left, and even an active Ice Block's immunity, so essentially, becoming Ragnaros is a VERY risky play that will most often than not cost you the game. And of course, the game doesn't tell you about any of this. Even the boss encounter when you face off against Majordomo and Ragnaros misleads you, because Ragnaros spawns with 8 Health and 8 Armor in Normal mode, probably making some players think that it's not as risky as it actually is (since Lord Jaraxxus, the only hero-replacing card before him, gave you 15 health, which is about the same as Normal mode Ragnaros).
  • Zephrys the Great's effect is worded vaguely: "If your deck has no duplicates, wish for the perfect card". What this actually means is that you choose one of three cards from the Basic and Classic sets algorithmically calculated to offer the best value for your specific situation at the moment you play Zephrys. Oh, and the algorithm considers the size of your hand but doesn't know what specific cards you're holding (in other words, it only considers information your opponent knows). None of this is stated in-game, of course.
  • Blizzard is generally good at averting this when it comes to nerfs, as launching the game after a nerf patch pulls up an unskippable text box that shows the original card(s) alongside its nerfed version with an outline to show what changed. That is except for Yogg-Saron and Dragonqueen Alexstrasza, whose nerf screens showed a red outline around the text box... and no changes. This was because these cards were nerfed "under the hood" as it were: Yogg's effect will be interrupted if he was Silenced or left the battlefield, and Alexstrasza was made unable to create copies of herself. You needed to read up online to find out how these cards were changed.

H

• Hair Substitute Feature: Intelligent murlocs are shown wearing their distinctive crest of spikes like hair. One female murloc even has hers done up in a ponytail. This is averted in World of Warcraft proper, where murlocs always keep their spikes straight up even while wearing a hat (although, this is more likely due to model limitations, and the fact that non-hostile clothes-wearing murlocs are exceptionally rare in the canon game).
• A Handful for an Eye: The card "Pocket Sand" depicts a night elf throwing sand into the eyes of a troll. The card's name is a reference to King of the Hill.
• Harmless Freezing: The Freeze ability prevents a character from attacking for one turn, after which they thaw out no worse for wear. Granted, there are ways to avert this with spells like Shatter, Ice Lance, and Ray of Frost that gain lethal bonuses against frozen targets, and the fact that some Freeze effects come with damage already.
• Hellfire: Purview of the Warlock class, from the aptly named Hellfire, Soulfire, Shadowflame, and Demonfire.
  Demonfire is like regular fire except for IT NEVER STOPS BURNING HELLLPPP
• Herd-Hitting Attack: All classes have at least one card that can damage multiple targets at once, and several neutral cards can do the same. These types of cards are usually what dismantle minion-rush decks by taking out many cheap minions at once.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • The aptly-named Paladin secret Noble Sacrifice immediately summons a 2/1 Defender to Taking the Bullet when an enemy attacks. Since he only has one hitpoint, he will almost certainly die to the attack.
  • The Mage secret Spellbender can do this by summoning a 1/3 Spellbender minion to become the target of an enemy spell, though this can also happen to defensive or buffing spells.
  • At the end of Bru'kan's Book of Mercenaries chapter, he pulls off a Mutual Destruction to defeat Tamsin Roame once and for all so the other mercs can follow Onyxia to her lair.
• Heroic Second Wind:
  • Late-game Paladin cards have a tendency to pull this off by healing their hero for a huge amount with likely some other bonuses on top, like Lay On Hands (8 mana for 8 health and 3 cards) and Libram of Hope (9 mana to heal for 8 and summon a 8/8 with Divine Shield and Taunt, which can have its cost reduced).
  • Any time a control (or other late game) deck of any class successfully weathers the onslaught of an aggro deck is an example of this trope, and the aggro deck is likely to lose unless he has gained a massive advantage. Such as a mill druid down to 3 health succesfully taking down a warrior at full health and 19 armor. Needless to say, coming back from an extreme deficit isn't always a given, but it's better to persevere unless you know the game is completely unwinnable.
  • Reno Jackson is a card introduced in the League of Explorers adventure that encourages this trope. By playing a deck with reduced consistency (since you can't have duplicates in your deck to trigger the effect), you can get a potentially enormous heal that can put you right back into the game against aggro decks, right when your own late-game minions begin to come into play.
• Highly Specific Counterplay: In the "Unite against Mechazod!" tavern brawl event, Mechazod has an attack called "Kill Lorewalker Cho" which it will only use in response to someone playing the Lorewalker Cho card.
• Hit Points: They're actually called "Health," but the concept is the same. In traditional Hearthstone, you start the game with 30 Health and if you get down to 0, you lose. Your goal is to kill your opponent by bringing their Health down to 0. Also, both players can summon minions that also have Health. In Solo Adventures mode, players can have different amounts of Health, and getting a character down to 0 Health sometimes represents something other than death, such as forcing your opponent to surrender or proving yourself to be a Worthy Opponent.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • It's very easy to turn an enemy's advantage into one of your own. For example, countering a Lightwell, which heals friendly characters, with a Lightwarden, which gains attack power every time a character is healed, and unless they can stop it they can only watch as you turn that small 1/2 Lightwarden into a monster. Or encountering a 2/4 Frothing Berserker, which gains one attack every time any minion takes damage, which can become a huge problem if you can't kill it within one or two turns before it begins snowballing.
  • Priests have numerous spells that can crush an opponent with his own cards, including some that take possession of an enemy minion (temporarily or permanently) and a few that copies random cards from an opponent's deck...
  • On the other hand, Priests also have a number of cards that can turn healing powers into damaging powers, which can screw themselves over if they end up needing to heal themselves really badly but can't because their power is permanently Shadowform (deal 2/3 damage)...
  • Most embodied by Faceless Manipulator. Goes into borderline Troll grade when done at the right time. Examples include using two of them (more likely in a control druid deck) to copy something like Ragnaros the Fire Lord. This includes even your own, making THREE of them spew 8 damage fireballs at the end of your turn.
  • Cards like Mad Bomber or Wild Pyromancer that can damage a player or their own minions can do this.
  • Cards such as the Northshire Cleric and the Cult Master allow the player who controls them to draw additional cards, but in the first place, you can only have up to ten cards in your hand, and if you're forced to draw additional cards they instead get discarded; in the second place, if the battle lasts long enough for that player to run out of cards, these minions instead accelerate the fatigue damage. Indeed, this is an effective way to defeat Noth in the Curse of Naxxramas expansion.
  • Feugen and Stalagg are minions that spawn Thaddius (who has the second most powerful combat stats in the game) if one dies after another has already died that game. This does not depend on who played the first minion to die, so a player can use the other player's minion to help spawn their own Thaddius. The most extreme example is the heroic Thaddius boss fight. During this fight, the boss spawns a Feugen and Stalagg on their own, although these do not spawn anything when they die. Their deaths do count, however, if the player uses their own Feugen or Stalagg. The Thaddius fight thus allows a player to kill him with himself, and makes this process easier.
  • Some minions have detrimental Deathrattle, which can utterly screw you over. Most notably the Deathlord from Naxxramas adventure. Sure you get a beefy 2/8 Taunt minion, but if you're unlucky, that can easily backfire with the enemy getting a lategame minion way earlier than they should.
  • Since Blackrock Mountain, Rogue has gotten at least one card per update that grants the user random cards from the opponent's class. Furthermore, the Karazhan adventure gave Rogues a minion that lowers the cost of cards they hold from another class by 2 mana, making them easier to be played. While stealing cards is similar to what Priest can do, this adds a bit of strategy as you can get cards the opponent could use but may not have, versus random cards they do have but may not be useful with your deck.
  • The first fight with Rafaam has him steal your deck to use against you, but there is nothing stopping you from building a bad deck to sabotage his efforts, making his Unstable Portal hero power the only threat in the fight.
• Hopeless Boss Fight:
  • The last tutorial mission is against Illidan Stormrage, who, as the game tells you, you can't win against ("This fight is totally not fair. Blame the terrible game designers."). Subverted in that the decks are stacked so that he looks intimidating early on, but a bit later the player can easily turn it around, demonstrating how even losing battles can be won.
  • In the prologue of the Knights of the Frozen Throne adventure, the Lich King destroys Jaina with his completely overpowered cards before reinforcements arrive, and before you draw anything that you have the mana to play except a lowly Magma Rager... and then he raises Jaina from the dead, which leads to the second half of the battle... Jaina vs. Tirion.
• Horse of a Different Color: Several varieties exist in the game, including the well known wolf rider. The Grand Tournament expansion added a lot more, with mounted units as a theme, including a gorilla riding a hippo and a murloc riding a frog.
• Hostile Show Takeover: The Fire Fest-E.V.I.L. event starts with Ragnaros preparing to host another Fire Festival, before the League of E.V.I.L. crash into Blackrock Mountain and decide to take it over while they wait for Dr. Boom to fix their city/airship.
• HP to One:
  • The Paladin spell Equality changes all minions' HP to one. It would be a real shame if the enemy Uther just happened to have a Consecration, Avenging Wrath, or played a Wild Pyromancer to sweep your side of the field... They also have a variant that reduces attack instead of HP.
  • The Hunter spell Hunter's Mark does this to one minion. Even if a Hunter has no minions to dispatch the marked minion, an easy follow-up is to use any of their damage-dealing spells or Rush minion to finish it off. The Hunter Legendary Veranus sets all enemy minion's health to 1.
  • The Paladin legendary High Priest Thekal sets the player's health to 1, but grants them Armor equal to the amount of health lost, allowing them to heal themselves and gain more effective health.
• Humanoid Abomination: The Doppelgangster card is a 2/2 Dwarf gangster whose Battlecry summons 2 more 2/2. But considering he has glowing eyes and purple skin, which is never seen in other dwarves before (The Dark Iron Dwarves have soot-black skin and red eyes), and that his summoned minions are the Faceless Ones, it's clear that this 'Dwarf' is very likely a Faceless himself. Another one is the Darkshire Councilman; if you look closer at his artwork, his shadow is eerily tentacle-y. Played for Laughs with Convincing Infiltrator, which is obviously a Faceless One in a Paper-Thin Disguise trying to pretend he's a "fellow human".
• Hurricane of Puns: The entire Maw and Disorder miniset is just an excuse to cram as many courtroom puns into a card set as they possibly could. That's not a hyperbole, either — the dev team admitted that they started with the puns first and designed cards around them for the set. Some examples include the Nature spell Dew Process, the Warlock spell Habeas Corpses that resurrects a friendly minion, the Rogue Secret Perjury turns itself into a Secret from another class, the Paladin minion Class-Action Lawyer that has an effect if you have no neutral cards, the neutral minion Tight-Lipped Witness (who literally has their Mouth Stitched Shut) that stops Secrets from being revealed, the Paladin spell Order in the Court which orders your deck from highest to lowest cost and draws a card; it just goes on.

I

• I Am Your Opponent: As Jaraxxus is summoned to the field, he makes clear that you will be facing him and not the puny warlock he just replaced.
  Jaraxxus: You face Jaraxxus, Eredar Lord of the Burning Legion!
• Ironic Echo: In Whispers Of The Old Gods, corrupted versions of earlier cards were released. These cards had altered versions of their original quotes to show the effects of their corruption:
  Kobold Geomancer: You no take candle!
  Evolved Kobold: I take your candle.
• I Know You Know I Know: When Secrets are in play, the mindgames get ramped up when players try to avoid triggering them or minimize advantage swings when they go off. In general there's a pool of the most commonly used Secrets, but beware of not expecting THAT Secret, especially in Arena.
• An Ice Person: Mages can use a number of ice-based spells that usually involve freezing opponents (preventing them from attacking for a turn). Mage decks built around freeze effects are extremely efficient at stalling out matches as they hit enemy face with spells. Knights of the Frozen Throne and Fractured in Alterac Valley gave Shamans cards that can Freeze minions.
• I Meant to Do That: Or, as they say, "there is no missed lethal, only hilarious BM". It's entirely possible for a player to somehow miss dealing lethal damage to the enemy hero, be it due to miscalculation, misclicks, or what have you, and still manage to win the game later on.
• I Shall Taunt You: The game includes an emote system, which lets you threaten or taunt an opponent. For instance, many players delight in giving the opponent a "Well played" or "Wow" after they mess up or get screwed by RNG.
  • The Evil Heckler card throws some mean insults at your opponent, reminiscent of a certain movie about a certain group of knights looking for a certain piece of silverware.
  • Evil Heckler's mantle was later taken up by Vulgar Homunculus from Kobolds and Catacombs, which also has a number of randomly selected voice lines used when attacking or being played, all of which are juvenile insults. Exaggerated with Hecklebot from Rise of Shadows, which has a grand total of nine different responses for being played and nine more for attacking, all of which are insults directed at the opponent. Appropriately enough, Evil Heckler, Vulgar Homunculus, and Hecklebot all have the Taunt keyword.
• Instant-Win Condition: While the usual win condition is to reduce the enemy's Health to 0, a few cards sidestep this and allow you to instantly kill them after filling a certain condition:
  • The Paladin hero card from Knights of the Frozen Throne, Uther of the Ebon Blade, changes the Hero Power to summon the Four Horsemen. When all 4 of these 2/2s are on the board at the same time, they strike the enemy hero at once and obliterate them. Not even Ice Block can save them.
  • The Boomsday Project introduces Mecha'Thun, a 10-mana neutral minion whose deathrattle destroys the enemy hero... provided its player has absolutely nothing left on board, in hand, and in deck (barring active secrets, weapons, and permanents).
  • United in Stormwind introduces the Priest questline Seek Guidance, whose end reward (after playing a 2, 3, and 4 cost card for its first stage, a 5 and 6 cost for the second, and a 7 and 8 cost for the third) is Xyrella, the Sanctified. Her Battlecry shuffles a 10-mana Purified Shard into your deck that instantly destroys the enemy hero when played.
  • March of the Lich King brings in Rivendare, Warrider, a new depiction of Baron Rivendare of the Naxxramas Four Horsemen. He's a 6-mana 6/6 whose Deathrattle shuffles the other three Horsemen into your deck, each of which is a 6-mana 6/6 with a different keyword, and the shared Deathrattle to destroy the enemy hero if all four Horsemen have died during the game.
  • Whizbang's Workshop has the Legendary Warlock spell Wheel of DEATH!!! For the cost of 8 mana and destroying your own deck, it destroys the enemy hero after 5 turns.
  • Can be inverted into an instant fail condition for several decks. With certain decks, if you make them discard or overdraw the right card, their entire strategy becomes useless.
• Insufferable Genius: The Dalaran aspirant, in all of his quotes:
  [when played] Knowledge is power, and I know a lot.
  [attack quote] So, here's where you're wrong!
• It Will Never Catch On: While many pro players make accurate predictions about which cards in an upcoming pack are worthless/game-changing, they are occasionally dead wrong, most notably with the Mysterious Challenger, which was dismissed until it became the core of the Game-Breaker Secret Paladin.

J

• Jack of All Stats:
  • Mage has quite a lot of utility, having a nice spread of spell cards.
  • Paladins in general have some of everything: healing, buffing, weapons, decent spells, in addition to never being short on minions. However, they usually aren't the best at any particular one of those, though they do have the most cards with the Divine Shield property.
  • In the metagame, a midrange deck is a mixture between an aggro deck (early-game) and a control deck (late-game). These usually do not have as much early game damage as an aggro deck nor the same stranglehold of the board as control decks, but they can do both simultaneously.
• Joke Character: A couple cards seem to exist solely for comedic value. One example is the Angry Chicken, a 1-cost creature with one of the most powerful Enrage effects in the game (+5 attack, giving it a potential 6 attack for 1 mana). The problem? It only has one health, meaning it requires some form of health buff to activate its effect without dying. Said health buff is nearly always better spent on a more useful minion such as an Ogre or Yeti. That said, beating your opponent down with a chicken might be amusing enough for some players to do it anyway.

K

• Keystone Army: Some decks are highly reliant on a single card as keystone of their strategy (for example, Archmage Antonidas, Shudderwock, Sire Denathrius, some of the Death Knight Hero cards, etc. If you can somehow make them lose the card through discard or overdraw effects, there's a good chance that your opponent will concede there and then.
• King of Beasts: It's the name of a card, which is logically a lion. Stat-wise (King Krush and Giant Sand Worm are tied for the biggest) and popularity-wise (the most common here is Savannah Highmane, which is also a lion), it's not the best by far among Beast cards, though it gets it King status by becoming stronger if you have more Beasts already in play.
• Kneel Before Zod: Both Yogg-Saron and Deathwing, Dragonlord command this in their summon quotes:
  Yogg-Saron: Bow down before the God of Death!
  Deathwing: The dragons shall kneel before me!
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Player can concede (traditionally accompanied by a "Well Played" emote) when they know they can't win, in order to save their opponent the trouble of finishing them. This is usually realized by counting up the damage on both sides and realizing that their opponent can finish them off in the next turn before they can do the same. Some, however, insist on not quitting the game until the enemy player actually kills them, perhaps hoping that the enemy either doesn't realize that they a guaranteed victory or they make a mistake in the process, giving them just the last one or two turns that they need.
• Kraken and Leviathan: The Colossal minions introduced in Voyage to the Sunken City are mostly made of unfathomably huge Sea Monsters of various types. They represent this by coming into play alongside a set of Cognizant Limbs that take up extra board spaces, since their bodies are too big for one card. The only ones that don't fit this trope are Gaia and (funnily) The Leviathan, which are Humongous Mecha, and Neptulon, who is a humanoid elemental and more of a generic Kaiju.

L

• Large Ham: The Stormwind Champion and numerous other cards ham up their quotes upon being summoned and Jaraxxus is only not-hammy when he apologizes. Even the tokens of such minions are Large Hams, firmly dropping onto the table at high-speed.
  Stormwind Champion: BEHOLD! the might of STOOOOOOOOOORMWIND!
  Stormpike Commando: I've got a HUUUGE GUN!
  Wild Pyromancer: Do you LIKE to play with FIYAAAAH?!
  Al'Akir, The Windlord: WINDS! OBEY MY COMMAND!!
  Jaraxxus: OBLIVION!
  Deathwing: I AM POWER INCAARNNATEEEEE!!!
  Grim Patron: EVERYONE, GET IN HERE!^note EVERYONE-EV-EV-EVERYONE-EVERYONE, GET IN HERE-IN HERE-IN HERE!, and so on and so forth...
  Emperor Thaurissan: BY THE POWER OF RAGNAROS, I HAVE THE POWER!
  Coldwraith: Winter is here... AND IT'S CAAAWLD!
  Chillblade Champion: I'll CUT them DOWN TO SIZE!
  • In the Naxxramas expansion, Kel'Thuzad definitely qualifies for this.
    Maexxna is a GIANT SPIDER! MUAHAHAHA
    Just being nearby Loatheb causes your flesh to rot. So I recommend a melee class.
    You keep KILLING MY MINIONS. Stop it! Stop it right this minute!
    Of course I played well. I'm Kel'Thu-freaking-zad!
    Victory tastes so sweet... Like a milkshake. No, maybe more like a bar of chocolate.
    My power is overwhelming! And yet, I did not die horribly at the end of the turn.
  • The characters themselves are pretty large hams when you consider the in-universe Excuse Plot that they're playing a card game at an inn. Phrases like "I will crush you!" somehow don't have the same impact when you're not actually in a combat situation.
  • Jaraxxus and the Ragnaros hero are such large hams that even their emotes and the names of their hero powers ("INFERNO!" and "DIE, INSECT!" respectively) are written in ALL CAPS.
• Last Chance Hit Point:
  • The Paladin secret Redemption can almost simulate this by resurrecting a fallen minion with 1 HP left. The game still sees it as a death and new summon, so the Deathrattle activates, Battlecry is skipped, and so on.
  • Mages have Ice Block which stops any attack or spell that does lethal damage and makes her immune for the rest of the turn. Players expecting this secret often divide their damage such that their opponent's health is as low as possible before triggering the secret, fulfilling the trope to the letter.
• Lava Magic Is Fire: Lava-based spells like Volcano and Lava Burst are part of the Fire spell school, whereas purely earth-based spells are instead part of the Nature school. This is consistent with World of Warcraft, where lava spells deal Fire damage and earth spells spells deal Nature damage.
• Leeroy Jenkins:
  • An actual card, even being voiced by the man himself. 5 mana, 6/2, has Charge (can attack immediately), and summons two 1/1 whelps for the opponent (enough to kill him on the next turn). At least he has angry chicken.
  • His Battlegrounds counterpart, Leeroy the Reckless, has a unique Mutual Kill mechanic: his Deathrattle kills the minion that delivered the killing blow to him, even if said minion has tons of HP, Divine Shield or kills him by indirect means such as Cleave.
  • More generally, any card like the true Leeroy Jenkins card (low cost, high attack, low life, comes with Charge) is meant as a suicidal fast-hitting attacker that will usually die quickly.
  • Kobold Barbarian from Kobolds and Catacombs fits the trope to a T; instead of you ordering it to attack something, this minion automatically attacks a random enemy at the start of your turn. Similarly, there's Swamp King Dred, which automatically attacks any minion the opponent plays, even if that minion is Poisonous or bigger and nastier than Dred himself (which is comparatively rare as Dred is significantly overstatted at 9/9 for 7 mana).
• Lethal Harmless Powers: Divine Shield grants invulnerability to one attack, which sounds like a purely defensive spell. Then keep in mind that all minions counterattack, so using it offensively effectively gives you a free kill for one mana (which can be rather cost efficient).
• Lethal Joke Character: Joke cards can become lethal under the right circumstances.
  • Any Murloc rush deck, which depends on spamming Murlocs (the resident Butt-Monkey and Joke Character) in large numbers early on then buffing all of them in order to steamroll the opponent before any high price-tag cards come into play. Surprisingly effective, if only because no one usually sees it coming - and even when they do, a properly-played Murloc deck is terrifyingly effective.
  • The Angry Chicken seems to have to put into the game specifically for players that want a challenging card to work with. It's the worst card in the game unless you can buff its health and then damage it, whereupon it's suddenly extremely powerful relative to its cost. Fear the Chicken synergy! The Angry Chicken also got a shot in the arm with the addition of Deathstalker Rexxar, which can slap its Enrage effect onto a much bigger body. An Oasis Snapjaw or Stegodon that gains +5 attack upon taking damage is nothing to sneeze at.
  • Sacrificial Pact for Warlocks is generally regarded as mediocre and/or counterproductive since it kills a Demon for +5 health, so unless facing another Warlock, it just reverses summoning a Demon . However, should the enemy Warlock sacrifice themselves to summon Lord Jaraxxus, he technically counts as a Demon, so using Sacrificial Pact will end the game on the spot.
  • Anything with 0 attack and high health (like the Lightwell) can be this in the hands of a Priest, using Divine Spirit to double that already high health and then Inner Fire to raise their attack to the same level. With just 5 mana, that 0/5 Lightwell would suddenly be a 20/20 Behemoth.
  • Fel Reaver from the GvG set gets a bad rap because he makes you discard 3 cards from the top of your deck every time your opponent plays a card. However, as explained here, discarding a good card does not guarantee you will draw it in the first place due to the random draw mechanic, and if you manage to win the game before you run out of cards, the Fel Reaver might as well have no drawback at all. That said, his power shines more in Arena where the rest of your deck is more disjointed and you can afford to lose the cards; in constructed, a player would want to have and use the cards since they're central to the deck's strategy.
  • Yogg-Saron, Hope's End from Whispers of the Old Gods is the current world record holder for this. With an effect as silly as his (casting random spells with random targets for every spell his owner casted that game), it was quite the shock that he turned out to be the best board clear in the game, as he was statistically likely to draw his owner plenty of cards while wiping out all enemy minions, with other effects like summoning more minions or potentially just giving you the ability to kill the enemy right there. In fact, his lethalness outshined the joke part so bad, he had to be nerfed.
  • The basic card Stonetusk Boar is a 1 mana 1/1 with Charge, and it doesn't take long to come to the realization that this card is pretty bad in of itself, even with Beast synergies. However, there are a few cases cases where it actually shines — Quest Rogue, whose quest results in the Boar becoming a much more fearsome 4/4, and Death Stalker Rexxar's Hero Power, where he can graft Stonetusk Boar's Charge effect onto anything bigger and make it much more fearsome without dramatically inflating the base card's cost.
    • The Witchwood has the cards Dire Frenzy, which grants a +3/+3 buff to a beast and then shuffles 3 copies of that minion with the buff into your deck, and Emeriss, whose Battlecry doubles the stats of all minions in your hand. Stonetusk Boar happens to be one of the best minions to combo with these cards; its Charge ability lets you make use of the boosted stats immediately, and its 1-mana cost makes the copies easily searchable with cards like Witchwood Piper and Tol'vir Warden while letting you flood the board with them easily. Needless to say, Stonetusk Boar becomes a lot less of a joke when buffed to 8/8 and played three at a time.
    • The Boomsday Project gives way to "Topsy-Turvy Priest", where Stonetusk Boar is a win condition for a combo. The deck involves using Test Subject to copy Divine Spirits to pile on the Boar, followed with Topsy Turvy to switch that massive health into massive attack for a One-Hit Kill via massive damage off the charging Boar. Furthermore, the combo also requires you to copy Vivid Nightmare with Test Subject, letting you duplicate the Boar as many times as you need to bust through any number of Taunts assuming you can play your cards quickly enough without messing up your combo.
  • Dirty Rat is a 2 mana 2/6 Taunt whose Battlecry summons a minion from your opponent's hand. This has the natural potential to backfire spectacularly by summoning a huge bomb for your opponent that you're not prepared to deal with. However, the keyword here is that it summons a minion, it doesn't play it, meaning the summoned minion does not trigger its Battlecry. It's also one of the first cards that directly affects your opponent's hand, and playing it mid-late game when you have Removal potentially disrupts their combo by dragging their keystone minion out to be killed or can deny a key Battlecry like Shudderwock or Kun the Forgotten King, leading to an instant concede. Or it can blow up their board by dragging out a Doomsayer. Even when other hand disruption cards were printed, Dirty Rat is still one of the cheapest, and knowing the meta means that even playing him early can be relatively safe (since late-game minions are usually shuffled away in the mulligan).
  • Weasel Tunneler is a 1 Mana 1/1 with a peculiar Deathrattle of shuffling himself to the enemy's deck. Widely considered a crappy gimmick card, Savjz invented the 'Weasel Priest' deck, which utilizes multiple resurrections, Deathrattle activators and minion copying to flood his opponent's deck with Weasels, thus 'diluting' their card draw, and making them less likely to draw their required cards in time. Furthermore, putting multiple Weasels in the opponent's deck means that Highlander effects like Kazakus and Raza the Chained become stone useless due to requiring you to have no duplicates in your deck, making it very powerful in the right matchup.
    Savjz: Spend 2 Mana, take 2 damage and draw a Weasel. You can't summon your Doomguard when all you get are Weasels.
  • Bolf Ramshield from The Grand Tournament has an ability that basically makes him a taunt minion, except worse: whenever your hero takes damage, Bolf takes it instead. The opponent's minion, however, takes no damage, so Bolf can literally be killed without him affecting your opponent's board in any way. If you somehow manage to obtain both Tree of Life and Auchenai Soulpriest or Embrace the Shadow, the result is usually all minions and both heroes dying, resulting in a draw, but if you have Bolf on the field, he'll soak up the damage and allow you to live to win the match. Good luck actually having all the necessary cards on hand, though.
    • With Maw and Disorder, Bolf has become a powerful servant for the Jailer. The Jailer makes all your minions Immune for the rest of the game, and with this, Bolf takes no damage from all the damage he redirected from your hero, making your hero Nigh-Invulnerable unless the opponent can remove him using non-targeted destruction effects. Then The Jailer got nerfed to no longer affect your other minions due to the potential for much more degenerate combos, making Bolf a regular Joke Character again.
  • Despite his incredibly high 4/4 stats for a 2-mana minion, Millhouse Manastorm almost never sees play in regular game modes as his Battlecry gives the opponent free spells on their next turn, which can easily lead to them building an insurmountable advantage or straight-up killing you. Tavern Brawls are a different story: because many Brawls with randomized decks tend to be relatively light on spells, with damage and removal in particular being almost nonexistent, a turn 2 Millhouse gives you an early powerhouse that can be very difficult to punish. He's also one of the best 2-drops to get from random effects like Piloted Shredder or Vex Crow or to cheat out using cards like Call to Arms, as this gives you a huge pile of stats without the hindering Battlecry.
  • The Silence Priest deck in its entirety. Individually, the key cards are laughably weak: Humongous Razorleaf is an overstatted minion that can't attack and is thus useless on its own, and Purify silences your own minion to draw a card, making it hopelessly outclassed by the Basic card Power Word: Shield. But put them together, and you can easily get a massive beater very early on that also synergizes well with the Priest's buff spells. In fact, the Razorleaf's uselessness works in the deck's favor: if the opponent chooses to destroy it, they waste a disproportionate amount of resources on a useless minion, but if they leave it up it'll smash their face in. Silence Priest has since become a recurring archetype with various Priest cards that silence your own stuff for various benefits and various big minions held back by crippling downsides, meant as silence targets.
• Lethal Joke Item: Showdown in the Badlands has two minions that generate Snake Oil, a spell that deals 0 damage to a target and even says on the card "This seems useless..." However, the key here is that it deals 0 damage, meaning that its damage can be increased by Spell Damage bonuses and thus can be used to actually kill something if you have enough of it. More directly, it's a Tradeable card so you can cycle it away for hopefully something better; while it's not much of a benefit if it gets shuffled into your deck by an opponent's Snake Oil Seller (basically making it a Deck Clogger that forces you to spend 1 mana to draw the card you were supposed to), but very useful if added directly to your hand by your own Miracle Salesman.
• Light/Fire Juxtaposition: One of the most iconic cards from the Classic set is Ragnaros the Firelord, a legendary fire elemental that can't be ordered to attack but does 8 damage to a random enemy at the end of its turn. When the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion was released, while many of the cards were Eldritch Abominations with a theme of corruption, Ragnaros gained an uncorrupted form called Ragnaros the Lightlord, which randomly heals an injured friendly character for up to 8 hitpoints instead.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • Compared to the rest of the Warcraft franchise, it's just a bunch of people (both Alliance and Horde) setting their differences aside to enjoy drinks and card games in a tavern. 90% of the cards' Flavor Text even puts a humorous spin on the more serious parts of the Warcraft canon when it comes to notable characters/factions.
  • The Curse of Naxxramas adventure mode is much lighter in tone compared to the original raid, with Kel'Thuzad sounding more like a comically bumbling necromancer who keeps assuring you that the next minion of his will surely destroy you.
  • Initially averted by Blackrock Mountain, where its two main villains were much more sinister and serious, even if their minions were fairly goofy. Played straight starting with the third wing, where Nefarian winds up divulging in a hilarious meltdown that only escalates from there.
  • The main artwork of every character is much more cartoony, especially on Tavern Brawls.
  • One Night in Karazhan is an intentional Breather Episode following the Darker and Edgier (by Hearthstone standards, anyway) Whispers of the Old Gods, and basically an Affectionate Parody of the World of Warcraft raid it is based on.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Dunemaul Shaman is a 5/4 minion for 4 mana plus Overload and a has a 50% chance to attack the wrong target. Discounting the Overload and Clumsy aspects, he's reasonably tough and strong for his cost, but most dangerously, also comes with Windfury. You do not want to let him wail on your face, as he can wipe off 33% of your health every turn.
  • King Krush is a 9-mana 8/8 with Charge, who can take a colossal chunk of health off the opponent or can bust through a tough minion, while having enough health to require several minion trades before it goes down.
  • In general, minions with similar attack/health value and possessing Charge, Rush, and/or Windfury is this.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Alluded to with the 'Ice Lance' card, which freezes a character, or deals four damage if said character is already frozen. Played straight with the Whispers of the Old Gods card Shatter (destroys a Frozen minion) and The Witchwood card Snap Freeze (basically Shatter crossed with Ice Lance; destroys the target if it's frozen, freezes it otherwise).
• Lovecraft Lite: The Whispers of the Old Gods expansion. In particular, it introduces a corrupted version of Stormwind as its new battlefield, which parodies many Lovecraftian Tropes (a church's window becomes a huge eye that sheds a tear if you click on it a few times).
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • No doubt any player can attest to praying to draw that one card that can save them from a troublesome situation or help them win the game.
  • The Shaman's Hero Power summons a random totem out of a possible four. This ability is programmed to not summon duplicates, so the outcome gets less random as you gather each basic totem.
  • Several of the Shaman's cards involve more random effects than the other classes. This includes Lightning Storm doing 2 to 3 damage to each enemy minion, Crackle that deals anywhere between 3 and 6 damage, and Evolve and Devolve which transform minions into random ones costing 1 mana more or less.
  • The Hunter's Animal Companion spell works essentially the same way, with 3 possible beasts summoned by it.
  • Also, many card effects that target random minions/characters. On one hand, their randomness allows them to go through protection effects which prevent you from targeting, say, a Stealthed minion with a kill spell. On the other hand, try killing that one stealthed minion with, say, Multi-Shot, when your opponent has more than two minions out in the field.
  • The Thoughtsteal card, which lets Priests copy two random undrawn cards from their opponent's deck, Mind Vision, which lets Priests copy a random card in an opponent's hand, and Mindgames, which lets you randomly summon a minion form your opponents deck to the battlefield.. You can use stolen cards no matter what, but it's up to the Random Number God whether you draw a game-winner and (hilariously) kill someone with their own trump card... or one that's entirely useless to you (getting a Rogue's Deadly Poison is no good without a weapon to use it on).
  • Perhaps best typified by the Warrior's Brawl. Destroy all minions (including yours) but one, chosen at random. Often played on a board containing only enemy minions, allowing for up to a 6-for-1 card trade and possibly destroying extremely powerful minions.
  • The opponents you get in general and their decks. Match-making does its best to match you with opponents of equal skill (especially during peak playing hours), but whether any opponent is bringing his trump deck (that may smash yours to pieces) or his cruddy experimental deck that he's tried once is all a matter of luck.
  • Arena mode. You get 90 random cards generated and have to make a deck by choosing 30 of them (1 per set of 3 presented to you). Other than having to be neutral or available to your hero, these can be any 90 cards, which makes for some... interesting possibilities. Will you get just the right cards for the strategy you were planning on or will your deck end up a train-wreck? Will you get the chance to pick from some epic or legendary cards or will you be stuck with bog-standard ones? Part of the fun of playing Arena is playing with decks that would be impossible or insane to run in Constructed mode, and then beat opponents with those decks anyway.
  • The Hunter class challenge from Curse of Naxxramas. The player's deck consists of nothing but 30 Webspinner minions, which upon death add a random beast to the player's hand. Made significantly less frustrating by the fact that the boss the deck faces is Loatheb, who is susceptible to the rushdown decks beasts are meant to specialise in.
  • A similar thing happens in the Mage class challenge in Blackrock Mountain. Instead, it's 30 Unstable Portal spells, which add a random minion to your hand that costs 3 less. Like the Hunter challenge, you fight a boss who is easily susceptible to this deck, it being the Dark Iron Arena (which has 30 legendary cards, which while powerful, are very expensive, meaning many cheaper, better minions can beat him). Also, the boss tends to play Millhouse Manastorm in the first couple of turns (since his mana cost makes him one of the only things that can be cast early on), allowing you to immediately convert ALL of your portals into creatures.
    • That said, the Dark Iron Arena does have one thing going for it that can make it a lot tougher; one of the other two mana minions in the deck, Lore Walker Cho. Though he has no attacks, Cho's ability means that any spells you cast are given to the boss, which really stings if he plays Millhouse Manastorm the turn after he plays Cho, if not the same turn, and you have no way of removing him save by playing Unstable Portal and hoping for a strong charge minion.
  • Prone to happen in Tavern Brawls. One such Brawl gives the players a deck filled with random minions that cast a random spell of their matching cost when summoned (targets chosen randomly). Another does the reverse, with a deck full of random spells that summon random minions when cast. Yet another has random minions whose costs change randomly each turn, and another involves a deck full of Shifter Zerus that transforms into random minions at the start of each turn. The list goes on.
  • To get the most bang for the buck out of Elise Starseeker, you have to randomly draw a card she shuffles into the deck, then randomly draw another card shuffled into the deck by that card, and then hope that the random legendary minions you get won't ruin your synergy and leave you with a worse deck. Outside of that unlikely scenario she's just a Sen'jin Shieldmasta without taunt, but it makes it all the more awesome when you do get to play the full potential of the effect.
  • The so-called 'Randuin Wrynn' deck consists entirely out of cards with random elements to them. For extra fun, some of his cards copy random cards from the OPPONENT'S hand or deck.
  • The Discover mechanic will give you three random cards or effects within certain conditions (such as the player's class), letting you pick one. You could get something game-breakingly powerful, or three options that are completely mundane.
  • The Dungeon Run and Monster Hunt modes, being inspired by Roguelikes, require a lot of luck to win, both with regard to which card choices you get and which bosses you face.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Many minions brandishing shields have defensive gimmicks. Garrosh can also Shield Block to generate a lot of armor points, and draw a card.
• Luring in Prey: The minion Blackwater Behemoth spawns a Behemoth's Lure when played. The card art for the lure depicts a killer whale being drawn towards an anglerfish-style glowing lure, and its effect makes a random enemy minion attack the behemoth at the end of its turn.

---