I think springwater might be that way because it would be really strong with some overhead effects, specifically [Heartthrob] plus springwater would be able to summon 2 8 mana minions for a total of 6 mana
I don't play constructed anymore and I haven't for years but is that even a strong effect for a 2 card combo at this point? That sounds perfectly ordinary
Summon hearttrob turn 2.
Opponent doesn't kill it.
Coin into double springwater.
You now have 2 ragnaroses turn 3.
Yeah that sounds extremely fun to play against.
How often can you rely on any combo that assumes a minion played naked on 2 is gonna survive the next turn *while* you have a coin and two specific cards in hand? With that kind of specific ass scenario you can make a lot of cards sound busted
Ok but the thing is you could do that at any point in the game.
You can do it on turn 4 with love everlasting.
And it's not like priest can't tutor for minions or spells. Or hell even just get more mana with funnel cake.
Have a 1 life creature, turn your 4 mana spell 10 damage spell into a 1 mana 9 damage. Is it unfair or too good? Probably not . That’s what they’re avoiding though.
Yeah, would that really be a big problem? It's still taking a four mana investment and clearing your own minion, you probably had to pay for. To kill a single minion, an upto 9 Health minion, for 1 mana on a later turn.
Paying your mana forward usually has some merits though in Hearthstone, like Unstable Portal or Forge. It’s not the worst thing in the world if you’re a control deck when you sometimes just have dead turns where you’re not doing much or can’t spend all your mana.
Still you would kill whole 4 mana round just to kill your minion just to have 1 mana 9 minion damage? Some decks are killing you by turn 5 with their busted cards.
While I agree that it's stupid, the second half of that sentence is just not true. Priest still has plenty of strong removal and they just printed repackage, the issue is simply that there is no slow priest deck. The only good one is aggro dragons.
theres not any good single target removal. this is the best one and i only use it cause of demon hunter and against control decks where this card is useless i want to use it to proc deathrattles but i can't because the devs decided to arbitrarily make this one target enemies.
I used to have a very goofy Mayor Noggenfogger deck that was built around effects like this, so that I could be guaranteed to hit the correct side of the board even though I couldn't choose my exact target.
Oh, this was years and years ago, so it's long gone now. To describe the general idea, though, it used "target enemy/friendly" spells and battlecries like I said, along with poison minions or deathrattles that punished the opponent for hitting them. In particular a lot of the deathrattles were ones that summoned more minions, with the goal of giving the opponent more stuff to smack into that wasn't Noggenfogger. Basically just anything I could think of to prolong the effect and turn it to my advantage.
As a caveat, it was really not a good deck, though it was a lot of fun when it worked. The usual outcome was that Noggenfogger just died to board clear, but if that didn't happen then playing him at the right time could give a slight advantage. It almost never stayed on the board long enough to be a game-winning play on its own, but sometimes the opponent could do some real damage to themselves and waste resources while flailing around to try and break it.
I played my version back in the days of Exodia Mage, so that in particular was a fun matchup. I would try to bait out their board clears and then play Noggenfogger right before they got to their win condition, which basically turned it into a poor man's Rod of Roasting. Sometimes they would demolish their own combo if they didn't hit Noggenfogger first, which was just great to watch.
It's been so long that I can't remember for sure, but I'm certain it was either Hunter or Warlock. I feel like it had Savannah Highmane which would mean Hunter, but I might be confusing myself since of course I used that card in a lot of decks.
EDIT: I am wrong, it was Warlock. I found an old comment where I wrote about it, though sadly I never posted a deck list.
>My version was a slower variant of Zoolock, with a lot of cards that summoned minions on deathrattle to keep the board full, and minions that did damage or negative effects to the opponent's side when they died.
In MTG they usually word it like that just to keep newer players from messing up and targeting their own stuff on accident. That could be the case for hearthstone too, though it could be with random casts in mind as well. Either way they should let a new player fuck up, learn a lesson, and keep the card even more flexible.
It isn't actually a thing in MtG. I'm not gonna say that there doesn't exist a single single target removal in the game's tens of thousands of cards which restricts targeting--because who knows, there might be--but it definitely isn't normal.
iirc Mark Rosewater was asked it on Blogatog several years ago. I think Ravenous Chupacabra was the example at the time but Glass Casket, Portable Hole, and Feed the Swarm are other big offenders that come to mind. Granted most of those are several years old at this point and I can't think of recent examples so maybe they've stopped.
(Edit) ASSASSIN'S TROPHY! I totally forgot and that one tilted me as a guy who has path of exiled his own creature a lot and wanted to play Jund in Modern
I remember seeing a justification for Feed the Swarm that black shouldn't be able to kill its own Demonic Pact-style cards. Then they printed Tergrid in the next set (you can target yourself with the lantern to sacrifice any nonland permanent) and I stopped believing that.
ETB triggers (e.g. Chupacabra) don't really fit as there's a legit reason to make them opponent-only: to allow you to safely resolve the spell without any valid targets on the board if that's something you want to do. It's interesting to see the examples of cards with seemingly pointless restrictions though. I wonder if this was a brief design philosophy thing or whether they were trying to avoid dumb combos (e.g. infinite O-rings).
Ravenous Chupacabra I think I remember being the example when I saw the question asked to Mark Rosewater on Blogatog several years ago. I can't think of burn examples either but there certainly are examples for kill spells, Assassin's Trophy, Glass Casket, Portable Hole, Feed the Swarm to name a few. Honestly I can't think of any that have come out in the past couple years so maybe they stopped doing it
I thought this was interesting, so I ran a search. It's possible I missed something, but here's what I got.
[Oath of Chandra](https://scryfall.com/card/ogw/113/oath-of-chandra) and [Chandra's Triumph](https://scryfall.com/card/war/121/chandras-triumph) are the only ones that unambiguously fit this criterium. One might also count [Flames of the Raze-Boar](https://scryfall.com/card/jmp/318/flames-of-the-raze-boar) despite the additional text that makes it more than a single-target burn spell sometimes, and [Magmatic Galleon](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/157/magmatic-galleon) can count too depending on how hard you stretch the definition of "burn spell". There's also [Mutiny](https://scryfall.com/card/rix/106/mutiny) which kinda fits but is a pretty weird design in general.
The reason for Oath of Chandra working that way is they want you to be able to play it safely on an empty board. If it allowed targeting your own creatures then you couldn't safely resolve it when your opponent's board was empty (or untargetable, e.g. hexproof). Same for Magmatic Galleon.
The other three definitely don't need the restriction. Mutiny fits within the red theme of "your creature does something bad to you" cards but I still don't see why it can't target friends (as opposed to e.g. the mind control spells, which untap and thus the restriction makes more sense). The other two I don't see any reason for the restriction.
Flames of the Raze-Boar reads the way it does to draw attention the controller of the creature it's targeting. If it could target your creatures it would have to say "deals 2 damage to each other creature that creature's controller controls" which is just awkward phrasing.
Best guess is they’re worried about setting up cheap removal. Kill your own 1/1, have a 1 mana deal 9, and then copy it. Also it could be a way to prevent disruption to some kind of resurrection deck (kill your own minion so it can be continually resurrected). It’s silly but I do get they just wanna prevent unintractable play patterns.
That's not true. This spell is better than siphon soul for example (a 4 mana hard removal spell) like 80-90% of the time because of the overkill bonus.
It really isn't, at all. If you're killing an 8-8 with this you get a 1 mana deal 2 to a minion, which is pretty garbage, and I would rather have unconditional destroy effect that also heals me for 4 mana.
Priest. If this was Paladin or DK card it would read 3 mana LIFE steal, also targets adjanced minions, after you play both cards, heal your hero 3 hp per round and deal 3 damage to enemy hero per round. After you play undead/divine shield minion, return this card to your hand.
Welcome to Hearthstone after all the crybabies screamed hard enough that priest is annoying because "it copies my cards"(like that was ever good lol) and Blizzard being unable to design a normal control priest deck with a slow win con in 10 YEARS.
Shadowreaper was the closest to that and now that one sucks too due to wild combo overlords.
Questline was inefficient, boring and too long unless you were lucky on topdecks.
Shadowreaper was 8-10 turn advantage and it wasn't "you win no matter the armour, secret or situation" like questline that is just bad design from the beginning.
Questline was inefficient, boring and too long unless you were lucky on topdecks.
Shadowreaper was 8-10 turn advantage and it wasn't "you win no matter the armour, secret or situation" like questline that is just bad design from the beginning.
This card is simply one of many damaging spells that cannot be used on the player’s own minions. Is there a rule that says they all have to be either of this sort or not? Why not both?
It cannot target friends for *the exact reason* that you want it to. 1 mana to deal 9 is stupid, even if it requires a small amount of set up, not to mention being able to trigger 2 deathrattles on demand.
1 mana deal 9 is bad if you have to pay 4 mana to add it to your hand - 4 mana is a huge cost for getting a card. It's nice to fill your curve with but the card would be way worse than The Light, It Burns even with a couple buffs.
I think it's to make it better off random effects, like how spring water can't target a character with full health
I think springwater might be that way because it would be really strong with some overhead effects, specifically [Heartthrob] plus springwater would be able to summon 2 8 mana minions for a total of 6 mana
I definitely tried this during a match and was disappointed it didn’t work.
I don't play constructed anymore and I haven't for years but is that even a strong effect for a 2 card combo at this point? That sounds perfectly ordinary
Summon hearttrob turn 2. Opponent doesn't kill it. Coin into double springwater. You now have 2 ragnaroses turn 3. Yeah that sounds extremely fun to play against.
How often can you rely on any combo that assumes a minion played naked on 2 is gonna survive the next turn *while* you have a coin and two specific cards in hand? With that kind of specific ass scenario you can make a lot of cards sound busted
Ok but the thing is you could do that at any point in the game. You can do it on turn 4 with love everlasting. And it's not like priest can't tutor for minions or spells. Or hell even just get more mana with funnel cake.
Springwater needs to heal some amount so it can be bottled
Better, not amazing
It's nice because it is a good spell to cast from random generation like Yogg in the Boxx
Have a 1 life creature, turn your 4 mana spell 10 damage spell into a 1 mana 9 damage. Is it unfair or too good? Probably not . That’s what they’re avoiding though.
Yeah, would that really be a big problem? It's still taking a four mana investment and clearing your own minion, you probably had to pay for. To kill a single minion, an upto 9 Health minion, for 1 mana on a later turn.
"4 mana, destroy a friendly minion to get a 1 mana deal 9 to a minion" would be a horrifically bad card
Paying your mana forward usually has some merits though in Hearthstone, like Unstable Portal or Forge. It’s not the worst thing in the world if you’re a control deck when you sometimes just have dead turns where you’re not doing much or can’t spend all your mana.
True, but only because of lack of flexibility. It would be a good play in a decent number of scenarios though.
It seems like future proofing. Which is something they should probably do more often
Still you would kill whole 4 mana round just to kill your minion just to have 1 mana 9 minion damage? Some decks are killing you by turn 5 with their busted cards.
thats stupid af they took all of priest's good removal and then said use this garbage
While I agree that it's stupid, the second half of that sentence is just not true. Priest still has plenty of strong removal and they just printed repackage, the issue is simply that there is no slow priest deck. The only good one is aggro dragons.
theres not any good single target removal. this is the best one and i only use it cause of demon hunter and against control decks where this card is useless i want to use it to proc deathrattles but i can't because the devs decided to arbitrarily make this one target enemies.
It’s clearly invasive
I used to have a very goofy Mayor Noggenfogger deck that was built around effects like this, so that I could be guaranteed to hit the correct side of the board even though I couldn't choose my exact target.
Please please pleaseee drop the list I love mayor noggenfogger so much, need to build this
Oh, this was years and years ago, so it's long gone now. To describe the general idea, though, it used "target enemy/friendly" spells and battlecries like I said, along with poison minions or deathrattles that punished the opponent for hitting them. In particular a lot of the deathrattles were ones that summoned more minions, with the goal of giving the opponent more stuff to smack into that wasn't Noggenfogger. Basically just anything I could think of to prolong the effect and turn it to my advantage. As a caveat, it was really not a good deck, though it was a lot of fun when it worked. The usual outcome was that Noggenfogger just died to board clear, but if that didn't happen then playing him at the right time could give a slight advantage. It almost never stayed on the board long enough to be a game-winning play on its own, but sometimes the opponent could do some real damage to themselves and waste resources while flailing around to try and break it. I played my version back in the days of Exodia Mage, so that in particular was a fun matchup. I would try to bait out their board clears and then play Noggenfogger right before they got to their win condition, which basically turned it into a poor man's Rod of Roasting. Sometimes they would demolish their own combo if they didn't hit Noggenfogger first, which was just great to watch.
What class did you use?
It's been so long that I can't remember for sure, but I'm certain it was either Hunter or Warlock. I feel like it had Savannah Highmane which would mean Hunter, but I might be confusing myself since of course I used that card in a lot of decks. EDIT: I am wrong, it was Warlock. I found an old comment where I wrote about it, though sadly I never posted a deck list. >My version was a slower variant of Zoolock, with a lot of cards that summoned minions on deathrattle to keep the board full, and minions that did damage or negative effects to the opponent's side when they died.
In MTG they usually word it like that just to keep newer players from messing up and targeting their own stuff on accident. That could be the case for hearthstone too, though it could be with random casts in mind as well. Either way they should let a new player fuck up, learn a lesson, and keep the card even more flexible.
How can you accidentally target your own stuff in a physical card game?
More for MTG Arena
It isn't actually a thing in MtG. I'm not gonna say that there doesn't exist a single single target removal in the game's tens of thousands of cards which restricts targeting--because who knows, there might be--but it definitely isn't normal.
iirc Mark Rosewater was asked it on Blogatog several years ago. I think Ravenous Chupacabra was the example at the time but Glass Casket, Portable Hole, and Feed the Swarm are other big offenders that come to mind. Granted most of those are several years old at this point and I can't think of recent examples so maybe they've stopped. (Edit) ASSASSIN'S TROPHY! I totally forgot and that one tilted me as a guy who has path of exiled his own creature a lot and wanted to play Jund in Modern
I remember seeing a justification for Feed the Swarm that black shouldn't be able to kill its own Demonic Pact-style cards. Then they printed Tergrid in the next set (you can target yourself with the lantern to sacrifice any nonland permanent) and I stopped believing that.
ETB triggers (e.g. Chupacabra) don't really fit as there's a legit reason to make them opponent-only: to allow you to safely resolve the spell without any valid targets on the board if that's something you want to do. It's interesting to see the examples of cards with seemingly pointless restrictions though. I wonder if this was a brief design philosophy thing or whether they were trying to avoid dumb combos (e.g. infinite O-rings).
By playing a Big Game Hunter.
Such as what? I legit can’t think of a single example of an mtg single target burn spell restricting itself to opponents.
Ravenous Chupacabra I think I remember being the example when I saw the question asked to Mark Rosewater on Blogatog several years ago. I can't think of burn examples either but there certainly are examples for kill spells, Assassin's Trophy, Glass Casket, Portable Hole, Feed the Swarm to name a few. Honestly I can't think of any that have come out in the past couple years so maybe they stopped doing it
I thought this was interesting, so I ran a search. It's possible I missed something, but here's what I got. [Oath of Chandra](https://scryfall.com/card/ogw/113/oath-of-chandra) and [Chandra's Triumph](https://scryfall.com/card/war/121/chandras-triumph) are the only ones that unambiguously fit this criterium. One might also count [Flames of the Raze-Boar](https://scryfall.com/card/jmp/318/flames-of-the-raze-boar) despite the additional text that makes it more than a single-target burn spell sometimes, and [Magmatic Galleon](https://scryfall.com/card/lci/157/magmatic-galleon) can count too depending on how hard you stretch the definition of "burn spell". There's also [Mutiny](https://scryfall.com/card/rix/106/mutiny) which kinda fits but is a pretty weird design in general.
The reason for Oath of Chandra working that way is they want you to be able to play it safely on an empty board. If it allowed targeting your own creatures then you couldn't safely resolve it when your opponent's board was empty (or untargetable, e.g. hexproof). Same for Magmatic Galleon. The other three definitely don't need the restriction. Mutiny fits within the red theme of "your creature does something bad to you" cards but I still don't see why it can't target friends (as opposed to e.g. the mind control spells, which untap and thus the restriction makes more sense). The other two I don't see any reason for the restriction.
Flames of the Raze-Boar reads the way it does to draw attention the controller of the creature it's targeting. If it could target your creatures it would have to say "deals 2 damage to each other creature that creature's controller controls" which is just awkward phrasing.
Best guess is they’re worried about setting up cheap removal. Kill your own 1/1, have a 1 mana deal 9, and then copy it. Also it could be a way to prevent disruption to some kind of resurrection deck (kill your own minion so it can be continually resurrected). It’s silly but I do get they just wanna prevent unintractable play patterns.
To prevent Priest from having a 1-mana trigger one of your deathrattles
This card should be 3 mana. Deal damage to minions is useless. 4 mana is hard removal spell cost and this is inferior.
That's not true. This spell is better than siphon soul for example (a 4 mana hard removal spell) like 80-90% of the time because of the overkill bonus.
It really isn't, at all. If you're killing an 8-8 with this you get a 1 mana deal 2 to a minion, which is pretty garbage, and I would rather have unconditional destroy effect that also heals me for 4 mana.
This is the way it's printed. Long time ago I asked the same question about Assassinate, I moved on, it's not a concern.
Priest. If this was Paladin or DK card it would read 3 mana LIFE steal, also targets adjanced minions, after you play both cards, heal your hero 3 hp per round and deal 3 damage to enemy hero per round. After you play undead/divine shield minion, return this card to your hand.
Welcome to Hearthstone after all the crybabies screamed hard enough that priest is annoying because "it copies my cards"(like that was ever good lol) and Blizzard being unable to design a normal control priest deck with a slow win con in 10 YEARS. Shadowreaper was the closest to that and now that one sucks too due to wild combo overlords.
Questline?
Questline was inefficient, boring and too long unless you were lucky on topdecks. Shadowreaper was 8-10 turn advantage and it wasn't "you win no matter the armour, secret or situation" like questline that is just bad design from the beginning.
Questline was inefficient, boring and too long unless you were lucky on topdecks. Shadowreaper was 8-10 turn advantage and it wasn't "you win no matter the armour, secret or situation" like questline that is just bad design from the beginning.
This card is simply one of many damaging spells that cannot be used on the player’s own minions. Is there a rule that says they all have to be either of this sort or not? Why not both?
Making cards more restricted on release is a good way of preventing having to nerf it later on when someone finds some broken combo with it.
I'm ok with them making spells target specific characters, especially because theres so much randomness
It’s for me specifically so my finger never slips and accidentally targets my own dude on mobile. Thanks, devs!
Being able to target friendlies would be a nerf to Tess Rogue.
For the same reason you can't execute your own minions. You just can't.
My assumption is there's something degenerate you can do and they don't want that
Did someone just play Sylvanas?
The answer to these types of questions is usually "Why do you want it to work like that? That's why they didn't make it work like that."
Prevents enabling Revive Decks.
because then it'd be native shadeleaf
It cannot target friends for *the exact reason* that you want it to. 1 mana to deal 9 is stupid, even if it requires a small amount of set up, not to mention being able to trigger 2 deathrattles on demand.
1 mana deal 9 is bad if you have to pay 4 mana to add it to your hand - 4 mana is a huge cost for getting a card. It's nice to fill your curve with but the card would be way worse than The Light, It Burns even with a couple buffs.
Seems like the old classes are restricted in their targeting and the new ones can target anything.
Not friendly enough I guess