Hello everyone, let's talk about something important. When you play a minion, first it
enters play, and later its Battlecry resolves. One of the biggest pieces of misinformation
in the Hearthstone community is that the Battlecry resolves BEFORE the minion enters play. I'm
not kidding, check out the upvote counts on all these reddit posts that are -dead wrong-.
Let's watch some more clips together, and clear this up once and for all.
You just saw a clip where Leeroy Jenkins' Battlecry summoned two Whelps, which triggered
an enemy Knife Juggler to hit and kill Leeroy, all before the Battlecry resolves.
But we can interact with played minions even earlier - 'on play' trigger minions, such
as Illidan Stormrage, trigger after the played minion enters play BEFORE the Battlecry resolves,
allowing us to change the game state before the Battlecry.
For example, we can use Illidan Stormrage to trigger a Knife Juggler and set off a chain
reaction that leads to a played Twilight Drake taking one damage and dying before his Battlecry
resolves and gives him more Health.
Or how about instead of killing the Battlecry minion before its Battlecry begins - we take
control of it using Sylvanas Windrunner? The Battlecry will then resolve as though it always
belonged to the opponent, which is really cool.
Dr. Boom enters play before his Boom Bots do, since the Battlecry resolves after the
minion enters play. Yet this misinformation is so pervasive that Trump and Amaz, two Hearthstone
pro players, think that the Boom Bots enter play before Dr. Boom. See for yourself.
OK, so what is really happening? Let's take a look at the Sequence of Phases that resolves
when you play a minion. First, the minion leaves your hand and enters play. Then the
On Play Phase resolves, where Illidan Stormrage, Hobgoblin, Questing Adventurer and more queue
and resolve. Then the Battlecry Phase resolves. Then the After Play Phase resolves, where
Mirror Entity and other Secrets related to playing a minion, and Rumbling Elemental,
queue and resolve. Then finally the After Summon Phase resolves, where Knife Juggler,
Sword of Justice and Ship's Cannon queue and resolve. In addition, after each outermost
Phase, we process deaths and update Auras until no new deaths are found, creating a
Death Phase each time we found deaths.
This model makes many useful predictions. For example, death processing repeats until
no new deaths are found, so if the Battlecry causes a minion to die, and THAT death results
in another minion dying and so on, all death processing will resolve before the After Play
Phase begins and Mirror Entity triggers.
It also predicts that if you play Dr. Boom onto a board with 1 or more other minions,
Sacred Trial will trigger following Dr. Boom's Battlecry, because Sacred Trial triggers in
the After Play Phase, and checks its condition at this time.
But hold on - Earlier we used Illidan Stormrage to affect the game state before the Battlecry
begins. But Illidan Stormrage and Mirror Entity use the word 'when' or 'whenever' in their
card text. So why does Mirror Entity trigger AFTER the Battlecry in the same Phase as Rumbling
Elemental, and Illidan Stormrage trigger BEFORE the Battlecry?
Simply, this is a mistake in the card text. And it's a mistake that can be fixed - recently
Ship's Cannon, Sword of Justice and Djinni of Zephyrs were corrected in a patch to use
'after' instead of 'whenever'. I have faith in Blizzard that one day, Mirror Entity and
the other Secrets related to playing a minion will also have their card text fixed.
And to all of you out there watching this video, I have only one request - whenever
you see a streamer or reddit post or forum post think Battlecries occur before the minion
enters play, please correct them. Please link them this video. Together, we can fix the
biggest piece of misinformation in the entire Hearthstone community once and for all. From
the bottom of my heart, I thank you.
If you're interested in our model of playing a minion, and want to learn more about the
mechanics behind it, check out the Advanced rulebook, where we list all the rules and
all the different Phases. I've linked it in the description. Thanks for watching!