Cloning Device Bug

Played cloning device, only gave me one choice. Played cloning device again later, only gave me 2 choices. The third time I played cloning device it actually worked. Looks like my opponent was playing a highlander deck.

First game played it turn 3 and 6
https://hsreplay.net/replay/mAfvEiJhH25M5fGkYB97TA

Another game it happened, turn 1
https://hsreplay.net/replay/oUf5rSnswXMsebukZqHkJo

I tried to help, but I don’t remember how the HSreplay links look like exactly. So please read this and post a proper link:

https://hsreplay.net/replay/mAfvEiJhH25M5fGkYB97TA

also in another game it happened again, gave me 2 choices

https://hsreplay.net/replay/oUf5rSnswXMsebukZqHkJo

Thanks. For those curious, it happens on the 3rd turn in the first game (interestingly, it offers as the only choice the minion which was copied by Thoughtsteal) and the very first card played in the 2nd game. Clearly the opponent’s deck had plenty of other minions in it. There did not appear to have any Galakrond minions, so it would not be from the recent issue which prevented discovering Galakrond minions from the opponent’s hand.

The replay XML reveals that the opponent in the first replay was indeed a Galakrond deck. They apparently just didn’t draw any of the cards. As for why Cloning Device didn’t pick up any of the other minions…

It’s possible that Cloning Device’s implementation causes the limitation to be skipped at the deck searching phase, but enforced later. Presumably they had it so Discover wouldn’t search for or display Invoke cards if you didn’t have a Galakrond (actually I think this has been reverted and now it shouldn’t give you Invoke cards at all, but it’s still apparently causing problems like this). But maybe whoever implemented Cloning Device didn’t use the Discover mechanics for the searching. I.e. instead of “Discover a minion, using the enemy deck as the card pool”, they implemented it as “select 3 different random minions in the enemy deck, then offer a choice between them using the discover interface”. That would make it possible for an Invoke minion to be randomly chosen at first, but then be rejected at the final hurdle, leaving empty spots in the options.

That’s just speculation though. Could just be some quirk of how the new logic was implemented into their Discover system.

The way I understand the Galakrond / Discover situation (and this is also just speculation), is as follows:

Before the change, a card which discovers a new card (Ethereal Lackey for example) would never offer a Galakrond card. The change was made so that if you have Galakrond in your deck / hand / hero, then Galakrond cards would be added to the pool.

Before the change, a card which copies a card (from the opponent’s deck or hand) would pick 3 available cards and offer them to you, no matter whether a Galakrond-related card or not. The change to the above resulted in this “copy discovery” to now remove Galakrond cards from the pool, but it was probably implemented the way @Jetz describes, after the 3 cards are selected. This would be the reason why the change was reverted. But it sounds like there are leftover issues due to that, since those replays are from yesterday, and the change should have been reverted some time around March 26:

https://twitter.com/Celestalon/status/1243267467364818945

I heard this part was also bugged, giving Invoke cards to everyone, Galakrond or not. They may have “reverted” the change just by changing it to offer them to nobody. That would fix most cards to work like they used to, but since Lazul and Cloning Device are among cases where Invoke cards should be presented as Discover options, that causes problems for them. May affect other “Discover from a zone” cards as well, like Eternal Servitude or Stitched Tracker.