So an opponent played madam lazul against me, and got my buffed up evasive dragonoid (13/13) taunt (because of palladin handbuffs).
But when I play Barista Lynchen on a board of buffed up dragons, unbuffed ones are added to my hand.
The text of Madam Lazul is ‘discover a copy of a card in your opponents hand’, while Barista Lynchen says ‘add a copy of each of your other battlecry minions to your hand’, and honestly I don’t see the difference between the two.
Whenever a card is copied and moved backwards through the zones (i.e. board > hand > deck), the copies are generally base copies without any buffs, with a few exceptions (like Dire Frenzy or C’Thun). So in your case, Barista Lynchen seems to be working correctly, but not Madame Luzul, so Madame Lazul would be the bugged card here, imo.
You’re sure that your opponent didn’t play any cards of their own to buff the Evasive Drakonid? Do you have a video/replay of the scenario, or perhaps a screenshot?
“Parallel” copies also retain buffs, that is, deck to deck, hand to hand, board to board.
https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/21965466/
I do have some screenshots, and I am sure that the priest didn’t play any other handbuff cards.
Thanks for your explanation, even though I don’t agree with the design philosophy behind it. Copies should be, well, copy things lol.
There are many reasons for this. Most of all: balance. If copies always retain stats, lots of cards need to be adjusted or they would be severely OP.
But also: fun. Remember those cards that have “Deathrattle: Shuffle this in your deck” / “Return this to your hand” / etc.?
Do you really want to get a zero-health minion in your deck? That you then draw a few turns later? And then you spend the mana, play it, and it dies because it still has zero health?
And what about the resurrect mechanism? “Summon a friendly minion that died this game” … but with the same stats, so zero health. Boom, dead. Unless it has a deathrattle, nothing just happened. (Would solve a problem with a specific rather annoying Priest deck in Wild, but other than that…)
The rules for retaining or losing modifications used to be rather unclear and inconsistent, and I think somewhere in 2018 or 2017 Blizzard decided to end all confusion by moving to the generic rule that buffs are lost if the card copy or move goes in the direction graveyard → board → hand → deck; and retained in all other cases. (Unless explicitly noted differently on the card itself)
If that were the case it would say “Deathrattle: Shuffle a copy of this into your deck.” and same for the other. I agree with OP. Copies should be copies. I do understand the zone explanation and that the game must be balanced though.