Interrupting battlecries

A time rollback mechanic is actually an interesting idea! Rollback to your last turn for some mana cost, maybe an overload mechanic - effectively undoing a play that didn’t work, but paying some price for it.

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I think that can be a refresh-able action that should just remember the last thing your opponent did, not the whole turn or game. This should help to lower the demand of memory since it can be something like “The “end turn” button was clicked => I will remember the last action before it” which means that it might create just a bit of lag when the “End turn” button is clicked instead of constantly saving every piece of the turn.

Now I’m not sure how Hearthstone differentiates battlecries from deatthratles from frenzy etc. etc. I think there has to be a specific sign for every keyword. But, even if let’s say this would be problematic, we could just make it “Battlecry: Cancel the last keyword your opponent played last turn” so it doesn’t bug in such situations (+gives more ways to play around it).

Well… not really, at least not over diamond or even higher. The idea is that you can eventually play another battlecry that is cheaper (1-2 mana) after the reward so you can assure the reward’s effect. It would slow down them a bit since you have to play around that battlecry, so it is skill-testing(which is good) and slows them a bit and that is favourable to let other archetypes breathe. Combo decks in the past had to play around cards like Dirty Rat so questlines shouldn’t have a pass from this, it is the classic action that you can do against combo decks in Hearthstone.

No you missing the point here. I am not talking about how game knows whats BC and whats DR. I am talking about how to handle results of those effects.
Minion getting killed, deahtratles triggering, secrets triggering, card drawn, etc.
You remove initial step - the entire sequence changes. If that initial effect didn’t happen - the player would have made other moves differently. How do you undo/remake that?

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I’ll pay that. Now it seems the anti battlecry tech will be trivial to play around, and some quests will still need a rethink :joy:

Doing different coding in particular situations where the Battlecry affected another minion/face/etc.
For example, if it buffed a minion, the code could work like at Silence. If a 4/2 minion gets 6/5 after a buff, and if after that this the minion attacks and gets to 6/1, once you use that “Cancel the last battlecry” that specific minion gets to 4/1, like at silence.

Well the main reason control dissapeared from the meta was that the classic anti-combo tech cards (Dirty Rat, Illucia, Mutanus, etc) became completely ineffective because the reward was protected by being literally in the Quest and you can finish it whenever you want and play the reward in the same turn.
It wasn’t too hard to play around dirty rat either, but the card was still pretty good against combo. The battlecry I proposed could be the same cup of tea, but usable in more archetypes and against more decks than just questlines.

You should just think about design not implementation.

Designing a ‘cancel the last BC’ card sounds like a nightmare to me and would be unintuitive and tricky to use, also just doesn’t fit with the proactive nature of Hs.

I was surprised Weblord wasn’t in the new core set, that card would be a cool addition to standard without being game breaking.

Would be a skill-testing card which could be pretty powerful in a Bc heavy meta.

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ok let say:
I had minion A 2/2 on board
You had minion B 6/6 on board
I play minion X with BC: give A +4/+4 and trade A into B.
You now play : undo Battlecry. What happens?

Nothing. The minion died so it ignores the buff-undo since minion A left the board.

Depends. It is the type of card that more archetypes can use, not just reactive playstyles. For example an aggro deck could use it to stop Xyrella, Reno.
Also not all cards have to fit with a proactive playstyles. If it was like this, cards like Xyrella, Duskbreaker, Reno would of never existed.

wait what? I just undo the last battlecry! none of that suppose to happen! What good is your undo - if nothing changed??

Well the battlecry just did what was asked to do. If there is no minion to undo the buffs/action, then it just ignores it since the code says “Gives A +4/+4” but A doesn’t exist. Something like:
“If (A==1)
Remove +4/+4;
Else
Nothing”

I think you’re just playing the inverted battlecry on existing board/deck. It’s not a Cher song or a Delorian!

And that’s a relatively simple example! Imagine I play Acrobatics and one of the cards I’m given is a bc draw card that enables me to complete that stage of the Dh quest , which reduces the cost of cards in my hand meaning I can play a spectral sight to further buff my weapon and play Felosophy to copy the 6/7 Taunt minion which I then play 2 of , playing all these cards triggers galloping saviour secret that I kill with my weapon which then triggers avenge!
There are many many similarly convoluted chains of plays which could lead to all sorts of bizarre resolutions, seems like a bad idea to me!

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You’re overthinking it… in that example your battlecry is draw a card, so you instead shuffle a card (if you have one). It’s not undoing battlecries, just playing a reverse effect.

At least that’s how I read it.

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That’s the problem with your approach.
There are like 100 different BC type of effects with potentially 10,000 results from effects of those BC. The way you want to do this - you will need to make a list of 10,000 points each of which will apply to a specific unique situation of BC-undo. And you simply can’t do that. If you create new effect - it has to be universal.

In that situuation, it ignores everything except the “Battlecry: Draw a card”, which means you just send back a card from your hand to the top of your deck. If you have no cards in hand, then it does nothing. It’s not supposed to go back in time, just to undo what that specific battlecry did.

I understand this but those are very particular situations that can be easily resolved and are not that many. Most battlecries are “Draw a card” or “Add that spell to your hand” or “deal damage”, most don’t have particular situations. The card’s effect is supposed to care only about what is wrote in the last battlecry, not to undo everything it went after it.
Like if it’s “Deal 3 damage to a minion” and the minion dies, then it just ignores and it does nothing because the minion died(if it’s too hard in codes to revive it).

Ok everyone, resolve this =)

I play minion A, that summons minion B which is 3/3 Rush.
I run my 3/3 Rush into my opponent minion C, which is 2/2
C dies, B lives.
Now minion C has Deathrattle effect which draws SPECIFIC CARD from the deck - let say Minion D, which has BC effect: Undo Battlecry.

Now my opponent plays minion D for his Undo BC effect.

What happens? Now A and B both still onboard and therefore targetable.
Does effect prevent minion B from being spawned?
And hence from killing C?
And hence C deathrattle doesn’t trigger , and doesn’t draw D?
And then D cannot be played?
And hence Undo BC never happens?
And then B is still spawned?
And then C still dies?
And then D is drawn and played?
And BC is undone?
And then B never spawns, and doesn’t kill C, and C doesn’t draw D and D is not played…

Enjoy :wink:

I’m a convert, I think that “your opponent plays an inverted copy of their last battlecry” is an interesting effect.

But still a lot of work to code as each battlecry needs to support inverted logic :slight_smile:

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There could literally be an exponentially growing list of conditions and variation based of board state. You simply cannot anticipate each possible cause and effect without breaking game code and logical flow of the game.

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= Add 3 health to a minion (at random)

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