Magtheridon + Shadowmadness bug

Good day, found a bug resulting in an arena loss today involving the card Magtheridon. Frankly speaking, I killed one of the warders by using Shadow Madness and charging it into a huge taunt, then proceeded to cut down the last remaining one. The result - as I killed the last one, the count on Mag went up to “2” instead of 3. I reckon that’s because for some reason, he isn’t tied to the minions individually (even though the flavor text/information makes it clear otherwise), but instead is counting how many warders died on the enemy board. Cheers.

It’s this, and that’s how it’s supposed to work.

If you took one with Shadow Madness then it is no longer an enemy warder while it is under your control. So it’s death will not count.

This isn’t a bug.

Descriptions and mechanics are hard, I guess. Description: (sentence start) Summon three 1/3 enemy warders (sentence end). -->> (sentence start) When they die, destroy all minions and awaken (sentence end). Do you see something like “When all enemy warders die, destroy all minions and awaken” ? I don’t. It specifically says “when” they die. Same mechanics would apply to some of the old adventures, where you had to keep a minion alive or avoiding damaging them. Regardless of on which side it died or took damage, you would still either lose or get other unavoidable consequences. There is no “Enemy” in the 2’nd part of the description, therefor your argument is invalid.

2 Likes

“They” in this context is referencing the subject of the prior sentence, aka “enemy warders”. This is common usage in English.

If it’s on your side of the field, it is no longer an enemy warder, so it won’t count.

This isn’t a bug.

Right… so, all the other specific descriptions in the game are just random by-products. /nextthreadpls

I fully agree that the description is at least ambiguous. “They” can refer to 3 enemy wardens, or it can refer to the specific wardens that were summoned. Both are correct interpretations within English language rules.

Reality is, Magtheridon requires three Wardens to die on the enemy side and doesn’t care a flying hoot whether those were the one summoned or not.
A think the card would be easier to understand if they rephrased it as:
Dormant . Battlecry: Summon three 1/3 enemy Warders. After thee enemy Wardens die, destroy all minions and awaken.”.
(But that would be hard to fit on the card, I’m afraid).

1 Like

Or… just fix the mechanics, so it means exactly what it says. Just checked both Japanese and Russian versions, they are literally exactly the same. It’s not about english, never was. It’s just a different mechanic from what it’s said to be.
h ttps://i.gyazo.com/901c7a28221b4de37ac627c8c3a7a394.png
h ttps://i.gyazo.com/3ff9428e432caa61b92ba7a562cfcb1d.png (since blizzard for some reason doesn’t let me link pictures and URL’s).

Thanks. Just tried it, said the same thing. Maybe it’s an account thing. . .

Based on past experiences with the most similar card I remember (The Darkness), I dare to assume that how it now works is how it is intended.

Darkness was quite different though, and it was quite logical. The overdraw -> purge mechanics for instance made sense. This just doesn’t feel like a hearthstone card at all. There are a million ways to make it a dead slot on board as it is (evolve, shadow-step mechanics, buffing it out of reach, transferring it into a sheep/hexing and etc), but this is well within the description and it makes little sense why there are no individual links to the warders. And I ain’t even talking about logic here, logically speaking as long as there are “no warders” (since… well, duh, he is trapped because they are warding him off) - he should be set free immediately. Like no matter how I look at it, it’s just a weird card with not thought through mechanics and synergies and a misleading description to boot.

1 Like

The similarities are there as well, though.

The Darkness would wake up after your opponent draws three candles.
Not after they draw the candles shuffled in. With Elekk (or if you manage to play two copies of The Darkness), you would shuffle six candles and the first three make Darkness wake up.
Not after the candles are drawn by (whoever). Swap the decks with King Togwaggle and the Darkness will never awaken.
Not after all candles are gone from the deck. If a candle gets burned due to overdraw, the Darkness will never wake up.

All these three interactions are similar to how Magtheridon works, except that Magteridon triggers on three Wardens dying on the enemy side, and not to three Candles being drawn by the enemy.

2 Likes

If you’re looking at it from a flavor perspective, The Darkness is the same. There are three candles in the deck, and if you mill them, or swap decks and draw them on the wrong side of the board, he stays asleep forever. Even though there are no more candles to keep The Darkness at bay, it doesn’t count. However, it never came up as much because losing candles was much less common than the various ways to lose Warders. I think that even though it’s somewhat consistent with the Darkness’ design, changing the condition from drawing cards to killing minions reveals how this dormant “quest-like” minion design can become really counter-intuitive when more dynamics are involved.

If nothing else, I’d say it’s really dodgy to have to assume “Summon enemy warders” + “When they die” = “the warders have to still be enemies when they die”. If that were not already an existing requirement, I can’t imagine anyone would call it misleading. Furthermore, the Hellfire Warders also make no indication that their ownership matters, even though they have more space to spare. They don’t say “The enemy Magtheridon will destroy all minions and awaken…”. A text change along those lines certainly wouldn’t hurt. Though if it were up to me I’d much rather suggest that they be changed so that dying counts towards both the original Magtheridon that summoned them (regardless of owner) and all other enemy Magtheridons (so copies of him or of Warders can count as well).

1 Like

Or, make it a must-have card in half the decks and change “die” to “removed”. Board wipe, 12/12 minion turn 5 and all hail mid & control. There is a lot of stuff that can be done, but I’d just be happy with either the mechanics being fixed or the description made more uglier, boring and longer - but correct.