In battlegrounds I was playing Ozumat whose hero power says “when you have space in combat” and I had a toxic tumbleweed out to counter a dragon player which says: “Start of combat”. Yet it summoned the tentacle first, but that can’t be right cuz “in combat” is always after “start of combat”. Or is it me getting these texts wrong?
Do you mean that you’re not in combat at the start of said combat ?
There is an order of operations in the game. Hero abilities take first priority so if indeed there is an open spot available, it takes the first chance to do its thing. Next are Trinkets if they have a start of combat influence. Then Tavern Spells take their turn. A good example is your Ozumat one, another is Illidan’s passive power where his two outermost minions attack right away before anything else can happen on the board at all. Illidan’s power even has priority over other hero powers beginning at the start of combat. Consider if playing as Illidan you cast the same toxic tumbleweed spell and purposefully left a space open for it to generate. With your understanding of the order of events you might expect the toxic tumbleweed to happen first but it does not, in fact Illidan’s power triggers the two outermost minions to do their attacks, and if the opponent has a hero power that does anything at start of combat it will happen, then each player’s trinkets do their things if applicable, and now is when the toxic tumbleweed will be generated and do its thing. Similar events happen for Ozumat, its power will always happen before any spells youve cast for that combat to happen.
Not a bug, just a case of not knowing the order of events and the priority of when they trigger compared to other start of combat effects. Basically if you really want that toxic tumbleweed to happen while Ozumat, you are gonna have to have 2 empty spots and also doublecheck your next opponent’s hero power and trinkets to see if it will even be effective.
For me I try to remember it like PEMDAS from math order of operations.
Hero Powers first (Illidan always wins this coin flip)
Trinkets Second
Tavern Spells Cast
Minion Abilities (In order of Left to Right)*
*This is also helpful to know for how things occur at the start of your actual turns once combat is over. So many times I was not mindful of my Quillboars positions for this and I would discard my spell in hand to gain gold and then not have anything in hand for the next Quillboar to generate more blood gems for me, making their abilities never give me anything. So now I always make sure it will discard to generate more gems first before the other can discard to generate gold. Took me a while to pick up on this im afraid to admit lol.