I wanted to discuss the issue with the Spellbender secret in Hearthstone. For those who don’t know, Spellbender states, “When an enemy casts a spell on a minion, summon a 1/3 as the new target.” This mechanic is supposed to disrupt your opponent’s targeted spells by redirecting them to a summoned 1/3 minion.
The problem is when this secret interacts with cards like Chaotic Consumption and Dark Pact. Both of these cards require you to destroy a friendly minion to activate their effects. However, when Spellbender triggers, the 1/3 minion that gets summoned is on my side of the board, not my opponent’s. Despite this, the spell still completes as if it had destroyed a friendly minion, which in this case it absolutely shouldn’t.
Let’s break it down:
Chaotic Consumption: This card is supposed to destroy a friendly minion to destroy an enemy minion. If Spellbender activates, it shouldn’t count as destroying a friendly minion because the 1/3 minion is not on the opponent’s side of the board. Yet, the enemy minion still gets destroyed, which feels like a huge oversight.
Dark Pact: Similar issue here. Dark Pact is meant to restore 8 Health to your hero after you destroy a friendly minion. When Spellbender redirects the spell to the 1/3, the opponent still gains the healing, even though they didn’t destroy a friendly minion.
This interaction goes against the core mechanics of these spells. Spellbender is meant to disrupt spellcasting, not facilitate the opponent’s game plan. When the secret triggers, it should prevent these spells from fully activating because the “friendly minion” requirement is no longer being met.
this is a busted interaction that needs to be addressed. It doesn’t make sense from a gameplay perspective and undermines the strategy behind playing Spellbender to counter these kinds of effects. These are just a few cards that have this iteraction. There are dozens of cards this affects.
No, because Spellbender isn’t really a card most players put in their decks. It’s not a good card. I don’t think it was even in secret mage when that deck was good in wild.
If by problem you mean working as intended then yes 100%.
Both Chaotic Consumption and Dark Pact require a target to activate, your opponent fulfilled the requirement, after that Spellbender activates and changes the target of the spell that allready had its requirements done.
How do you figure? It clearly says destroy a FRIENDLY minion. When did the friendly minion get destroyed? If the cards said destroy A minion i would have no issue with this.
IM the one playing the secret, pay attention. and I have a pretty high win rate running it in my current custom deck. Sorry i dont just copy whatever the current meta deck is, not sure how people find that fun.
It’s a weak secret. I don’t see why you would be running it unless you are running a full secret package and you are using it in hopes of confusing your opponent. Post your deck. I play Secrets. Maybe I can help.
And again your opponent did just that, he picked a friendly minion to destroy fulfilling the requirement.
Your secret changed the target after that, you are confused on order it seems.
About a year ago, Dane posted a youtube video where he played a deck of “bad” secrets, including Spellbender. The idea is funny, but I bet it doesn’t win very much
There is no separate check for condition validity during resolution of an effect after a triggered event. Valid targeting is determined solely by the initial action. As a correlary, you can’t cause an effect to fizzle by invalidating the target after it has been chosen.
Maybe…whenever I use it it seems to overperform though. Opponent has board and uses Blessing of Kings? They just wasted their turn 4 and also gave the opponent a 5/7 (simple example that isn’t really used anymore but it’s what comes to mind and the point remains the same as whatever buffs are used today)
