Max McCall on if Taunt and/or Charge are Bad for Hearthstone

A user on the official Hearthstone message board wondered if Taunt and Charge were bad for Hearthstone.

Neither taunt nor charge are inherently bad for Hearthstone.

Taunt is great. Taunt minions let players defend themselves and their other minions and add a lot of depth to direct minion combat.

Charge can be problematic, though. Minions’ ability to directly attack other minions means that a player who achieves control of the board early will tend to snowball their lead. When you control the board, you can arrange for minion trades that further cement your board control. Minions with charge are a useful tool for allowing players who have fallen behind on the board to catch up. Spells are a good way to catch people up as well, but cards like Stormwind Knight can kill a 3/2 and establish a board at the same time. Different ways to catch up when you’re behind gives the game more texture, and offers more strategic choices.

Charge becomes a problem for Hearthstone when you use it to kill your opponent out of nowhere in one turn. Playing Druid of the Claw as a 4/4 charge for 5 is good gameplay. Playing Bluegill Warrior, casting Power Overwhelming on it twice, then copying it with Faceless Manipulator to attack your opponent for 20 isn’t. In that example, charge is only a problem because of how efficient it makes converting minion buffs into direct damage. We could make more charge minions if we made minion buffs worse, but minion buffs have more design space than charge minions. Minion buffs are also fun and also enable you to catch up with weaker minions your opponent hasn’t gotten around to trading off yet.

Note that it’s specifically cheap charge minions that tend to cause problems, because they’re easier to combine with buffs and Faceless Manipulator. No one uses Reckless Rocketeer or King Krush for evil. We’re cautiously experimenting with more expensive charge minions that are harder to use in degenerate combos. The Hogriders in Mean Streets were the first example of this, and it’s reassuring to see that no one is using them to one-shot their opponents. We’ll do more charge stuff in the future as we figure out what’s safe.

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8 Comments

  1. cparks
    February 14, 2017 at 10:57 am

    I don’t see what’s wrong with doing 20 damage in a turn if it requires a large number of cards and isn’t easily pulled off. It breaks the monotony of hearthstone and allows interesting plays/decks.

    • Thascout
      February 28, 2017 at 10:56 pm

      Yes, but decks like Renolock can just throw in a 3 card combo that isn’t interactive at all and can easily burst people from 20 hp. On the other hand, decks like DonHancho paladin with Leeroy charge combo would be a bit healthier as the deck would require more thought as to which cards to use and how to use them.

  2. Starfinguer
    February 14, 2017 at 10:16 am

    It would interesting to see a card like 3 mana 5/5 carge whaterver it deals damage deal triple the damage to your own hero , he would be perfect to make people start tinking about combos, and a fun card to make a draw deck.
    Also, I know this isn’t reddit or anything but its true this rumor about the next hero skin being a goblin? I really wanna know

  3. Nandiman
    February 14, 2017 at 7:06 am

    Taunt is cheat. Except when it’s on my side of the board. Than it’s perfectly fine.

  4. Robert
    February 14, 2017 at 2:01 am

    The truth is charge minions are only used to do damage to face and the ones that can’t do this efficiently do not see any play .

    If they wanted people to use charge for trade they should up their quality by a lot .

  5. Shepard
    February 14, 2017 at 1:04 am

    “Playing Bluegill Warrior, casting Power Overwhelming on it twice, then copying it with Faceless Manipulator to attack your opponent for 20 isn’t”

    You need all 4 cards in had and all 10 mana for this ….that combo also requaire to wait and plan you move
    and it is fun when it is landed
    Is not so fun when are on lader so many oponents that play only reno decks and pirates ….maybe next expantion will be more creative

  6. Tuvillo
    February 13, 2017 at 6:23 pm

    It’s not rocket science. Just make two types of Charge like other games- One like it is now, one for minions only. (But the minion can attack face like normal after the first turn)

  7. Liam Davies
    February 13, 2017 at 5:29 pm

    The Hogriders in Mean Streets were the first example of this, and it’s reassuring to see that no one is using them to one-shot their opponents.

    No one is using the AT ALL!