Nine Lives and Magnetic

General Discussion
1

So i encountered a problematic play with my hunter deck today. Im playing a deck with nine lives and some mechs like spider bomb, ursatron and zilliax in it. the situation was, that i had already played an ursatron ealier in the game which has died and my opponent flooded the board some turns after. so then i decided to get rid of some of his minions with zilliax and a spiderbomb attached to it, followed by playing “play dead” on zilliax with the spider bomb to trigger the deathrattle. also my opponent killed zilliax with the attached spider bomb on it. after that, my opponent played some more minions and when it was my turn again, i decided to play nine lives to get spider bomb out of it, but it didnt, it only showed my the ursatron. it might have just been an unfortunate playing order, that i could have avoided by attaching zilliax to the spider bomb and not the other way around. it might be because of the megnatic mechanic acts like an enchantment, but wouldnt it be more effective or less punishing when the order doesnt matter and whatever minion you played first, you will get the deathrattle minions you magnetized from nine lives? because sometimes you cant control the order like for example when there is already a mech minion on the board. this might be a change in a positive and good working way, maybe? what do you think?

2

Well you can avoid magnetising mechs by just playing them to the right of them and yes this is an order issue as when a minion is magnetized it doesnt count as a minion being played but as a buff so minion are magnetized onto something will never count as a minion that has died or been played so they wont interact with cards like nine lifes or stuff like secrets that destroy or summon a copy of a minion played

3

ye it can be avoided, but sometimes it is not the best play when you need the bonus damage from the magnetizing minion :disappointed_relieved:

4

I think the way how Magnetic mechs work is absolutely fine. It encourages more meaningful decision making that separates noobs from good players.

5

It would be less punishing, but why should it be? As it is now, you have to choose between using the mech as buff or using it as a minion you can rediscover with Nine Lives. Each of these plays have their moment to shine right now. You would just make mech Hunter easier to play by removing this decision making and actually rewarding people for making an inferior play.
In your case, you made a mistake by playing the mechs in the wrong order. I don’t see why you should not be punished for it? People already complain that HS doesn’t require enough skill or decision making…

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Another thing that can side-step this issue is, if you’d played the spider bomb first and then magnetized zilliax onto it, rather than the other way round, the spider bomb would have still been in the resurrect pool as the resurrect pool captures the base minion and ignores any minions magnetized onto it.

7

Isn’t this one of those cases where HS rules aren’t clear for everyone? I never saw this as two minions together but rather upgrading the minion on board with minion we add to it. However it makes sense, intuitively, that there are two minions in one.

If we take my view on it, then silence, returning to hand, etc, would only preserve the original minion. But if we take the intuitive sense, then both exist, so both return to hand, both get to the graveyard, etc.

8

Well, on the hearthstone wiki one of the notes under magnetic reads thus:

“If you use a Magnetic card to upgrade a mech, that upgrade is treated as an enchantment, not as a transformation. So, for example, if the mech is silenced or returned to the hand, it loses all the effects it got from the magnetizing.”

For me there has never been any ambiguity about the mechanic. If people don’t understand how it works they can’t blame Blizzard for their lack of understanding, the information is out there if they want to find it. Ignorance isn’t really a valid excuse.

The intuitive sense you mention would be pretty silly to be honest because magnetic is a pretty powerful mechanic already. If the combined minions were still treated as 2 (or more) separate entities combined then there would be no real viable interaction with silences being used on them and returning them to hand would theoretically divide the minions back up before adding them back to the players hand not only allowing them to just replay the magnetizing combo (which is quite a scary prospect if Zilliax is involved) but it would also allow players to magnetise cheap minions early to dominate the board and then, in the late game, break them back up to combine with bigger minions to created more combos. Big magnetized minions would effectively be immune to most removal with the exception of polymorphing effects and effects that reduce health/attack, of which there are very few in the game at the minute.

The intuitive sense could, effectively, make an already powerful mechanic, pretty broken

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9

You and I have a different intuition, it seems. I’d say there’s one minion on board, so (intuitively) one minion gets returned to hand/sent to graveyard/etc.

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10

But two little magnets don’t become one, right? They’re still two objects attracted to each other due to their magnetic field.
It’s a stretch, I know, but I share Vlads intuition.

Maybe if the keyword would be ‘molten and reforged into one’, but I can’t see that fit on a card.

Edit: got interested in magnetism and I realize now I know absolutely nothing about it. Never mind this post.

Anyone a quantum mechanic here?

11

I don’t disagree with this, but the fact remains that the description of the magnetic mechanic states that it works like an enchantment, invalidating this as a viable argument. On top of that, you can’t compare real world interactions with the interactions of a fantasy world…I mean, the vast majority of mechanics in hearthstone have no real world viability :stuck_out_tongue:

12

Well of course, but I thought we were talking about intuition.
And with a word like magnetic, intuition is formed by real life, not an official description on how the mechanic works. Because you are 100% correct in that case, it leaves no room for interpretation.

But intuition is a different animal.

13

Yeah, but that’s what I’m trying to say, this intuition is based on real world knowledge, but real world knowledge doesn’t apply to a fantasy world so, as such, the intuition is invalid because it’s based on ‘false’ information

14

I agree with you there. If I’m being picky, I wouldn’t use the word ‘invalid’, I’d go for ‘wrong’. Because intuition can’t be invalid in my eyes, but that’s just semantics.

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15

Yeah, this was exactly my point. I was aware of how the mechanic worked but intuitively it “should” work differently. I mean I even like how the mechanic works. It enhances strategic decisions, for starters. But if two bodies are magnetically attracted, they are still two bodies.

I have a quantum physicist on my team, but to be honest, the more I ask him stuff, the more I’m aware of my hopeless ignorance. Here’s a cute one just as an example and keep in mind I’m probably butchering it. It is possible to physically walk through a wall but the probability of it happening is so low that it would take more than the lifetime of the universe to happen only once making it effectively impossible… oh well…

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16

I dunno, Kitty Pride does it all the time :wink:

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17

If you want to see someone walk through a wall just come and see my reaction when my mom interupts me from studying to tell me I should study more

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18

regarding intuition: they are mechs. machines. I could build a lawnmower or take the mower, disassemble it and incorporate the parts into a go-kart.

I think both interpreting a machine as a standalone or as parts of something bigger seems plausible.

regarding how it works (if that was in question somehow, sorry I just leafed through the thread): the hunter secret ‘snipe’ doesn’t trigger with the magnetic effect, so it doesn’t count as a separate minion in-game.

19

True but the keyword is Magnetic, not Reassemble, right? :slight_smile: The intuition I’m referring to is related with the keyword, not the actual hardware. Maybe Reassemble would be a better keyword, intuitively at least!

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alright, gotcha [20 characters]