Deathrattle



Deathrattle is an ability where the stated effect occurs when the minion or weapon is destroyed. Cards with Deathrattle appear with a skull and crossbones when in play. All classes have access to Deathrattles, but they're more abundant for Hunters then other classes.

Sequence of events


Deathrattles and death-related effects take place after damage has been exchanged and minions/weapons have been destroyed and removed from the board. This prevents Deathrattles from acting upon other minions which were destroyed in the same combat. It also prevents several simultaneous events from acting upon consequences of Deathrattles or other triggered events. The same is true for secrets and triggered effects which are activated from death, such as Duplicate and Cult Master, which are treated exactly the same as Deathrattles.

Note that all effects triggered from the death of a minion will play out in the order in which they were put into play, regardless of type of effect. For example, if a mage plays Duplicate followed by Abomination, and the Abomination is then destroyed on the opponent's turn, the Duplicate will activate before the Abomination's own Deathrattle; while if the Abomination was played first, its Deathrattle will activate first, followed by the secret. Deathrattles do not gain any special priority.

Note also that when multiple minions are killed simultaneously, their deaths will be resolved one at a time, in the order in which they entered play.

Once all destroyed minions have been removed from the board, each death will be resolved, including the activation of any death-related effects - this includes the minion's own Deathrattle, triggered effects such as Cult Master, and Secrets such as Duplicate. Resolution takes place one minion at a time, in order in which the minions entered play. As each death is resolved, all eligible triggered events will play out in the order in which the effect entered play, including the minion's own Deathrattle, Secrets and other effects. Each effect will play out individually and resolve, before the next activates. Once all related effects have played out for the minion, the next simultaneous minion's death will begin to resolve.

For example, if a Sylvanas Windrunner attacks another Sylvanas Windrunner, destroying both minions, the Deathrattle of the Sylvanas which was summoned first will take place first, followed by the Deathrattle of the Sylvanas which was summoned second. Order of minion summoning can therefore be extremely significant.

For a more thorough explanation of Deathrattles and their interactions with other effects, see the Advanced rulebook.

Cards with Deathrattle
This section lists all cards which possess or provide Deathrattle.

Deathrattle generating cards
This section lists cards which generate Deathrattle minions.

Deathrattle granting cards
This section lists cards which grant the Deathrattle ability to other minions or to itself.

History
In the build-up to Curse of Naxxramas, the adventure's class cards were revealed to players one by one, many of which featured Deathrattle effects, with text that did not specify that the effects were randomly targeted. This led to widespread confusion over the function of the effects. In a special forum post, Ben Brode explained that by omitting the word 'random', card text could be shortened. By establishing the rule that Deathrattles were never targetable, the developers would not have to explicitly state this on each card, which could eventually allow for the development of more "strategically deep" card effects, due to having more card space in which to describe them, potentially otherwise a limiting factor. Brode stated that "setting expectations now that triggers never allow choices allows us to make cards that otherwise would have too much text", explaining that the omission of explicit statements to this effect "lays the groundwork for shortening the text."

However, in the face of player confusion and preference for random effects to be explicitly described as such, the policy was altered, and the word 'random' added to several Naxxramas cards.

Patch changes

 * Fixed a bug where cards that target Deathrattle minions would still work with Deathwarden in play.
 * The order in which Deathrattle abilities resolve has been updated to be more consistent.