Shadowboxer



Shadowboxer is a rare priest minion card, from the Goblins vs Gnomes set.

Strategy
This minion is similar to Knife Juggler, but with a synergy based around healing instead of minion summoning. Paired with a few AoE healing effects, this minion can easily deal a dozen damage to random enemies, in addition to its value as a body on the board. Drop it right before using Circle of Healing or Holy Nova for lots of damage.

Because of its potential for ongoing and uncontrollable damage, this minion can serve as a soft taunt in a similar fashion to Knife Juggler. Even if it only deals a few points of bonus damage, it may serve the purpose of drawing enemy removal spells or attacks, deflecting attention from other minions. Given its low cost, this minion need only deal a few points of damage to be well worth the mana.

This minion is excellent for finishing damaged minions, for thinning boards of multiple smaller minions, or popping Divine Shields.

Trivia

 * Shadowboxer is an excellent example of the invention of a new card causing the game's underlying mechanics to be revised. Prior to the introduction of Shadowboxer, AoE healing effects healed targets one at a time, with any triggered effects activating after each healing occurred. For example, with a Northshire Cleric on the board, a spell like Circle of Healing would heal one minion at a time, with each followed immediately by a card being drawn, before moving on to the next minion. However, this design presented a problem for Shadowboxer's design. The current mechanic at the time of the card's invention meant that with Shadowboxer's triggered effect activated after each healing, and therefore before all healing had taken place, a Circle of Healing would potentially heal the very target the Shadowboxer had just damaged, thus undoing its effects. Likely as a result of the invention of this card, the game mechanic was altered prior to the card's addition, with the result that all single-effect healing now takes place at once, before any related triggers are activated.
 * Shadowboxer also provides an example of how formerly innocuous designs can become problematic much later. The introduction of the Lifesteal ability, while originally unimportant to the power of this card, became somewhat problematic in Kobolds & Catacombs when Unidentified Elixir could potentially grant any minion Lifesteal. A Shadowboxer with Lifesteal would trigger its ability, healing your hero, then trigger its ability again, repeating until your hero was restored to full health. This became especially bad in The Boomsday Project, with Zilliax having the ability to give Lifesteal to any Mech. This would allow the Priest to fully heal themselves and deal a large amount of damage fairly reliably. Blizzard issued a preemptive nerf to Shadowboxer to prevent this combo.

Patch changes

 * Now reads: Whenever a minion is healed, deal 1 damage to a random enemy.
 * Previously: Whenever a character is healed, deal 1 damage to a random enemy.
 * Added.