Charge


 * For the card of the same name, see Charge (card).

Charge is an ability allowing a minion to attack the same turn it is summoned or brought under a new player's control.

Charge is available to all classes, but is most strongly associated with the warrior and hunter classes. Warrior cards involving Charge include Charge, Kor'Kron Elite and Grommash Hellscream. Hunters have access to powerful Charge cards such as Huffer, Unleash the Hounds, Tundra Rhino and King Krush.

Strategy

 * Charge is a very useful ability for dealing instant damage, and often features as part of a deck's burst damage potential. Cards like Doomguard can be held until the opportunity arise to quickly defeat the opponent using the cards left in the hand.


 * Charge minions are often used to finish the opponent, sometimes as part of one turn kill (OTK) combos. Leeroy Jenkins is a good example, often combined with cards such as Shadowstep, Faceless Manipulator, Reincarnate and Power Overwhelming to deal huge damage in a single turn. Unleash the Hounds and Grommash Hellscream are also commonly used as finishers.


 * Charge can be granted through cards like Tundra Rhino, allowing beasts which do not usually possess the ability to make use of it. This can be key in making powerful plays with strong beasts such as Savannah Highmane. Unleash the Hounds is a strong example of the power of a sudden group of minions, heavily dependent on Charge.


 * Charge minions frequently feature decent Attack but relatively low Health. This ensures that they will be defeated upon attacking most targets, and otherwise can be easily dispatched by the opponent, serving to balance their ability to immediately attack with a low likelihood of surviving into the next round.

Cards with Charge
This section lists all cards which possess or provide a source of Charge.

Charge-generating cards
This section lists cards which generate Charge minions.

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

Design
Charge is historically one of the most problematic abilities in Hearthstone. This is due to the potential for Charge minions to be combined with Attack-increasing buffs and copy effects, producing excessively powerful burst combos, in the worst cases resulting in one turn kills. This lack of interactivity makes Charge a concern for the developers, who have consequently become increasingly reluctant to print new minions with unqualified Charge, as well as nerfing numerous cards critical to Charge-based combos.

Designer Max McCall clarifies that the ability itself can be positive, such as for allowing players to catch up when behind on the board, helping to counter the strength of consistently developing the board. However, when a Charge card is cheap enough to combo with other effects, or it is otherwise viable to achieve a one turn kill using it, the ability "becomes a problem". One solution to this could be to restrict the availability of buffs and other key combo pieces, but these types of effect offer a larger design space, with the result that restricting them would detract from the game far more significantly than simply restricting the availability of Charge.

More recently the designers have experimented with conditional Charge effects, and are considering adding more expensive Charge minions in the future, as they "figure out what's safe".

With The Witchwood, Hearthstone introduced the related Rush effect, which is similar to Charge except that the minion cannot attack heroes on the turn it is summoned. It is possible for a minion to have both Rush and Charge (for example, if you play a Rush Beast while Tundra Rhino is on the board); in that case the minion can attack the enemy hero on its first turn.