Vaporize

Vaporize is a rare mage spell card, inducted into the Legacy set, formerly from the Classic set.

Previous availability

 * Regular Vaporize could also be obtained as a first-time reward for first time reaching Silver 10 and Gold 10 in Ranked mode from April 1, 2020 to March 25, 2021 (or as a reward of Climbing the Ranks (2/10) and (4/10) achievements).

Strategy
It is generally a good idea to play this card when your opponent has a massive monster bearing down on you (such as Deathwing). A good counter strategy is to send in a weak minion in first to burn the trap before you attack with your massive monster.

Fixed bugs

 * If a player puts Vaporize and Freezing Trap into play in that order, when an enemy minion attacks the hero, Vaporize would trigger first and mark the minion with pending destroy, then Freezing Trap would trigger and return the "dying" minion to hand. If this minion is then played, it will immediately die.
 * The minion immediately dying was fixed in Patch 3.1 or 3.2. Instead, the minion would live.
 * Freezing Trap triggering was fixed in Patch 5.0.0.12574 (WotOG patch) . This is because triggers and effects that ignore mortally wounded minions now also ignore pending destroy minions.

Lore
Surprisingly, this is not a mage ability in World of Warcraft. The only character with an ability of this name in WoW is a Bound Zephyr in the Bastion of Twilight, where it deals a respectable amount of damage and causing the afflicted player's armor to not protect them for ten seconds.

Trivia

 * The artwork for this card comes from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game "Servants of the Betrayer" series, for the card.
 * This card's art depicts a mace-wielding draenei mage summoning fire against a tauren. This is odd as mages do not traditionally wield maces, and are in fact unable to equip them in World of Warcraft, the game upon which the art was originally based.

Patch changes

 * Moved from Classic to Legacy set.
 * Now activates when a minion attacks your hero, rather than when your opponent plays a minion.
 * Now activates when a minion attacks your hero, rather than when your opponent plays a minion.