Secret



A Secret is a spell card that is cast normally but has a delayed, hidden effect, which only takes place when a specific event occurs. When a Secret is played, a Secret icon appears on the caster's portrait, but the name and details of the Secret are not revealed to the opponent until the card is activated by its hidden condition.

Secrets can only be activated on the opponent's turn, preventing the player from triggering them themselves. There are a handful of exceptions, such as Competitive Spirit, Open the Cages, and Rigged Faire Game, which activate on your turn. However, these trigger at the start of the turn and have effects that opponents can still play around, following the general rules.

Secret is also the name of the ability all Secret cards have.

Originally, secret cards were limited to mages, paladins, and hunters. In the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion, rogues became the fourth secret class.

Multiple Secrets

 * Players cannot have more than one copy of the same Secret active at any one time. Players are unable to play Secret cards which match one of their active Secrets.


 * When played directly from the hand, players can have up to 5 different Secrets active at a time. Once this limit is reached, the player will be unable to play further Secret cards. Kezan Mystic also does not allow the player to exceed 5 Secrets. Mysterious Challenger will not play more than 5 Secrets from your deck.


 * As of January 2015, a bug allows Mad Scientist to place additional different Secrets into play through its Deathrattle, even if this causes the number of Secrets to exceed 5. Secrets beyond the 5 limit will activate and take effect normally, and in the correct order.


 * Multiple Secrets can trigger from a single event, for example a minion attacking the hero will activate all Explosive Trap, Misdirection and Freezing Trap secrets active on that hero at the time.


 * Only one Secret can take effect at a time, and multiple activated Secrets will always take effect in the order in which they were played. For example, a minion attacking a hunter who has played Misdirection followed by Freezing Trap will be Misdirected before then being returned to the controlling player's hand. This can make the order in which Secrets are played extremely significant.


 * If a Secret removes the specific target for another Secret which was already triggered, the second Secret will not take effect, since it now lacks a target. For example, if Freezing Trap removes the minion which would have been the target of Misdirection, the Misdirection will not trigger, since it no longer has a target.
 * Note that this rule only applies for Secrets which require specific targets; Secrets such as Explosive Trap and Snake Trap do not require targets, and will always take effect once triggered, even if the original trigger minion has been removed from play.

Secrets
This section lists all collectible Secrets.

Related cards
The following cards have specific synergy with Secrets, such as providing additional effects when Secrets are cast, or destroying Secrets already in play.

For cards which have synergy with spells in general, but not specifically with Secrets, see Spell-related.

Arena rotation
The following secrets are offered in the current Arena rotation, updated for June 3rd, 2021:

History
Secrets likely evolved from the cancelled "Combat Tricks" feature, removed early in the game's development. Similar to Secrets, these allowed players with active Combat Tricks who attacked their opponent to play a card on their opponent's turn, disrupting their play. Ultimately it was found that removing Combat Tricks actually made the game more fun, as well as further improving its speed. It seems the idea was not wholly abandoned though, since Secrets appear to represent a weaker form of the same mechanic.

Rogues originally had Secrets, but this was moved to Paladins during the game's alpha. The designers were struggling to give the Paladins a class identity while Rogues already had "a ton a sneaky things" with Backstab, Stealth and Combo effects. The change served to refocus each class' strategic focus, helping to give Paladins "something that was their own thing" and giving Rogues a clearer picture of what the class wanted to do. Over 3 years later, Secrets were re-introduced to Rogues in the Kobolds and Catacombs expansion. According to Game Designer Peter Whalen, the developers wanted to capture the fantasy of each specific class in the expansion, with Secrets making a lot of thematical sense for the "sneaky and tricky" Rogues, and "now lots of classes have different stuff going on", allowing for the re-introduction of Rogue Secrets.

The apparent original line-up of Rogues, Hunters and Mages may reflect a connection between Secrets and the // mechanics in World of Warcraft, with these the only classes (except Druids in ) capable of employing such mechanics to ambush their opponents, similar to the function of Secrets in Hearthstone. In this respect Secrets are more similar to World of Warcraft Stealth than the Hearthstone Stealth ability itself, allowing the player to genuinely surprise the opponent.

Patch 1.0.0.4944
With Patch 1.0.0.4944, secrets were made to only be triggered on the opponent's turn. Prior to this, players could intentionally trigger their own secrets, allowing them to make use of them as additional spell effects, rather than counter-abilities.

While most secrets were unaffected, some interesting play options were intentionally removed by this change. The developers stated that the ability to trigger your own secrets was preventing them from creating new and powerful secrets, due to being easily triggered by the controlling player prior to this change. While removing certain strategic possibilities, this change was therefore intended to allow for the creation of a diverse range of new secrets. The subsequently announced Curse of Naxxramas mage secret Duplicate was confirmed as an example of a card that the earlier design would have prevented from being implemented.

This rule was accepted as standard for all Secrets, until nearly 18 months later when The Grand Tournament added a specific exception, in the form of Competitive Spirit.

Future of Secrets
Adding Secrets to a new class is unlikely to happen again. Secrets require build-around cards to support them, since players rarely play Secrets by themselves. In order to set up an expansion, the class needs at least three Secrets (otherwise the effect isn't really a "Secret") as well as good support cards for them. That leaves very little room for other cards in that class that set. The devs realized this while designing Rogue's Secrets after having explored the concept. Since then, the idea of another Secret class hasn't been seriously considered. Having four Secret classes is already a lot, and possibly even too much.

However, if a new class were to get Secrets, it would probably coincide with a new Core set where all Secrets are removed from one or two classes, so that the new class' Secrets can still feel special. Warlock is a good thematic fit for another Secret class.

Trivia

 * Having 5 secrets active can partially hide a hero's armor total, if playing on the desktop game client.

Patch changes

 * The first Rogue Secrets are added.
 * Competitive Spirit is added, the first Secret to specifically break the rule that Secrets can only activate on the opponent's turn.
 * Secrets can now only activate on your opponent’s turn.