Ability

A selection of minions, each with its own ability. From left to right: Divine Shield, Deathrattle, a triggered effect, and Spell Damage.

Abilities are special effects, powers, or behaviors found on cards. For spell cards, the ability describes the total effect of playing that card, while for minion and weapon cards, abilities are special effects or powers additional to the basic functions of the card. Abilities may be described in the card's text, or granted by enchantments.

Hearthstone features a large range of abilities. Abilities may trigger in response to certain events, provide ongoing effects to certain minions, or grant special powers or characteristics. Certain often-used abilities are written in memorable shorthand form using bold-faced keywords on the card, such as Battlecry or Deathrattle, while other abilities are written out with their full description in the card text.

Minion abilities granted by card text or enchantments can be removed using the Silence ability. However, abilities granted to minions through aura effects generated by other cards can only be removed by neutralizing the aura-generating card.

Notes

• When multiple abilities are triggered simultaneously, the order of events is generally determined by the order in which the cards were played or summoned. For example, if two minions with Deathrattle die in the same combat, the minion which was summoned first will activate its Deathrattle first, followed by the minion which was summoned second. All triggered abilities will take place before the current phase of activity concludes.
• Although some abilities are only present on cards playable by a specific hero class, these cards can be played by any hero that manages to acquire them in an ongoing game (e.g. through Thoughtsteal or Mind Vision).

Keywords

This section is about keyword abilities. For keywords used to search the collection, see Keywords (collection manager).

Keywords are specific bold-faced words or terms printed on cards which specify a unique power or behavior without any explicit description. Mousing over a minion card with a keyword ability will generate a text display describing the ability. For a more detailed exploration of each keyword, and a list of related cards, click on the respective section headings.

In almost all cases, when a new keyword and mechanic is added for an expansion set, that keyword is only used in that set. (This does not apply when a new keyword is added for existing behavior, as when Poisonous and Lifesteal were added.) Two notable exceptions: Discover and Rush were added in League of Explorers and The Witchwood, and have been used heavily since their introduction.

For a discussion of why keywords do not exist for some often-seen behaviors in cards, see the trivia section.

Evergreen Keywords

These keywords can be found across multiple card sets and are frequently given new variations and synergies.

Battlecry

A triggered effect which activates when the card is played from your hand.

Choose One

Gives the controlling player the ability to choose between two or more effects stated in the card. Found only on druid cards.

Combo

Triggers an effect when played from the hand if you already played another card this turn. Found only on rogue cards.

Deathrattle

A triggered effect which activates when the minion dies. It is identified by a skull and crossbones that appears at the bottom of the minion's portrait.

Discover

Choose one card from three random class-appropriate cards.

Divine Shield

Absorbs the first source of any damage, removing the shield.

Freeze

Frozen characters lose their next attack.

Lifesteal

Damage dealt by the card also restores Health to the controlling hero. It is identified by a broken purple heart that appears at the bottom of the minion's portrait.

Poisonous

Any minion damaged by a card with Poisonous is destroyed. A type of triggered effect, Poisonous is identified by a green bubbling flask at the bottom of the minion's portrait.

Outcast

Gains an effect if it's the right-most or left-most card in your hand. Found only on demon hunter cards.

Overload

You have {X} less mana next turn. This effect is activated when the card is played from the hand, and typically allows a powerful card to be played for a low mana cost this round, at the price of reduced mana next turn. Found only on shaman cards.

Rush

Enables the minion to attack enemy minions on the same turn that it is summoned.

Secret

A type of spell card that remains hidden until its trigger condition occurs, revealing it and triggering its effect. Most Secrets can only be activated during the opponent's turn, but some exceptions activate at the start of the player's next turn. Only one of any given Secret can be in play for a given player at a time.

Silence

Removes all card text, enchantments, and abilities from the target minion, except for auras provided by external cards in play. Silence does not prevent enchantments and abilities from being applied to said minion afterwards, however.

Stealth

Minions with Stealth may not be the target of enemy attacks, spells or abilities until they attack or deal damage. Once they attack or deal damage, Stealth is removed. Minions with Stealth can still be affected by AoE spells such as Consecration, and randomly targeted spells such as Arcane Missiles.

Spell Damage

Increases the output of your damaging spells by {X}. Spell Damage is indicated by blue and purple sparkles rising from the card.

Taunt

Enemies must attack minions with Taunt before any non-Taunt characters. This includes minions and hero attacks. Taunt is illustrated by a large shield-like border.

Windfury

Can attack twice each turn. Windfury is indicated by multiple wind-like lines around the card.

Other Keywords

The following keywords only appear in specific sets or are used very sparingly.

Adapt

Choose from one of three possible upgrades from a list of ten.

Casts When Drawn

The spell card is automatically cast for no mana when drawn from your deck, and the next card in the deck is then drawn. Only found on a few Uncollectible spells.

Charge

Enables the minion to attack on the same turn that it is summoned. Originally an evergreen keyword, it has been phased out in favor of Rush.

Choose Twice

A variation of Choose One that allows the player to combine two options (or pick the same option twice) from a list. Found only on druid cards.

Corrupt

The card gains an additional effect if the player plays a more expensive card while it's in their hand.

Counter

Prevents a spell that was just cast from taking effect. Currently the only card to use Counter is the mage spell Counterspell; see that page for details.

Dormant

The minion becomes a Permanent until certain conditions are fulfilled.

Echo

Adds another copy of the card to the hand after it's played that disappears at the end of the turn, and can be replayed indefinitely that turn.

Frenzy

A one-time triggered effect that activates the first time the minion survives damage.

Immune

Prevents damage dealt from any source to the target, and prevents all enemy interaction with the target.

Inspire

A triggered effect that activates each time the controlling hero uses their Hero Power. It is identified by a blue flag that appears at the bottom of the minion's portrait.

Invoke

If a version of Galakrond is in the deck, triggers his hero power and contributes to upgrading him.

Magnetic

Playing a Magnetic minion to the left of a Mech merges the two cards together, combining their stats and effects.

Mega-Windfury

Can attack four times each turn. Mega-Windfury is indicated by multiple wind-like lines around the card.

Overkill

A triggered effect that activates when dealing more damage than needed to kill the target.

Passive

Cards that continuously provide a global effect to the game via an aura. Passive hero powers are a main source of this ability. All Passive cards currently known have no mana cost associated with them.

Quest

A special type of spell card that does not take effect until certain requirements are met, granting a Reward upon completion. Active Quests and their Reward can be seen by either player while in play. Each Quest will be automatically included in the player's mulligan. All Quests are legendary. A player can only have one active Quest at a time.

Reborn

The first time the minion dies, it returns to life with 1 Health remaining. Reborn is represented by a cracked blue glow around the minion.

Recruit

Summons a random minion from the player's deck. A keyworded version of Put into battlefield, found only on Kobolds & Catacombs cards with this effect.

Sidequest

A type of spell card that does not take effect until certain requirements are met, granting a Reward upon completion. Unlike Quests, Sidequests do not start in the mulligan. Only one of any given Sidequest can be in play for a given player at a time.

Spellburst

A one-time Triggered effect that does something the first time the controller cast a spell. It is identified by a sparkle that appears at the bottom of the portrait.

Start of Game

A type of triggered effect that activates at the start of the game.

Twinspell

Casting the spell puts another copy into your hand, but without the Twinspell ability.

Keyworded Generation abilities

Some card generation or summoning effects use a bold-faced word to denote their ability.

Death Knight

Powerful cards that are generated from The Lich King and Arfus, considered to belong to their own class.

Jade Golem

Each Jade Golem summoned throughout the match is +1/+1 larger than the last. Found only on Druid, Rogue, Shaman, and Jade Lotus Tri-class cards.

Lackey

1 mana 1/1 minions with useful Battlecries.

Piece of C'Thun

The body parts of C'Thun. Playing all four will shuffle C'Thun, the Shattered into your deck.

Spare Part

1 mana spells with minor benefits.

Other abilities

Can't attack

Prevents a card from attacking.

Can't attack heroes

Prevents a card from attacking a hero.

Card draw effect

Causes the player to draw one or more cards from their deck.

Cast spell

Casts a spell on behalf of the controlling player.

Copy

Copies an existing card. Usually combined with a Summon effect to summon the copy into the battlefield, or a generate effect to place it into the player's hand.

Deal damage

Deals damage to a character, attempting to reduce its Health by the stated amount.

Destroy

Destroys a minion, weapon, Secret or Hero without dealing damage to it.

Disable Hero Power

Causes both players to be unable to use their Hero Power. This effect does not work against Adventure- and Mission-specific Hero Powers.

Discard

Causes the player to discard one or more cards from their hand.

Elusive

An unofficial term for minions which cannot be targeted by spells or Hero Powers, from either player. The term "evasive" is also used, especially after Descent of Dragons.

Enchant

Modifies the statistics or card text of one or more cards. May be temporary, permanent, or ongoing.

Enrage

While damaged, this minion gains the stated effect. Prior to Patch 11.0.0.23966, Enrage appeared as a keyword, but was replaced with generic text due to its scarcity.

Equip

Equips the hero with the stated weapon.

Force attack

Forces a character to attack.

Forgetful

A term for a minion which has a 50% chance of attacking the wrong enemy. Forgetful is a type of triggered effect.

Gain Armor

Causes the controlling hero to gain Armor.

Generate

Generates a new card, and places it into the player's hand.

Highlander

Has an effect when your deck has no duplicates.

Increment attribute

Adds or subtracts a value from something's Attack, Health, Cost, or Durability.

Joust

Reveals a random card from each player's deck. If the player who initiated the Joust produces a card with a higher mana cost, they win the Joust, activating a secondary effect. Both cards are then shuffled back into their respective decks.

Mind control effect

Transfers ownership of the targeted minion.

Modify cost

Alters the mana cost of another card or Hero Power.

Multiply attribute

Multiplies something's Attack, Health or Cost by some value, which so far has always been 2.

No Durability loss

Causes the possessing hero's weapon to not lose any Durability during their turn.

Permanent

Permanent "minions" lack Mana cost, Attack and Health, are untargetable, are immune to all effects except their own, do not count as minions for effects, and take up a space on the battlefield.

Playerbound

Provides a permanent effect bound to the player. Similar to the aura-generation effect associated with the keyword ability "Passive".

Put into battlefield

Directly places a card from the player's deck or hand into the battlefield, without triggering any Battlecries.

Put into hand

Draws cards of a specific type directly from the player's deck and places them into the player's hand.

Refresh Mana

Refills the player's empty Mana Crystals.

Remove from deck

Removes cards directly from the player's deck, without placing them into the hand. Similar to discard effects.

Replace

Replace one card with another, without destroying or discarding the original card.

Restore Health

Heals a character, increasing their Health by the stated amount, up to but not beyond their current maximum Health.

Return

Returns the target minion to its owner's hand.

Set attribute

Via an enchantment, assigns a new value for something's Attack, Health, or Cost.

Shuffle into deck

Places a card into a player's unused deck, with its placement randomly determined.

Spend mana

Spends mana in addition to the normal mana cost to produce an extra effect. Currently, all cards with this ability spend all available mana, and the effect is proportional to the amount of mana spent.

Summon

Summons the specified minion/s. Distinct from simply playing a minion card from the hand, this is an ability found on spell or minion cards, sometimes triggered by a Battlecry or Deathrattle.

Transform

Changes a minion into something else irreversibly, entirely replacing the previous card.

Transform in hand

At the start of the controlling player's turn, changes a card into something else while it is in the player's hand.

Unlimited attacks

Allows the possessing hero to attack any number of times each turn.

Types of ability

See also: Tags

These are rough categories of abilities that describe certain common behaviours.

Area of effect

Affects all characters of the stated type.

In-hand effect

Effects which activate while the card is in the player's hand.

On-discard effect

Effects which activate upon being discarded from the hand.

On-draw effect

Effects which activate upon being drawn from the deck.

Ongoing effect

An ability which provides a specific effect on an ongoing basis.

Positional effect

Takes effect depending on the specific order and position of minions on the battlefield.

Random effect

Chooses a target or effect at random.

Removal

Used to remove minions from the board. Generally refers to destroy, transform or high-damage effects.

Triggered effect

An effect or behaviour which only activates in response to a certain event. On minions, these are denoted by a lightning bolt icon at the bottom of the portrait.

Boss and Tavern Brawl abilities

The following abilities so far only appear on cards featured in boss encounters and Tavern Brawls.

Auto-cast

Causes the Hero Power to be used automatically at the start of each turn, provided the hero has enough mana to spare.

Auto-Attack

Causes the minion to attack automatically at the end of the turn, targeting the minion or minions directly across from it. The minion cannot be commanded to attack, or prevented from attacking.

Shrine

Whenever the minion would be destroyed or removed from the field in any way or get Silenced, it instead becomes dormant for 3 turns.

Trivia

• According to Ben Brode, the game's alpha featured 4 or 5 keywords which were removed from the game prior to the beginning of the beta.

Keyword creation

Keywords were specifically designed by the developers to help players to quickly recognise when a large number of minions have exactly the same ability, such as minions with Taunt, saving time spent reading each individual card's text. However, while keywords make it easier in cases where they are frequently encountered, when such examples are rare, keywords can actually serve to make understanding cards harder, requiring players to mouse over cards in understand to examine their abilities. The case of the "Destroy any minion damaged by this minion" effect was cited by Ben Brode in 2014 as an example where the developers could have added a keyword, but chose instead to simply describe the ability in full, since it is was originally only found on 2 cards. Senior Producer Yong Woo explained:

"You know, keywords are double-edged swords. On the one hand, it really condenses information. I tell you Deathrattle and you know what it is right away. I tell somebody off the street Deathrattle and he is going to be like "What are you... selling me a snake?". They will not know what I am talking about, so it is a balance we have to reach between condensing the information and making too hard a set of vocabulary for new players to understand. It is something we continue to work on."

Ben Brode has also stated that when a keyword conveys more than one behaviour rule, it can be hard for players to remember these from just the keyword. For example, Taunt and Charge immediately convey that the minion possesses a single, specific ability. In contrast, the "elusive" ability is tricky because it has more than one effect, protecting the minion from both spells and hero powers, but not Battlecries or attacks. Ben Brode has stated that the elusive ability was "right on the razor's edge" regarding whether or not to create a keyword for it.

Yong Woo has stated that it is possible in the future that keywords may be added for currently existing abilities such as the "elusive" ability of the Faerie Dragon, Laughing Sister and Spectral Knight - should there come to be a sufficient number of minions with that behaviour in the game. Other card text for which keywords were considered, and for which keywords may be added in the future, include on-draw effects and Joust.

New keywords

Following its launch, the game did not see the addition of any new keywords until The Grand Tournament, when Inspire was introduced. Inspire was initially represented by the text "Whenever you use your Hero Power do X", but the developers felt that replacing it with a new keyword would both save space on cards and also highlight the new mechanic as a key feature of the new expansion. They also felt that the game had been around long enough that it was acceptable to introduce a new keyword. However, the developers did not choose to make the same expansion's new Jousting mechanic into a keyword, partly because of a lack of synergy with established keywords, and partly because it is "more in depth" than other keywords. Inspire also featured on a larger number of cards than Joust.

The League of Explorers, the next major addition of cards, saw the debut of Discover. Originally intended to debut in a Tavern Brawl, the second added keyword was postponed due to technical difficulties.

A new keyword would not be added until Journey to Un'Goro, with Adapt. A few months earlier, the long-standing "Poison" ability ("Destroy any minion damaged by this minion") was formalised, with the addition of the Poisonous keyword. The change was purely cosmetic, but appears to have been due to the introduction of a number of new Poisonous cards with Un'Goro, therefore justifying the creation of a keyword for the long-standing effect.

As the game grows, the developers feel increasingly open to adding new keywords. When the game was new, Ben Brode says, the developers "really wanted to keep ourselves in check as far as the number of keywords we added and how quickly we added them", but since The Grand Tournament have begun adding keywords quite regularly. In 2018, Dean Ayala explained that the team tends to create keywords that are unique to specific expansions, to ensure that players don't have to learn "a hundred new mechanics" when they log into Hearthstone. As a result, new keywords tend to be introduced at around the same pace that old keywords rotate out of the Standard format. While all old keywords continue to exist in the Wild format, Wild generally has more experienced players that are able to "learn new things a little bit more over time". However, Ayala emphasizes that player feedback plays a big part in deciding which keywords to continue using in future sets and which ones should remain expansion-specific.

A handful of justified exceptions exist. Mega-Windfury was added with Goblins vs Gnomes for just one minion: the uncollectible V-07-TR-0N, summoned by Mimiron's Head's triggered effect. However, this keyword is followed on the card by the italicized text, "(Can attack four times a turn.)", essentially negating the use of the Mega-Windfury keyword. The redundancy can be explained by the obvious similarity between Windfury and Mega-Windfury, with the use of the keyword aiding players in immediately understanding the card's ability. Choose Twice was also added for one specific card, but is obviously based on Choose One. Likewise, the Start of Game keyword only appeared on three cards at the time it was added, but is justified by its self-explanatory name. The humorous keyword "Charrrrrge" was similarly added exclusively to the card Skycap'n Kragg with The Grand Tournament, but served only as a cosmetic variant on Charge.

Patch changes

• Patch 20.0.0.77662 (2021-03-25): Frenzy added.
• Patch 19.0.0.65614 (2020-11-12): Corrupt added.
• Patch 18.0.0.54613 (2020-07-30): Spellburst added.
• Patch 17.0.0.44222 (2020-03-26): Outcast added. Dormant keyworded.
• Patch 16.0.0.37060 (2019-12-05): Invoke and Sidequest added.
• Patch 15.0.0.32708 (2019-08-01): Reborn added.
• Patch 14.0.0.29933 (2019-04-04): Twinspell and Lackey added.
• Patch 13.0.0.27845 (2018-11-29): Overkill added.
• Patch 12.2.0.26996 (2018-10-02): Casts When Drawn added, replacing the previous card text "Cast this when drawn".
• Patch 12.0.0.25770 (2018-08-02): Magnetic added.
• Patch 11.0.0.23966 (2018-04-10): Echo, Start of Game, and Rush added. Enrage removed and replaced with "while damaged".
• Patch 10.0.0.22611 (2017-12-06): Recruit and Choose Twice added.
• Patch 9.0.0.20457 (2017-08-08): Death Knight added. Lifesteal added, replacing the previous card text "Damage dealt by this minion also heals your hero."
• Patch 8.0.0.18336 (2017-04-04): Adapt and Quest added.
• Patch 7.1.0.17720 (2017-02-28): Poisonous added, replacing the previous card text "Destroy any minion damaged by this minion."
• Patch 7.0.0.15590 (2016-11-29): Jade Golem added.
• Patch 4.0.0.10833 (2015-11-10): Discover added.
• Patch 3.0.0.9786 (2015-08-18): Inspire added.
• Patch 2.0.0.7234 (2014-12-04): Mega-Windfury and Spare Part added.
• Patch 1.0.0.3890 (Closed beta, 2013-10-02): Poisonous visual effect added.