Joust

A Joust in progress

Joust is an ability that causes a card to be revealed at random from the deck of each player. If the player who initiated the Joust has the higher mana cost card, a special secondary effect will be activated, depending on the Joust card. Once the Joust is complete, the two Jousting cards are shuffled back into their respective decks.

Jousts are triggered through other abilities, most commonly Battlecry, but at least one card uses Deathrattle to Joust.

Joust does not exist as a official keyword, but is the official term for the card text, "Reveal a [card] in each deck. If yours costs more, [secondary effect]."

Notes

• The basic rule for Joust is that in order to win the Joust, the initiating player must reveal a card with higher cost than the opponent. If this is not achieved, for whatever reason, the initiating player will lose the Joust, and the secondary Joust effect will not be activated. It is not possible to "draw" in a Joust; the initiating player either wins or does not.
  • If the initiating player has no valid target left to reveal, they will automatically lose the Joust, and no cards will be revealed for either player. If neither player has cards left to reveal, the initiating player will lose the Joust. If the opponent has no card left to reveal, but the initiating player does, the initiating player will win the Joust automatically.
  • This means that with two identical decks, initiating a Joust has a less than 50% chance of success.
• Jousting uses the base mana cost of the cards, regardless of any cost-modifying effect that can affect cards in a deck (such as Renounce Darkness) or hand (such as Molten Giant).
• During a Joust, both cards are revealed to both players.
• Jousting reveals a card from each player's unused deck. The minions are selected at random, not by order of placement in the deck.
• Following a Joust, the cards are shuffled back into the players' decks, effectively incorporating a shuffle into deck effect. This has a high very chance of altering the order of those two cards, depending on the number of cards remaining in each player's deck.

Cards

For Wild format listings, see Joust/Wild format

Swipe left or right to see the cards.

Lore

Hearthstone

No tournament (especially one as grand as The Grand Tournament) would be complete without the time-honored tradition of jousting!

Minions Joust by emerging from their decks, creating a brief contest within a contest wherein players each reveal a minion from their deck. In order to win, the minion who initiated the Joust must reveal a minion with a higher mana cost. The rewards are varied based on the minion starting the Joust, but players will want to emerge victorious from the lists as often as possible!

There are many ways for a knight to prove their valor, but there’s only one true test of mounted might! An aspiring champion may face off against raging beasts in the arena or best skilled challengers in melee combat, but nothing shows off one’s heroic grandeur like mounting a noble steed and charging with a leveled lance in the ultimate chivalrous contest: the joust!

World of Warcraft

This section uses content from Wowpedia.

Jousting is a form of combat introduced with the Argent Tournament, using the vehicle game mechanics.

At the time of its introduction, jousting was the vehicle used the most in World of Warcraft. Opinions range from hating it because of the difficulty, to loving it because it is a challenging event, and because gear and class do not make a difference; only skill makes a difference in jousting.

Justicar Mariel Trueheart directs players to the pavilion for their respective faction. Once there, they are entered into the Argent Tournament rolls as an Aspirant.

Aspirants

The task of an aspirant is to practice the mechanics of jousting. Other tasks assigned aspirants include defeating a number of Scourge forces in the field, and retrieving weapons suitable to knights.

Valiants

Upon defeating the valiant, the character is promoted to the ranks of the valiants, representing their racial city, and are eligible to complete quests for tokens to advance to the rank of champion. They are eligible to joust with their race's favored mount.

Where aspirants are tasked to practice upon targets, valiants face live foes. While valiants are still tasked to retrieve weapons and defeat Scourge, they also practice mounted combat amongst themselves, and face mounted scourge forces in the field.

As a valiant completes quests, they earn Valiant's Seals, much like aspirants did. Upon completing enough (proving their ability), a valiant is challenged to defeat an Argent Champion.

Champions

Upon defeating the Argent Champion, the character is awarded the rank of Champion (of their city), and may thereafter continue to use their race's jousting mount at the Argent Tournament. If the character is Exalted with their race's faction, they earn the achievement Exalted Champion of (their city), and earn a corresponding title.

Champions face most of the same foes as valiants, but more difficult. They continue to train amongst themselves and battle scourge in general. At the Court of Bones, they are expected to challenge and defeat commanders of the Boneguard forces.

Additionally, champions may choose to qualify with other races of their faction, gaining the ability to ride their mounts, and eventually gaining the title of Champion to the other cities and access to the other race's tournament vendors.

Trivia

• The developers came up with the idea of Jousting after choosing the Grand Tournament as the setting for the new expansion. With the key involvement of jousting in the original Argent Tournament, the developers knew that they had to have "some kind of jousting" feature in the expansion. Earlier designs included "a lot of stuff with Charge", with some earlier versions becoming non-Joust minions in the set, such as Argent Horserider. The developers eventually settled on a process by which both players revealed a card, and whichever had the highest cost gained an extra effect; this was later changed to include only minions, as this allowed players to focus on including higher cost minions while still including lower cost spells.
• Most Joust minions are mounted, helping to reinforce the theme.
• Joust was not made into a keyword partly because of a lack of synergy with established keywords, and partly because it was "more in depth" than other keywords. It may also not have featured on a large enough range of cards.
• After the release of The Grand Tournament, some players exploited the length of the jousting animation by playing Nozdormu and following it up with a Joust card, forcing their opponent to skip their next turn. During the player's subsequent turns, they would continue to play Joust cards and repeatedly force their opponent to miss turns until they won the game. This was eventually hotfixed.
• Joust effects have largely been unused after The Grand Tournament, and as such are now only available in Wild matches.
  • It has however seen a somewhat return to form with Raven Familiar which has a similar effect but uses spells instead of minions.

Patch changes

• Patch 24.0.0.145077 (2022-07-26): Animation speed increased.
• Patch 3.0.0.9786 (2015-08-18): Added.

See also

• Mana cost