Hearthstone
[Myth Busted] A cultist in the Crystalsong Forest
- Taunt Druid
- Wild
- Fun
DECK UPDATE - THE COMBO DOESN'T WORK!
As you can see above, a single Mogu Cultist doesn't summon Highkeeper Ra. So it was coded to check whether there are 6 other cultists after all. There isn't any free interpretation of the card description. Permanents might be skipped in Reliquary Seeker's case, but apparently not here.
Pity, I was looking forward to playing the deck. It wasn't going to cause any issues in the game, since the set-up would have been very slow and faster decks would have overwhelmed it with ease.
For people, who are confused about what's going on: I speculated, that Mogu Cultist could have created a hidden OTK combo, which involved summoning Highkeeper Ra, when you had 5 Lucentbarks on the board, and copying the 20/20 with a Faceless Manipulator.
When Mogu Cultist was revealed for the first time, I speculated that it could have enabled some hidden synergies with dormant creatures. Now, I am not going to deny the fact, that making a board full of dormant creatures (The Darkness, Sherazin, Corpse Flower) wouldn't have been easier than just going for Highkeeper Ra the old fashioned way, which is already a meme strategy. But the difference in druid's case is that you could have tried to do your normal gameplan - to build up some taunts and multiply Lucentbark a bunch of times. Eventually, when you had 5 copies of him on the board and all of them went dormant, you would have cheated Mogu Cultist's requirement and summoned Ra with only two minions. I speculated this would have been the case, because up until yesterday Reliquary Seeker (a card with a similar text) was the only evidence for this interaction. She gets a buff, when there are a couple of dormant minions on the board. Since permanents don't really count as minions per se, I thought that dormant creatures would have been skipped in Mogu Cultist's case. I was wrong, the card works as someone would expect it to.
Soo...
But before I finish this deck guide, I would like to give you an example of how beating an opponent with this deck would have felt like:
Quote From No Author Specified Malfurion: *groans* Con…gratulations… Garrosh. I… must admit… that you… put… a very nice fight. *coughs* But your dragons were no match against my wall. You fought with anger in your heart and that's why you lost. A true warrior is not a person, who aggressively forces his creatures to attack and who observes them as plain servants. Instead, he looks upon them as brothers in arms and keeps his faith even in the darkest of times. But I guess you are too unpatient to understand this, so there is nothing more to say than well pla…Garrosh: HAHAHAHA. Foolish druid. Do you think you have defeated me that easily? I will make you pay for your insolence. I activate MY LEGENDARY SPELL!
Malfurion: *grasps* Legendary spell? Could this be?
Garrosh: THE BOOMSHIP!
Out of nowhere a massive airship, probably a kilometre long, flies above the field. It slows down, its big metal doors start to crack open and an unbearably loud screech pierces the air. Smoke and flames emerge from its rear entrance. "Could it be just the engine?", you ask yourself. Then suddenly three huge creatures break free from their metal chamber, with lightning speed they swoop down on your minions and block out the sky.
III AAAMMM PPPOOOWWWEEERRR IIINNNCCCAAARRRNNNAAATTTEEE!!!
Malfurion: No! NOOOOO! This can not… bee!
Garrosh: *laughs* Pretty impressive, aren't they? While you were planting your pathetic little trees, I gathered an army with a single roar and just waited to draw my magic card. Now look how your pathetic wall crumbles from the might of my dragons. Red-Eyes, attack!
AAALLLLLLL WWWIIILLLLLL BBBUUURRRNNN!!!
Garrosh: Your healing spells are depleted, you can't revive your trees anymore. Tell me, dudu, how's your faith now? On my next turn all three Red-Eyes are free to attack. This game is over no matter what card you play. I WILL CRUSH YOU!
Malfurion: It's true, Garrosh, my healing spells are indeed finished and I can no longer revive my Lucentbarks. But don't write me off just yet, as I have another trick up my sleeve.
Garrosh: E…explain yourself!
Malfurion: With pleasure. My turn! I summon MOGU CULTIST!
Garrosh: Mogu Cultist? *reads card* Did my dragons accidentally fry your brain as well? What are you trying to do? You don't have 6 other cultists on the board to summon Ra.
Malfurion: Read again, Garrosh. The card states that the board only has to be full of them.
Garrosh: So? You have a bunch of dormant Lucentbarks.
Malfurion: True, but what's one minion's weakness is another minion's strength.
Garrosh: N…nani?
Malfurion: Dormant creatures don't count as living entities on the board and only narrow the available spaces. And since I control 6 of those, you understand what that means.
Garrosh: Holy Mother of green Jesus!
Malfurion: I activate Mogu Cultist's special ability. Come forth, Highkeeper Ra!Your world is beyond redemption.
Garrosh: Highkeeper Ra?! Ahh, it's not possible! No one's ever been able to call him.
Malfurion: Highkeeper Ra, OBLITERATE.*pew*
Garrosh: AAAAAAaaaaahh!
Malfurion: My Greetings. My Greetings. My Greetings.
And now the harsh truth:
Quote From No Author Specified .
.
.Malfurion: Come forth, Highkeeper Ra!
*But nobody came.
Malfurion: A natur…
AAALLLLLLL
Garrosh: Huh!
WWWIIILLLLLL
Garrosh: Huh!
BBBUUURRRNNN!!!
Garrosh: Huh!
Vote On This Deck!
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31- 00
- 01
- 02
- 03
- 04
- 05
- 06
- 07+
- 1 Crystal Power x 2
- 2 Keeper Stalladris x 1
- 2 Wild Growth x 2
- 2 Wrath x 2
- 3 Swipe x 2
- 3 Witching Hour x 2
- 4 Flobbidinous Floop x 1
- 4 Predatory Instincts x 2
- 5 Anubisath Defender x 2
- 5 Starfall x 1
- 7 Gloop Sprayer x 1
- 7 Overflow x 2
- 8 Lucentbark x 1
- 1 Mogu Cultist x 2
- 5 Faceless Manipulator x 2
- 5 Mind Control Tech x 2
- 5 Witchwood Grizzly x 2
- 5 Zilliax x 1
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Comments
I enjoyed reading this guide.
+1 @Kovachut
Sadly I doubt it will work and expect "board is full of Mogu Cultists" to translate into "control 7 Mogu Cultists" in the code. Personally I don't see the distinction between a space being occupied by a dormant minion and an active one.
Nevertheless, it is good to see someone else taking a story-driven approach to deck guides. In this case it gives you a great out if it doesn't work, where you could write the alternate ending: Malfurion 'activates' the Mogu Cultist and nothing happens....
Yeah, don't worry. I also expect to be disappointed when the expansion hits. I am aware, that checking whether there are 6 other cultists on the board sounds more logical and is easier to implement than what I am suggesting above. But at the same time, I think there is something true in my assumptions. Whenever I take a look at Reliquary Seeker, I always wonder why she behaves so weird. She shouldn't get buffed, when there are dormant creatures on the board, because those aren't really minions per se. Those are just some entities, which are marked as permanents. A new card-type in my eyes, which isn't a minion and it can't be removed with destruction spells (Twisting Nether), but it occupies a board slot, it removes itself from the board and it leaves a copy of the original minion behind, when you meet its requirements. And that's why I think, that Reliquary Seeker's code actually checks whether minions occupy all possible occupiable slots.
But again, I don't insist, that my speculation is true. Blizzard isn't consistent with its card decriptions and they have shown that time and time again - Ogre Brute, Mogor's Champion vs Mosh'Ogg Announcer.
Yeah, ty for appreciating it. I also love making such deck guides, because people can dive into a fantasy world and feel like they are experiencing the events first hand. Anywho, I know what to say, if the combo whiffs.
Malfurion: Come forth, Highkeeper Ra!
*But nobody came.
Malfurion: ....
ALL ALL ALL WILL WILL WILL BURN! BURN! BURN!
Garrosh: Huh! Huh! Huh! Huh!
Given how Reliquary Seeker works, I think we have to conclude dormant minions do count as 'normal' minions. That way they simply contribute to the 6 other minions. Of course they would have special rules to make sure they interact with absolutely nothing, but we already have partial non-interacting minion types with stealth and immune (which your opponent cannot target) so that is not a silly idea.
There's further evidence they count as actual minions from them having the minion card type in game (i.e. with an oval image when hovered over), and that they can be moved around the board in exactly the same way as ordinary minions.
From a programmer's perspective though, it would be silly to create an entire new card type for what was initially just 2 cards*, especially when a fairly simple adaptation to the existing tools (i.e. minions) does the job.
* I think there were some dormant minions in the Karazhan adventure so Sherazin, Seed and Nether Portal may not have been the first, but I'd have to play back through the adventure to check.
Hi.
Look, I respect your interpretations of how Reliquary Seeker works with dormant creatures. But allow me to disagree, since there are tons of examples, which don't interact with them directly. If I have to take my knowledge of some hearthstone mechanics into consideration, I would say that it's way more confusing to create an exception of the rule, when there is absolutely no need for it. Why should the seeker act differently than the other minions? Dormant creatures were first implemented in ONiK, while the seeker was implemented 8 months before that. The devs couldn't have designed her differently, in order to let her buff herself in the pve adventures. If they had done that, they should have done the same to other minions, which were in the game since its creation.
I'm not a programmer myself, but I don't think it would be silly to implement an entire new card type. Entities have to be marked somehow, in order to trigger certain in-game effects. If I cast a spell, the game acknowledges it as a such and it allows some spell-benefiting or -countering events to take place (Counterspell, Wild Pyromancer). Same logic applies to minions - damaging spells, minion targeting battlecries, stealing minions based on their count ... - or weapons etc. Like I said, the game checks whether such entities exist on the board. Dormants aren't marked as minions, so they can't possibly count towards Reliquary Seeker's battlecry, else they would have triggered similar effects. Imho it's easier to mark them differently than to mark them as minions and write wall of codes explaining why they shouldn't get affected by anything. Furthermore
I'm sorry to say, but this argument isn't convincing me at all. I can argue, that that's just an outward appearence, because the devs want to make the game simpler and easier to understand. It's more logical for them to make the dormants look more like minions, so that people wouldn't be confused and would know what to expect, when they fulfil the cards' requirements. But just because dormants look like minions, just because they have an oval shaping, that doesn't mean that they are marked as such. Game mechanics are what it's important here. In order to prove my words, that looks can be deceiving, I would like to point to Enigmatic Portal.
https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Enigmatic_Portal
I don't know if you played hs during the "The Dark Wanderer" tavern brawl, but this dormant-looking entity was actually marked as a minion. This is because people managed to remove it with destruction spells or to steal it and transform into the cow king. This isn't possible with typical dormant creatures.
I just logged into hearthstone and I wanted to test some of those interactions myself. Here are some screenshots I made (the game is in German, sorry):
Btw if you want to see a whole list of permanents (both collectible and non-collectable), I would suggest you to go to this site:
https://hearthstone.gamepedia.com/Permanent
(the list isn't updated, because the dormants form the RoS adventure are missing)
Regarding your argument for moving dormants left and right - I can say, that that's just for positioning purposes. Dorothee gives minions different benefits depending on where they are placed.
I will end this post like so - I am aware of both POVs and I've said before, that making Mogu Cultist check whether there are 6 other cultists on the board is more logical and practical. That's why I expect to be disappointed, when the expansion hits. But even though logic isn't on my side, the arguments, which I bring, are also valid only because there is an in-game minion with a similar effect supporting my thesis. If it wasn't for it, I would have never come up with a Mogu Cultist-Lucentbark theorycraft in the first place. That's why I hope, that the devs would allow this interaction to happen, so that we could experience a more fun side of the Ra-mechanic, even if it's not intended.
!! Warning: I found the question interesting enough to actually imagine coding these minions, and hence my main arguments revolve around speculative computer code. Hopefully you find it a bit enlightening, and I'll gladly answer any questions about it !!
Firstly, good job on compiling all the evidence: that makes these discussions so much better thought through. In light of it all I now have to agree it is likely dormant 'minions'/permanents are not actually coded as minions. Although they still share enough traits that we cannot rule it out.
Thoughts on Reliquary Seeker
Anyway, putting my programmer's hat on I went back and thought about how the code would likely be written for Reliquary Seeker to buff itself with permanents on the board. It is true that it is quicker and easier to check if there are any spaces left on the board than it is to check all of the other 6 spaces for minions. Since the card was printed before permanents needed to be considered, and has never seen nearly enough play to warrant a slight nerf by going back and changing it to not count permanents, it is plausible that is how the devs coded the card. If so, it behaves weirdly because it doesn't actually look at your board at all.
To help show the differences in code simplicity, here's what I would write the battlecry as (in C syntax, which HS very probably isn't written in but most languages work essentially the same for this stuff):
Checking for empty spaces:
if(space 7 != empty){activate battlecry;}
Note: "!=" means "not equal to", and I am assuming the minions always fill the spaces 1-7 from 1 upwards so that space 7 is only filled if there are 7 minions. The order of them is probably 1=far left, 2=second from left etc., which is only a guess but because of cards like Betrayal that care about neighbours it is helpful to keep the numbers connected (so 3 minions would occupy spaces 1, 2 and 3 rather than 2, 5 and 7 say).
Checking all spaces, reducing the number of required minions if permanents are present:
required count = 7; //note not 6 as you might as well include the seeker in this to make the code more general
count = 0;
for(i=1; i<=7; i++) // this just looks at all 7 board spaces 1 by 1.
{if(space i == occupied by a normal minion){count++;}
else if(space i == occupied by a permanent){required count--;}
else{break;} }
if(count == required count){activate battlecry;}
Of course there are other routes you could take, but it makes a point: the previous version asks 1 question, while this version has a loop, declares 2 more variables and asks way more questions. Both bits of code will do exactly the same thing.
Anyway, the purpose here is simply to say Reliquary Seeker's strange behaviour can be rationalised by the devs trying to avoid unnecessarily complicated 'spaghetti code'. Note this is a peculiarity that only occurs because is specifically requires a full board (including itself). Cards like Frostwolf Warlord have no choice but to count minions.
[edit]: I've just seen your next comment, which is pretty much the same I said above.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Predictions for how Mogu Cultist will work
I then considered what we really want to find out: how would Mogu Cultist work? The first question is how is it different from the Seeker? Both need a full board, but the Cultist asks specifically for Cultists. It therefore NEEDS to check the other 6 spaces, and cannot do the whole job with a single check like the Seeker. The simplest version of the code I can think of is:
for(i=1; i<=7; i++)
{if(space i != Mogu Cultist) {battlecry = fail; break;}}
if(battlecry != fail){activate battlecry;}
which scans through the board spaces until one is not a Mogu Cultist. If it makes it to the end, the battlecry triggers.
As above, the code itself is speculative and it is possible the devs chose to add in tests for permanents. I personally doubt it but I'd love to find out on Tuesday!
Thank you so much for the highly informative post. If I could, I would have pinned it. You did a wonderful job at explaining the most likely coding possibilities for Reliquary Seeker, minions that don't require a full board (Frostwolf Warlord) and Mogu Cultist.
I just don't know how to continue our little conversation further. You are definitely right, that Mogu Cultist's code would look like so:
and won't contain any other variables, in order to keep things clean and simple. And like I said in my previous posts, I also expect seeing that outcome for the exact same reasons. Logic and practicality aren't on my side. But hope dies last, as the saying goes, so I look forward to Tuesday as well.
I should say, simple code is only as good as what it does, i.e. it is best to be simple but that comes after functionality. No doubt many of the bug fixes over the years have actually been making relatively simple bits of code a little bit more complicated.
In the case of the Mogu Cultist, we don't yet know what functionality they chose when writing the code (there is no explicit mention of 7 minions), so it could yet go either way. And honestly I want it to work with dormant minions because I have been struggling to come up with many ways to use the card outside of rogue.
The bolded part was one of my arguments as well, but I don't think that the devs would allow such free interpretation of the card description. Normally it's not their style, but just like you I am also curious to see whether this is the case.
I have a question regarding coding though. In which cases is functionality better than simple coding other than the example of fixing some bugs? Like you know, I'm not a programmer, but isn't writing a complex code more likely to cause a lot of bugs and weird scenarios?
(this is an old video, dunno if the bug is fixed by now)
This interaction was caused by an old patch (I think this is the one), because the devs wanted to change how copy effects work.
Anyway if you are looking for a fun deck, which aims to summon Highkeeper Ra, I would suggest building a duplicate druid deck and run Elise the Enlightened and Flobbidinous Floop. You would need the duplicates, in order to survive the early- and mid-game. And the combo would take place very late in the game anyway, so there's no need to make a highlander build. Once you draw enough cards and Elise starts to glow yellow, you could play the 5/5, Floop would turn into her and you would have two Elises in hand, allowing you to duplicate your hand again. Depending on how many cultists you had prior playing Elise, you would need either 1 or 2 turns in order to generate all needed cultists and go for the 20/20 afterwards.
I saw some warlock decks running the Quest, Glinda Crowskin, Baleful Banker (who will shuffle Glinda, you would be able to draw her with the HP and reduce her cost to 0), Mogu Cultist (obviously) and Demonbolt (in order to kill your Glinda on the final turn).
If you are looking for a somewhat competitive deck, then yeah, rogue decklists would be your best option. If the cultist-dormant combo does work like I want it to, cultist decks won't be viable yet, because Lucentbark takes a lot of time to be multiplied and the deck is super vulnerable to aggro, silence (Plague of Death) and transform effects (Plague of Murlocs).
Complex vs simple code
You always write code to do a job, and aim to make it do that job as simply as possible (this is not quite true if you are really concerned about making code super fast, which is most obvious with parallel code which uses multiple CPUs (sometimes thousands or even more) to work on the same job, but that's a concern far beyond implementing battlecries in HS). Ultimately it is the end result (i.e. functionality) that matters, and that sets a lower bound on how simple the code can be.
I work in a physics department and spent 3.5 years working on code to simulate polymers and swimming bacteria (and other small things in liquids). By the end the code was several thousand lines long spread across 8 files, despite me working hard to make it as simple and efficient as possible. To most people it is extremely complicated, but if it was much simpler it wouldn't do its job properly and would be worthless.
Bugs, bugs, bugs. The bane of my life.
To a programmer bugs are just a fact of life. Sadly simpler code isn't necessarily less likely to have bugs, but it is easier to find bugs in simple code. Bugs are usually typos or (perhaps oddly) missing code. E.g. suppose the devs DID want Mogu Cultist to work with permanents, but they didn't include any lines to account for this. Then the interaction would be bugged, but the only fix is to add more code, thereby making it more complex, but less buggy.
What often happens when you add more features to the code, such as every expansion in HS, is the new code interacts with existing code and that is fine because it was written knowing what it will interact with (hopefully!). The bugs usually arise in the old code which hasn't been fully updated to work with the new stuff. This happens all the time and is VERY easy to miss! HS has thousands of cards to keep up to date and many of the interactions are so obscure it is almost unthinkable that they would all be noticed. Even worse, you often have bugs starting somewhere and manifesting as apparent errors somewhere else (I suspect a lot of HS bugs actually had nothing to do with the cards involved but were caused by an error buried somewhere else altogether).
With my own programming, every update/upgrade I made I expected to introduce a bug somewhere and have to spend longer finding and fixing the bug(s) than it took to update the code in the first place. This is completely normal.
There is an amusing side to all this though: it is up to whoever writes the code to decide whether something is a 'bug' (i.e. unwanted) or a 'feature'. Sometimes unexpected behaviour can be good and be kept (I believe that is how Cloak of Invisibility came about), or simply be harmless enough (and difficult enough to find) that it is OK to leave it in as a 'feature'. As long as the code does what it's author says it does, it doesn't matter what it was meant to do originally.
Other Mogu Cultist decks
Thanks for pointing these out. I had thought about the Elise+Floop approach, but was unconvinced about how likely it would be to keep the hand empty enough to fit the 7 Cultists in it (given you are duplicating anything else there too).
I hadn't thought of Glinda though. It seems more likely to work without hoping to get it to 0 mana with the quest HP to me, but I'll try it out for sure. Perhaps try to get a Finicky Cloakfield in Wild?
Come to think of it, the only logical explanation of why the seeker acts so strangely with dormant creatures is that she just checks whether or not the board is full. She doesn't care if I control minions or permanents, while Sea Giant cares. The cruicial part in her design is checking the board spaces themselves and not the type of creatures occupying them. So this could mean, that dormants don't really block board spaces like I thought. If this is the case, then I would curse Blizzard for their card text inconsistencies. :D I want to test this interaction on my own. It would be a pity if it doesn't work. I only wanted to gladden the community and myself with an interesting deckbuild.
Anyway sorry for the wall of text above. You don't have to reply to everything, if you don't want to.
I think this could easily be an unnoticed interaction by blizzard. They have missed much stronger and obvious interactions before (*cough* *cough* Snip-Snap), so I hope they don't read this and change the way the card was made xD
If they aren't aware of the combo, they will eventually notice it, once people start playing this deck. But imho if this would be the case, then there's no reason to change this interaction NOW. The current dormant creatures in the game are The Darkness, Lucentbark and Sherazin, Corpse Flower and they are either very expensive or very weak. Not to mention, the set-up, which you have to make, takes a lot of time and is easily counterable (e.g. with Plague of Murlocs, Plague of Death). I don't consider setting up a Mogu Cultist with a bunch of permanents turn to be broken, even if it's not intended, because multiplying the aforementioned legendaries isn't easier than just going for Ra himself. And in druid's case, the class can perform faster OTK strategies in wild thanks to Aviana and Kun the Forgotten King.
So yeah, I really hope the combo works as I want it to and the devs let us have fun. The last thing I want is to spread false hype.
Instalike for smart idea and entertaining guide.
I am not sure it will actually work, but i'd love if it does.
If that combo works, i will laugh my ass off every time Ra fires his shots. Well done! Let's call the deck Kovachudruid! ;)
Well done my boy well done! I had more fun reading your guide than playing the game :D
Glad you liked it. :)
Would the combo work with 6 dormant creatures and you playing a single Mogu Cultist? That would be awesome, as it enables you to play it again if the first Ra dies.
I know and the deck initially aimed to do exactly that. But then I considered, that going for the OTK with a Faceless Manipulator on the 20/20 would be better.
Again, let's hope that Mogu Cultist is coded exactly like Reliquary Seeker.
Awesome guide!!! I will give it a try.