Titan is a new mechanic introduced in the TITANS expansion. Each class is getting one Legendary Titan minion… which doesn’t exactly act like a regular minion. Instead of attacking, they get three activated abilities, but you can only use one per turn. Once you use one of them, it’s gone and you can’t repeat it (unless you replay the Titan, of course). Only once all three abilities are used, the minion can attack like normal. Of course, it’s still there on your board all the time, so your opponent can interact with it, clear it etc.
Since the mechanic works in a pretty unique way and players had a lot of questions, Hearthstone’s Senior Software Engineer Clay Howell has decided to explain how it works in detail. The basics I explained above are very simple, but the details get much more complex. For example, Titan actually interacts with keywords like Windfury and Freeze. Titan with Windfury can use two abilities per turn, while a Frozen one can’t use any.
If you’re interested in how exactly the new keyword works, check out the full post below:
Hi all,
New Titan minions were revealed last week when we announced TITANS, our next expansion! Soon, the rest of the Titans will be revealed and we thought it would be a great time to answer some questions and really get into the nitty-gritty about how Titans work in Hearthstone. So we brought an expert along to give us the scoop—check it out if you want to know all the details of the new Titan keyword, and don’t forget to follow along with our Titan card reveals from July 3 to July 7!
The following is being posted on behalf of Clay Howell, a Senior Software Engineer on the Hearthstone team.
New Keyword: Titan!
Hello! The next expansion, TITANS, has been announced and along with it comes the brand-new Keyword: Titan! I’m here to break down exactly how this new keyword works, so let’s dive deep into the rules and edge cases.
We’ll start with the basics, and then get more nuanced. Titan is a new keyword found only on minions. This main difference between a regular minion and Titan minion is the following:
- Each Titan minion has 3 activated abilities.
- Each turn, Titan minions can use 1 of their 3 abilities instead of attacking.
- Titan minions can only use each ability once.
- After a Titan minion has used all 3 abilities, it will be able to attack like a regular minion.
For templating reasons, Titan minions do not show what their abilities are in their card textbox. In game, you can hover over a Titan minion in order to see the Titan’s abilities in the form of tooltips. These tooltips will show a lock icon in the top right corner after an ability is used. You can also inspect a Titan minion in the Collection Manager to see all of the Titan’s abilities. From now on, I will refer to Titan minions simply as “Titans”.
On the first turn a Titan is in play you can immediately use one of their abilities. This is true if the Titan is played, randomly summoned, recruited from your deck, sent to the future, or awakened from being dormant. An easy way to think about this is: If a normal minion with Charge can attack, a Titan in the same scenario can use one of their abilities.
If a Titan has Windfury, then that Titan can use two abilities in a single turn. Using the same logic, if a Titan is Frozen, then that Titan skips their next action. Assuming a Titan has used their last ability and has no more actions available on a turn, a Titan will be able to start attacking as if they were a regular minion on the following turn. With all of this in mind, if you can somehow give a Titan Mega-Windfury on the first turn it is in play, you could theoretically use all three abilities on the same turn, and then use the fourth and final action to attack an enemy minion or hero.
A Titan that is forced to attack will perform minion combat. A forced attack will not execute one of the Titan’s abilities, and it does not consume that Titan’s action for the turn. For example, let’s say your hero has a Trueaim Crescent equipped, and you have a Titan in play. If you use your hero to attack a minion with the Trueaim Crescent, your Titan would be forced to attack the target minion. Afterwards, the Titan would still be able to use an ability.
If a Titan is Silenced, they can’t use their abilities and instead can perform attacks as if they were a regular minion. Typically, silencing your own Titan wouldn’t be a good idea, but you can if you want to give your Titan the option to attack a specific target instead of using one of its abilities. If a Titan previously used an ability on your turn, and then is silenced afterwards, it will not be able to attack since it already took an action that turn. But if a Titan is silenced the turn it is played, before you use any of the Titan’s abilities, the silenced Titan would be asleep and would not be able to attack that turn.
When you copy a Titan, the state of its abilities is preserved. For example, if you play Eonar, use Eonar’s ability Flourish to refresh your mana crystals, and then Faceless Manipulator your Eonar, the copy will also have the same ability, Flourish, exhausted. The new copy of Eonar will still be able to act on that turn, it would just have one less ability available to choose from. The same rules apply when copying an enemy Titan. Your copy of that Titan will have the same abilities exhausted as the original Titan. Since exhausted abilities persist on new copies, it is usually best to copy a Titan before it has used an ability on your turn, so that your new Titan copy has as many Titan abilities available as possible.
If your Titan is returned to your hand with Shadow Step, Freezing Trap, or any other similar effect, the Titan would be reverted to its base definition, allowing you to use all of the Titan’s abilities once it comes into play again.
Titan abilities that deal damage are not increased by Spell Damage because Titan abilities are not spells.
If a Titan’s ability requires a target but there are no valid targets, it can’t be used. If a Titan still has abilities left to use, and all the abilities left for that Titan have no valid targets, then the Titan will be unable to take any action that turn (including not being able to attack).
If Mayor Noggenfogger is in play, and you control a Titan, you can still choose which ability your Titan will use, but the target of that ability, if a target is required, will be random. This is the same way Mayor Noggenfogger works with minions that have a Choose One ability.
Titans can’t be created as a result of a random evolution. Titans can’t be randomly discovered and won’t be randomly generated from cards with random generation effects.
If you have any more questions about Titans, feel free to ask! We’ll be checking in later today and adding answers to questions at a later date.
