Please help understanding a match outcome

[tulamide]

Note: This is not a rant. I don't suspect an exploit or something. I just need to understand it.

That's also why a vague "maybe he had some cards" doesn't help me much. It would be much more helpful to draw an explicit scenario, if you are able to.

Late R3, my opponent (controlling that vampire leader) has three cards on the board, no orders. Prior to this moment he played bronze cards like Barbegazi and Slyzard, that I controlled before they started. The highest unit went to 12 str, that was the gold card kayran. No bronze card made it even close to that.

So I was quite confident when I draw my last card and ended that turn with 14 points in the lead. His last card was Ghoul, and to my surprise, after graveyard selection, Ghoul was at 17 str! At no point during the match was there a 16 str bronze card on the board, and he played normal monster, no "moving to graveyard" action.

So my guess is that somehow the boost he selected from the graveyard got doubled, since 8str was in there for sure (he played Griffin in R1)

Is there a scenario where Ghoul could end with 17 str without a 16str bronze card in the graveyard?

 

[Gercho7]

Was he playing the leader (woodland spirit) that boosts the unit on his hand by 8? in that case, an 8 bronze, would suffice.
Btw, in craveyard what counts is base str, if a 25 str unit goes to graveyard, he cannot consume it for 25

 

[Allistre]

If he wasn't playing woodland...

There is a card called triss: butt that boosts a unit in hand by 4. If he ate a 12 point speartip with ozzrel it would be 1+4+12 = 17.

Also one time I saw a guy use syanna ability to have a ghoul eat 2 cards from graveyard. So it could've been he ate two 8 strength units.

 

[tulamide]

Was he playing the leader (woodland spirit) that boosts the unit on his hand by 8? in that case, an 8 bronze, would suffice.
Btw, in craveyard what counts is base str, if a 25 str unit goes to graveyard, he cannot consume it for 25

Thank you for answering! It can't have been, because the card came to the board unboosted, with 1 str. Also, I'm pretty sure it was Unbseen Elder, but we all know that memory can fail at times. Also, thank you for pointing me to base str, I didn't know that!

If he wasn't playing woodland...

There is a card called triss: butt that boosts a unit in hand by 4. If he ate a 12 point speartip with ozzrel it would be 1+4+12 = 17.

Also one time I saw a guy use syanna ability to have a ghoul eat 2 cards from graveyard. So it could've been he ate two 8 strength units.

Thanks for answering! The last one seems to be a plausible scenario, as it would be similar to what I saw (played out at 1str, then going to 17). In my mind there's not much information on the cards he had on the board. It felt like there wasn't any order left, but as I said above, our memory isn't the most reliable source.

If it was like that, it's actually a pretty cool move! I've seen 20+ points switches before, but never with a 1 str bronze card!

 

[rrc]

Syanna seems like the most obvious (and the only possible?) explanation (given that the leader was not WLS)!