EXPLOSIVE Snowballs In Minecraft – Command Tutorial

Hey everybody, it’s UnderMyCap, and welcome back to another video! Today I’m going to be showing you how to get explosive snowballs in Minecraft. This is such an awesome command because it only requires one command block to make explosive snowballs — so let’s get straight into it!

If you’d prefer to follow along visually, you can watch the full video here:
▶ Watch on YouTube – EXPLOSIVE Snowballs In Minecraft Command Tutorial!

Setting Up Your Command Block

First things first — this command will not work if you type it directly into the chat or command line. You must use a command block. Once you have your command block open, we can start typing in the command.

The Command Explained

Start by typing execute, and then after that, use as @e[type=snowball]. One of the really cool things about this command is that you can actually replace snowball with any entity you like — for example, arrows work great! I would avoid replacing it with entities that can naturally spawn in your world though, as that can cause a lot of issues. For this tutorial, we’re going with snowballs, so make sure you include those square brackets: @e[type=snowball].

Next, we want to add at @s unless. This is a fairly new addition and what it’s doing is running the command at each individual snowball you throw — essentially executing at the “self” of each snowball. It might sound a little confusing at first, but it will make total sense once you see it in action!

After that, we want to use block — make sure it says block and not blocks, as autocomplete can sometimes fill in the wrong one. Then we want to use relative positions. These look like three up-arrow carets (^), and on most keyboards you can type them by holding Shift and pressing the number 6 key. Once you have those, we need to add some numbers. Your command won’t work without them — you’ll need to place a -1 next to the middle caret and also a -1 next to the right caret. So when you type it out it should look like: ^ ^-1 ^-1, with spaces between each one.

After the relative positions, type minecraft:air. This ensures that the command only executes when the block beneath the thrown snowball is not air — meaning it will trigger when the snowball makes contact with a solid block. You could replace air with another block type to test for different surfaces, but for this command, keep it as air.

Finally, add run summon minecraft:tnt, followed by three squiggly tildes with spaces between them, like this: ~ ~ ~. The TNT is what creates the explosion effect, but you can swap it out for other things like lightning if you want to get creative! The full end of the command should look like: run summon minecraft:tnt ~ ~ ~.

Full Command Summary

Here’s the full command to paste into your command block:

execute as @e[type=snowball] at @s unless block ^ ^-1 ^-1 minecraft:air run summon minecraft:tnt ~ ~ ~

I’ll also be putting this command in the video description so you can easily copy it if you run into any trouble.

Seeing It In Action

Once you’ve entered the command and activated the command block, you’ll be able to throw snowballs and watch them explode on impact! As you can see in the video, the results are pretty spectacular — the snowballs summon TNT wherever they land, creating some seriously powerful explosions. I did have a mod running that made things look a little extra dramatic, but even without it, explosive snowballs are an incredibly fun thing to add to your Minecraft world!

Final Thoughts

I hope you found this tutorial helpful and that you have an absolute blast (literally!) trying out explosive snowballs in your own Minecraft world. If you enjoyed this post and the video, don’t forget to leave a like and subscribe over on YouTube — I can’t wait to see you in the next one!