Hearthstone Battlegrounds Tips And Tricks To Dominate (Top 15 Tips)

In this article I go over some tips, tricks and general strategies that will help you dominate in Hearthstone Battlegrounds. 

 

1. Balance

Growth and life and happiness and friends.

Battlegrounds is a draft-based game mode. It’s crucial to balance spending your limited resources between buying new minions and advancing your tier to gain access to better minions. You don’t want to let too many rounds go by stuck with lowly minions, but you also don’t want to spend all your money on tier upgrades and lose every battle on the way up. 

For the longest time, the go-to strategy was to buy a minion on turn 1 and upgrade on turn 2. The addition of tavern spells has muddied this a little but it’s still a solid start in general. Maybe now you buy a minion on turns 1 and 2 as well as a nice little buff spell if you get a minion worth buffing. Then turn 3 hopefully you can get an economy-buy minion that either gives you a coin or a boon when you sell it and you can upgrade then. Regardless you’re almost always going to want to have upgraded your tier at least once by turn 4 or risk falling behind.

Beyond that it’s less clear cut, just keep balance in mind. If you’re losing a lot of battles, focus on building up your stats for a while. If you’ve got a really solid formation going race to tier 6. 

• Keep a healthy balance between advancing your tier and maintaining the strength of your minions. 
• Try to be at tier 2 or above by round 4 at the latest.
• Keep an eye on your win/loss ratio. If you’re on a losing streak upgrade your forces, if you’re on a winning streak spend some rounds advancing tiers.

2. Synergy

Synergy - the bonus that is achieved when things work together harmoniously. 

You should always try and tailor your board composition to fit your chosen hero. Each hero has a signature power and many of those powers work best with certain minion types. A few are designed around one specific type like Chenvala and Elementals. Others though just have powers that suit a certain style of play like death rattles or battlecries and those have multiple viable approaches. 

In general, it’s best to be as flexible as possible and try to work with what the tavern gives you rather than waste time and gold hunting for a specific minion, especially in the early game. That is unless your chosen hero has a hyper-specific focus in which case it might be worth refreshing a few times to optimize your build. It can be a pain but those focused heroes tend to be among the more powerful so it’s a worthy trade-off.

• As a rule, it’s best to focus on one type of minion as they tend to play off each other well, which minion you pick will be heavily influenced by which hero power you choose.
• If your hero’s power mentions a specific minion type just focus on buying that type as much as possible.
• If the power has an avenge component you want to focus on summoning minions in combat to boost how many times you can get it to trigger, usually with death rattles. 
• If the power allows you to kill a minion to boost your others, or grants reborn or anything in this area death rattles are your best friend. 
• If the power is geared towards selling minions, Pirates are your best bet. Murlocs and Elementals work as well. 
• If the power is particularly offense-based I would go with a type that has multi-prong attack capabilities like Elementals, Pirates, Dragons, or Mechs.  
• For battlecry powers, Murlocs are the number one choice.
• Stat boosting powers work well with most types but Elementals in particular..

 

3. Formation

Hold the line!

In Battlegrounds, minions attack from left to right, alternating sides starting with the player who has more minions. If both players have an equal number of minions it’s randomly selected which side attacks first. So a good rule of thumb is to order your minions from highest attack to lowest. You want your heavy hitters out front and your weaklings in back.

• Poisonous or venomous creatures should generally be out front as well since those abilities equate to infinite attack power.
• Divine shield minions go out front. 
• Minions with any kind of special attack ability should be towards the front generally. 
• In the rear, you want to keep any creature with an avenge ability or a passive buffing ability.
• This can vary depending on what type of build you’re running, but for the most part, it's best to keep your death rattle summoning minions toward the back. You want some space to clear before they trigger their summons to get the most bang for your buck.
• Typically minions with reborn are good to keep in the rear too because they have a relatively weak attack when they revive. 
• If you have taunt minions, be sure to keep them on the outside edges of your formation to minimize the damage an enemy with the “this minion damages minions next to the minion it attacks” ability. 

 

4. Espionage

What do we have here?

Pay attention to your opponents' choices. When the game starts check out their chosen heroes to get a feel for the builds they might employ. A Chenvala player is probably going to be rocking Elementals, Azhara Naga, Putiricide Undead etc. If they’ve gone for a hero with a less obvious affinity you can also see what minion type they have the most of by hovering over their portraits. Keep an eye on their line-ups when you fight.

Don’t make too many assumptions in the early game though as most players are just buying economy or stat minions early on regardless of type. Mid to late game is when you can get a real sense of the direction they’ve chosen. 

There are only so many copies of each minion in the pool so if two or more players are trying for the same build they’re just going to trip all over each other. Try to go with a minion build no one else is going for to make it more likely you’ll get the minions you need. Alternatively, and this is a high-risk approach, you can try to intentionally gum up the works of the top players by buying up their key minions. 

• Keep an eye on the makeup of your various opponents' armies.
• Their chosen heroes can give clues to the direction they’ll go.
• Hover over enemy portraits to see their most used minion type.
• Try to avoid double-booking the same build.
• Intentionally go for the key elements of your stronger opponents builds, at the risk of weakening your own position.
• Be careful not to assume too much early on, many players pivot in the mid-game.

 

5. Pirates

Yar matey!

Time to go over the best strategies to employ for each of the ten current battlegrounds minion types.  First up, pirates!

The pirate build is all about gold fittingly enough. No other type has as much buying power as the pirate, almost to a fault as you reach late game. A strong pirate build will have you with so much gold near the end of the game that it genuinely becomes challenging to spend it all before the next battle begins. 

In general with pirates, the more you buy the stronger your position becomes. So many pirate cards are aimed at getting you more gold to work with. It’s not uncommon to double or even triple the usual amount in the mid to late game. 

A decent pirate build will have at least two minions dedicated to buffing your other  pirates the more you spend. Some pirates add more pirates or tavern spells to your hand every turn based on your spending, some have battlecries that improve the more you spend, and some just straight up get stronger every time you receive or spend gold. 

• Pirates are incredibly adept at improving their attack power, less so health. This tends to be a glass canon build. 
• Try to have as many “whenever” cards in your lineup as possible. The cards that continually buff your minions whenever you spend gold, or whenever you add cards to your hand, etc. 
• The Blade Collector is a tier 4 pirate that deals damage to up to three enemy minions when he attacks, his target and the adjacent minions. This is the pirate's most devastating offensive option. Get one, put him out front, and buff him as much as possible.
• The Lovesick Balladist, tier 4, has a battlecry that grants extra health to a minion for each gold you’ve spent that turn. This is the only real option for buffing health effectively in the pirate lineup, but it’s a powerful one. 
• The Record Smuggler, tier 5, gives you 1 extra gold every turn per friendly pirate and twice that if you manage to make him golden. This is the key to having more gold than you know what to do with in the late game.

 

6. Demons

Demons? Demons. 

The Demon build is all about trading pain for gain. Most of it’s minions gain significant power boosts by either harming your hero directly or just buffing whenever you do take damage during the recruitment phase. 

It used to be that you would have to wait til tier 3 to be able to counteract that damage, but in the current meta, the one demon that prevents you from hurting your own hero is a tier 2 minion, the Soul Rewinder. So the best play for Demons is to try and get ahold of a Soul Rewinder ASAP so you can get all those benefits without the HP loss. 

Tons of demon abilities are designed to consume tavern minions and add their stats to the host demon. This is incredibly powerful, especially if you buff the tavern whenever possible, but be cautious not to accidentally consume a useful demon build minion. Also it might be worth refreshing the tavern first if all the current minions are shrimpy, or there aren't enough to maximize the abilitie’s effect. 

• You can utilize the demon minions' buffing abilities without an HP shield but be careful, that’s a slippery slope. Those cuts add up. 
• Step 1. Get to tier 2 or triple a tier 1 minion and get ahold of a Soul Rewinder ASAP, Step 2. Watch the buffs roll in. 
• Once you have Soul Rewinder try to stack your lineup with as many demons that affect your hp as possible as well as demons who benefit every time your health is changed.  
• Many demon abilities consume tavern minions and absorb their stats. This is very powerful but be careful to buy all the minions you want first.
• Refreshing to get a more beefy or numerous selection of minions to consume isn’t a terrible idea 
• It’s also a very good idea to buff the tavern minions whenever possible to get the most out of those consumption abilities. 
• When a minion is consumed, it adds whatever stats it had at the time of consumption to the host demon. That includes temporary buffs, which will no longer disappear next turn. 
• Malchezar, Prince of Dance’s ability to make refreshes cost health instead of gold is a game changer in tier 4, don’t sleep on it. 
• Demons don’t have a lot of death rattles compared to other types, but there is one worth mentioning. The Impulsive Trickster transfers its MAX hp to another minion when it dies. Twice if you make him golden. This one death rattle can go hard, especially with taunt.

 

7. Naga

Obey the queen!

I have a soft spot for the Naga type and its exponential potential. Naga builds are all about adding temporary incredibly powerful stat boosts and abilities to your front line with Spellcraft cards unique to this minion type. 

Generally, you want two to three heavy hitters that will receive the majority of your Spellcraft boons. Later in the game once you have a truly colossal minion built up it can be smart to spread the stats out a bit in case an opponent gets a poison hit or something in.

Lava Lurker is always a solid base to build off of. At tier 2 she’s easy to get early on. She retains one Spellcraft per turn permanently. So start with your strongest spells and work down. The real OP combo with Lava Lurker is the Deep Blue Crooner whose Spellcraft gets stronger every time you use it. Add a Zesty Shaker and its ability to copy the first Spellcraft used on it per turn and you have a pipeline for some truly monstrous minions by late game. All of these effects double when you turn their respective minion golden too so it’s worth trying for a triple ASAP. 

• The Naga build is all about the Spellcrafts, make sure you have enough Spellcraft minions in your lineup. 
• Lava Lurker’s ability to make permanent the temporary Spellcraft boosts is immensely powerful. There are other viable front liners but none keep their boosts between battles. 
• Deep Blue Crooner is the key Naga card. The more you have and the more you can cast its Spellcraft the better. Each use improves the next and it can get truly immense. 
• Zesty Shaker will help you cast extra Spellcrafts every turn, this works best with Deep Blue Crooner but is also good to spread divine shield, taunt, and stealth around and buff those Naga that improve whenever you cast a spell,
• Try to get to tier 4 as early as possible. All the most important Naga are accessible at that tier. There are some nice additions like Divine Shield and “discover a Naga” Spellcrafts at tiers 5 and 6 but none as essential as Deep Blue Crooner. 
• Don’t be afraid to give your bruisers taunt, you’ll be able to add stealth later on to counteract it in case your opponents are running a lot of venomous minions. 
• If you do run into a poison counter, start spreading your Spellcrafts out every turn so the enemy can’t one-shot you. 
• There are two Naga heroes who both add to its viability immensely, Queen Azshara allows you to discover a Naga every turn and Lady Vashj gives you a permanent Spellcraft.

 

8. Quilboar

BONK!

The Quilboar build is another one that lends itself to exponential gains. It’s all about Blood Gems with the Quilboar, which give a permanent stat boost to the minion they are attached to.  There is no surer path to victory than buffing and deploying those Blood Gems as early as possible and as often as possible. 

There are numerous ways to get ahold of Blood Gems in Battlegrounds, battlecries, deathrattles, and minions that just give them out at the end of every turn. But there are only two minions that improve those Blood Gems permanently. The Prickly Piper (tier 3) and the Moon Bacon Jazzer (tier 2). 

The former gives your Blood Gems +1 attack for the rest of the game whenever it dies in combat, and the latter gives them +1 health for the rest of the game as a battle cry. These are the key cards to any Quilboar build and should be employed wherever possible. 

• Try and get a divine shield Quillboar on your frost line as early as possible, they make fantastic battering rams. The Tough Tusk is a tier 2 minion that gets a divine shield for a turn whenever you play a Blood Gem on him. That’s your best bet early on. 
• Stack your lineup with as many Quilboar that either play Blood Gems on your minions every turn or more likely add Blood Gems to your hand one way or another. 
• Prickly Piper should be a constant presence as well, you want to be buffing the effects of Blood Gems at every opportunity. You should grab every Moon Bacon Jazzer you see too but don’t need to keep them on the board unless you're trying for a triple. 
• Make sure to keep upgrading your heavy hitters with better bruisers. The Bristleback Knight comes with his own divine shield and re-ups it once per battle when he takes non-fatal damage. He is better in every way than the Tough Tusk. 
• Try to buff the Quilboar you know will be sticking around as much as possible. The ones that play Blood Gems on others especially. You don’t want to waste too much on minions you’ll be swapping out eventually. Or stuck with a lower class Quilboar because you have invested too much in them.

 

9. Murlocs

Mrglmrglmrglmrgl!

Murlocs used to be all about high turnover, poison and battlecries, and while that’s still true to some extent the focus has shifted somewhat. In the current meta you don’t want your true heavy hitters out on the field you want them to stay in your hand. 

Currently, the best strategy to win as Murlocs is to keep 1 or 2 aces in the hole to be summoned when the chips are down. Many Murloc minions are designed to buff your hand and summon your strongest held minions during combat. I also like to keep a poison minion tucked in there in case of emergency. 

• For the early game Murloc is pretty standard. Get one front liner and buff him as much as possible. Swampstriker is a solid tier 1 option, Blazing Skyfin in tier 2 also works. 
• As you reach mid-game start building up your hand.There are multiple Murloc minions that buff minions in your hand, Scourfin, Upbeat Flutist, Murcules etc.  Get a few and start buffing.
• Get 1 or 2 bruisers to hold onto and buff. Bream Counter in tier 4 improves every time you play a Murloc while you're holding him, that is your best stat option to hold onto. Venomous Murlocs work well too.
• Get a Bassgill for your board, he’ll summon the strongest minion in your hand when he dies. Voila, surprise pinch hitter. 
• For the late game the Choral Mrrrglr from tier 6 gains the stats of every minion in your hand at the start of combat, so it’s worth holding onto more than just your heavy hitters. 
• Any hero that deals in battle cries is a good choice for a Murloc build, but none are better than Funglmancer Flurgl who gives you a free Murloc for every 4 minions you sell. 

 

10. Undead

I'm undead, not dead dead!

Running Undead is a marathon, not a sprint. You want to design a lineup that is constantly summoning and resummoning Undead minions during combat. You also want to make sure those summons pack a punch by buffing the attack of all friendly Undead for the entirety of the game. 

• The Undead minion type is designed around populating your board with tons of glass cannons.
• First and foremost you want minions that will summon other Undead minions using death rattles, reborn, or both.
• Eternal Knights (tier 2) improve all Eternal Knights for the rest of the game whenever an Eternal Knight dies, spam them ASAP and keep an eye out for Eternal Summoner (tier 6) whose death rattle summons an Eternal Knight.
• Buff the attack of ALL friendly Undead for the rest of the game using the battle cry of Nerubian Deathswarmer (tier 2) and the death rattle of AnuB'arak, Nerubian King (tier 4)
• Your best bet for heavy hitters are going to be cards that benefit from the deaths of your other minions such as the Rot Hide Gnoll (tier 1), Xylo-Bones (tier 4) and Hungering Abomination (tier 5). Keep them in the rear though to maximize the buffs they get before engaging the enemy.
• Reborn is your friend, just try to avoid tripping over your death rattles when targeting it. The game will prioritize a summoning death rattle over reviving your minion if there aren’t enough slots to go around.
• There are multiple heroes that work extremely well with an Undead build. The Lich King grants reborn for a turn, Prof. Putricide creates Undead amalgamations, Teron Gorefiend lets you destroy a minion and then resummon an exact copy once a space is available, the Jailer’s power gives a stat boost which increases in potency the more your minions die, Onyxia summons a small dragon to attack for every 3 friendly minions that die in battle, and Tamsin Roame lets you kill your weakest minion and give its stats to the rest of your board.

 

11. Elementals

The power of the elements!

Elementals are all about the hot new freshness. There are multiple ways to buff ALL Elementals in the tavern for the rest of the game and then you just keep replacing your board with ever stronger versions of your minions. 

Tripling minions is also a very important element of playing Elementals. It’s helpful for every minion type of course, but none more so than Elementals because of the tavern buffing and the Elemental of Surprise which can triple with, and therefore add divine shield to, any other Elemental. 

• The game with Elementals is all about turnover.
• Sellementals allow you to fill your board relatively early.
• Elemental’s reduced refresh cost ensures that you can really focus on getting the minions you want and get early triples.
• The Elemental build leans toward buffing the tavern as much or more than buffing your actual board, Felementals, Dancing Barnstormer and Nomi Kitchen Nightmare all increase the stats of every Elemental you buy for the rest of the game.
• Routinely replace your front line with buffed counterparts from the tavern, keep your buff generators until the very late game to maximize their effects.
• The WIldfire Elementals ability to deal excess damage on a kill to adjacent minions makes it the best possible front liner for any Elemental build, get one and buff it as much as possible.

 

12. Beasts

Woof. 

Beasts are another deathrattle focused minion type. But rather than aiming to permanently boost your minion stats, what you want is to be summoning as many large beasts in combat as possible. The key to the current best Beast build is the Banana Slamma (tier 4) which doubles the stats of any minion summoned in combat. This effect stacks the more you have and a golden copy triples the stats. Supplement that with stat boosts from minions like the Mama Bear and Humming Bird and you’re off to the races.

• Beast builds can struggle in the early game but are a vicious cycle once you get them rolling.
• Mana Saber is only good for one decent hit until you buff it with Humming Bird, so get to tier 2 ASAP.
• Try to structure your lineup so that there is enough space for your summons when the deathrattles trigger. You don’t want your deathrattle summon minions out front or there will sometimes only be one slot available when they go off.
• Same goes for Monstrous Macaw. If the only death rattles you have are summons then if Monstrous Macaw attacks too early there won’t be anywhere for those summons to go. Try and open up some space in the first few passes.
• That said, you definitely want your summons to trigger while you still have buffing Beasts in play. It can be a tricky lineup to balance.
• Baron Rivendare’s ability to double deathrattles can be extremely helpful in a Beast build but he’s also vulnerable to counters. Be on the lookout for opponents with minions that target your weak links and adjust accordingly. Either buff the Baron or insert a weaker scapegoat to take those hits.
• With Beasts it’s worth getting to tier 6 as early as you can to get access to some incredibly powerful minions like the Ghastcoiler.

 

13. Dragons

Here there be dragons. 

Dragons are decently competitive in the early game with Dozy Whelps ability to gain attack whenever it is attacked and Upbeat Frontdrake giving you a new dragon every three turns, but become truly fearsome in the mid game. Once you start adding divine shield to the dragons’ impressive stat building capabilities the sky’s the limit. 

• Dozy Whelp and Upbeat Drake are both weak at the start but improve your chances over time.
• Blazing Skyfin in tier 2 is your best option for an early front liner, he gains +1/+1 whenever you summon a battle cry minion.
• Bronze Warden (tier 3) is another good option for buffing with his divine shield and reborn.
• Amber Guardian buffs 2 other dragons with divine shield at the start of every combat, no dragon line up is complete without at least one.
• Dragons tend to be glass cannons, but the implementation of divine shields makes each cannon worth at least 2 good shots.
• Battle cries are your friend, especially once you reach tier 6 and can employ Kalecgos, Arcane Aspect who gives all friendly dragons +1/+1 whenever you play a battle cry minion.

 

14. Mechs

Beep boop bzzzzt.

Few minion types are as versatile as mechs. Their ability to magnetize to one another makes for some truly powerful mashups. In addition, adding the ability to spawn smaller mechs upon death to every mech on the field makes for good staying power. Nothing more annoying than finally taking down that bruiser on the enemy field only to see him spawn seven mini bots and win the day through sheer numbers. 

• Micro Mummy is a decent platform to build off of with its attack buffing ability and inherent reborn.
• Try to get to tiers 3 and 4 ASAP, that’s where some of the best mechs can be found.
• Deflect-o-Bot (tier 3) has a divine shield and the ability to replenish it AND gain attack whenever you summon a mech in combat. Easily one of the best front-line options in the game. 
• Accord-o-Trons (tier 3) are worth one extra gold per turn for everyone you have and they are magnetic making them easy to glom onto any mech line-up.
• The Annoy-o-Module (tier 4) lets you add divine shield and taunt to any mech, great for heavy hitters and those mechs whose death rattles you want to trigger early.
• The Scrap Scraper (tier 4) will give you a random mech for every 4 friendly deaths in combat, spam it with as many micro bot corpses as possible and watch mechs roll in.
• The Utility Drone (tier 5) gives your mechs +1/+1 every turn PER mech magnetized to them, it can really add up.
• Tier 6 for mechs is the best in Battlegrounds, every tier 6 mech minion is a game changer.
• It’s easy to turn a tier 1 mech into a viable threat over the course of the game by adding stronger mechs to it as you go but beware, that tier 1 mech is still only worth 1 star when you’re tallying damage to the enemy HP.

 

15. The Late Game

The end approaches. 

In Battlegrounds just making it to the final 4 is considered a win. But how do you get that real crown when faced with the top half of players on the field? By specifically countering those players' builds. 

Keep an eye on the players that seem to be winning most of their matches throughout the game and the builds those players are employing and if possible try to keep a counter handy for the end game. 

• If your opponents have built up one mega colossus minion that is taking on all challengers, add some poison to your ranks.
• If you're facing a lineup that is filled with divine shields, get a hold of some minions that deal damage to multiple opponents. It only takes one point of damage to pop a divine shield after all, don't waste your heaviest hits when a pin prick will do the job. Tunnel Blaster (tier 4) is best for this, though he does damage to ALL minions so avoid if you have a lot of low health minions or divine shields yourself.
• If Baron Rivendare is making your life difficult employ cards that target weak minions specifically.
• Reborn and deathrattle summons will make it more likely that you have the last minions standing when all is said and done, Ghastcoiler in particular has a knack for adding just a little punch to the last act of combat
• If you can afford it try buying up all the minions that will be helpful to your last few opponents, especially if you see they have two copies of a minion then buy up all the copies of that minion you can to reduce the chances they will pull one and get a golden copy.
• Be aware of the clock, late game is where you have the most gold and the most to do on your turns as well as when combat tends to last longer.