BG Know-How

Start of the game

At the beginning of each battleground game you will first have to select the hero you will be playing for the rest of the game. Heroes differ by their values for health (usually 30), for armor (between 0 and 20) and most importantly their unique hero power. There are nearly 100 different heroes, all of which you can check out on our Heroes listing.

Normally you get to choose from two different heroes, but if you buy the Battleground Season Pass you will be offered a selection of four heroes until the end of the season (usually lasting 3-4 months).

A key part in influencing your decision for a hero is the availability of minion types in your BG lobby. While there are 10 different minion types (Beast, Demons, Dragons, Elementals, Mechs, Murlocs, Naga, Pirates, Quilboars, Undeads and Neutrals which are in each game) only a random selection of 5 of them will be available for each game. Some heroes do perform better with a specific minion type or a combination of minion types due to synergies with their hero power. Also, some minion types have a huge effect on how the game will play out in general. For example with Murlocs in, players will have access to more Venomous minions than usual which means the value of high HP minions is reduced.

With 8 players in each game a maximum of 32 heroes will be offered to pick from. Some heroes are only offered in games featuring a specific minion type (e.g. Millificent Manastorm only when Mechs are available). The heroes offered to you can not be picked by other players. With each new game you will get another random selection offered, therefore it is possible to not see a specific hero for a long time.

Hero armor

The armor of a hero can be between 0 and 20 and is used as a balancing tool by Blizzard. Heroes which are weaker or need more time to get their game going will usually have higher armor values, whereas heroes which are more tempo oriented or better in the current meta will usually be given lower armor values. These armor values are constantly adjusted with every Hearthstone patch. In reality no ingame difference exists between health and armor regarding the survivability of your hero, it is just a means to keep all heroes at 30 health.

In the past there used to be an armor tier system, meaning that one hero had a range of armor (e.g. 7-10) instead of one set armor value. But nowadays, each hero has one specific armor value and only some heroes have a second armor value for higher MMR ranges (~6000+). On our hero pages the regular armor value will be displayed with a gray background, whereas the high MMR value has a golden tinted background.

For a sorted list of all heroes and their armor values check out this page.

Minion pool

Before the start of each game the 5 available minion types (chosen at random) will be listed above the hero selection. After the game has started you can always check the available/banned minion types by hovering/tipping the right border of the gaming board.

With 10 different types and 5 of them drawn for each game, there is a 50% chance that a specific minion type is available, and in total there are 252 different type combinations possible. Depending on the actual mix of types, some minion types can be at an advantage or disadvantage for that current game of BGs, while sometimes combining two or more specific minion types can enable game-winning lines of play.

Since January 2023 (patch 25.2.0) dual-type minions have been added. These minions feature two different minion types and are available as long as one of its minion types is available in your game (Transmuted Bramblewitch being one example).

Tavern phase

Each game begins with the Tavern phase in which you are offered a selection of three minions to buy. The cost of buying a minion is always 3 Gold (ignoring some corner cases) and because every player begins the game with a starting amount of 3 Gold, during the first turn there is usually not much more to do then choose the best of the three minions, buy it, and play it from your hand onto your board.

You can sell any minion already on your board for 1 Gold, back into the tavern. But this usually makes sense only after your board has reached the maximum amount of seven minions, and you want to play other minions better than the ones already present.

Each player will gain 1 permanent Gold per turn, up to the 'maximum' of 10 Gold (reached on turn 8). There are some means to gain more gold than 10 during your turn (the most common one would be selling of minions). The maximum amount of gold available during a turn is capped to 100.

Anytime during this phase you can pay 1 Gold and push the roll button to get offered a new set of minions. You can use this button as many times as you want and can afford the gold. It is usually advised not to roll too much during the early game and rather buy the best minions offered, to fill up your board.

Every player starts the game on Tier 1, which means only minions of that tier will be offered to buy (check out the tier distribution if you want to know which ones). You can increase your personal tier by pressing the level-up button and paying the amount of gold needed to do that. Each tavern phase the cost to upgrade will be reduced by 1. The upgrade base cost for each tier is different (see Tavern Tiers) with the upgrade to Tier 2 being the cheapest at an initial 5 Gold. Therefore, the earliest you can level to Tier 2 is usually on turn 2. The higher the tier the more different minions will be offered on each refresh (3 on tier 1, 4 on tiers 2 and 3, 5 on tiers 4 and 5 and 6 on tier 6).

After the turn timer (25-40 seconds during the early rounds, 60-120 seconds later) has run out, the game will switch into the Combat phase where your minions face off against the minions of your next opponent. After each Combat phase there will be a new Tavern phase with a fresh roll of available minions offered.

If you want to buy more minions from the tavern than you can afford, you have the option of using the freeze-button which will lock the current tavern until the start of the next Tavern phase and prevent the free refresh.

Spells

In addition to the minions, each refresh of the tavern will also feature one spell (since December 2023, patch 28.2.0). These spells are different non-permanent effects, but their cost to buy can range from 1 to 7 gold.

Click here for a list of all currently active spells.

Combat phase

In the combat phase the left-most minion (with an attack > 0) of one player will attack a random minion on the opponents board. On a full board that means your attacking minion has a 1:7 (or 14.29%) chance to attack a specific minion of your opponent. This luck-factor can become very relevant when 'sniping' a minion like Mama Bear or Titus will decide over the outcome of the match.

After the attack has concluded the left-most minion of the player who did not attack, will begin its attack. This loop will continue until all minions on one side of the board have been killed.

Minions with zero attack power will be skipped and the next minion to the right (which has a positive attack value) will attack instead. If both players have only minions with zero attack power on the board the combat will end in a tie.

Initiative

Which player will attack first is decided by the number of minions on each side at the beginning of combat. If you control more minions than your opponent your left-most minion will attack first, followed by your opponents left-most minion, after your attack has concluded. If both players control the same amount of minions at the beginning of combat, a hidden coinflip will decide who gets to attack first. It is usually an advantage to attack first, but there are some corner cases where it could be beneficial to go down from 7 to 6 minions to force your opponent to attack first.

Taunt

As a defensive measure to protect your valuable creatures providing in-combat buffs (e.g. Mama Bear) you can play minions with taunt or buff any of your minions via Sparring Partner or Vigilant Stoneborn. A basic strategy is to position a big taunt minion to the right side of your board, so that it attacks as late as possible and will block most of your opponents minions.

Another thing to keep in mind with taunt minions occurs when facing minions with cleave (e.g. Blade Collector).

Windfury

A minion with Windfury will attack a second time, if it survived its first attack. Multiple instances of Windfury do not increase the number of attacks.

As Windfury is an offensive ability only, it is usually best to place a minion with Windfury to the left to increase the chance that it can attack twice before being killed by an attack itself. Also notice, that Windfury only provides value if the minion is able to survive its first attack. Therefore, the value of Windfury increases on minions with high health or a Divine Shield.

Divine Shield

Minions with a divine shield will not get damaged the first time they are hit during each combat (the shield will refresh between combats). This provides the opportunity to trade 2 for 1 if the shielded minion is big enough or to protect a key minion from dying too early.

Out of the box only 9 minions in total come with shields but there a different means to buff any minion with a shield (primarily via Glowscale or Annoy-o-Module).

While usually the positioning of a DS minion is less important because the shield works on offense as well as on defense you should still try to position against what your opponent has. The best counter against a shielded minion is a Leeroy, as he will kill any minion in one hit, shield or no shield. But even a small taunt minion like a Risen Rider can be played as a blocker to waste your shield. If your opponent is featuring several shielded minions instead of just one huge one you should consider picking up a Blaster and putting it in first position.

Deathrattle

A minion with Deathrattle will trigger an action upon its own death, usually spawning one or more token minions (token minions are 1-star minions not buyable from the shop). The number of spawns is limited by the currently remaining board space (e.g. Replicating Menace will try to spawn 3 Microbot tokens, but if there are already 6 minions on the board only 1 Microbot will be created).

An example of a Deathrattle effect not spawning a minion is Selfless Hero which will gift a Divine Shield upon death instead.

Deathrattle triggers before Reborn. Please check out this list of all Deathrattle minions to know your options.

Reborn

A minion with Reborn will respawn upon its own death in its basic state (meaning as bought from the shop with no buffs applied later) but with only 1 health.

Reborn triggers after Deathrattle. Please check out this list of all Reborn minions to know your options.

Cleave

Cleave is short for the text "Also damages the minions next to whomever this attacks." and is featured on only two minions, namely Blade Collector and Foe Reaper 4000. There is also Wildfire Elemental (will only cleave when killing its target and only to one side until golden) as an honorable mention.

That is most likely because it is one of the strongest offensive abilities in the game, with the potential to trade your one minion for up to three of your opponent minions. Because cleave has no defensive benefit you usually want to position your cleave minions to the left, so they can attack before getting killed. This also means that the health of a cleave-minion is way less important than its attack.

A countermeasure to cleaving minions is clever positioning and taunted minions (for example if you place a minion with taunt on the outer right position, a cleaving attacker will only hit two of your minions). So be aware of lobbies featuring the above-mentioned minions and the picks or discoveries of your opponents.

Venomous

A minion with Venomous will kill any minion (without a Divine Shield) it hits regardless that minions health, once. Afterward the Venomous will fall off. Fighting a minion with 0 attack will make the minion lose Venomous, while fighting a minion with Divine Shield will not remove Venomous.

Please check out this list of all Venomous minions to know your options.

Poisonous

A minion with Poisonous will kill any minion (without a Divine Shield) it hits regardless that minion's health. Unlike Venomous, Poisonous will not be removed from the minion. This is a very strong ability, because in theory a poisonous minion with only 1 attack but enough health could kill an entire opponent's board.

Therefore, only very few active minions have this ability, namely Amalgadon, Tide Oracle Morgl and Emperor Cobra (spawned from a secret).

Avenge

A minion with Avenge will count the number of minions dying on your side of the board during the combat and trigger their effect for each time the condition was met (e.g. Ghoul of the Feast with "Avenge (2)" will trigger the first time after 2 of your minions have died and then again after 4, 6, 8, etc. deaths).

Token minions spawned during combat will also be counted, but the Avenge minion will not count its own death. Avenge minions will usually be placed on the far right of the board to get as many triggers as possible before dying itself. The avenge counters do not carry over from combat to combat, but will reset to zero at the beginning of each new combat turn instead.

Please check out this list of all Avenge minions to know your options.

Battlecry

Minions with this ability will trigger an effect when played from your hand. Many Battlecry effects will buff the minions on your board with permanent stats (e.g. Menagerie Jug) or permanent abilites (e.g. Taunt by Sparring Partner).

A key minion to utilize battlecries as a winning strategy is the neutral Brann Bronzebeard available in all games. Also Rylak Metalhead can trigger the battlecries from minions on your board during the combat phase (those buffs will vanish after combat, though).

Please check out this list of all Battlecry minions to know your options.

Magnetic

Magnetic is a Mech-only keyword that works when you play the magnetic minion to the left of any Mech (or a minion with all minion types) already on your board. The played minion will then instantly be integrated into the target minion, increasing its stats and adding any new keywords or effects stated on the played card. If you do not want to trigger the magnetic effect, you have to play the minion to the right of the Mechs, or to the left of a non-Mech minion on your board.

Since May 2023 (patch 26.2.0) it is possible to play magnetic minions even when you already have the maximum number of 7 minions on your board. Since July 2023 (patch 27.0.0) any magnetic minion which is magnetized to another minion will return to the shared minion pool.

Please check out this list of all Magnetic minions to know your options.

Spellcraft

Spellcraft is an ability exclusive to the Naga minion type, but some dual-type Naga (like Draconic Deathscale) do exist, which let the ability bleed into other types, too.

When you play a minion with Spellcraft you will get a temporary spell with its effect added to your hand. In addition, for each Spellcraft minion on your board at the start of your Tavern turn you will also receive its Spellcraft spell. These spells will be destroyed at the end of each Tavern turn. Therefore, you should always plan for enough time to play all of them, and they can not be stored for future turns. If your hand is already full (10 cards maximum) when you would receive a Spellcraft, you will still receive it after you clear your hand of cards.

Please check out this list of all Spellcraft minions to know your options.

Blood Gems

Hand size and interactions

The maximum number of cards (minions, spells, effects, coins, gems, etc.) in your hand is 10. After that you first have to play a card to buy or receive another one. Cards which would added to your hand if you are at maximum hand size will be lost, except for Spellcraft cards, which will be newly generated when the space opens up again.

Some minions add cards to your hand during combat (e.g. Bristlemane Scrapsmith) or can access the cards in your hand (e.g. Bassgill).

During the combat round you are able to see the number of cards in the hand of your current opponent and can sometimes deduce their strength or strategy from that information.

Discovering

Some cards or effects let you discover minions (and sometimes even spells). When this happens you will usually be presented with a choice of three options to pick from. The card picked will be added to your hand.

The most common occurence of discovering happens when tripling minions.

Tripling minions

When you buy or otherwise get the third copy of a minion all copies on your battlefield will be pulled back to your hand and combined into a golden minion. In general a tripled minion will have double the stats of the regular minion plus all the permanent buffs accumulated on the prior copies. For an in-depth look at the math involved please refer to our Triple Stats guide.

As a bonus, when you play the golden minion you will receive a discover-effect card which lets you discover one minion from a tier one level higher than your current tavern tier. The tier level for the discovery will be locked in when you play the golden minion. Therefore, if you want to get a higher discovery it is possible to delay the playing of your triple. You also benefit from tripled minions by needing one less space on your tavern board.

Your first triple during a game can often be a key decision guiding your direction or strategy for the rest of the game. Please refer to our list of key minions for each minion type.

Already golden minions can not be tripled again and will bind three copies of the minion on your board. Of course, it is possible to get another golden version of a minion by combining three new minions of the same name. When you sell a tripled minion three copies will be readded to the shared minion pool. This is more relevant for high-tier minions, because there are only 9 copies of each tier 5 minion and only 7 minions of each tier 6 minion.

Pivoting

Transitioning from one strategy or minion type to another, usually during the mid-game but sometimes even during the late-game can be the difference between a subpar or a top 4 finish. Knowing when it is the right move to pivot in order to increase your long-term chances, is a skill fed by proper enemy scouting as well as general experience with the flow of the game. Naturally, some strategies like Beasts or Scam are easier to switch to than others, for example Dragons or Elementals.

Buff persistence

Unless explicitly stated that an effect is permant (like on Budding Greenthumb) buffs which happen during the combat phase won't carry over. This includes all "at the beginning of combat" effects.

On the other hand, buffs that happen during the tavern/buy phase (from something like The Boogie Monster) or "at the end of your turn" (e.g Famished Felbat) will persist, unless specified otherwise.

Order of effects

Some effects happen at the end of your Tavern turn or at the beginning of the Combat phase. If multiple effects of the same kind are triggered they will usually happen from left to right. For example with the Quilboar minions Pokey Thornmantle and Charlga, you should always position the Pokeys to the left of the Charlgas, because then they will increase the size of your Blood Gems before the Charlga will apply them to your minions.

Effects of hero powers will usually happen before minion effects.

Damage Cap

The Damage Cap was implemented to avoid players from taking huge amounts of damage on early turns. It is indicated by a little shield symbol you can see while hovering over heroes on the left bar. The current Damage Cap is set to 15, meaning if a player would take more than 15 damage (e.g. 20) while the cap is active, the damage will be reduced to the maximum amount of 15.

The Damage Cap is in place until only 4 players are left alive.
Until September 2023 the Damage Cap was in place until both a hero had died and the game had reached at least turn 8 (10 gold).

Fighting a ghost aka 'Deadguy'

Whenever an odd number of players are defeated before a combat round, one of the remaining players will be randomly paired with one of the eliminated players. These eliminated players, referred to as ghosts or 'deadguys' (their ingame name will show as "Kel'Thuzad"), will bring their board lineup from the time of their death to the fight, but will not activate hero powers (even passive ones like from Deathwing will be inactive) or any other abilities.

In most cases, the fight will be relatively easy to win, allowing players to use the lobby turn beforehand to level up a tier or improve their board without much concern for the matchup. However, an exception can occur in the endgame when only three players are left standing, and one of them will have to face the player who was just eliminated and likely had an endgame-viable board. Losing to a 'deadguy' will deal the normal amount of damage and could potentially lead to elimination.

The bar on the left of the screen represents the heroes ordered by their remaining health and armor. In the event of a 'deadguy' fight, the bottom three players who were not paired with a ghost during the previous two rounds will be eligible.

In 7-player lobbies where one player disconnected or conceded early it can be a successful tactic to level faster than usual, while taking lots of damage in the early fights to place oneself on the lower half of the scoreboard and therefore have a high repeating chance to face the 'deadguy' and use these auto-win rounds to catch up and overtake the other living players.

Game length

Most lobbies will take about 13-16 turns to find a winner, which translates to around 25 to 30 minutes in real life. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, for example when many fights end in ties during the endgame it is totally possible to reach 20+ turns.

The first 5 turns are usually refered to as the early game, whereas turns 6 to 10 are the mid-game and everything after that is the end game. It is very uncommon for a player to die before turn 8 (notwithstanding conceding or disconnecting), but pretty common that at least one player does so on turns 9 to 10. This will also depend on the tempo of the current meta game and the lobby composition, of course.

Damage Output

Scouting

Rating (BG MMR)

The rating shown after every game is your match making rating (MMR), a first place will normally net you around +100 points, whereas an 8th place will make you lose around -100 points. The actual values are based on a formula and depend on the MMR of every player in the lobby and your actual placement at the end of the game.

The higher your MMR gets, the harder it will be to further accumulate points (for example with an MMR of 10,000 a win will only provide like 70 points, while an 8th place will cost you ~115 points). At normal rating ranges, a singular 5th place and below will make you lose points, whereas a singular 4th place and above will make you gain points. If multiple players die on the same turn, the rating gain/loss will be 'split' between them.

The matchmaking algorithm will try to build lobbies where every player is roughly in the same MMR range. But after you reach a high rating (8000+ in the middle of the season) there is a chance to be matched with everyone, even the top 100 players of the ladder.

Rating Floors

There are rating floors between 2000 and 6000 for your MMR. Your rating does not drop below each floor once it is above it. Currently, there is a floor every 500 rating points: 2000, 2500, 3000, 3500, 4000, 4500, 5000, 5500, 6000. Below 2000 MMR you won't lose any points for an 8th place, anyway.

Internal rating

At the start of each BG season (roughly every 3 to 4 months) your shown/external MMR will be reset to zero. But Hearthstone saves your internal MMR (which at the end of a season will be very close to your external MMR) and will match-make you by your internal MMR.

A lobby win at that point in time will net you up to 300 points, allowing you to climb back to your 'real' MMR faster. This bonus for point gains will decrease the closer you'll get to your internal MMR (and will also be capped at ~8000 MMR, even if you had a very high rating like 10,000+ in the last season).

Conceding

You can concede a running game at any time by opening the options dialog and pressing the concede button, after which you will lose (or sometimes even gain) points according to your current rank.

If you have to or want to concede, you should wait until the combat phase has been started. Because then the combat results will already be calculated server-side, and you will share points with everyone dying during the current round.

If you are in the top 2, and you know or see that your opponent outmatches you and your chances to win are slim to none, you can save time by conceding, without getting punished for it.

Disconnecting intentionally

Winning percentages

Some external addons are capable of calculating your odds of winning, tying or losing a given round by simulating the combat before or while it happens. Although those tools will usually run several thousand iterations of the combat in order to provide percentages as accurate as possible, it can still happen that you lose a combat for which the addon claimed a 100% chance to win. As the number of random effects during combat increase (e.g. with cards like Ghastcoiler) there is always the off chance that a crazy result will happen, not in the first 5000 iterations but only on the 5001st run (which could be your actual combat).

Although knowing your chances in combat can be used as a guide for the relative strength of your composition do not overvalue the numbers. Be aware of the mental impact of always checking the win percentages and what the percentages really express. For example a fair amount of combats will be decided by who attacks first, which is essentially a 50:50 coin flip at the begining of the match. This effect is evened out by the theoretical simulations running several thousand iterations. But in practice, it will still be just the one coin flip at the start of your combat, having a major impact on the result of the given round.