General Strategy
Tavern Tiers and upgrading
The cost to upgrade to the next tavern tier will reduce by 1 gold at the beginning of each of your turns. For example if you have upgraded to tavern tier 2 the cost to upgrade to tier 3 will be 7 gold. After you enter the next fight and then reenter the tavern shop the cost to upgrade will be reduced to 6 gold.
When upgrading to tier 2, tier 4 and tier 6 the number of minions offered per roll in the tavern will increase by 1.
The higher the tier, the fewer copies of each minion will be available in the minion pool shared by all players. For example each tier 6 minion is only available 7 times. So if you fight someone who has a golden tier 6 minion, there will only be a maximum of 4 copies left for pickup in the tavern. This includes most ways of discoveries, but not the hero powers of Tess and Scabbs who will generate additional minions. Minions sold during the game will be readded to the shared pool (golden minions will be reverted to three normal ones).
Since August 2023 (patch 27.2.0) Tavern Tier 7 has been added to the game, but will only be accessible in games affected by the anomaly Secrets of Norgannon or the hero Thorim, Stormlord. One minion per minion type as well as three neutral minions were newly created for this Tier.
| Tavern Tier | Upgrade base cost | Upgrade base cost (Duos) | Minions in tavern | Copies of each minion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | - | - | 3 | 15 |
| 2 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 15 |
| 3 | 7 | 7 | 4 | 13 |
| 4 | 8 | 10 | 5 | 11 |
| 5 | 10 | 13 | 5 | 9 |
| 6 | 10 | 12 | 6 | 7 |
| 7 | 10 | 10 | 6 | 5 |
Minion types and distribution
The different minion types are not equally distributed across the six tavern tiers. For example Murlocs have only two tier 3 minions.
Even on tier 1, where each type used to have two minions, Pirates and Quilboars have access to three minions. Also notice the neutral minion Wrath Weaver, which is the third minion in the Demon pool on tier 1.
The table below is automatically generated and therefore always up to date and accurate. Click on the different types or tiers to display all minions for that selection.
| Minion type count per tier | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tier | Beasts | Demons | Dragons | Elementals | Mechs | Murlocs | Naga | Pirates | Quilboars | Undeads | None | Total |
| 1 | 2 (0) | 2 (1) | 3 (0) | 2 (0) | 2 (0) | 2 (0) | 2 (0) | 2 (0) | 2 (0) | 2 (0) | 0 | 22 |
| 2 | 3 (0) | 3 (0) | 2 (1) | 4 (0) | 3 (0) | 4 (0) | 3 (0) | 4 (0) | 2 (1) | 4 (0) | 3 | 35 |
| 3 | 3 (1) | 3 (0) | 4 (0) | 4 (0) | 3 (0) | 2 (0) | 5 (0) | 3 (0) | 3 (0) | 3 (0) | 2 | 33 |
| 4 | 4 (0) | 3 (0) | 4 (0) | 5 (0) | 3 (0) | 5 (0) | 4 (0) | 5 (0) | 4 (0) | 5 (0) | 8 | 48 |
| 5 | 5 (0) | 5 (0) | 4 (0) | 4 (0) | 5 (1) | 3 (0) | 4 (0) | 5 (0) | 4 (0) | 3 (0) | 10 | 50 |
| 6 | 3 (0) | 2 (1) | 3 (0) | 2 (0) | 4 (0) | 4 (0) | 1 (1) | 2 (0) | 3 (0) | 4 (0) | 5 | 33 |
| 7 | 1 (0) | 1 (0) | 1 (0) | 1 (0) | 1 (0) | 1 (0) | 1 (0) | 1 (0) | 1 (0) | 1 (0) | 2 | 12 |
| Total | 21 (1) | 19 (2) | 21 (1) | 22 (0) | 21 (1) | 21 (0) | 20 (1) | 22 (0) | 19 (1) | 22 (0) | 30 | 233 |
Spell Tiers and distribution
Whenever a spell is bought/generated, it immediately returns to the pool. There is a specific number of copies of each spell in the pool, but it's kind of like appearance rate since they get replaced immediately.
Since February 2024 (patch 28.6.0) one specific spell for each minion type has been added, which will only be available if the minion type is active for the given Battlegrounds game.
For a full list of all available/active spells check out our spells strategy page.
| Tavern Tier | Number of different spells | Copies of each spell | Average gold cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7 | 5 | 1.29 |
| 2 | 7 | 7 | 1.29 |
| 3 | 8 | 9 | 2.00 |
| 4 | 14 | 11 | 3.00 |
| 5 | 10 | 7 | 3.70 |
| 6 | 4 | 5 | 2.50 |
Buying Buddies
When the Buddy mechanic is active each hero has a Buddy button, which you can press during your shop turn to buy the buddy. The Buddy button's initial cost is based on your Buddy's Tavern Tier, and is reduced by 3 Gold each time you win or tie a combat, or reduced by 2 Gold each time you lose a combat.
The first time you press the button, you'll get one copy of your Buddy; the second time you press the button, you'll get two copies. The cost to press the button resets and is slightly increased after you press it the first time.
| Buddy Tier | Initial Cost | Reset Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 11 | 13 |
| 2 | 13 | 15 |
| 3 | 15 | 17 |
| 4 | 17 | 19 |
| 5 | 19 | 21 |
| 6 | 21 | 23 |
Tier 2 minions influencing your decision to go 3on3
While some heroes like Cookie and Galewing demand to play a 3on3 curve nearly 100% of the time, there are others where the decision to go for tier 3 on turn 3 will heavily depend on the tier 2 minions offered in the tavern. Below you will find a tier list of sorts, for the tempo value of all the tier 2 minions available, if you have decided to level on turn 2. Notice that you will usually sell the minion bought on turn 1 in order to buy two better minions, unless you got a 'token' like Deck Swabbie . Therefore, make sure that those two minions are worth it (don't buy tier 1 minions, for example).
Abort 3on3 plan, go for the minions:
Heavily think about switching up your 3on3 plan:
Middle of the pack, decide based on hero, synergy and/or lobby composition:
Not really worth it, better go 3on3:
Definitely not worth it, absolutely go 3on3:
Key minions guiding your strategy
Transitioning from mid-game to a viable end-game composition is an important step you should master in order to improve your game. Often times your first discovery of a 5 or 6 drop minion after a triple, will guide you in a specific direction. These are the key minions for each minion type strategy:
Ghastcoiler odds
This beast is a potent lategame minion. Therefore, it is advisable to know the odds of getting a Leeroy, an Operatic Belcher or any of the other possible Deathrattle minions.
There are currently 38 Deathrattle minions in the game (not counting Tier 7), but the Ghastcoiler can not spawn itself. Therefore, the odds for a specific summon from Coiler are 2.70%. You get two chances independent of each other, so for example the odds of getting exactly one Leeroy from one Coiler is 5.41%. Whereas the odds of getting two Leeroys is as low as 0.29%.
(These numbers are currently not filtered for banned minion types. So roughly multiply by 2, depending on your actual lobby composition.)
Mantid Queen odds
This endgame minion will always have Venomous, but what will take it from a good investment to a great one is the combination with Reborn, enabling it to take out two of your opponents biggest minions while only needing one slot on your board. If you are playing this on a board with only minions from one type or neutral ones, the odds of getting the elusive ability are a measly 25% (as there are 4 random buffs to choose from).
In order to increase the odds you can either place more different minions types on your board (not always an option, depending on your general strategy) or buff the Queen with Taunt and/or Windfury (because if it has either of those at the beginning of combat that option will be ignored for the random roll). All but the +5/+5 buff can only be applied once, therefore the maximum chance for getting Reborn with only one minion type will be 50%, for a fully buffed Queen. Whereas adding a second minion type will bring the odds of an unbuffed Queen to nearly 48%, and adding a third to nearly 68%.
| Number of minion types | Unbuffed | Taunt OR Windfury | Taunt AND Windfury |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25.00% | 33.33% | 50.00% |
| 2 | 47.92% | 61.11% | 75.00% |
| 3 | 67.53% | 78.70% | 87.50% |
| 4 | 81.24% | 88.73% | 93.75% |
| 5 | 89.68% | 94.16% | 96.88% |