Hello again, I bring you another Tale from Hearthstone Battlegrounds. It has been a while since I had time to really delve into Battlegrounds as much as I would want to and on Wednesday it was the first time I got to play with the new Quests introduced in the Battlegrounds Season 2 with patch 24.2 on August 30.

If you are on our Discord, maybe you saw me mention this already, and chances are that avid Battlegrounds players among you figured this out way before me, but I chanced upon a combo of Nether Drake and Whelp Smuggler and it seemed a little too good. And if yesterday's slight nerf to Nether Drake is any indication, Blizzard might agree that the card is one to look out for.

The Wednesday's run didn't go so well and I made many mistakes, but this combo stuck with me and I had a chance to try it again soon enough.

When the Plan Comes Together

I didn't know where the game would take me, of course, but when I was offered the Quest Unlikely Duo - to play 6 Dragons or Quilboars - as Sire Denathrius on turn 1, and there was a dragon waiting for me, I took it.

It was to play only 6 of them and the reward was Victim's Specter (After each combat, get a plain copy of the last friendly minion that died), so there was a good chance I could start generating triples extremely soon.

Unlikely Duo Card Image Victim's Specter Card Image

Second turn pretty much just sealed the deal when a literal triple of Evolving Chromawing offered itself alongside Sun-Bacon Relaxer, all of which would help me progress the Quest. That alone meant a free triple, 5/6 Quest progression and a +2/+2 buff on something. I mean that looked like a preeeetty good start.

I was wondering if I should straight up triple on Tier 1 so I could get a chance to discover Nether Drake or Whelp Smuggler, but I did that on Tier 2 eventually and discovered a basically useless Iron Sensei. I don't remember the exact Discover options, but I think I picked it because it was super early and if I got a Mech, any Mech, I could at least start buffing it and get some tempo. It was a pretty bad choice at the time.

Looking back, I should have definitely tried to triple on Tier 1 and try to discover one of the two combo pieces I was looking for, but I suppose I was not fully set on going dragons yet despite what I got offered so far. It certainly helped me complete the Quest basically in 3-4 turns, but I didn't know what other offerings would the Tavern provide and you don't want to re-roll too much, or at all, this early.

I did get offered Whelp Smuggler right on the next turn, so that settled it.

Now I was looking for Nether Drake(s) to try and replicate the setup I had on Wednesday and see how strong could it be with a good start and set strategy in mind. I was offered one next turn, as luck of the draw was on my side.

I had completed the Quest on the same turn, so I tried to set up my board in a way that either Nether Drake or Whelp Smuggler would hopefully die last. And it worked, second Nether Drake was in the bag. Now my dragons were going to get +2/+2 a turn from two Nether Drakes and Whelp Smuggler - let the scaling begin!

On Wednesday, I made a mistake of tripling Nether Drake too soon. I actually didn't know if a golden one would give +2 Attack once or +1 Attack twice. I suppose the former was the more obvious option, and reading the patch notes would help as well lol. The allure of triple enticed me enough anyway at the time, but now I restrained myself when offered and actually tried to game the odds again to have Nether Drake die last, since that would mean I could get a triple and buy another copy off the Tavern, leaving me with two Nether Drakes still and thus two procs of Whelp Smuggler a turn too.

That plan worked perfectly and I was now getting +3/+2 a turn and had a chance to discover from higher Tier.

I got an Atramedes which was quite nice. At this point I was steamrolling pretty much everyone and shooting up Tavern Tiers as fast as I could, since I had a great passive board scaling which was carrying me hard.

I will say it was way trickier to game which minion would die last after a while, since the dragons were getting beefed up :)

But I was still getting some decent triples along the way. Got a second Whelp Smuggler as well, tripled it eventually - not by choice, since it was the last one to die; but it was OK, I needed the board space anyway.

Got a golden Nadina the Red too which I sold soon after - crazy notion, I know - but I felt like I was so ahead of the curve that I didn't need to "waste" a board space with her for now and could keep scaling one more Dragon instead. I was basically trying to get to Tier 6 ASAP and find Kalecgos, Arcane Aspect to get to the final stage of my composition.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot, as my second Quest I took Assemble a Lineup that wanted me to summon 25 minions for Yogg-tastic Tasties, which spins the Wheel of Yogg-Saron for you at the start of your turn. I honestly had, and still have, no idea what all of the options are. I could probably look it up, but was too lazy lol! So I picked that option to see what I would get. I knew it was good, I just didn't know exactly what to expect. I knew there was a stat redistribution among all friendly minions which could play well with my comp.

Assemble a Lineup Card Image Yogg-tastic Tasties Card Image

At that time, on turn 4, I was hoping for like a Rat Pack to progress the Quest faster but as I've already described above how the game went from there, I quickly decided that with what I'm doing, it would take a while before I was able to summon 25 minions, since I wouldn't have any token spawners, so I basically forgot about the Quest for a while with strategy I wanted to lean into forming already.

When I eventually did finish the 2nd Quest, I think I got like 5 or 6 triggers off it, but nothing that really helped me at that stage of the game. Got some Darkmoon rewards, but like "discover a minion" and stuff, sadly no Divine Shield or Windfury buffs. Got twice "permanent +3/+3 for minions in the Tavern" which was suuuuuuuuper useful at that point (yeah, not really) when I was only cycling Battlecries by then and didn't need any new minions so stats didn't matter.

Anyway, getting back to where we left off, I finally found Kalecgos and could speed up my scaling since with golden Whelp Smuggler, each proc off Kalec essentially meant a +1/+3 instead of +1/+1. While also getting a +4/+4 a turn on all dragons from Nether Drakes combo. Awesome!


Honestly, having a board like this BEFORE you even have Kalec is kinda crazy I would say.

I pretty much didn't lose a single match that run except for one somewhere in the early turns. So my chosen strategy worked like a charm the entire game.

I will say that the last match was probably a bit lucky on my part. We haven't faced each other in a while, but I knew he had Foe Reaper 4000 (which probably had Divine Shield by now) and Divine Shield quilboars from before and I actually didn't find another Nadina again so I didn't have very many Divine Shields myself. Seemed like we both had the same idea with Tunnel Blaster :)

I went 1st and attacked Foe Reaper twice, it survived and got an attack off, but looking back at the screenshot of our boards, I don't think it actually mattered that much who went 1st or 2nd in this instance, since the board would look much the same after both of our first attacks - no matter what order thanks to the Blasters and both Foe Reaper and Tarecgosa having Divine Shield. So they would either trade the Divine Shields or one would get wasted on the Taunt and the other popped by aoe regardless.

Even if I did lose our first encounter, I was sitting at 36 HP vs 6, and I think my scaling would beat his Hero Power if it went off longer. Unless he got some Leeroys or Mantid Queens :D


Victory!

I got my achievements for Sire Denathrius done and finished the quest-line for Little Witch Jandice Battlegrounds skin, so this run was rewarding in many ways :) That is all folks, until next time!

Tell us in the comments below what was your experience with the new Battlegrounds Quests so far. Which Quest Rewards do you think are the best? I haven't had the chance to experiment with all of them, so I will happily read your suggestions.