Quote Originally Posted by Zevox View Post
Snuck some Battlegrounds time in this weekend when I wasn't playing Dragonball. I rather like the Dragons update so far - new comp possibilities with Dragons themselves are rather cool, and I absolutely love that their addition has made Menagerie a lot more viable again. Especially with the stealth-buff of Lightfang Enforcer so it that now added Dragons to the types it hits without removing any of the original four, so it can now buff five things at once. Managed a first-place finish with a menagerie comp that started with Lightfang buffs and transitioned a bit later into Brann for faster buffing - haven't seen a composition like that take first at least since Amalgam was removed, if not since Lightfang was nerfed.

I haven't gotten to try all of the new heroes, but I mostly like the ones that I have. Nozdormu seems strong, albeit not exciting - a free refresh per turn makes it a lot easier to build a coherent comp, and helps in the early game since you get a re-roll even on turn 1 if you're offered crap. Ysera is nice, makes it a lot easier to build a Dragons-focused comp, but I'm not sure how strong that makes her. Reno is kind of cool, hit the right thing with his hero power and it can be a big deal. My one time with him I took a crappy mechs comp that had no Cobalt Guardian into top 4 by grabbing a Junkbot off a triple and turning it gold. Ideally I think Reno really wants to hit something like a Brann or Baron Rivendare, though - or maybe Kalecgos or Razorgore if he's running dragons - I was just in bad shape in that match and needed the power spike to not finish in the bottom.

The only one I've played and don't really like is Galakrond. His power is okay I guess, but hard to leverage right. I tried using it repeatedly and freezing to get an early tier 5 or 6 minion, but I took a lot of damage trying to set that up, and whiffed on getting anything crazy enough to make up for it. Getting to tier 4/5 and just using it to fish for good minions from the next tier up might be the better way to play him, but then isn't he just slightly different Toki?

Haven't gotten to try Deathwing, Malygos, or Alexstraza. From playing against Deathwing, he seems strong if built right; hard to say about the other two.
Deathwing is absolutely broken. Grab a rat pack early and it just carries you all the way to late game, so you can tier up faster than anyone else and cruise into victory. Any time I've seen a deathwing who got tokens in the first 3 turns, they basically won the lobby.

Alexstraza seems inconsistent. I haven't played with her myself yet, but I see a lot of times her dying before hitting Tier 5 making her HP useless. Of the T5 alexstrazas I've seen, one was completely bonkers and just blew me away, the other two were very much 'meh'.

On Galakrond, you're not wrong that the best way to play him is to fish for Tier 5/6 minions, but just being a weird Toki isn't a bad thing. Also he's much more flexible than Toki, since if you are getting good early tempo minions, you have the option to freeze and push a single minion up a few extra tiers for huge highroll potential. Then when you hit the actual late game, you're not stuck always getting tier 6, if you really want some more Tier 4 or 5 minions, you can target those specifically which is really handy. I got 1st with him doing a Murloc build, I kept on using the HP to hit t4 minions to fish for Bran/Bagurgle. Yes I could have gone for Megasaur instead, but 2 potentially good hits vs 1 seemed a good deal to me.

I have not had good luck yet with Ysera. Dragons in general I have had a hard time with, I suspect I am just playing them wrong. I have done good late game dragon transitions, but any time I try to start dragons in the early/mid game, I end up getting stomped even when I have what looks like a good comp. Until Razorgore and Kalecgos come online, they just don't have the sort of scaling necessary to keep up it feels like. Though cherry picking stronger dragons and slotting them into menagerie comps has seemed really successful, that's not really what Ysera's specialized at doing.

Malygos is actually pretty cool because his hero power can target minions on your own board. I used it a few times to refresh a minion that I used for a battlecry into something stronger as a temp fix until I could get something more desirable the next turn. But much like Galakrond being able to target the tier you are wanting to hunt for is so flexible that it's hard to pass up.