Welcome to the strategy guide for Duos mode in Hearthstone Battlegrounds. In this article, we will explain the basic and advanced mechanics of duos, go through all the new “Duos-only” minions, heroes, and spells, as well as strategies, build examples, synergies, and other relevant things that you should know to progress in this new mode.
The Guide is up-to-date for the latest 29.2.2 Hearthstone patch.
Note that this will be an advanced guide and that we covered Hearthstone Battlegrounds builds and strategies, because the essence of building your board is still largely the same. Duos are a new mode – they were introduced in patch 29.0 on April 16th, 2024, so the meta is still in the experimentation phase, although it’s relatively clear what is strong and what isn’t. That said, let’s see what Duos in Hearthstone Battlegrounds are all about.
Hearthstone Battlegrounds Duos Overview
The new Battlegrounds Duos mod is at its core very different from the regular Battlegrounds in some ways, and the same in others. The interaction between players is what makes builds good and it’s almost impossible for a non-cooperative team to beat good teamwork. In essence, this is because passing cards is very powerful, and there are a lot of mechanics that incentivize one player to play a more supporting role, and the other player to carry the game.
What are carry/support roles in Battlegrounds Duos?
In Duos, there isn’t a definite concept of a carry/supporting role, but the gameplay naturally “gets there”. It’s not like this every game, since RNG, your partner, and the current game situation are all complex factors that determine your builds. What do we mean by this?
Well, let’s show an example:
You and your partner are playing the early-mid game and you build some tempo. He starts buying some Quillboars and if you happen to find 2 good Quillboars in your Tavern, you pass it to him. Next turn, again you find 2 key Quillboars and triple something at Tier 5 and find Chargla. Naturally, you pass it to him. Now, he has an extremely powerful scaling build and will carry the majority of the game, and you have…nothing. This is where the “support role” comes in. Since you don’t have any concrete composition/build, your job is to build some sort of scam build.
Now, by him having extremely powerful Quillboars, and you having a Titus Rivendare and a Golden Magnanimoose, one Transmuted Bramblewitch, and one Leeroy the Reckless, you can essentially copy 4 of his Quillboars and have 2 more scammy minions. This kind of tactic is just one of many, but it is exclusive to Battlegrounds Duos. We provide some examples of builds and explain them in detail below. You don’t just do your own thing, but rather play different roles, which is usually determined by what you get in Bob’s Tavern. This is not always the case, a lot of times you both just get minions that you need and you will naturally be “on the same level”, but this will not always be the case.
Duos-only Minions
A lot of minions and builds are similar to regular Battlegrounds, and we have a separate guide for that, visit our detailed Hearthstone Battlegrounds guide. The core mechanics are essentially the same and making a good Naga/Quillboar/Murloc/whatever build requires the same finesse and composition in Battegrounds Duos. The biggest difference is how you get there. Because you still need core minions (for example, Prickly Piper for Quillboars, Anub’arak, Nerubian King for Undead, Slitherspear, Lord of Gains for Naga) for the strong, scaling builds, a good idea (as we mentioned above) is for one player to play the “strong” and “difficult to get” build, and the other to play a more supporting role.
Let’s go over the new Hearthstone Battlegrounds Duos minions and see what they have to offer:
- Passenger – Extremely good for tempo, especially if you have more than one. Don’t forget to pass a card each turn.
- Wanderer Cho – Decent stats, and you will likely need the free pass ability, nice value.
- Friendly Saloonkeeper – Only good if your partner really needs one Gold Coin for this turn in order to level up the Tavern, for example.
- Generous Geomancer – Pretty bad since you don’t share the Blood Gem strength, plus the stats are horrible.
- Puddle Prancer – After the buff (+3/+3 to +4/+4), this minion seems okay for tempo. You buy it, pass it a few times, and you suddenly have a strong tempo minion.
- Orc-estra Conductor – After the nerf, she is pretty useless, nothing else to say.
- Plunder Pal – Good. Just don’t pick it up if you don’t have tempo.
- Doting Dracthyr – Not good, the attack gain is small for it to take up space.
- Mirror Monster – Rarely useful.
- Grave Narrator – Extremely good for the player playing the support role. Get this, few Taunt minions, and a few Reborn/Summoning minions, and you will boost your partner and get him to the endgame build much sooner.
- Storm Splitter – It’s good on paper, but you need to get the useful spells in Tavern in order to get the full value out of this card.
- Well Wisher – Very good value, the only problem is you will get him pretty late, so board space is a problem.
- Feisty Freshwater – Just like Well Wisher, it’s very good value and an instant pick-up, but it takes up space after a few turns.
- Man’ari Messenger – It got nerfed. Still good for Demons, but the stats are nothing special, especially since Rylak Metalhead was also nerfed.
- Magnanimoose [Game-changer] – One of the best minions in the game. The fact that you can get a Reborn on him since he is a beast is extremely powerful. Buy Earthmother for him, get reborn, and Titus, and you will summon most of your partner’s board. This is ideal for a support role player.
- Support System [Game-changer] – Speaking of supporting roles, this minion is also one of the best in the game. Your partner will permanently gain a Divine Shield on a random minion each turn, which is just broken.
Duos-only Spells
Tavern Spells are very similar to regular Battlegrounds, the only difference is that some spells that have “Duos” mechanics have been introduced:
- Catch! – After the “+3 Attack” to “+2 Attack” nerf, the spell is not that good. It’s okay if you think you really need tempo or else you will die, but it’s not a game changer like before the nerf.
- Recruitment Program – Useful, especially with Passenger. 2 Gold for a random minion of the most common type just seems like a good deal in the early stages.
- Portal in a Bottle – Also a very good spell. You will inevitably see a minion that your partner will need, and with this spell, you will pass it to him for 2 Gold, instead of 4 Gold (3 to buy + 1 to pass).
While these spells are good value, most of the time, Eyes of the Earthmother will be the most useful, since there is a higher likelihood that someone will need it, since you now have two boards, not one.
Fun fact: Duos-only Tavern Spells 50% more chance to appear compared to all the regular Tavern Spells.
Duos-only Heroes
Most of the Battlegrounds Heroes are the same, but there are some special Heroes that only exist in Hearthstone Battlegrounds Duos. Their abilities are also tuned in with new Battlegrounds Duos mechanics, like passing minions, copying partner’s minions, or Hero Power. We also noticed that they are always in the game so you will naturally encounter them much more often. Let’s go over all the new Heroes and explain what strategies can you use with their Hero Power:
- Nameless One – One of the best Heroes in Battlegrounds Duos. The ability to copy your partner’s Hero Power is super powerful. Having double Madam Goya passing Hero Power is very useful, for example. Plus he has decent Armor for this kind of ability. We kinda see that if one partner gets Nameless One, it’s very good if the other one has Battlepass, in order to choose from 4 Heroes, so the copy Hero Power potential can be realized more easily.
- Madam Goya – Extremely powerful Hero Power. Passing a card for 2 Gold is too good. You will find a lot of cards in your Tavern that your partner needs, and passing them for 2 Gold instead of the regular 4 Gold (3 to buy and 1 to pass) is just OP.
- Flobbidinous Flop – This Hero is situational. The Hero Power has proven to be very powerful sometimes, and other times very useless. For example, if your partner plays Nagas, he will most likely have a weak tier 6 – Lord of Gains. Since this Hero Power copies the “highest tier”, it will copy a pretty useless minion. This will happen a lot throughout the game, since the strongest minion is oftentimes not the highest tier, weirdly.
- Cho & Gal – We played with this combo several times and while the Hero Power seems good on paper, it frequently “baits” you into forcing you to find the triple early on. If you triple something useless and then get a bad Discover, you lose a lot of tempo. On top of this, you don’t really have much momentum, and you lack a tempo Hero Power that a lot of other Heroes have. This makes Cho & Gal extremely vulnerable to early-midgame brawls. We see them being last a lot of times in our lobby, simply the greed of finding early triples + no tempo hero power results in a lot of last places. Try to build tempo with minions early on, and save the hero power once you reach at least Tier 3 or 4.
Hearthstone Battlegrounds Duos: Advanced Mechanics and Tips
Importance of Building Tempo
We mentioned tempo a few times, and we explained it in our main BG guide, but the tempo is a bit different in Hearthstone Battlegrounds Duos. If you have heroes with a lot of armor, it’s much more important for one player to just go for a strong scaling build, since you really have a lot of armor and the 15 Damage Cap is there. Usually, something like Quillboars will be extremely powerful, rather than trying to build a strong tempo army at tier 4. More often than not, you will just lose in later because you both can’t suddenly scale even though your Tier 6 Tavern Level.
Teamwork in Battlegrounds Duos
First, we suggest you just join up with a friend or link up with someone playing Duos at Hearthstone Discord, Bob’s Tavern subreddit, or Hearthstone Battlegrounds Facebook Group. Playing without voice with random people can sometimes be fun, but a lot of times you will just end up frustrated because things simply get more complex than you can communicate. The essence of teamwork is communication, we know it sounds cliche but you will lose your mind sooner than later from all the pinging and blaming your partner.
The other thing to keep in mind is that you both share your armies and because you do, it’s totally fine if you end up supporting your partner. Don’t try to carry the game when you get minions in Tavern that can help your partner carry, you will lose if you go against the grain. We know this is somewhat obvious, but sometimes ego can get in the way, especially if you’re playing with a stranger.
Finally, always be aware of what type of minion your partner is playing. Act as if that’s your board also…because it essentially is. For example, we found it was much easier for just one player to build the current overpowered Quillboars and for the other player to just have a scuffed scam army with something like Magnanimoose, Transmuted Bramblewitch, or Leeroy the Reckless. Builds that are hard and scale well are powerful in Hearthstone Battlegrounds Duos because you have double the “finding power”, the other guy can just later fill the board with scams, as you will see in some build examples below.
Advanced Tips For Duos
- As we already mentioned, focus on a strong build or support your partner with it, until it starts to “work”.
- Take advantage of the passing/copying abilities. Most of the “Duos-only” cards tend to be really good value and feel stronger than regular ones.
- Later in the game, you will probably be required to play with your partner a lot, so look for minions in your Tavern for both boards, not just your own.
- Start going for a build ASAP. Your opponent will outscale you if you start committing to a build only when you Tier 5, it’s a bit faster-paced than regular HS since you got almost double the buying power for one build.
- Be sure to always be aware of the “end of turn triples”. You can accidentally pass a triple and your partner may not have the time to play it before the battle starts. Recruitment is especially risky playing at the end of a turn if your partner has pairs of minions.
- When you choose the hero, armor will combine so choosing the hero with a lot of armor is more efficient than in regular HS BG.
Build Examples and Strategies for Duos in HS BG
Now that we covered the general all the spells, minions, and Heroes, as well as general gameplay tips, let’s look at some builds that can be effective in Hearthstone Battlegrounds Duos. Do note that these builds are highly situational because of the RNG nature of the game. Just a reminder to not force builds and to go with the flow of Bob’s Tavern. You will also see builds that have that “supporting role” we were talking about, but this is not always the case.
Generally speaking, the strategies for most builds in HS BG Duos revolve around Support – Carry mechanics as we explained above. Surviving mid-game and obtaining key minions for one player (carry) is the main objective of the team, as well as getting some kind of scam for the other (support). The trick is to feel when it’s time to start refreshing and searching for key minions – or deciding what the main build will be. We will give several examples of how this is done and what kind of strategies you can use to utilize this in the best way.
Duos Strategy: Supporting Demons
One of the best support-carry tactics in Duos revolves around Demons and their synergy with Man’ari Messenger. The whole point of this strategy is to buff up minions in the Tavern of the carry player. Support uses Man’ari Messenger and carry uses regular Demon build. Once the minions are buffed enough, the demon army will become insanely strong, and the carry will be able to pass buffed-up minions to the supporting player.
Although this strategy is good on paper, the real issue comes in midgame, while the minions are getting buffed. Defense is the main issue as offensive power is not a problem for Demons – but lack of Reborn and/or Divine Shield is. This Duos build is especially vulnerable to scam tactics for that reason. In order to avoid that, try to have your own scam in support player’s army.
The other issue is the fact that Man’ari Messenger has been nerfed in patch 29.2.2. The build is still very viable it’s just that it’s not as strong as it was at the beginning of Season 7. Basically, if you get Man’ari Messenger early on and are able to trigger its Battlecry by ability and/or a minion, you can go for this one. Refreshing and searching for it is not a good strategy as it will ruin your tempo completely.
Duos Strategy: Support and Power Level
This Duos strategy is highly volatile and one of the high-risk-high-reward types of approaches to the game. There are several requirements that are needed for it. First of all, hero power needs to provide a lot of sustain in order to survive mid-game. We played this one with Yogg-Saron and our teammate went with Mutanus; both heroes have a lot of armor and their hero powers provide enough support to execute this Battlegrounds Duos strategy.
So, how does it work? Well, in our example, we played as support. We kept utilizing stat-boosting spells and hero-power in order to boost our teammate who pretty much just kept upgrading until Tavern Tier level 6. The reason why we went this way is the fact that he got Long John Cooper very early as well as the fact that we had several Passengers on the board so there was enough sustain and economy boost to do this.
The main thing about this Duos strategy is the timing and commitment. If you decide to try this with the teammate, it has to be done perfectly as you will be crippler in mid-game severely, especially because one of you needs to support the other that keeps upgrading. Suffice it to say, your early game needs to be perfect and no gold can’t be wasted at this stage if you want to go this way. Keep an eye out for minions that can help with that – anything that has an economy boost or scam is good in mid-game. What you see in the board in the picture above is not how we played it during mid-game; we just kept providing support and surprising fire with minions such as Operatic Belcher + random Murloc, Leeroy the Reckless, Transmuted Brambelwitch, Tunnel Blaster etc.
If you survive mid-game, you will win with this strategy – no questions asked. As you can see in the print screen above, even if the opponents somehow survived these two builds, the scaling on both of them is just insane, and in a couple of more turns, those minions on both boards would turn into several hundred stats on each. Again, the three most important things for this Hearthstone Battlegrounds Duos strategy are: early-game, timing, and commitment. Good luck!
Duos Strategy: Taunt and Scam
Taunt build in Hearthstone BG is one of the most interesting ones to play in our opinion. Although it is not as strong compared to the beginning of Season 7, it is still very viable, especially in Battlegrounds Duos. Generally speaking, builds that rely on just a few cards are a good option to go since you have a double chance of getting those cards in Duos. Furthermore, Taunt is a good option since it has a very good tempo throughout the match and Battlecries can be used for other boosting economy as well.
This is another type of support-carry strategy for Duos. Your early game has to be strong – there is nothing that you need early on for this build so you should be focused on not losing health. Your support teammate should focus on economy and getting Draconic Deathscale, and Brann Bronzebeard as well as Assistant Guard for you. Once you assemble this build, you need to start boosting your teammate as well – in our example, we went for a scam build focusing on copying minions by using Magnanimoose and Titus Rivendare. Since the core taunt build is stat-based, this kind of strategy will allow to have basically a full board of minions with high attack as well as a low-key anti-divine shield strategy with initial Magnanimoose attack.
Keep in mind that it is a good idea to have both divine shield and anti-divine shield strategies in situations like these. Sure, your opponents can counter you, especially if they play Undead – but that was not the case in this game. Basically, your strategy needs to correspond with the build that your opponent is playing and this build should be an example, but not the rule, of how it can be done.
Duos Strategy: Divine Shield and Reborn
Another example of Duos strategy is the one that you see above – synergy between Divine Shield build and Reborn is a good way to to counter pretty much anything that comes your way. As you can see in the image above, for this one you will need regular Mech build and Undead build in Battlegrounds. The best way to approach this strategy is to avoid buying expensive magnetizations early on and focus on improving Undead attack all while providing some sustain with Deflect-o-bot and other Divine Shield mech minions.
Buffing up the Undead army is the key in this one as that mechanic is much less vulnerable to potential scam counters. However, both mech build and undead build are vulnerable in mid-game since their power scales much faster on higher Tiers. Avoid buying useless units and get anything that can provide sustain or power level to Tavern Tier 5. Don’t start buffing mech armies with magnetization units until you get Beatboxer. It’s much more effective to simply provide sustain or support to your teammate when playing with mechs than buying expensive magnetizations.
The endgame should be fairly easy in this Duos build as you will have both, Reborn and Divine Shield mechanics. Scam builds shouldn’t be a problem at this moment nor should high-stat ones (like Quilboar). The only real counter would be Tunnel Blaster as he will take off Divine Shields and kill off low-health Undead units.
Duos Strategy: Quilboars and Scam
One of the best builds in Duos is currently the one that focuses on Quilboar army being the main thrust force of the team. The other army can go for a support/scam type of build but should be focused primarily on buffing the carry player. Quilboar builds have been nerfed in the latest patch but they still remain the strongest ones in the duos. The reason is the fact that they pretty much outscale any other build and this is easy to do when you have a player supporting and passing the key minions to you.
As you know, there are two main ways of buffing Quilboars and that’s with Battlecry and/or End-of-Turn mechanics. It’s not important which one you use here as they are both very efficient, especially in duos. The main issue with Quilboars is their clunkiness and sluggish tempo in mid-game, but this is not an issue in Duos since the other player can compensate for that.
Since Quilboars get buffed up so hard, utilizing regular scam builds won’t be enough to counter them. The only real counter for Quilboars are other, (stronger) Quilboars. If you see that someone in the lobby is going for this build, you can try to rush them and eliminate them from the game early on. However, if that fails, and you are stuck with some other army such as Demons or Nagas, chances are that the game is lost.
Image Credits: Hearthstone Battlegrounds, Blizzard
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