Amalgadon is Best Boy! An Analysis and some thoughts!

Since the release of the latest patch, Amalgadon has been my absolute favorite card. I think it’s one of the most well-balanced cards that has been added to Battlegrounds as it can be viable in any board composition but it doesn’t feel oppressive or unfair to play against like Holy Mackerel used to be. Unless you’re playing a Menagerie board, the more “ahead” you are in developing an end-game board (i.e. full board of Murlocs or full board of Dragons), the weaker the card becomes and the more behind you are in building a synergistic board, the stronger the card becomes in hopes of helping you catch up. Looking at HS Replay statistics, Amalgadon is one of the top 3 most impactful minions for every single board composition which makes a lot of sense because it works well with almost every board:

• Menagerie: huge buff to Menagerie boards, although still not great by any means they’re much more competitively viable than they were previously. Amalgadon does best when both Murlocs and Mechs are both in play since you can manually add poison or a divine shield if you miss with the adaptations.

• Dragons: I think Amalgadon is actually the biggest buff to dragons since it can be a poisonous divine shield minion that gets further buffed by Kalecgos, regain divine shield from Nadina and also help buff your Waxrider by killing enemy minions.

• Murlocs: huge buff to murlocs because it can be discovered by Primalfin Lookout at Tier 5 and it can also be buffed and adapted. Also synergizes well with the fact that you often have a Brann on board as well.

• Beasts: can be buffed by Goldrinn, Mama Bear and Pack Leader. Downside is that it can interfere with your Monstrous Macaw since it can gain a deathrattle.

• Mechs: it doesn’t add much synergy unfortunately and could actually hurt your board by spawning non-mech tokens with the deathrattle and taking up board space. The only upside is that it’ll get buffed by cards like Metaltooth Leaper in case it doesn’t already have poison. It’s a very slight buff to Sneed’s Old Shredder as a 6/6 minion coming out isn’t bad and as a mech minion it’ll also reset your divine shields on Deflect-o-Bot.

• Pirates: pretty decent buff to Pirates since it can be used defensively as a big taunt minion (which pirates generally don’t have) or aggressively as an attacker to activate buffs from Ripsnarl Captain and Dread Admiral Eliza. It’s also a buff to Tide Razor since it’s a 6* minion with 6/6 in stats which is an above-average pirate to come out of the boat and deals an extra 6 hero damage if it stays alive.

• Demons: slight synergy with demons because it can activate Soul Juggler however the downside is the 1/1 deathrattle spawns could take up board space that would otherwise be filled with voidwalkers from a voidlord. Slight buff to Imp Mama as well since a 6/6 minion is above average.

Some lower tiered heroes that have benefited from Amalgadon:

• Alexstrasza – I think this is a slight buff to Alex as discovering this card with the hero power is actually quite impactful since you’re generally rushing to Tier 5 and you may have a bit of a menagerie board at this point anyways if you weren’t able to find strong dragons along the way. Additionally, if you do decide to go dragons

• Infinite Toki – huge buff to Toki because it’s a great minion for her to discover with her hero power on turn 5. It’s not like finding a Nadina when you have no dragons or finding a Megasaur with no murlocs, if you find an Amalgadon it’ll generally strengthen your existing board.

• Shudderwock – amazing synergy with hero power, enough said.

The following chart was pulled from Twitter and I don’t have the original source of who did the calculations, but here’s the probability of hitting the jackpot with Amalgadon which is getting both poison and divine shield:

Number of adapts = Probability of divine shield and poison

1 = 0.00%

2 = 3.13%

3 = 8.20%

4 = 14.40%

5 = 21.15%

6 = 28.04%

7 = 34.81%

8 = 41.29%

9 = 47.38%

10 = 53.02%

11 = 58.19%

12 = 62.88%

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. Here’s one of my favorite games I’ve had with Amalgadon:

https://youtu.be/ElbdeuZfI98