It could be used as an aggro tool as well, since it protects other minions in two ways: after completion as a taunt and before completion by inviting the opponent to deal face damage instead of dealing with the minions on the board.
The more I think about it, the more situations I see in which this is good.
If your opponent has a wide board of small minions (Quest Shaman, Lackey Rogue), this doesn't give them the full three minions, while you do get a cheap big taunt with enough attack to take out small minions when traded into.
If you don't play this on curve, you could immediately kill off the summoned minions with one-sided AoE; even on turn 6 or 7, a 3/9 taunt is useful.
In Quest Hunter, this progresses your quest by 4 ticks early game and has synergy with Unleash the Hounds late game.
And of course other advantages that were already mentioned, like messing up resurrect pools and discounting Sea Giant.
Maybe an opponent can delay the quest completion, but it is going to make their turns more awkward. For example hero powers are not mana efficient, so in the early to mid game, you don't want to be using your hero power every turn. And if you have to go face with a minion to prevent the quest completion, that minion is not trading, which leaves the Paladin's minions alive to deal face damage or get better trades.
Why not? One or two good dragon class cards can make a dragon deck viable. For example Dragon Priest was played because of Drakonid Operative and later Duskbreaker, not because the Priest class has particular synergy with dragons.
The class that would in theory have the most dragon synergy would be Shaman, because dragons often use battlecries. But Dragon Shaman has never been particularly good because there were no class-specific dragon cards.
Lack of healing is what is keeping Neferset Thrasher and Diseased Vulture back at the moment. But I don't know how many dragons you'd be able to fit into a deck with those cards. Crowd Roaster would fit into a tempo deck. Perhaps Twilight Drake is good enough as a tribal Yeti, but to get Yeti stats you have to draw or at least skip on some of your early turns if you go first. Dragonmaw Scorcher is a good card in more defensive decks, but maybe not if you're a tempo deck that wants to go wide. So I guess it depends on what new dragons we'll see. I don't think Crazed Netherwing would fit, since it would be a bad play if you're ahead and in a tempo deck you probably don't have the ability to draw a lot of cards early to allow for situational cards.
The obvious comparison is Duskbreaker, which was extremely good. This comes one turn later, which could be a concern, but provides much better stats to make up for it. The self-damage could be an issue, but Nether Breath helps there. And in Wild, Lesser Amethyst Spellstone turns the self-damage into an upside.
We might see seasonal shifts, where ladder is more popular after an expansion launches and Battlegrounds more popular when an expansion has been out for a while. I guess it's still better for Hearthstone though if people play/stream BG when they're bored of ladder instead of playing a different game entirely.
There is too much randomness to be sure of a draw, but they let the player with the stronger board would keep buffs in their hand to play after the round, to increase the chance of a draw or at least avoid dealing too much damage. I guess positioning as well, but I don't know the details there, since I watched the overall stream mostly and not specific streamers. Also they would often level up on turns before same-team fights.
I played some Odd Druid during Witchwood and Boomsday (so before Gonk, the Raptor was even released) and it wasn't all that bad. Claw was a pretty good card in that deck, although part of the reason was the synergy with Lesser Jasper Spellstone, which isn't in Standard anymore.
Shu'ma's ability doesn't seem good enough to make up for its stats at that mana cost. The repeating value is going to be rare: if your opponent cannot deal with a 7-health minion on turn 7, wouldn't you rather play a War Golem? At least with the War Golem it will cost them something to kill it with minions or a weapon.
Even for token decks, this seems weak. The tokens are summoned at the end of the turn, so you can't attach buffs or deathrattles to them on the turn that they are summoned. Druid, Shaman and Hunter have no shortage of tokens to summon, so a new token generator is only interesting if it is better than what is already there.
Dragonrider Talritha is going to be unreliable, since the buff might attach itself to an expensive dragon that you won't be able to play until for example turn 7 or 9. But the stats are decent and there isn't much competition at the 3 mana slot in a Dragon Paladin deck, so it will likely see play if the deck itself does.
Envoy of Lazul is the hardest to predict. 2/2 is not great but still useful early game. Scouting has been rated higher in predictions than in actual play, looking at Chameleos and Madame Lazul. For value, this is roughly Mind Vision on a stick; a not very exciting effect, but "on a stick" can make all the difference, see Vilespine Slayer.
The real issue is whether there will be a deck that the Envoy fits into. It doesn't do anything useful in a Divine Spirit / Inner Fire combo deck. The 2/2 is a downside in a resurrect deck. There is no particular synergy with the quest. So it will only see play if a new Priest archetype can make use of it. Maybe a deck built around Galakrond, the Unspeakable, since both the hero and the synergy cards have a removal theme, so it seems to be aimed at long games.
[i]Edit[/i]: Maybe they're trying to push a Princess Talanji deck, but I played a Talanji deck with randomly discovered minions and it's not good. Versus aggro Talanji is too slow to matter, while one wave of threats isn't going to defeat control.
When discussing Battlegrounds, it would be nice to be able to link to the Battlegrounds versions of cards instead of the regular Hearthstone versions, such that it includes the tier rating instead of mana cost.
I'm not sure what the syntax should be. One option would be to have a separate tag like {bgcard} instead of {card}. A different option would be to have a prefix in the body, such as {card}bg:Alleycat{/card}. I guess the cleanest solution is an attribute, such as {card set="battlegrounds"}Alleycat{/card}, but that would be terrible to type.
A different approach would be to have the post editor look up the card as you're typing and have a way of cycling between versions of the card. Misspelled card names are the #1 reason for me editing my posts, so a way to verify that the right card will be displayed would be great. But this is probably the most work to implement.
With Out of Cards supporting multiple card games, I guess you'll eventually run into overlapping names between games as well. Especially really generic names such as "fireball" might exist in multiple games. So it might be worth thinking of a solution for disambiguation in general and not just in the scope of Battlegrounds.
The Curator being one of the top heroes shows that getting an amalgam early, regardless of stats, is very good. So my guess is that it will remain an auto-pick in tier 2 even at 2/2.
Stats would matter more for minions that you eventually get rid of, since those need to be immediately useful. For example Vulgar Homunculus is a good early pick even though most players don't stay on demons. But Amalgams you typically keep until the end, so their starting stats are less important.
There is a short but very informative clip of Mike Donais providing info about the minion pools sitting next to Brian Kibler playing Battlegrounds at Blizzcon in this week's OmniSlash highlights.
There is a loading screen tip that states there are 6 copies of the tier 6 minions shared between all players. I assume the other minions have a similar system, but with larger numbers. That's also how other autobattlers work, as far as I know.
Firebat sometimes mentions things that developers confirmed, I assume that is from a public source like Twitter, but I don't follow Twitter closely since there is so much noise.
My impressions of the tribes from watching a lot of Twitch this week:
Demons: Never seems to work out when I saw them being used. If you don't become a turtle find Mal'Ganis early, you kill yourself.
Mechs: The current meta. The main downside is that the other players will be looking for mechs as well, so there will be fewer in the pool.
Beasts: Pretty solid, but it depends a lot on finding Mama Bear for the late game.
Murlocs: You might have a chance if you get poison + shields from Gentle Megasaur, but that's a lot of high-rolling.
Some meme options you didn't mention yet:
Shifter Zerus, which is in tier 3 but can shift to any tier, so you can get a super early tier 6 minion.
Bolvar, Fireblood with taunted Cobalt Guardian and mech-summoning deathrattles. You can't buff the health unless you get him golden though, so Junkbot is generally just better.
It's a pity that currently the strongest decks (Quest/Evolve Shaman and Combo Priest) are so RNG-heavy, but I think it was Liooon's selection and piloting of Malygos Druid and especially Highlander Hunter that gave her the edge over the other players.
Purple is the color of the League of EVIL, so a card glowing purple might represent a League victory. Right now in the Battle.net client I'm looking at an ad for the Hex and Flex bundles, of which the left side is Rafaam on a purple background and the right side is Reno on a yellow/orange background, so the other card color might simply represent an Explorers victory.
Based on hints from one of the brawls, I think there will be some additional twist that involves Nefarian, but I can't find any evidence for that in this teaser. I never played WoW though, so it's very much possible I didn't pick up all hints available.
It could be used as an aggro tool as well, since it protects other minions in two ways: after completion as a taunt and before completion by inviting the opponent to deal face damage instead of dealing with the minions on the board.
The more I think about it, the more situations I see in which this is good.
If your opponent has a wide board of small minions (Quest Shaman, Lackey Rogue), this doesn't give them the full three minions, while you do get a cheap big taunt with enough attack to take out small minions when traded into.
If you don't play this on curve, you could immediately kill off the summoned minions with one-sided AoE; even on turn 6 or 7, a 3/9 taunt is useful.
In Quest Hunter, this progresses your quest by 4 ticks early game and has synergy with Unleash the Hounds late game.
And of course other advantages that were already mentioned, like messing up resurrect pools and discounting Sea Giant.
Maybe an opponent can delay the quest completion, but it is going to make their turns more awkward. For example hero powers are not mana efficient, so in the early to mid game, you don't want to be using your hero power every turn. And if you have to go face with a minion to prevent the quest completion, that minion is not trading, which leaves the Paladin's minions alive to deal face damage or get better trades.
Why not? One or two good dragon class cards can make a dragon deck viable. For example Dragon Priest was played because of Drakonid Operative and later Duskbreaker, not because the Priest class has particular synergy with dragons.
The class that would in theory have the most dragon synergy would be Shaman, because dragons often use battlecries. But Dragon Shaman has never been particularly good because there were no class-specific dragon cards.
Lack of healing is what is keeping Neferset Thrasher and Diseased Vulture back at the moment. But I don't know how many dragons you'd be able to fit into a deck with those cards. Crowd Roaster would fit into a tempo deck. Perhaps Twilight Drake is good enough as a tribal Yeti, but to get Yeti stats you have to draw or at least skip on some of your early turns if you go first. Dragonmaw Scorcher is a good card in more defensive decks, but maybe not if you're a tempo deck that wants to go wide. So I guess it depends on what new dragons we'll see. I don't think Crazed Netherwing would fit, since it would be a bad play if you're ahead and in a tempo deck you probably don't have the ability to draw a lot of cards early to allow for situational cards.
The obvious comparison is Duskbreaker, which was extremely good. This comes one turn later, which could be a concern, but provides much better stats to make up for it. The self-damage could be an issue, but Nether Breath helps there. And in Wild, Lesser Amethyst Spellstone turns the self-damage into an upside.
We might see seasonal shifts, where ladder is more popular after an expansion launches and Battlegrounds more popular when an expansion has been out for a while. I guess it's still better for Hearthstone though if people play/stream BG when they're bored of ladder instead of playing a different game entirely.
There is too much randomness to be sure of a draw, but they let the player with the stronger board would keep buffs in their hand to play after the round, to increase the chance of a draw or at least avoid dealing too much damage. I guess positioning as well, but I don't know the details there, since I watched the overall stream mostly and not specific streamers. Also they would often level up on turns before same-team fights.
I played some Odd Druid during Witchwood and Boomsday (so before Gonk, the Raptor was even released) and it wasn't all that bad. Claw was a pretty good card in that deck, although part of the reason was the synergy with Lesser Jasper Spellstone, which isn't in Standard anymore.
I'm not so sure. There are other options at 2 mana worth considering, like Acidic Swamp Ooze, Doomsayer, Bloodmage Thalnos, Auchenai Phantasm, Belligerent Gnome, Holy Ripple etc. Those are a bit situational, but so is Envoy, since whether the card you copied (assuming you can guess it reliably) is useful will depend on the matchup and luck.
Onyxia is technically a 14/14 for just 2 mana more, still doesn't see play.
Shu'ma's ability doesn't seem good enough to make up for its stats at that mana cost. The repeating value is going to be rare: if your opponent cannot deal with a 7-health minion on turn 7, wouldn't you rather play a War Golem? At least with the War Golem it will cost them something to kill it with minions or a weapon.
Even for token decks, this seems weak. The tokens are summoned at the end of the turn, so you can't attach buffs or deathrattles to them on the turn that they are summoned. Druid, Shaman and Hunter have no shortage of tokens to summon, so a new token generator is only interesting if it is better than what is already there.
Dragonrider Talritha is going to be unreliable, since the buff might attach itself to an expensive dragon that you won't be able to play until for example turn 7 or 9. But the stats are decent and there isn't much competition at the 3 mana slot in a Dragon Paladin deck, so it will likely see play if the deck itself does.
Envoy of Lazul is the hardest to predict. 2/2 is not great but still useful early game. Scouting has been rated higher in predictions than in actual play, looking at Chameleos and Madame Lazul. For value, this is roughly Mind Vision on a stick; a not very exciting effect, but "on a stick" can make all the difference, see Vilespine Slayer.
The real issue is whether there will be a deck that the Envoy fits into. It doesn't do anything useful in a Divine Spirit / Inner Fire combo deck. The 2/2 is a downside in a resurrect deck. There is no particular synergy with the quest. So it will only see play if a new Priest archetype can make use of it. Maybe a deck built around Galakrond, the Unspeakable, since both the hero and the synergy cards have a removal theme, so it seems to be aimed at long games.
[i]Edit[/i]: Maybe they're trying to push a Princess Talanji deck, but I played a Talanji deck with randomly discovered minions and it's not good. Versus aggro Talanji is too slow to matter, while one wave of threats isn't going to defeat control.
Nice!
Maybe the relevant card tags could be shown on the card's page? For example below the images.
When discussing Battlegrounds, it would be nice to be able to link to the Battlegrounds versions of cards instead of the regular Hearthstone versions, such that it includes the tier rating instead of mana cost.
I'm not sure what the syntax should be. One option would be to have a separate tag like {bgcard} instead of {card}. A different option would be to have a prefix in the body, such as {card}bg:Alleycat{/card}. I guess the cleanest solution is an attribute, such as {card set="battlegrounds"}Alleycat{/card}, but that would be terrible to type.
A different approach would be to have the post editor look up the card as you're typing and have a way of cycling between versions of the card. Misspelled card names are the #1 reason for me editing my posts, so a way to verify that the right card will be displayed would be great. But this is probably the most work to implement.
With Out of Cards supporting multiple card games, I guess you'll eventually run into overlapping names between games as well. Especially really generic names such as "fireball" might exist in multiple games. So it might be worth thinking of a solution for disambiguation in general and not just in the scope of Battlegrounds.
The Curator being one of the top heroes shows that getting an amalgam early, regardless of stats, is very good. So my guess is that it will remain an auto-pick in tier 2 even at 2/2.
Stats would matter more for minions that you eventually get rid of, since those need to be immediately useful. For example Vulgar Homunculus is a good early pick even though most players don't stay on demons. But Amalgams you typically keep until the end, so their starting stats are less important.
There is a short but very informative clip of Mike Donais providing info about the minion pools sitting next to Brian Kibler playing Battlegrounds at Blizzcon in this week's OmniSlash highlights.
There is a loading screen tip that states there are 6 copies of the tier 6 minions shared between all players. I assume the other minions have a similar system, but with larger numbers. That's also how other autobattlers work, as far as I know.
Firebat sometimes mentions things that developers confirmed, I assume that is from a public source like Twitter, but I don't follow Twitter closely since there is so much noise.
My impressions of the tribes from watching a lot of Twitch this week:
Some meme options you didn't mention yet:
It's a pity that currently the strongest decks (Quest/Evolve Shaman and Combo Priest) are so RNG-heavy, but I think it was Liooon's selection and piloting of Malygos Druid and especially Highlander Hunter that gave her the edge over the other players.
Purple is the color of the League of EVIL, so a card glowing purple might represent a League victory. Right now in the Battle.net client I'm looking at an ad for the Hex and Flex bundles, of which the left side is Rafaam on a purple background and the right side is Reno on a yellow/orange background, so the other card color might simply represent an Explorers victory.
Based on hints from one of the brawls, I think there will be some additional twist that involves Nefarian, but I can't find any evidence for that in this teaser. I never played WoW though, so it's very much possible I didn't pick up all hints available.