Summary
Darkmoon Prizes are special bonuses that appear in certain games ofHearthstone Battlegrounds. They are divided into four tiers, each more powerful than the last, that upgrade every four turns.
Most of the best prizes will come from the top two levels, but there are some gems among the earlier options as well. The event that puts Darkmoon Prizes into the game has appeared a few times, and there are quite a few other ways they can sneak into your Tavern as well (includingan Anomaly), so it’s important to know which of them you should be looking out for.
10New Recruit
Seeing an extra minion every time you refresh Bob’s Tavern is better than it might initially seem. New Recruit doesn’t provide you with any value directly, but having more opportunities to find key minions can make a big difference to certain builds.
You can still get unlucky and miss out on the minion you are looking for, which always feels bad and can result in a much earlier exit from Bob’s Tavern than you were hoping for. However, with New Recruit active, the odds are definitely more in your favor.
9Top Shelf
Top Shelf provides you with an early chance to get a Tier 6 minion, which can be game-changing. The options you see won’t always be perfect for your build, but even if you low-roll, you’re able to still find a buff or a solid standalone minion.
And sometimes, you will get either the exact minion you needed (like Goldrinn, the Great Wolf ina Beast build), or one that will define your build going forward. Top Shelf might be a lottery, but the potential rewards for hitting the jackpot are massive.
8The Unlimited Coin
True to its name, The Unlimited Coin gives you a Coin that reappears in your hand every turn. Even if you’ve never played Battlegrounds, you’ll probably recognize that getting free gold for the rest of the game is pretty good.
One gold won’t make too much of a difference on its own once you’ve passed the early game, but it can give you small advantages that build up over time. Additionally, as a spell, The Unlimited Coin will also trigger any abilities that rely on spells being cast, which provides a nice side benefit.
7Argent Braggart
Argent Braggart is good for one thing and one scenario: you already have a really big minion, and you want another one. That probably doesn’t sound especially niche, but there are quite a few cases where you either have a bunch of big minions, at which point the Braggart becomes redundant, or no big minions, in which case it isn’t useful at all.
However, in certain instances, Argent Braggart is the single best Darkmoon Prize you can find. If you only have a single big minion, getting another obviously makes you much stronger, and gives you some protection against scam minions like Leeroy Jenkins.
Argent Braggart is also nowa Tier 7 minion, so you can sometimes find it in the tavern even if Darkmoon Prizes aren’t available.
6Fresh Tab
Fresh Tab essentially allows you to take two turns back to back, which can obviously be exceptionally powerful. By the time it is available to you, that gives you the use of a total of twenty gold to search for key minions, or to cycle through buffs in an already established build.
It’s a one-time benefit, which might seem underwhelming compared to the more permanent buffs on this list. However, sometimes that extra gold is all you need to get over the finish line in an endgame scenario.
5Big Winner!
Getting a Darkmoon from the first three Darkmoon Prize Tiers has extremely high potential. The options for the first two Tiers will be hit or miss, as some of their effects are basically useless by the time Big Winner! will actually be available to you.
The real benefit here is having an extra chance to hit the Tier Three Prizes, and looking at the rest of this list should make it clear how impactful some of them can be. Big Winner!’s randomness will hurt sometimes, but the amount of value it gets you can’t be underestimated.
4Buy The Holy Light
Divine Shield might be the best Keyword in Battlegrounds, but it takes some work to access outside of Mech builds. Buy the Holy Light is one of the few solutions to that problem.
You can slap it on a big minion to give it a free hit, even against minions with bigger stats or an insta-kill effect like Venomous or Poisonous. Alternatively, you can use it to keep key combo pieces like Banana Slamma or Titus Rivendare, that might otherwise die in a single hit, alive.
3Raise The Stakes
Making a crucial minion Golden can mean the difference between winning and losing, as the tripled version of them will often be exponentially stronger than its base form. Finding that third copy in Bob’s Tavern can be a frustrating experience, and Raise The Stakes lets you skip the search and get straight to the good part.
Raise the Stakes also returns the minion to your hand, so Battlecry minions will be able to trigger their Golden effects, which isn’t the case with many other abilities that make something Golden. And as an added bonus, this Darkmoon Prize nets you a free Triple reward, which doesn’t hurt.
2Give A Dog A Bone
Give A Dog A Bone is an improved version of Buy the Holy Light. You still get Divine Shield, which is often the most important component, and having that extra 10/10 can be relevant depending on how far into the game you are (if your minion is too big it won’t matter much at all).
The big difference between the two Prizes is the addition of Windfury. When used on a minion like Blade Collector, which damages minions next to the one it attacks, attacking twice in a row can absolutely decimate opposing boards.
While Windfury is usually a bonus, certain minions don’t actually want to attack twice. For example, minions that can refresh a Divine Shield, like Deflect-o-Bot, can accidentally get themselves killed early in the fight.
1Ice Block
Having the ability to buy yourself an extra turn is exceptionally powerful in both regularHearthstoneand in Battlegrounds. That additional time can give you enough leeway to either outscale your opponent, or just another opportunity to pull out a lucky win.
Even in a less unusual case, surviving one round of combat longer than you normally would can make the difference between finishing in the top and bottom four. If you’re trying to work your way to the top of the Battlegrounds leaderboard, that can make a big difference.
