Hearthpwn

I love Divine Shield Menagerie builds.

If Quillboars are in and Mechs are out, George the Fallen is very powerful with a menagerie build. Competition for Gemsplitters (tier 3) will be very low, and once you get one golden and use your Hero Power on all your minions, you'll easily have a full hand of Blood Gems at the start of every turn. Get a single Thorncurse (tier 5) and your stat scaling goes from decent to galactic. It's even stronger if Beasts are out along with Mechs — you can get six minion types. The main trick to playing the build is to not be too picky with the non-Quillboar you hero power — it'll take seven turns to Hero Power everything, so start early.

You can try Divine Shield Menagerie with other heroes, too, but it's much more difficult. You need Beasts and Quillboar in — Mechs are nice for Greasebot (tier 4) but that's optional. Still Gemsplitters and Thorncurse, but you also need golden Monstrous Macaw (tier 3), golden Selfless Hero (tier 2) and not-golden Baron Rivendare (tier 5). Combine with a Divine Shield Taunt and the Macaw swing will give everyone divine shield, and you should get a full hand of Blood Gems with Gemsplitter that way. It's only a four-tribe Menagerie, but 4 out of 5 isn't bad. Positioning is Macaw first, Selfless Hero fourth. Because the build needs multiple Goldens for consistency, it's not surprising I've only pulled this off so far with Zephrys — but any hero can do it.

Great tips, thank you!

Finally got a good pirate build. Feel like it should have been bigger given how early I had all the key pieces, though; took forever to get the Goldgrubber golden, otherwise that'd have been closer to 200/200, and I think I only found one or two strongarms the entire game.

These apm pirate builds are so much fun to play, but so weak against poison / shields. :-( I feel like the only times I've succesfully played an apm pirate build was when transitioning to menagery after a while with quilboars / amalgs with poison and shield.

The key is to get Baron Rivendare and golden selfless hero :)

Yeah, kinda depends on the lobby. I think it was a no murloc game, and it got whittled down to four pretty quickly with two beast comps and a mech comp. Tough for those guys to roll DS/poison amalgams. Barring a golden baron/omega buster scenario I felt like I had the stats to handle mechs, and I don't think beasts ever get there even with a couple of reborn maexxnas.

Would definitely have been a better build if I were George, though.

Quote from Cleedek >>

The key is to get Baron Rivendare and golden selfless hero :)

 I'm actually getting a little tired of the Selfless Hero arms race for coming in first. For most builds, anyway.

BTW I always recommend the tier 5 Poisonous 1/1, and if possible a single Blood Gem on Baron, as anti-Zapp insurance when using Baron. Or even without Baron, if you're relying on golden Macaw to double a Selfless Hero.

Funny build. Managed to golden up my pirates with tony and then tried to get 2 reborn maexnas, but that didn't work out. Eventually in the last turn I found a parrot and selfless so decided to use my snake on the parrot and hope for some rng. I had Al'Akir's hero power on the final turn so got some nice value on shields.

2 golden hoggers is such a great way to restock on gold. Buy a pirate, get 4 gold. Yay!

(I was up against a mech player with double Holy Macherel with taunt and a ton of divine shields and 2 reborn maexna's himself.)

Nice non-traditional build!

This game went well for me. Not necessarily huge stats at the end as I didn't find much to buff with in the last few rounds, but I had about 75% of this very early in the game. Also has 2x baron and a golden Selfless in hand, but the game ended so fast I didn't have to use them (and last opponent was mechs).

I finally got my full comp in golden

What about the Unstable Ghoul? :D

Quote from Cleedek >>

What about the Unstable Ghoul? :D

 Hey, at least I was looking for the golden one, ok? Had the 2nd copy frozen and was going for the 3rd but unfortunately my opponent managed to die :D

Not necessarily my best build, but I did learn something kind of hilarious with this one, which is that if you try to play a deathrattle beast build with Diablo, you're inevitably going to give your opponent(s) a ton of loot when your macaws trigger Diablo's deathrattle.

This one got down to three people in the lobby when it came time for everybody to fight Diablo. The third guy must have just died, but managed to kill Diablo in the process because I didn't get any loot. The guy I actively played lived, killed Diablo, and I think I gave him 4-5 extra loot cards in the process from Macaw triggers. So I got to go into head-to-head against him with a major disadvantage!

Managed to take first somehow because he never found Zapp, but uh, lesson learned: don't go Beasts with Diablo.

A good idea for the post could be the worst stats for the 1st place finish

Had a game yesterday where someone left on turn 1 and the diablo-player was hitting the nuts, game was over by turn 10 or so since there was so much damage going around. If there is a weak diablo player tho the game can be longer since every 4th turn 7 players don't take damage

Quote from SnapFace34 >>

A good idea for the post could be the worst stats for the 1st place finish

 I made that a few months ago!

https://www.hearthpwn.com/forums/hearthstone-game-modes/battlegrounds/248615-whats-your-worst-battlegrounds-1st-place-board

This one was nice. Master of Realities is a pretty insane card given all of the scaling methods Elementals have, but I'd never juiced it up quite like this: Hooktusk + Brann (golden) + Amalgadons. Every single battlecry scales it a minimum of +6/+6 (not to mention the stats your Amalgams gain), and Menagerie Mug/Jug can really put in some work. Throw in the Hooktusk hero power to fish for more battlecries (or elementals at the very least for free refresh), and that boy got big in a hurry.

Yep.  Frogs.

Classic scam build :D But I love full golden