Basics Battlegrounds Hearthstone Strategy

What you need to know about Battlegrounds’ popular Jeef Curve

Battlegrounds Jeef Curve Explained

One of the popular strategies of the latest Battlegrounds patch is the Jeef Curve. The curve’s name comes from the former rank 1 Battlegrounds player, Jeef, who many believe popularized the strategy. Let’s get into why the curve gained so much popularity, and why you should try the strategy in your own Battlegrounds game, and how it all works. 

How the Jeef Curve works in Battlegrounds

The Jeef curve is quite simple to follow and works in many different situations. Token minions, pairs, triples, and other things may change how you want to adapt your game plan throughout the Battlegrounds match. However, the plan below is the ideal starting point to learn more about the Jeef Curve. 

Three Gold: Buy the strongest available minion. As always, token minions are preferable. 

Four Gold: Buy the strongest available minion, optionally reroll Bob’s shop or use your Hero Power. 

Five Gold: Upgrade to Tavern Two (three gold), upgrade a token, or buy a minion if you purchased Deck Swabbie before. 

Six Gold: (1) Upgrade to Tavern Three (Six Gold). Or, (2) buy two minions. 

Seven Gold: (1) Upgrade to Tavern Four (Seven Gold). Or, (2) buy two minions – optionally reroll or use your Hero Power.

Eight Gold: (1) Upgrade to Tavern Five (Eight gold). Or, (2) upgrade minions on your board to prepare for upgrading your Tavern next round.

At first, the Jeef Curve may seem counterintuitive, as you don’t efficiently spend several gold throughout the first rounds, and you often skip out on Tavern Two minions entirely. The why of the Jeef Curve comes from the immense strength of the current Tavern One minions relative to the Tavern Two minions. Similarly, the Tavern Three units are much stronger than the Tavern Two options, so reaching those earlier works allows you to create a much stronger Warband much faster. 

Why the Jeef Curve is so successful, and how you can benefit from learning the strategy

The obvious tribes that are good in every game are Murlocs, Beasts, and Elementals. These tribes allow you to find the “token” minions from Tavern One. Alleycat, Murloc Tidehunter, and Sellemental, with Deck Swabbie being close but not quite as strong.  The economic advantage of these tokens allows much more flexibility throughout the early rounds of the Battlegrounds match, often creating significant advantages over the players without a token in their starting shop(s). 

If everyone played the standard Battlegrounds curve, those with a token would win nearly every time. However, with the Jeef Curve, you can rectify a lot of that initial advantage by picking units with stronger combat capability than even several of the Tavern Two options. 

Units like Evolving Chromawing, Wrath Weaver, Pupbot, Micro Mummy, Acolyte of C’Thun, and Scallywag all lead to a win condition or trade well, if not better than most Tavern Two minions. Due to the strength of these Tavern One units, you most likely won’t lose fights against players who stay at Tavern Two. You can beat the Tavern Two players due to the many weak units they may find, like Unstable Ghoul or Selfless Hero in the early rounds. 

In addition, the units of Tavern One have a stronger range of flexibility. Some are favoring strong combat, and others are benefiting your economy. Staying at one for an additional turn in the current meta allows you to preserve more health and find pairs and triples easier as the Tavern One minions are much more common than those of the higher Tavern Tiers. 

That isn’t to say you won’t ever lose a round against a player at Tavern Two, but you likely would lose regardless against that player, even if you invest your gold in upgrading your Tavern, losing even more health in the process. 

Which heroes benefit the most from this strategy?

As you end up buying pairs whenever you can in the first several turns, you have a much higher chance of finding a triple early in the game. As such, several heroes benefit from an early triple more than the average hero. For example, heroes like Reno Jackson, Fungalmaster Flurgl, Ysera, Xyrella, Yogg-Saron, Malygos, or The Great Akazamzarak try to obtain early triples or use Tavern one minions in their natural strategies. As such, these heroes are great candidates for you to try the Jeef Curve.

Remember that no one rule dictates the game of Battleground. Sometimes the Standard Curve is the correct choice. Other times, you may want to do the Shinese curve instead. Use your foresight and intuition when deciding on how you should go about the game. If you want to know how the other curves work, take a look at our guides for the Shinese Curve and the Battlegrounds Curve Cheat Sheet. Thank you all for reading, and I hope you all get better and climb up that ladder.

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