"The Battlegrounds Positioning Cheat Sheet"
Meta note: cards change, but the positioning logic below is evergreen. Treat it as a checklist, not a rigid rule.
Positioning is the free skill in Battlegrounds — it costs no gold and wins fights you'd otherwise lose. The board reads left to right, and that order decides who attacks first, who gets hit, and who absorbs splash damage. Here's a compact cheat sheet you can run through before every combat.
The mental model
- Minions attack roughly in left-to-right order.
- The defending minion is chosen randomly among the opponent's minions (with some effects modifying this), but your attack order is something you control.
- So position to control what attacks first and what survives to keep attacking.
Where things generally go
| Slot | Put here | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Leftmost | A minion you want swinging first, or a sacrificial body | It attacks earliest; good for triggering effects or trading |
| Middle | Support and buff-pieces | Protected from edge-targeting effects |
| Rightmost | Often your scaled carry | Survives longer; attacks later when the board is thinner |
Checklist before you hit ready
- Who's my first attacker? Make it something I'm happy to trade, or something whose attack triggers a useful effect.
- Where's my carry? Usually tucked away (often right side) so it lives long enough to swing multiple times.
- Is the likely opponent running cleave? If so, don't clump fragile minions adjacent to each other — spread the value.
- Do I have Divine Shields? Position so shielded minions soak the opponent's biggest hits early.
- Do my deathrattles/end-of-turn effects chain in the right order? Order them so summons and buffs land where you want.
Playing around specific threats
- Cleave attackers: assume the enemy's big cleaver hits two or three of your minions. Keep your most valuable bodies out of a tight cluster next to each other.
- Poison/Venomous: poison ignores stats, so don't rely on a single huge carry — have backup damage and consider Divine Shields to eat the poison hit.
- Zapp / first-position snipes: some effects target your lowest-attack or first minion — be mindful of what you leave exposed there.
Common positioning mistakes
- Carry on the far left, dying before it can do work.
- All buffs on one minion with no protection, letting a single poison or removal erase your whole game plan.
- Clumping fragile minions against a cleave board.
- Never re-checking position after adding a minion — your old order may now be wrong.
Takeaway
Positioning is a free win condition. Decide your first attacker, protect your carry, and read the lobby for cleave and poison before you commit. Run the five-point checklist every turn and you'll steal fights that the stat-sheet says you should have lost.