Playing With Brann Bronzebeard.

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I have finished all that has been released for The League of Explorers adventure, and am playing with a few of the cards. Both Reno Jackson and Brann Bronzebeard seem to be used a lot on the ladder.  I don't want to commit to not getting the tools I need to play successfully, so that means Reno is not my kind of card. Brann, however, is my kind of man. I reevaluated my Dragon Priest deck to include him and the Jeweled Scarab, and I like how it is working. Here is my revised deck list.

Not a typical dragon priest.

To add the scarabs and Brann, I removed two Dark Cultists and a Northshire Cleric. During my play before the change, I had noticed I usually didn't get any value from the cultists, and I already had Power Word:Shield and Azure Drake for card draw.

Maybe I'll discover another Brann Bronzebeard, or a murloc.

The strategy here is to get keep a dragon and hope to get a whelp and/or a technician in your opening draw. Other cards worth keeping on opening are the Twilight Drake and Power Word:Shield, though I have been known to toss back the latter, depending on who I am facing.

Brann gave me health, but Earth Shock killed me.

In my opinion, this is a control priest deck. Big bodies that can clear early drops, with late game solutions like Shadow Word:Death, Rend Blackhand, and Vol'jin/Holy Smite. Board clear for swarm decks with Holy Nova, and taunts from Defender of Argus to hold back the tide while you recover. Oh, and there is the fun factor of the Jeweled Scarab and Ysera.

My work is paramount. Leave me alone!

What does Brann offer? First, know that if you drop him on turn three he will be removed. Turns three and four for most players have something that does at least that much damage. For best result, pair him up in a turn to get at least one charge out of him. Turn seven with a nice sized hand can net you a Twilight Drake with quite a bit of health, or turn six a tech with 4/6. Even turn five can give you a whelp with 2/5, which isn't horrible. Other things that are fun are if you already have your whelp and tech up and slap Brann down on turn 7 with your defender to give your minions 2/2 and taunt. Turn 8 with Azure drake gets you two cards. Turn five with the scarab lets you choose a card, then from a new set choose another card.

The only combo I can see as being bad is Vol'jin, as he will swap health twice with the same target, negating the combo with Holy Smite. I have yet to try Brann out with the Corruptor or Rend. I'm sure with Rend he will just work on one Legendary (I'm taking volunteers to test him out!). With the Corruptor, I imagine it will have him shoot twice, but not sure if I will have the chance to target a different target after the first charge.

What other fun cards could I use? Keeping with the dragon theme, I could use the Wyrmrest Agent on turn five, making him 3/4 with taunt. I could use Nefarian to gain 4 random spells from the opponent (but Brann would have to have already been played and still active). If I had the Twilight Guardian (one of the reasons my dragon priest is so different) turn seven would make him a 4/6 with taunt. There are, of course, the vanilla cards like Abusive Sergeant, Shattered Sun Cleric, and Dark Iron Dwarf that could buff up the damage. How about Stampeding Kodo for those annoying Paladin token murloc decks? I think I'll keep my deck as is for now, but I am having some thoughts on pirates capturing Brann, especially after being killed by a charging 24 damage Bloodsail Raider the other night.

Have you been playing around with Brann? What's your favorite combo? I'd love to hear about it. See you in the tavern!