Hearthstone 22.0 Patch was a patch launched to release Fractured in Alterac Valley in Constructed. Battlegrounds got a new hero — Scabbs Cutterbutter — who is currently one of the top 10 heroes.

Scabbs Cutterbutter’s hero power is a mixture of Xyrella and Tess. The importance of his hero power is that it creates a minion with 2 golds. Yogg-saron was the best hero during the early days of Battlegrounds. Elise Starseeker before the nerf (2 mana Recruitment Map) was the best hero during the meta. Xyrella is a decent tier 2 hero.

Scabbs Cutterbutter is currently the sixth best hero in Battlegrounds in Top 5% (8,100+) MMR and updated as of December 12. As Scabbs is a new hero, he gets 2~5 armor in the beginning of the game as a bonus.

The table above shows an example of how a Scabbs Cutterbutter game can be played. Note that Scabbs games can differ heavily depending on bans, tokens, and shops in the first few turns. We will teach you the important points for Scabbs.

Staying on 1

Many heroes in the current meta tend to stay on tavern tier 1 to search for triple and discover a tier 4 avenge minion. Scabbs is one of those heroes that love to stay on tavern tier 1.

There are two reasons to why Scabbs should stay on tavern tier 1:

• Scabbs takes a minion from the opponent's board. If a lot of players stay on tavern tier 1, that means his hero power is more likely to take pairs and triples.
  
• Scabbs' hero power takes minion from the opponent's last board. Scabbs always takes the minion one turn later than the opponent, thus fast tavern tier ups do not work well with Scabbs.

There are great tier 1 minions that every player wants to take, like Murloc TIdehunter and Sellemental. Players try to counter Rafaam from stealing their minions by changing the order of attack and Tess by holding onto a strong minion for the turn.

However, Scabbs can't be countered because players won't know whether or not they will face Scabbs a turn later. Scabbs will likely find tier 1 minion triples, for a gold less.

Guessing what opponent has

Buying a minion for 2 golds is usually good, but there might be times when those minions are completely useless. In those cases, Scabbs' hero power might be a waste of gold on nothing.

It is important to look at your next opponent's information and guess on what your opponent has. For example, the image above is information of the next opponent in turn 2. Cookie can't create any unexpected minions on turn 1, therefore 2 murlocs always mean that he bought Murloc Tidehunter on turn 1.

This is an easy example, but there will be more difficult decisions later on. For example, you are playing a full murloc comp. You look at your next opponent's information and he has 7 beasts. In this case, you probably wont want to press the hero power as you only want murlocs for your comp.

Sometimes, his hero power can be a spying method like what his hero power name says. This could be helpful if you are facing 1v1 against an opponent that you have not faced yet in the lobby.

With these two taken into the mind, Scabbs will be a great hero to gurantee you a win. Have fun spying on your opponents!