How are you supposed to beat dragonbrand?

[Icedemon]

What is the strategy to beating this guy? He gets a full board of minions so quickly and I can't seem to do anything to get ahead. Playing as Redcroft.

EDIT: 2nd turn and six enemies on the board... Is this a joke?

[Morthgarrow]

He's tough as the end boss of the Redcroft campaign, but you can eventually outpace him with your minions by swarming the board and then using your Blitz in the mid-game to wipe him out.

The images below are the deck I used to beat him and get all the accolades (though not all in one fight). It's a fast pirate deck that also has high burst potential thanks to the bombs and +1 attack pirate elder relic, with several end-game options to close things out.

By no means a flawless deck or the only way to beat Dragonbrand, but it should get the job done quickly once you play a round or two with it.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3362819724
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3362819812
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3362819874
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3362819907

[Icedemon]

Thank you... upon finding a reddit post apparently you use the golden skull to give all minions a power up at game start. Since the boss gets free minions they don't get the bonus. Still a BS boss and I'm still trying to beat him. what a terrible boss.

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by Icedemon:

Thank you... upon finding a reddit post apparently you use the golden skull to give all minions a power up at game start. Since the boss gets free minions they don't get the bonus. Still a BS boss and I'm still trying to beat him. what a terrible boss.

Honestly I think the opposite, he's a perfect boss. The campaigns are easy overall, the final boss of a campaign should challenge you so that you can try different decks and see what beats him. I've beaten him with all 4 different archetypes Redcroft has, it's not an impossible fight, just one worthy of calling a final boss. Would you really have been satisfied if you beat him first try without any trouble? The fight only lasts like 2 minutes, having to tweak your deck to counter him and try again is the only reason it's memorable.

Blood Boil should use the skull, whip, and the one that gives minions rush on damage. Then you simply use cards that let them rush damage in on lanes you can slip damage through, you win on like turn 4 if you summon those 2 costs 0/4 dragons or 2/4 golems a few times. That's the easiest win by far, it's hard to misplay if you just drop your minions in the empty lanes so they rush.

Pirates probably want the skull too. You use basic minions like the 1 cost tough pirate, he will eat 3 of the 2/2s by himself for 1 single mana. You also use Rigbeaks to discount your other pirates and play them faster. Pirates can usually can win on turn 5 or 6. They have cards like Brass and Violet to do huge damage bursts. Violet is especially great because if you had pirates on board, she gives them lifesteal and now Dragonbrand really can't win because his damage is high for early game but weak for late game.

Bomb decks are completely different, you just need to play armor cards and summon bomb minions over and over to block his lanes. You use the relic that makes 4+ cost spells cost 1 less, and then on turn 6 you use the spells like the Barrel Bombs or Fortify which charges your BB. Then you win, because Dragonbrand has an explosive early game and then once you catch up he's done for.

Cannon deck is weirder, but it's similar to bomb decks. You spam minions that block him, especially cannons. Optionally you play the spell to give cannons attack so they kill attackers, and since this transforms cannons that counts as a summon which charges your BB. Your BB doesn't win as instantly as Bomb BB can, but cannon deck can spam the BB again with the expensive cards that give multiple cannons.

There's plenty of other strategies to win, you really just need to either rush him down before he kills you (not impossible at all) or survive long enough to start playing expensive cards that lock him out of the game.

[Eleveneleven]

> having to tweak your deck to counter him and try again is the only reason it's memorable.

That just makes it a crappy gimmick fight. Prestige difficulties are where you keep the game interesting making the game more difficult as you increase the number.

[Begood]

I found it fun to keep modifying my deck up until this boss fight. Usually when I had to modify a build it felt like I gained an insight and an upgrade to my deck.
But not this.

I had three decks that I put effort into refining throughout the chapters, then had to abandon them all to make a temporary janky deck to beat this boss. I had to use cards and relic that would be straight up horrible in any other situation.

Most importantly, it didn't help that the whole fight you feel like you have no control over any of it with the respawn debuff from enemy jumping around randomly on top of their free ghost per turn making it impossible to predict the next move. Since predicting the grid is not really an option here, all we do in this fight is block damage until BB or just get lucky to rush it down.

I will give it that it fit the ghost pirate theme perfectly. But regardless of that and the difficulty, this was not a good design imo. Half the fun in card games is being able to predict the next likely outcome and making decisions based on it.

[Dlanor]

Originally posted by Eleveneleven:

> having to tweak your deck to counter him and try again is the only reason it's memorable.

That just makes it a crappy gimmick fight. Prestige difficulties are where you keep the game interesting making the game more difficult as you increase the number.

This is a deckbuilder video game, and Fables is a deckbuilder RPG mode. Expecting there to never be a time when deckbuilding is a skill that is put to use is silly.

[Sir Valimont]

It's an interesting idea for a boss but not particularly well executed. Most of the alternate "strategies" available don't work, for several reasons, but a basic one being they decided to add control cards (e.g. damage all enemies for 2) in the otherwise themed deck. Things like that basically disable some of the more interesting ways you could actually otherwise win. As a result the difficulty is out of whack with the rest of the adventure and you basically have to luck into a strategy that "works."

TLDR is you're basically supposed to use the Skull relic since (very unclearly from the description in-game) it won't actually benefit the enemy, whose summons don't get the bonus. Because hey, they're summons, and you're supposed to figure that out. Yeah.

It's a great game but this fight is stupidly difficult. Not difficult. Stupidly difficult. The difficulty comes from the stupid fact that you can't use mechanics and strategy to win rather than a corner-case item you only just acquired, might have missed as it's optional to find, has no precedent, and is not well described in-game. It is what it is.

Go ahead and use skull, give the designers a pass for this fight, and play on. No game is perfect and this boss is ample proof of that.

I can assure you (and assume you realize it if you've come this far) it's a really great game overall and this fight is a rare aberration. I hope this post helps and that the frustration vented within helps you feel not alone! :)

Cheers, good luck