When assembling a deck for each champion, you need to ask yourself three questions:

1. How do I survive the early game?
2. How do I finish a game that goes long?
3. How do I interact with my opponent’s units?

Bard has the late game covered. His Runeterran power adds a Chime to your deck each turn of the game and will guarantee that given enough time, you will have enough stats to overwhelm your opponent. Bard’s weaknesses come from the first two points: his lack of early game and lack of interactivity.

Beginning with Bard himself, we plan to stack him at every opportunity. We will go out of our way to pick up as many Champion Item Chests as possible. If you have 5 copies of Bard in your deck, each copy will add a Chime at the beginning of each turn. This allows us to ignore (with reason) our late game when deck building.

In terms of itemizing Bard, he must be stacked with Relics that allow him to make an immediate impact on the board. His stats are fairly underwhelming, so spending a full 4 mana on a do nothing unit is unacceptable. I look towards relics like Riptide Battery, Stalker’s Blade, Lost Chapter, Laurent Bladerack, and Everfrost. These all provide an immediate benefit on summon.

With the champion and late game out of the way, the next point of focus is not dying. I tend to place the highest value on one and two cost units, then interactive cards like Mystic Shot or Vengeance, then finally cards that draw cards. A Summoner’s Stone (draw 1 when summoned item) will drastically raise a card’s value. Card draw both provides more “stuff to do” while churning through our Chimes faster.

Strengths:

• Incredibly powerful late game with the Chime ability
• The strength of your units typically doesn’t matter because Chimes will make them stronger
• Bard’s starting deck units are very good

Weaknesses:

• The starting deck’s spells are very expensive
• The starting deck has very low interactivity
• You may not be given an opportunity to fix your curve based on post-battle RNG
• Bard often feels like a dead draw

Tips:

• Bard is all about curve management. Seek post-battle rewards to lower your curve, mana cheating powers (Mana Flow, Sorcery, Black Market Discount, Quick Draw) and defensives (Hold It!, Hold Them Off)
• Powers that give your units bonus stats can be used to quickly level Bard (Battlefield Training, Endurance, Higher Education, Rush Them Down, Fixer Upper)
• Keep 4 interactive spells in your deck, if you draft something like Vengeance or Concussive Palm, you can start to healer out your spells.
• If spells are not a concern, remove Bandle Commando and Babbling Balladeers