Hearthstone Battlegrounds: Basics
Hello everyone, my name is neon31 and I am the person behind Hearthstone-Decks.net. I mainly post about Competitive that have reached Legend, in my weekly reports (this is my newest Weekly Report, from today) I post about decks that reached Top 500 Legend in both Standard and Wild.
Today I want to post something else. The last few days I played a lot of Battlegrounds, I liked the idea of auto chess before but I wasn’t really in the Dota or LOL universe. Having this format in Hearthstone is awesome for me (and I guess for a lot of other players too). For everyone that hasn’t played the game yet or wants to learn some more info, I made this article.
WHAT IS HEARTHSTONE: BATTLEGROUNDS?
Hearthstone: Battlegrounds is an eight-player auto-battler. As a Hero, you’ll recruit minions from various tribes, strategize and set your battle formations, and watch as fights unfold until the last Boss standing wins!
On Tuesday the game will be playable for anyone, the MMR will not reset (Source).
Upcoming Updates
- Start of the upcoming Week there will a little update.
- In another patch later 4 new heroes will be added (Leaked, click for more info)
- in December they will add new units and balance stuff
We are planning some of these, thanks for the feedback.
Start of next week will be a small patch that we built a week ago, before we had any data. Start of December we will do a patch adding a couple units and balancing lots of stuff. In between we are adding 4 new heroes.
— Mike Donais (@mike_donais) November 9, 2019
HOW DOES IT WORK?
You’ll choose one of two Heroes to play as at the start of each game (you get to choose out of three heroes when you bought 20 packs of the newest expansion). You have 40 health at the start of your game, you lose when you don’t have health. Battlegrounds don’t have ranks, but an MMR (Match Making Rating). You start with 4000 MMR. Normally you win MMR when you are reaching Top 4 and lose some if you aren’t in Top 4. Getting always Top 4 is better than getting in one game #1 and another #8.
Minions
You start with three gold coins to spend on a Tier 1 minion drafted from a pool shared by all eight players. You’ll receive an additional coin each round until your purse overflows at 10 gold coins per round. Coins do not carry over to the following rounds and everything costs the same (3 mana). There is not a single strat of going for a specific minion each time, but some are (in general) better or more consistent than others.
The Pool
You share the minion pool with other players. Meaning if you buy one Tier 1 minion (18 copies are in the pool) the pool gets reduced to 17. If a player dies or sells a unit, the minion returns to the poll (Source). A golden unit counts as 3 copies of a minion.
- Tier 1: 18 copies
- Tier 2: 15 copies
- Tier 3: 13 copies
- Tier 4: 11 copies
- Tier 5: 9 copies
- Tier 6: 6 copies
Triple cards
If you get the same card three times, you upgrade a card automatically, if the card has a battlecry try to have 2 onboard before buying the third one. The new card (at least the for most cards, some cards double different) has 2 times the normal attack and health, also the card text is doubled, you keep buffs (Example). If you play a triple card, you can choose a minion out of 3 that is one tier higher than your tavern (if your tavern is tier 3, you can choose a tier 4 minion).
Heroes
In Hearthstone Battlegrounds there are heroes, each one has a unique heropower. There are 2 kinds of heropowers
- Passive Hero Power: These heroes have a hero power you don’t need to spend gold for.
- Activ Hero Power: For this kind of hero powers you need to spend gold. The costs varies from hero to hero (0 to 4 gold)
Some hero powers are helping you to build up a stronger board, some are made to damage the opponent’s board. Also, some of them are made for the early game and some for the late game.
There are large numbers of tier lists (see below, you can click on the pictures to see the tierlist bigger). I recommend beginners to just try out each hero at least one time to learn about the playstyle.
Damage + Attacks
In Battlegrounds Minion attack starting from left and attack random unless the opponent has a taunt minion or the minion says something else (like Zapp Slywick).
Random token generation, e.g. from Shredders, follows the Hearthstone mana costs. However, their damage follows this rule:
- If the generated token is not a recruitable minion, it defaults to Tier 1, dealing 1 damage.
- However, if the generated token is a recruitable minion, it deals damage equal to its Tier.
When both players have no minions, no one takes damage. When one player survives, the other takes damage based on the tier of your tavern and the total tierlevel of the minions, for example: You tavern is tier 3. You have 2 tier 2 minions on your board. Your opponent takes 3+2+2 damage.
Official tips
- When you get a triple, you also discover a minion of your Tavern Tier +1.
- Minions will attack from left to right with random targets,unless an enemy minion has taunt.
- Shifter Zerus can transform into a minion of any Tavern Tier!
- When you win, your hero and minions deal damage equal to their Tavern Tier.
- The cost to upgrade your Tavern decreases by 1 each turn.
- There are only six copies of the Tier 6 minions. When bought, they are gone for everyone!
- Freeze minions to buy them next turn, or do it again to unfreeze them.
- Three golden minions do not combine into a bigger Triple.
- You can see your next opponent indented on the scoreboard. Prepare yourself.
- When an odd number of players remain, Kel’Thuzad will resurrect the minions of a fallen opponent and join the battle.
- Win streaks are shown on the scoreboard with an “On Fire” symbol.
- Only buffs that happen in the Tavern are permanent. Combat buffs go away after fighting.
- If your opponents purchase many copies of one minion, you will see less of it.
- If a minion is sold, it returns to the pool, so you will see it again more often.
- If you spend all your gold increasing your Tavern Tier, your army will fall behind, and you may lose.
- If you never increase your Tavern Tier, your army will fall behind, and you may lose.
- Murlocs are stronger in the early game, while Mechs are stronger in the late game.
- If you have 1 gold left over, refresh the Tavern – If you see a minion you like, freeze it for the next turn.
- With 8 players, being in the Top 4 is a win! First places gets you the Crown!
- All players recruit minions from the same shared pool.
- When you wipe out an opponent, their minions go back into the pool.
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