This past Blizzcon had a lot of things happening—Diablo IV, WoW Shadowlands, Overwatch 2 and much more. But the sleeping giant really comes from the minds of Hearthstone. Like with a lot of franchises, we see the game branching into the worlds of Auto Chess, Battle Royale, and concepts extremely popular with a lot of players. 

Hearthstone has introduced a new game mode called Battlegrounds. It is like Auto Chess in many ways, with buying various minions every turn and pitting those selected minions against enemy boards. The game looks fairly well-balanced and smooth for now, but I am sure balance changes will be coming soon as they always do. Hearthstone, though, puts some clever and unique spins on the format because it is a card game and due to the massive pool of cards, heroes, and other content they already have. Here are a few of the new additions: 

Choose Your Hero

Most auto-chess games set players on a totally even playing field, but Hearthstone decided to use their heroes in these matches to mix things up, giving them unique and new hero powers when recruiting minions. There are 24 heroes in total and a player is given three to choose from at the beginning of the round. They all seem very balanced and a lot of fun, either giving buffs to certain types of minions or being able to save the card for later; the added complexity is fun and makes each game feel more special and fresh.

Strong Hitting Cards

Most of the minions used in Battlegrounds are already from Hearthstone, but they have added in some really beefy and interesting minions that make for some killer combos and somewhat controlled chaos. 

Buff, Buff, Buff

Hearthstone is a game of many advanced and complex strategies, but one of the classic and most used is just buffing minions until they just can’t be stopped. This is one of the main (if not the most important) mechanics in Battlegrounds. Finding and creating good combos of Deathrattle and Battlecry minions to maximize buffs to your board of minions is a straightforward and very effective game plan. It is incredible to see the combos and power that these minions can achieve.

Hearthstone Battlegrounds is coming on Tuesday for those who bought the Blizzcon 2019 Virtual Ticket or attended in person. But it will be released shortly after to the public for beta testing. We are very excited to get our hands on it.

What else did you guys like from Blizzcon? Let us know in the comments below!