Hearthstone Battlegrounds Open Beta - Launch and Card List
It's Battlegrounds Open Beta launch day and we have everything you need to know, including our Battlegrounds How Does it Work and our Hero Tier List posts as well as Blizzard's Balance Patch notes from yesterday that we posted about here, which had the awesome news that we will see more NEW Heroes next week!
What is Hearthstone Battlegrounds?
It's a new 8 player PvP game mode, a combination between Hearthstone and Autobattler games, where you choose a Hero, build a team and then battle opponents, round by round, until only 1 of you is left standing.
When does Open Beta Launch?
Open beta is LIVE!
What does Battlegrounds cost?
The Battlegrounds game mode is fully free to play (though there are some unlocks to make it more usable) and has no entry fee or rewards. You play just for fun and ratings!
You do have the option to buy Descent of Dragon packs (currently only in pre-order, but for later expansions you can simply save up gold to do this) and unlock a few perks. The first one (for 10 packs purchased) is to have a suit of stats available to look through (this is not available yet in game), the second (for 20 packs purchased) is to have the choice of 3 Heroes when you start instead of 2 and the third unlock (for 30 packs) is the use of the game's custom emotes.
How do I play Hearthstone Battlegrounds?
If you have not had time to look at how this new game mode works, we have a primer which touches on all the important basic bits right HERE.
HearthPwn Card List and Deckbuilder
The keen observer might have already noticed in the Hero Tier list article we did, but it is now time to make it official: We have built a Card List and Deckbuilder specifically for the Battlegrounds game mode.
For the people who like to randomly click around and discover things themselves:
Enjoy!
For those that like to know what they are getting into, a small introduction:
The Card List
Let us start with a note: The Card List is slightly different than usual. Because Blizzard reused the assets and does not make much distinction in the files between versions of the cards, we have had to separate the Battlegrounds cards into their own set. If you ever need to search for a Battlegrounds card, the easiest way to do it is to do it in this set, or the versions you will find will likely be the normal card game versions.
The Card List can be used in most ways the regular Card list is too. You can search within the set to find a specific card by name, tribe, Tier, health and attack or randomly browse them from the main view. The set also includes the Heroes and their Hero Powers, as well as Akazamzarak's Secrets and all the related tokens.
The Deckbuilder
If you want to show off the crazy build you had in game or want to show others what kind of build you are aiming for when you are playing, you can use our Deckbuilder tool.
The Deckbuilder has the same functions as usual. You can add and subtract Battlegrounds specific cards and work out the possibilities. Then you can write up an explanatory guide as to how to get to that point, what order to use and tips and tricks that you feel are essential to running your build successfully.
And then you can share it far and wide!
Descent of Dragons Card List & Guide
Learn more and see all the cards in our dedicated expansion guide.
"You do have the option to buy Descent of Dragon packs (currently only in pre-order, but for later expansions you can simply save up gold to do this) and unlock a few perks."
I am not quite sure what this part means, either its written in kinda confusing way or I am missing something (which is entirely possible, English is not my first language). "For later expansions you can simply save up gold" - so speaking about this expansion (Descent of Dragons) purchasing packs with ingame gold will NOT unlock those perks? I have to wait for another expansion to unlock it if I dont want to spend real money?
Yeah, it's kind of confusing situation and I probably could have worded it better.
1) You get these perks by buying packs
2) Those perks last until the next expansion releases
3) Right now the only way to get these packs is by pre-ordering
4) For future expansions you can simply save gold and buy packs immediately to reactivate the perks when the expansion goes live and the perks stop, but that's not possible right now.
Sadly, Arena doesn't belong to those "other modes".
P.s. And ironically it is the only mode that is not free.
To be fair, 3 wins in arena are already worth WAY more than 10 gold...
Here is a Meta Tier list from Kripparian. Toki has been nerfed she so dropped to Good/Hard tier. Mukla also went up a tier.
For those that are just coming into the game mode this week:
This new mode is fun way better than copypaste decks meta.In the future you will pay gold or money same as arena but rght now is beta so i see why is free.For now on i will play just HS BATTLEGROUNDS because normal game is really not good 1,2 matches and you are done now with BATTLEGROUNDS they add fun to this game finally.
No? Give us a a source otherwise you are telling bull****..
im pretty new to this mode and havent had the time to watch streams.
Are there any rewards in this mode?
From what I know, there is currently none other than the select the team packs you get. Blizzard did say we would get a legendary quest soon for this game mode.
The Battlegrounds game mode is fully free to play (though there are some unlocks to make it more usable) and has no entry fee or rewards. You play just for fun and ratings!
For technicality sake - if you finish in the top 4, you do get progress towards the 3 wins = 10 gold (as with other game modes). So there's that - though I don't think anyone is playing it specifically for that. :-P