An example playfield of Hearthstone’s Battlegrounds mode.
Hearthstone
Release Date Developer Publisher 30 Aug 2022 Blizzard Entertainment Activision Blizzard
Success and Growth of Battlegrounds
After almost 3 years in the running (including Beta access), Hearthstone Battlegrounds has become one of the game’s cornerstone modes, largely in part to it’s ease of entry.
Unlike the game’s Standard mode, Battlegrounds doesn’t require players to build a deck, but instead form their Warband of minions to fight other players during the game itself. As a result, there’s not the same disparity between casual and long-term players when it comes to a sizeable collection of cards for building high-quality decks like there is in Standard.
This makes it easy to invite a friend to jump into a game without needing to unlock cards for a given class or buy packs for the cards they’re missing in their collection. Better yet, players who haven’t played in a while won’t need to craft all their old cards into new ones, but can jump right into the same playing field as everyone else!
Brief Summary of Gameplay
In Battlegrounds, players compete against 7 others to be the last one standing. Each round consists of two phases.
During the Recruit Phase, players buy minions from Bob’s Tavern to add to their Warband. Minions cost 3 Gold, though can later be sold back to Bob for 1 Gold. Players start their first turn with 3 Gold, which increases by 1 Gold each turn until reaching a max of 10 Gold.
In the Combat Phase, players are pitted 1v1 against a different, random opponent in the game. Minions from each player take turns randomly attacking enemies until one side has none remaining, at which point the winner attacks the loser.
Players must balance purchasing enough minions to avoid losing in Comabt and depleting their health with upgrading Bob’s Tavern to improve the quantity and quality of offered minions. Rounds continue, with players fighting different opponents until only the victor remains.
Previous Expansions
Since the initial release in late 2019, Blizzard has added a variety of factions to Battlegrounds. The new factions enabled the set of cards in the game (previously a fixed list of the 5 available factions) to vary, changing the meta each game.
For example
High-health minions become more powerful if Murlocs are not present, since Murlocs can consistently get the Poison buff, which destroys minions when they take any damage.
The new factions also brought in fresh ideas to the format, since the game’s cards were first based off of existing cards from Standard Hearthstone. The Quilboar faction, for example, added small buff spells called Bloodgems which give permanent stats. The Naga, on the other hand, provide Spellcrafts, which are more powerful, yet only buff a minion for one turn.
The development team also explored more powerful buffs with their Darkmoon Faire expansion. During this special format (no longer available), players would choose one of three powerful spells every four turns, adding it to their hand. This format was the standard for Battlegrounds for a while and was later sprinkled into about 25% of matches for Battlegrounds Season 1.
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Some examples of Darkmoon Prizes from the Darkmoon Faire expansion.
Overview of Quests
For those who haven’t played the newest update to Battlegrounds, here’s a quick explanation of how Quests work:
On your fourth turn, players are asked to choose from one of three quests. Each quest has a goal, like “Lose or tie 3 combats” or “Spend 25 gold” which, once completed, gives the player a reward, such as “You only need 2 copies of a minion to make it Golden” or “After you Discover a card, get an extra copy of it”.
On Turn 4, players must choose a Quest to help them scale later in the game.
The goals scale slightly based on the relative power of rewards. So, for example, “Summon X minions” might be 20 for a lower-impact reward but 30 for a higher-impact one. This can incentivize players to choose “worse” rewards if it means they’ll get it earlier and can power through the midgame, which often times can net a low-placing win.
Remember that getting 4th place or better is typically considered a "Win" (and gives a raise in MMR) since there are eight players in each game, so 4th place is in the top 50%.
While Quests have no doubt shaken up the meta, I think it’s important to consider if the quests are expanding the game by changing the way players build their Warbands or if they are instead amplifying existing strategies.
The answer is both! But let’s explore some of the different Quests to see why that’s the case.
Expanding Player Interaction
These Quests change how players interact with the game. Players will need to adapt their strategy to handle new bonuses (and obstacles) that each Quest provides.
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Alter Ego
I like Alter Ego because of the interaction with Freeze. If you Freeze a buffed minion, it’ll lose the buff next turn, due to the swapping mechanic. But similarly, freezing an un-buffed minion will cause it to be buffed the following turn.
In this way, players may reconsider which minions they’re Freezing. Perhaps a player wants to buy a buffed minion to empower their board and wait for a triple, but if they’ll have to Freeze it for next turn, when it won’t have the buff, it’s not worth it.
Devils in the Details
Initially, this reward feels like a straight buff that you can stack onto the right and left minions. It’s possibly good for hard-to-buff cleave minions or long-term buff minions that can’t buff themselves.
However, once players begin Freezing important minions they want to buy next turn, they’ll realize the devil really is in the details: Those Frozen minions each have a chance of being consumed!
Similar to Alter Ego, players will rethink how they’ll be Freezing minions. Is the Freeze worth it if the minion could be consumed? Is it better to re-roll until there’s a good set of stats in the Tavern to absorb instead? The Quest changes how player’s deal with the Tavern if they want to maximize their chance for a win.
Teal Tiger Sapphire
Many players can erroneously get caught in the cycle of spending all of their money each turn Refreshing for a specific minion. But with this Quest, players are incentivized to!
In Season 1 and earlier of Battlegrounds, committing to rolling for an entire turn was a bad move, unless you had multiple pairs you were hoping to triple. But now, players can commit to that strategy with a bigger payoff. That perfect minion might not always be found, but this can give players an extra edge towards piecing together a sweet combo.
Intensifying Existing Strategies
Some of the other Quests in the set are powerful, though they serve more to empower existing strategies and combos rather than create new player experiences.
This isn’t a bad thing; too many complicated Quests can lower the barrier to entry that made Battlegrounds so successful. But I think its important for designers to consider what future Quests will bring to the game, since expanding the experience is what keeps the game fresh.
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Staff of Origination
This was the most egregiously powerful-yet-boring card in the new expansion. In fact, it was so powerful it got nerfed from giving minions +15/+15 to +12/+12.
At face value, there’s rarely a reason not to choose this card: it gives the most amount of stats out of any quest. While, in theory, it falls off compared to other Quests once everyone’s minions have been buffed enough, the constant +12/+12 is enough to get most any build through the midgame, which normally means ending up in the top 50%, with a win.
While “Vanilla” cards like this are important for introducing players to the power of Quests, I find Staff of Origination to be extremely one-dimensional. Players aren’t doing much different once this Reward is active.
The Friends Along the Way
Getting locked into a specific faction is a blessing and a curse with this Quest. Most players will likely already be building towards the corresponding faction in the Reward, but that could change based on the Quest Goal.
Regardless, though, the Quest offers more of the same, existing Battlegrounds experience. The only change in playstyle is the comfort of getting two guaranteed cards from a faction each turn (though if you’re not playing to that faction, you could treat it as two coins, instead).
Don’t get me wrong, this Quest is still fun to play! And, unlike the first iteration of Staff of Origination, it isn’t unbalanced, since players might not get the specific faction cards they need for their build. But the only change in playstyle is forcing players to complete their Quest Goal to get this reward.
Theotar’s Parasol
Another extremely fun idea that mainly serves to empower a few existing cards like Baron Rivendare, Soul Juggler, or any card that doesn’t ever want to be attacked.
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In particular, I’ve found this Quest to amplify the Beasts + Baron Rivendare build to powerful levels. Though it’s nice that a buffed Zapp Slywick can still cut through the buff.
While the Quest Reward improves the viability of some builds, it doesn’t force the player to change how they’re building the Warband. The Quest itself is fun to use, but it doesn’t expand the Battlegrounds experience but rather highlights existing strengths.
Touching on Quest Goals
Since the Quest Goals themselves don’t make players more powerful, they aren’t as interesting of a topic to explore on a card-by-card basis.
As a whole, though, I appreciate that the Goals are balanced around the Rewards to encourage players to think about how difficult it will be to complete a Goal, even if the reward is extremely juicy.
The Goals serve to hinder the player in some ways: Often if you take too long to complete a Quest, you’ll quickly fall behind, no matter how good the Reward is. (This happened to me in several games.) In this way, the new Quest mechanic requires players to commit to their choice, since winning without incorporating your Quest is extremely difficult.
The Future of Quests
I imagine that the current state of Quests is only the beginning. The developers likely have more ideas on Goals and Rewards that will continue to diversify the relatively small pool of options, but are seeing how the first wave of Quests play out.
Some ways that Quests could change mechanically include:
- Granting a new / additional Hero Power
- Awarding special, unique minions
- Debuffing opponents at the start of Combat
- Repeatable Goals / Rewards (There’s currently one Quest that does this already!)
For Rewards, to keep the system consistent, there will likely be new additions that won’t stray far from the script. The Goals need to be completable by all heroes (though that could change) which means they can’t rely too much on a specific build.
As the Season progresses, I’ll be excited to see if new ideas are introduced or if they’ll unveil new Quests in a future Season. In any case, the meta still feels fluid thanks to Quests. I’d love to test out the few remaining Quests I haven’t seen as well as experiment more with Quests I’ve already tried. Who knows what will come out on top? (Though Poison still feels very dominant.)