Ahoy! After a pretty crazy weekend, we're back to nor-- Nope! This week we're taking a look into Battlegrounds, Hearthstone's new game mode, currently in closed beta. We are here to analyze the meme potential of the new format. It's tough to figure out, given there are no cards to bring into the format, and it's quite unlike anything we've ever seen in Hearthstone. Nonetheless, there is still room to mess around!
Brief Overview
Hearthstone's Battlegrounds follows the model of Dota 2 Auto Chess, which in turn is inspired by the Chinese tile-based game Mahjong. It can look daunting, even confusing at first, but a player with good knowledge of Hearthstone mechanics should get the hang of it pretty quickly. The majority of available cards come from the existing pool, with a few Battlegrounds-exclusive additions.
There are a total of 24 heroes. Each player gets to choose between 3 of them (not exactly true, you have to open at least 20 Descent of Dragons packs), all different from other players, to ensure no two players have the same hero. Each hero has a unique Hero Power! Some appear less effective for now, such as Boon of Light (the tooltip is not showing the mana cost, which is 4), which costs too much; or The Rat King's Passive Hero Power, which can turn the tide of fate towards destruction.
There are four tribes currently represented in this game mode, and to keep it short, here are their perks:
- Demons: Solid early to late game, big minions. Disadvantage: Your hero needs to eat some damage to be truly effective.
- Mechs: Great synergy, can pull of some crazy combos. Disadvantage: Barely any! Can be tough to set up.
- Beasts: Good buffing options, interesting swarm tactics. Disadvantage: Can quickly fall short if the wrong things happen mid-combat.
- Murlocs: Memes. Great early-game, but fall out of the race later on. Disadvantage: Not enough power aside from tribe-specific synergy.
Meme Factor
What about the memes? The potential for them is lesser, due to the nature of this game mode, however it is not entirely nonexistent!
As you can see in Image 1, we have Yogg-Saron blindly putting his faith into Murlocs. He is not at fault, for he knew not the rather low ceiling of competence Murlocs possess.
The result is... expected.
The science is not exact. There may very well be a day when Murlocs will outshine every other tribe! The game mode is still in beta, and I expect quite a lot of balance changes to take place before it is officially deemed released.
There are cases where the meme is not just the opponent's board. Sometimes your board turns your opponent's efforts, and perhaps his entire existence, into a meme. And there are other times when that happens to you.
You thought amassing Micro Machines past the golden tier was going to be worth anything? Also, Bob, I paid good money for those tiers.
Oftentimes, the state of the board is a meme in itself. Seems the Curator had similar ideas...
The bots really know their stuff. There aren't enough Poisonous minions in the world to deal with that.
In the end, even if you lose, Bob will always be there for you with a surprise 3x of the same minion - even when you don't want it.
Conclusion
After laborious research, I believe it is accurate to say that Battlegrounds have a meme potential factor of 47.7% compared to Wild. The reduction comes from the lack of control over the memes, even though they could potentially reach a higher memeness than in other areas of the game.
The game mode, memes aside, is quite entertaining. It brings a fresh experience to a game whose most recent distinguishing game mode was the Dungeon Run format of solo adventures. It requires a little bit of work, especially with bugs (mostly visual, though I do think the game unfroze my tavern minions without my consent at one point!) and with adding more tribes, and other cards which could prove interesting. I am also excited to see tournaments for Battlegrounds; they will surely prove more exciting than the constructed ones! All in all, no matter what you enjoy doing most in Hearthstone, Battlegrounds should provide a fresh, fun experience with the added benefit of all that waiting time - I actually had time to cook a full meal during those tavern waiting times!
Comments
I never got lucky with a Twitch drop to get Early Access, so all of my good luck accumulated for the Open Beta tomorrow! Haha... ha...........
@Zelgadis (as I can't reply due to browser issues): Demons can work, but require a very specific setup. You need to hard roll early game to find 3 Soul Weavers plus some demons (which usually pop up incidentally). An upgraded Soul Weaver usually gives you enough power through trickled buffs to see you through the early midgame.
You then stop off at level 2 briefly to pick up at least one Amalgam (preferably two), preferably NOT getting a third (Amalgam's major strength in a demon comp is being able to use Toxfin and Annoy-O-Module on it, and being able to do that twice is worth a lot more than the benefit you get from upgrading; you don't want to stay at level 2 for long enough to get 4, particularly since Amalgams are in high demand).
Optionally stop off at level 3 to get multiple copies of Soul Juggler. Optional because demon players often don't really know what they're doing and are in a relative minority anyway, so they'll usually pop up later anyway.
You then rush for level 5 and hard roll for Mal'ganis (to avoid self-damage due to Soul Weaver, which can stack up) and Battlemasters. Ideally, grab a Defender of Argus to give your Battlemaster(s) taunt, which makes them unassailable outside of Poisonous.
Actually winning with Demons is rare since even if done right, Mechs will usually outscale them. But you can pretty reliably make top 4 with them if the early game doesn't screw you on Soul Weavers.
I've been constantly amazed this past week at the rollercoaster of strategies and comps that surfaced, and how fast the meta settled; yet even with the meta settled, things are still fluctuating, with RNG being the constant that makes everything uncertain!
The true meme is a hybrid build, with Cave Hydra, 1 or 2 (golden) poisoned and divine shielded Nightmare Amalgam, Foe Reaper 4000 all Lightfang Enforcer-ed into OP-ness...
Mech seems OP atm
I concur : "(...) it is accurate to say that Battlegrounds have a meme potential factor of 47.7% compared to Wild.'' - ceteris paribus sic stantibus - within a margin of error ± 2.5 percentage points.
My impressions of the tribes from watching a lot of Twitch this week:
Some meme options you didn't mention yet:
what do you mean with the downside of mechs? because other people going for mechs doesnt somehow make your pool smaller.
Ya it does, all units are in a shared pool among every player.
the pool is shared between all players - ie if there are x copies of let's say pogo, and another player gets 2 , you have (x-2) copies available, thus if everyone goes for mech you will likely find mostly demons/beasts/murlocs/etc... during recruit phases, and won't be able to build synergy.
Where did you get that info? Because it doesnt sound ver logical
Is that really how this works? I thought the pool was shared in a sense everyone pick from the selection of same minions not from whatever is left.
To be honest it doesnt even make sence it should work as you say, that would mean that whoever gets to higher tier tavern first gets first pickings and 8th player might have his options very limited. That wouldnt be a very fair or healthy model.
I havent get to play it myself yet but this is a first time i hear shared pool works like this.
It's the choice you make:
Stay at a lower tier (with narrower pool) to target specific cards more reliably, or tech up in order to get to the 'OP' ones first.
Also consider that getting a triple allows you to discover from 1 tier up, for example, making going to tier 6 unnecessary in my experience.
There is a loading screen tip that states there are 6 copies of the tier 6 minions shared between all players. I assume the other minions have a similar system, but with larger numbers. That's also how other autobattlers work, as far as I know.
Firebat sometimes mentions things that developers confirmed, I assume that is from a public source like Twitter, but I don't follow Twitter closely since there is so much noise.
Didn't know that! I wish Blizzard would make a post detailing exactly how everything works. Hopefully it'll come out when BGs are out of beta.
Hm, interesting. I wonder how does it work when a player gets knocked out, do their minions free up for the ones still in the game? I think this would all be excellent questions to ask Blizzard, so we know how this works. Cause if it really works as you say, that would change how you approach the win condition quite a lot, if you knew you couldnt get a certain carry you're looking for
There is a short but very informative clip of Mike Donais providing info about the minion pools sitting next to Brian Kibler playing Battlegrounds at Blizzcon in this week's OmniSlash highlights.
Oh yeah, i saw Mike's responce on reddit yesterday, we have it mentioned in our newest article. But thanks for going back to this, love the dedication! ;-
Yes, there's a tip that specifically says that. When a player is eliminated, their minions are added back into the pool.
Cant wait to play it!