Hearthstone – Battlegrounds Update, New Heroes

Battlegrounds, the latest game mode introduced for Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, has received a new update that adds some extra chaos and a few new heroes.

The latest heroes to enter the Battlegrounds are Sindragosa, Elise Starseeker, Brann Bronzebeard, and Sir Finley Mrrgglton, each with their own unique hero abilities for players to make use of and take into account when creating their Battlegrounds deck.

New Hero Abilities:

• Sindragosa – Stay Frosty: At the end of your turn, Frozen minions gain +1/+1
• Elise Starseeker – Lead Explorer: When you upgrade Bob’s Tavern, get a Recruitment Map.
• Brann Bronzebeard – Battle Brand: When you play a Battlecry minion, give a random friendly minion +1/+1
• Sir Finley Mrrglton – Power Up!: Give a random friendly minion +1/+1. After you sell a minion, refresh this ability.

To make way for these new heroes, King Mukla, Giantfin, Millificent Manastorm, and Lich Baz’hial will exit the Battlegrounds, though they may return at a later date. More additions to the Battlegrounds game mode are planned for early December, bringing minion and Hero balance updates, a new rotation of Heroes, twop new minions, and the first iteration of the Stats feature.

Battlegrounds was first announced as an addition to Hearthstone at BlizzCon earlier this month, and is currently in open beta. Featuring an array of 24 different heroes for players to choose from, Battlegrounds is an entirely different way for fans to enjoy Hearthstone. In this new, fun game mode, players don’t build a deck of cards as in normal play. Instead, they construct an ever-changing board of minions through visits to Bob’s Tavern at the start of each match and in between combat rounds.

Minions automatically battle each other, though all keywords and special abilities work the same as they do in a regular Hearthstone game. Groups of eight randomly matched players take each other on for a spot on the leaderboard, and ending the match in the top four increases skill rank for the Battlegrounds mode, while ending in the bottom four lowers it.

Battlegrounds is free to access for anyone with a Hearthstone account, and is available now through a new “modes” button on the Hearthstone main menu.

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