04 Nov 2019
Blizzcon this year may have been all about Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2, but there were some mobile-orientated news items to pay attention to. As we already reported at the weekend, Diablo: Immortals got a brief update, and they announced a new Hearthstone set as well called Descent of Dragons.
Blizzard ALSO announced their own take on the Auto Chess phenomenon: Hearthstone: Battlegrounds. Taking the Valve route by making it an extra mode within Hearthstone (a la Teamfight Tactics > League of Legends) as opposed to making it a stand-alone experience (a la DOTA Underlords), this new variant will pit eight players against each other in the familiar Auto Chess format. There’s 24 heroes, god knows how many ‘minion’ characters to recruit. Here’s a trailer to highlight what we know so far (which isn’t much):
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuW_wDMXl64?controls=0]
Depending on how charitable you’re feeling, this is either a very creative way to both capitalise on a current trend AND provide new content for your existing playerbase, or it’s incredibly lazy. I mean watching the trailer gives off the impression that it’s essentially a regular game of Hearthstone that just plays itself, sans spell or other non-minion type cards. I imagine there might be some more tactical nuance to it (like in other Auto Chess games) but we won’t know until we get our hands on it.
If you’ve acquired the Descent of Dragons pre-purchase bundle, or are a BlizzCon or BlizzCon Virtual Ticket holder, you’ll be able to try out the new mode from tomorrow in an exclusive week-long early access period. The rest of us mere mortals will have to wait until November 12th, when the ‘Global’ beta period officially rolls out.
Since the Hearthstone client is available on PC, iOS and Android (Google Play + Amazon), the new Battlegrounds mode will be as well. However, since the beta isn’t going to be fully optimised only devices with more than 2GB of RAM will be able to try it out. As the mode is fleshed out, further optimisation work will try and bring older devices on board.
There is definitely room for experimentation in this space – a lot of Auto Chess games are kind of similar to each other right now. Again, whether this is ingenious or a “quick win” remains to be seen.
Will you be trying out Battlegrounds when it launches? Got any initial thoughts of your own? Let us know in the comments!