Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 9 starts on December 3, removing Trinkets, adding Hero Rerolls, and more

It’s official: the Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 9 release date is December 3. Hearthstone patch 31.2 will launch with Season 9: Enter the Technotavern in just a few weeks. As expected, the new season will also remove Trinkets from the game, but this time a new mechanic isn’t replacing it: instead, we’re getting Hero Rerolls to give you more Hero options each game and and new Damage Caps to reign in damage during the early stages of the game.

Here’s what’s coming with Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 9.

Hero Rerolls give you new chances to find a good hero… for a price

A new type of currency, Battlegrounds Tokens, will be added to let you purchase Hero Rerolls. You can earn these tokens from the Reward Track (free or paid), in-game events, drops, or (of course) the in-game shop. This currency will be usable during the “Choose a Hero” screen at the start of the game, allowing you to reroll one Hero slot. You can reroll each Hero slot once for a token each.

This seems like a change that will raise the power levels of the game, since players will be compelled to reroll until they find heroes they like (and know how to play), and can be viewed as a good thing, since it ends up giving players more options. Of course, the more cynical among us can also see this as a “pay to win” move that lets players who are willing to spend more money to get up to eight Hero choices per game. In addition to be able to buy tokens from the shop, there’s a new version of the Season Pass ($15) called Season Pass+ ($20) which gives players one free reroll per game in addition to the standard Season Pass benefits.

It’s hard to evaluate just how much of an impact the addition of Hero Rerolls through Battlegrounds Tokens will have until we know just how plentiful those tokens will be — there are only eight tokens listed on the free Rewards Track, but Blizzard promises other ways to earn them. We’ll have to see how it plays out.

Either way, the optimistic in me enjoys that players will have more control over which hero they’ll play on each game. The pragmatic in me knows that monetization is inevitable, and this seems like a mostly fair way for Blizzard to make more money out of a game mode that is, otherwise, free. For now, at least, I don’t see this as a “bring out the pitchforks moment,” but we’ll have to see how it develops once Season 9 is out.

New damage caps should make players less likely to be eliminated in the early game

In what seems like a positive change, solo (single player) Battlegrounds will have new damage caps starting from Season 9. Instead of having a damage cap of 15 until only four players are left, the game will now have a scaling cap that works like this:

• The cap is 5 damage at the start of the game.
• The cap is increased to 10 damage on turn 4.
• The cap is increased again to the usual 15 damage on turn 8.
• The cap is removed once there are only four players left (this is unchanged from how it works now).

This change — which is only for solo Battlegrounds mode, and does not apply to Duos — should alleviate those power swings that can get you eliminated quickly if you get a bad start, and allow more players to be able to catch up and mount a comeback.

Three new Heroes join the Battlegrounds

We’re getting three new Heroes in Season 9, but the only one we know of so far is Farseer Nobundo. His hero power is as follows:

• The Galaxy’s Lens (3 Gold)
  • Get a copy of the last Tavern spell you cast. Each turn, your next Hero Power costs (1) less.

This is an interesting Hero Power that probably gets better and better later in the game, as we get discounts to those more powerful Tier 5 and Tier 6 spells.

Besides Nobundo, the other two Heroes should be revealed over the following weeks.

Major changes to the roster of minions and Tavern spells

This season will also majorly shake up the roster, removing “over 90 minions and spells from the game,” and replacing them with “nearly 90 new and returning minions and 11 all-new spells.” We already know that Selfless Hero is returning, and that there are two new cards:

• Dr. Boom’s Monster is a new Tier 6 Mech with 2/2 stats with the Magnetic keyword that reads “Has +2/+2 for each time you’ve Magnetized this game (wherever this is).”
  • We don’t know if Foe Reaper 4000 is staying in the game mode or not, but if he is, he has a new best friend.
• Fandral’s Fortune is a new Tier 6 Tavern spell that costs 3 gold and reads “Discover a Choose One minion. It has both effects combined.”
  • This heavily implies that we’ll get at least a few new Choose One minions, so we can look forward to that.

While we don’t have many details on the entire roster change yet, the reveals are going to be rolling out over the next few days, and you can always find them at the official Card Library.

And the other (usual) changes

Season 9 will also reset player ratings for both regular Battlegrounds and Duos, give us a new Season Pass, and a new Battlegrounds Track filled with cosmetics that follow the Enter the Technotavern theme — which includes a few StarCraft-styled skins, to accompany the next Constructed miniset, Heroes of StarCraft. I personally cannot wait for another addition to my A.F. Kay collection, StarCraft A.F. Kay!

We can expect all of those changes for Hearthstone Battlegrounds when Season 9, Enter the Technotavern, releases on December 3. See you there!

Originally posted August 28, 2024. Updated November 19, 2024.