Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 10: Second Nature launches this month with Minion Frames, our beloved Buttons, and more

Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 10: Second Nature starts on April 29, and as usual the season changeover will shakeup gameplay with new mechanics, heroes, and minions. Season 10 will see the return of the Trinkets mechanic, the introduction of two new heroes (Forest Lord Cenarius and the adorable Buttons), a minion refresh, and brand-new Minion Frames, a nice quality of life improvement to the game mode.

So read on to learn all that’s coming in Season 10, and know what you can expect from Buttons.

Two new Heroes: Buttons and Forest Lord Cenarius

These heroes aren’t nearly as complex as some of the recent additions to the game mode, such as those added in Heroes of StarCraft. Their hero powers are far more straightforward, which is a nice change of pace.

Buttons

Growing Collection [passive]

• • On Turn 8, choose a Greater Trinket to buy.

Buttons is like an updated (or perhaps improved) version of Marin the Manager, and won’t require much thought for most of the game. Once you get to turn eight, you’ll pick a Greater Trinket to buy — an extra one while Trinkets are in the game, that is. During Seasons when the Trinkets mechanic is removed, we can assume Buttons will simply allow players to pick a Greater Trinket regardless, in a manner similar to how heroes like Marin and Denathrius work.

We just hope Moriaz the Red makes it into the game mode in some manner as well.

Forest Lord Cenarius

Wisdom of Ancients [3 Gold]

• • Increase your maximum Gold by 1.

Cenarius basically gives you the option to buy Strike Oil once every turn. This tavern spell is good, but not necessarily a must-buy — and that feels correctly balanced for a Hero Power. You’ll want to hit it sometimes, if you have nothing better to buy and you’re in no dire need to reroll. It’ll lose you some tempo in the current turn in order to give you a small advantage for the rest of the game.

We expect this hero to be a good pick, but not game-breaking. He doesn’t seem particularly powerful, just solid enough.

Seasonal gameplay changes: Trinkets return to the game, plus a big minion refresh

The Trinket mechanic ended up being one of the most enjoyed by players, overall. Trinkets add some power in ways that feel more “controllable” than Anomalies, but less convoluted than Buddies — you just buy them and you’re done — while also adding some variety on each game, much like Quests do, since there are so many options that pair up with so many different heroes. It should be fun to play with this mechanic again.

But perhaps more importantly, the game is getting another much-needed refresh to its minion roster. This time, we’re getting “over 75 new and returning minions and Tavern spells.” We don’t have the details yet on which cards are new, which are returning, which are leaving, and which are being re-balanced, but we’ll find out more over the next couple weeks, leading into the the new Season’s start date.

We do, however, have a few examples, as seen in the picture above! Seems like a theme this time might be “buffing your buffs” — making your Tavern spells that give stats to your minions give even more stats, sort of like Blood Gems work for Quilboar. We’ll have to wait and see what else they have in store for us.

New Minion frames allow you to tell a minion type at a glance

This is just a quality of life change, but it’s one that should make the play experience better overall. Minions will now have colorful frames, based on the class colors from Constructed mode, allowing players to tell what types a minion has at a glance:

Each minion type’s frame will correspond to one of the Hearthstone class frames, and dual type minions will use the half and half frames that Hearthstone uses for dual-class cards.

As seen in the picture above, it looks like Elementals will all share the light blue color of the Mage class, while Pirates will come in Rogue black — and a minion like Land Lubber, which is Elemental and Pirate at the same time, will have Elemental Blue on the left side and Pirate Black on the right. This may not seem like much, but it should ease the load on our brains just a tiny bit.

In addition to all of the above, you can also expect the usual Battlegrounds Track Refresh, as well as a new stream event where creators try out the new Season, including drops. You may check out these an all of the other changes at the official blog.

Season 10 starts April 29, so we’re only a couple of weeks away!