Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 11 adds Quests, a couple of new Keywords, and quality of life improvements, launching August 5

Hearthstone Battlegrounds has just had its new season announced, and it’s a pretty exciting one, with lots of content. Season 11, Echoes of Un’Goro, will swap out Trinkets and Anomalies, and herald the return of Quests. It’ll also introduce a “new” keyword, Rally — which is more simply turning an existing effect into a keyword to make things clearer, really — and a major minion roster shakeup that adds Bounty spells to Pirates, and bring back several fan-favorites from the past.

So let’s get right into it, for there’s a lot to talk about!

Quests are back, replacing Trinkets and Anomalies

Just like in other times it’s been in the game, the Quest mechanic for Battlegrounds will have all players choose from one of three pairs of Quests and Rewards on Turn 4. Completing your Quest gives you its paired Reward, so your choice needs to consider both ends: a Quest that isn’t too hard to complete, and a Reward that you’ll be able to build your board around and win.

The roster of Quests and Rewards has been changed, with a total of 35 Rewards this time, 13 of them being brand-new. Some of these new Rewards directly reference the new Rally keyword, which we’ll talk about next.

New keyword: Rally

This new keyword is there to replace those “After this minion attacks” effects from cards like Monstrous Macaw. Any previous minions that had such effects will now get Rally instead, and a lot of new minions that use this effect will be added, especially for Quilboar and Dragons.

It may not seem like it’s such a big deal to just replace some text with a keyword, but it actually opens up a lot of design space: new cards can be made that say things like “whenever a friendly Rally minion attacks,” and we could even get powerful effects similar to Rivendare and Brann, but tailored to Rally.

New spell keyword (for Pirates): Bounty

In any games when Pirates are in the lobby, a new type of Tavern spell will show up: Bounty spells can be used by any player, regardless of the minions they have on their boards, but they shine extra bright, like gold coins, for Pirates.

These spells are always Tier 3, and they have effects like “Get a random minion of your most common type” or “Gain 2 gold” (both of those examples costing two gold). But new Pirate minions have effects like “Rally: get 2 random Bounties” or, more impressively, “You cast your Bounties twice.”

New Hero: Loh, the Living Legend

The young maze-delving Tortollan from World of Warcraft is all grown-up now, and debuting in the Battlegrounds as a new hero. His starting hero power, Heroic Inspiration, reads:

• Passive. After friendly minions attack 15 times, get your Hero’s Welcome.

“And what is Hero’s Welcome?,” you’re surely wondering. It’s the replacement hero power:

• • [1 Gold] Discover a Rally minion.

Getting a Rally minion every turn for just one gold is fantastic value. Even if you it’s not anything you could use, worst case scenario you can sell it and get that gold back. Loh looks like he could be an interesting hero to play.

The new in-game Guide lets players get a lot of information about a match

A fantastic quality of life improvement the game is getting is the new in-game Guide, which will be located on the lower-right corner of your screen. Clicking on it will let you see not just which minion types are present in the current game, but also which minions (of each type) and spells are available per Tier, letting you plan and strategize.

This is the kind of feature that is currently provided by external tools, such as deck trackers (which are usually desktop-only), so it’s great to see Blizzard actually implementing useful features like this one for all players to enjoy — and to share it to mobile players as well.

The new Tavern Pass gives out lots of cosmetics (and other power options)

As usual, the three tiers of Tavern Pass each give out additional levels of swag. The skins on both the free and paid tracks are themed around Un’Goro’s archaeology vibe, and there are also some dragons in the mix. As usual, with the base paid Tavern Pass you also get access to two additional Hero choices in every match, and Tavern Pass+ allows you one “free” Hero reroll per lobby.

All in all, this is looking like an extremely solid Season. We’ll get minion reveals over the next weeks — though we already know some fan-favorite minions like the Elemental Ballers and Soul Juggler (now a Demon!) are returning. The season will be here August 5, and we can’t wait!