Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 13, Cataclysm Calls, begins April 14 with new keywords and the return of Trinkets

A new season is about to start for Hearthstone Battlegrounds: Cataclysm Calls will be here April 14, and it promises to shake things up a little more than usual with two new keywords, Fodder for Demons, and Chromadrake for Dragons. In addition to that, Trinkets are returning, and we’re getting several new minions, a few new heroes, and a big roster refresh, as usual.

Minions with the new Fodder keyword — which reminds me a lot of the Morsel minions from Monster Train (amazing game, by the way) — are made to be devoured by your Demons. Whenever one appears on the tavern, a friendly demon will automatically consume it to gain its stats, and that minion’s slot in the tavern will be immediately refreshed. This has huge implications for consume builds, which are already a lot of fun, and now gain a lot more design space.

Chromadrakes, on the other hand, are more of a minion “subtype,” similar to the Volumizer mechs, than a real keyword. These dragons come in five types (the usual green, red, blue, bronze, and black), and each has a Battlecry effect that either buffs your existing dragons or improves your tavern spells for the rest of the game. It’s a simple matter of “gotta catch ’em all” with this one, though it does double down on the synergy dragons have always had with Battlecries.

Trinkets are back, replacing the current Timewarped Tavern mechanic (and sunsetting Anomalies for the time being). This is a popular mechanic where players are offered a selection of Lesser Trinkets on turn 6, and of Greater Trinkets on turn 9. You buy one Trinket on each of those rounds, with gold, and they have permanent (and powerful) effects for the rest of the game. The pool of available Trinkets is changing, with some new ones being introduced, a few old ones being retired, and balance updates to a few others still.

But the Trinket system is receiving some small updates, as explained in a forum post: players are now guaranteed to be offered some Trinkets that work with whichever minion type their warband is focusing on (similarly to what already happened with Timewarped cards). Trinkets will now have an icon at the top left corner so players can identify at a glance if they’re Lesser or Greater, and there are a few other quality of life improvements such as “full hand protection,” which guarantees that any cards that are generated by Trinkets will wait until you have room in your hand, so you’ll never lose out on them because your hand was full at the moment they were generated.

Two new heroes join the battle this time: Genn, Worgen King has no Hero Power of his own, but you’ll get to Discover two hero powers on Turn four, which sounds both fun and strong. And Mister Clocksworth makes it so that you only need two copies of a minion to make it golden, but you get Tavern Coins from them instead of Triple Rewards. We’ve seen this effect a few times in the game before (including from one Anomaly), so we’ll  have to wait and see how this one plays out as a Hero Power instead.

Check out the blog post for the full details, including the Battlegrounds Track refresh, new upcoming events with drops on April 9, and the reveal season for new minions. We’re certainly excited for this Cataclysmic season to begin!