Hearthstone Battlegrounds get Aberrations, with discard effects and Old God summoning, but Naga are out

BlizzCon 2026 has a ton of Hearthstone news, and Battlegrounds was not left behind: a new minion type, Aberrations, will be introduced to the game with Patch 36.6.1, releasing on September 22. This new minion type is built around discard synergies and a new Deity mechanic, where each Aberration that dies advances your progress toward an Old God.

This new Deity mechanic will work roughly like this: at the start of the game, each player is randomly assigned either C’Thun or Y’Shaarj as their Deity. Every time a friendly Aberration dies, they make some progress, and after three sacrifices have been made in total, your Deity joins the fight with “a game-changing effect.”

• C’Thun
  • [Tier 3] 1/1. Deity. After this awakens, give this minion’s stats split amongst your other minions.
• Y’Shaarj
  • [Tier 3] 1/1. Deity. Deathrattle: Summon your first 2 Aberrations that died this combat with their maximum stats (except Deities).

As you can see, the two Old Gods have different strategies: C’Thun splits its stats among your other minions (so you wanna buff him), while Y’Shaarj’s Deathrattle resurrects your Aberrations, so you’re focusing on having big Aberrations that you want to keep bringing back. Many of the brand-new Aberration minions synergize with the Deities or with the new Sludge Corrosion tavern spell, which is a buff to all your minions that gets stronger if it’s discarded instead of played.

There are two new heroes joining the fray as well, Drest’agath and Kith’ix. Both will be guaranteed to appear in every lobby for the first two weeks after the patch is out, and Aberrations themselves will likewise appear in every lobby during that period.

• Drest’agath
  • Incubate: [1 Cost] Discard a card to get a random Aberration.
• Kith’ix
  • Dark Ritual: [2 Cost] Get 2 random minions. When you play one, discard the other.

There are several balance changes as well, with updates to minions, spells, and trinkets that are being changed, or rotating in or out. You can find the full details on the official blog.

Unfortunately, it’s not all good news: with the arrival of Aberrations, Naga are being rotated out of Battlegrounds, along with all of the Naga-specific heroes and cards. This is really strange, as it seems to put a hard cap on the number of minion types the game mode can support at once, whether it’s for gameplay or balance reasons. But it is what it is.

Wither way, patch 36.6.1 will be a massive update to the game, as it had been a long time since the last time we got a new minion type, so that’s exciting at least. We’ll see how it all plays out on September 22.