Hearthstone Battlegrounds is getting 32 new minions next week, many of whom stink

Hearthstone's Battlegrounds on my phone is my go-to game when watching anything on TV that my ADHD brain refuses to engage with. I love the mode so much that I consider myself a Battlegrounds rather than Standard main these days, and look forward to new content drops almost as much as full card expansions. Today Blizzard began detailing what to expect from Season 3 of Battlegrounds, and I'm glad to say we're getting a bunch of new minions—32 in total—as that always seems to shake the meta up the most.

Of those new minions, 16 will have the new Undead tribal tag which launched as part of the March of the Lich King expansion. A further 11 of the new minions will have dual tribal tags, meaning they can leverage the synergies and buffs of minions from two tribes. That should be a boost to menagerie-style warband compositions, which generate their power from running as many different tribes as possible. As we've seen with Amalgams, running minions with multiple tribal tags will make it easier to harvest buffs from cards like Lightfang Enforcer and Menagerie Jug. Check out the first four minions revealed in the gallery blow.

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Images from season 3 of Hearthstone Battlegrounds. — (Image credit: Blizzard)

According to the announcement, Undead minions will "revolve around death effects like Reborn and Deathrattle". Until we see the complete set of cards, it's tricky to predict exactly what kind of comp will be optimal when playing Undead. Blizzard is going to be drip-feeding on the changes coming in Season 3 over the next few days in partnership with various creators, starting with RDU, who has the skinny on all the Undead minions in his video embedded above. Sister Deathwhisper looks like a very strong tier-six minion if you can create a board full of Undead and Reborn minions.

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Blizzard also showed off the reworked Professor Putricide, who will be returning to the hero pool when Season 3 starts on January 17. He now has a completely different hero power which costs 4 gold and reads: "Craft a custom Undead, (3 Creations left)". Again, there's a video to explain what that actually entails, this time hosted by Kripparian.

The gist is that it works a bit like Deathstalker Rexxar, the hero card from Knights of the Frozen throne, except in this case you'll be combining Undead rather than Beasts. (Note that the Undead you can create are restricted to your current Tavern Tier or lower, with one of the options being guaranteed to be your current Tier.)

At the same time as the new season starts, the current Quest mechanic will be removed (which is a shame, as I've enjoyed these, but not unexpected), and the rewards track will be refreshed. Blizzard has also created its first Twitch Drop for Hearthstone Battlegrounds. In order to earn the Lightkeeper Xyrella skin, you'll need to tune in to a channel with Drops enabled and watch for at least one hour. You'll also need to have your Twitch and Battle.net accounts linked.

The window the Drop will be available through is between January 17 at 10.00 AM PT and January 23 at 11.59 PM PT. And for the love of merciful Millhouse Manastrom please do not type !drop in the chat over and over again as it does absolutely nothing.

With over two decades covering videogames, Tim has been there from the beginning. In his case, that meant playing Elite in 'co-op' on a BBC Micro (one player uses the movement keys, the other shoots) until his parents finally caved and bought an Amstrad CPC 6128. These days, when not steering the good ship PC Gamer, Tim spends his time complaining that all Priest mains in Hearthstone are degenerates and raiding in Destiny 2. He's almost certainly doing one of these right now.