It’s super dumb, but I have pretty much exclusively been playing Hearthstone Battlegrounds for the last 1.5 weeks. I say “super dumb” because this sort of gaming doesn’t mean anything. And, yeah, “does anything really mean anything?” but Battlegrounds is on a whole other level of frivolousness.

If you’re unfamiliar, Battlegrounds is a game mode within the Hearthstone client that is essentially an Auto-Battler. There are two main phases: Tavern and Battle. During the Tavern phase, you spend gold purchasing minions, upgrading the Tavern tier (unlocking higher-tier minions in the pool), refresh available minions, sell minions, use your Hero Power, and/or rearrange your minions. After about 60-90 seconds, you transition into the Battle phase. During Battle, minions take turns attacking from left to right, but their targets are chosen randomly (barring Taunt or other special effects). Whoever has a minion(s) left standing wins and deals X damage to the opponent’s hero.

Battlegrounds has been around for a while, but I didn’t really bother playing it for years. As my interest in Hearthstone proper started to wane though – I don’t care much about ladder ranks – Battlegrounds started to become more appealing. Throughout the seasons, Blizzard started to really shake things up with new, rotating features that added some spicey randomness. Granted, there’s already plenty of randomness in the game mode, but these were on another level. Things like Buddy units (unique to each Hero), Quests (bonus effects if you can complete them), and the latest season introduced Spells as something you can purchase in the shop. All of these things were introduced in a particular season, and then rotated out, keeping things fresh.

And then someone this season went nuts and added all of the things.

Specifically, this current season has Spells and then several weeks later… Quests too. The Quests have been revamped though, and some of them feature crazy effects like “Discover a new Buddy each turn.” That’s not actually the most powerful Quest effect, but I had a few degenerate games where I leveraged it to a massive win. Indeed, the sheer nonsense you can evoke depending on randomness – and the speed in which you must do so – is what is driving me to almost compulsively play Battlegrounds. I’m chasing the high I get from some of these games, or chasing the dream where I was a turn or two away from going nuts before getting wrecked by someone else’s high-roll.

Really though, the randomness cannot be overstated:

• Starting Hero selection is between 2-4 from random pool (94)
  • Opponent hero selections are random (for you)
• Overall minion type pool is random (5 out of 9)
• The minions you’re offered in each Tavern are random
  • There are only X copies of specific minions in the pool, which opponents can buy
  • Getting a “triple” confers a huge bonus, which is a pick 1-of-3 minions from a higher tier
• Minion attacks are random (aside from Taunts or other special conditions)
  • HUGE variance can that lead to losing to 5% odds
• Certain spells are random
  • Steal a random minion from the tavern, Discover a Battlecry Minion, etc
• Quests are random on top of random
  • At a baseline, you are offered a choice of three quests (out of 60)
  • Your hero selection impacts which quests are available
  • Quest completion methods are randomly assigned (out of 15)
    • Play X Battlecry Minions; Speed Y Gold; Kill Z Minions; etc
    • Minion types, hero selection, and quest power impact X/Y/Z values
  • Some Quest rewards are themselves random
    • Cast 5 Random Spells each turn; Discover a Buddy; etc

Sounds like it would be frustrating, yeah? And yet… it usually feels fine.

In Hearthstone, a card that does 3-6 damage is frustrating. Not drawing your combo pieces is frustrating. In Battlegrounds, the randomness is usually just presented as you needing to make the best decision out of available options. Did your minions miss the enemy buff target three times in a row and yet they hit your buff minion right off the bat? OK, that sucks. What’s your next play?

It also helps that losing early just means you can queue into a potentially better game right away.

Near as I can tell, whatever reward center in my brain that lights up from deck-building roguelikes (e.g. Slay the Spire) or survival-crafting games has been short-circuited by this season of Battlegrounds. I’m somewhat mad at myself because I should be playing Red Dead Redemption 2 (played one session) or anything else in my extended library. We’re talking like probably 30-40 hours of potential progress spent on otherwise wirehead activity in the past few weeks.

And yet… I need another bump. The next Battlegrounds season gimmick has been teased as being co-op, which honestly sounds pretty awful. I doubt that they keep Quests around for another entire season in any case, but maybe Blizzard will see the spike in (my) gametime and consider keeping it around. The fact that it may go away for a while makes me want to get my fill even more.

Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie! I need it.

Oh, and Hearthstone proper released a new expansion cycle too, I guess. Yawn.