There have been some changes to Hearthstone since I last posted about it, bringing good news and bad news. The bad news: they’ve discontinued Duels, which I was rather fond of. The good news: they’ve added a Duos mode to Battlegrounds!
Instead of eight players fending for themselves, four sets of two share health stats with their partner, and so must coordinate their approach. This includes the ability to Pass cards to your teammate’s hand at the cost of Gold. To that end, you can flag certain cards or other options (i.e. Tavern Upgrade) to confer with your opponent! It’s a very simple system, just a checkmark, an x, a question mark, and a portal symbol. Part of the joy for me has been learning how to click with each new teammate, because we all use the same four-symbol shorthand a little differently!
For the combats themselves, you and your teammate take turns fighting first, facing off one-on-one with an opponent until one or both combatants lose all their minions. Their teammate(s) immediately tag in, the fighting continues, and whichever team still has minions in the end does damage! If one player defeated both their opponents, their teammate’s minions fill in the empty spaces in their board and contribute to the damage total.
(Additional note: the Anomalies update I mentioned in the previous Battlegrounds post was, I believe, Season-specific, and isn’t currently in effect. They shuffle cards and rules like that with the major updates, so there’s always something new to play with!)
