THL's Battlegrounds Series: A Brief Flame, A Bright Legacy

By Wild9

On November 1, 2019, Blizzard announced their new battleground mode at Blizzcon. Inspired by Teamfight Tactics, at first, the only way to play Blizzard’s Autobattler was on a ladder system. Soon enough,  group play and lobbies were introduced.  Well before the news dropped, however, the THL team wheels were churning.

Once private lobbies were confirmed, it was only a matter of time before THL would create its own Battlegrounds Series for the community to compete in. Challenges existed, but the league would find a way to get it done.
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A Series is Born

Blizzard's custom Battlegrounds lobby launch had coincided with basedinc joining The Board. Based had taken it upon herself along with BrushyTuna to determine how a BGs series might take place. Based explained that “a good chunk of planning was already done by existing board members and then when I joined the board, Hat said, ‘Take it away.’”

A new Alpha series was conducted as a test run to work out potential kinks in the series structure. This took place shortly after the Battle of the Discords offseason event that ended in December 2020. The biggest problem: figuring out how to get eight people to schedule one time to play. As MartyB puts it, “Our biggest issue with any of these [matches] has always been scheduling. Generally, the more people that are involved, the more difficult it is to schedule matches.” Some weeks, scheduling for two people gets complicated. One can imagine just how tall the ask to get eight people together at the same time to play for an hour (or more) can be.

The solution was that each week would consist of two designated play times, and each lobby/time would consist of two BGs games being played. “We decided to make two generic times that you had to show up and play, and from that logic, we found out it was not hard for a four person team to have people meet those times,” explains BrushyTuna. Teams of four people would compete in pairs at the designated times. One lobby, therefore, would consist of four teams fighting it out, with two players from each team playing. Points would be awarded to each team based on the finishes of the two players in each BG game, totaling to 8 chances for points for each team, each week.

The Alpha run consisted of twelve teams and only six weeks of regular season play. The top six teams went to playoffs and competed for two more weeks. The overall structure, especially the team play dynamic, was a huge success. Some fine tuning needed to be done on the points system (changing how many points were awarded for each place) as well as confirming the best set times for everyone to play. But once adjustments were made, the BGs Series was ready for a more fleshed out format with more players and longer seasons.

BGs as a Team

During an era when the Autobattler format was getting a lot of attention, Blizzard was promoting Hearthstone Battlegrounds mode as a competitive alternative to standard constructed Hearthstone. Regular Blizzard-sponsored tournaments were scheduled, including qualifications and a worlds format for BGs. As a result, many third-party organizers also jumped in providing multiple ways on a regular basis to compete in competitive BGs.

The THL BGs series became another way for high-rank players to have fun and practice their BG skills. Jkirek, a member of the Season Beta champion Liimers, explains that during Season Beta, he was “high on the ladder… [as] a natural result of playing for fun…,” and that “THL was another way to have fun optimizing the game in a different way.”

THL’s BGs series began at a time well before Battlegrounds Duos had been released, so the format of 2v2v2v2 provided a new challenge to solo BG players. Jkirek provides insight:

“The format is something very different from normal BGs, since you have collective access to so much more information. Navigating friendly matchups to optimize tie odds was one of my specialties, but there was a lot more to it; optimizing who plays for which comps (to minimize overlap), figuring out who had the best odds to get first place and keeping them healthy, etc. is all quite unique to the format.”

Lulnenko, member of Concede Ur Match who won Season Kappa (third) of BG Series, further explains the depth of strategy and brain power needed to work together with a partner:

“THL duos format of it was not the same as playing solo… because you had to spend so much time thinking about what your teammate is doing. You were allowed to have a stream in Ddiscord open of your teammate’s board,. Soso we were watching our teammate’s screen and coordinating which is a lot of brain power. In addition to what my partner was doing, we would feed information about the lobby so I would tell my teammate about the board I just faced.”

Considering the meta, trying to maximize points for your team, passing information, playing different comps, strategizing friendly matchups to optimize ties, and overall working together to make the best plays every turn—BG Series constantly tested even the best players to grow in their knowledge, gameplay, and teamwork in Hearthstone Battlegrounds!

A New Challenge

Beyond the challenges to players, new challenges also arose for a different dimension of the series: casting the games. Saku, THL’s resident expert stream operator, worked together with fellow THL member BrushyTuna to make BG casts happen. Stephieee and Bluesombrero, two regular THL members and BG enthusiasts, were called on frequently to help cast.

The official Hearthstone production team uses eight screens at their disposal to make their casts, but THL does not have that capability. Saku explains:

“The hardest part was streaming the screens. Brushy and I figured out that we had to share screens in order to accurately switch between rounds with players. The unfortunate part was my screen was always crisp/cleaner as discord could only stream at 720p. SLOBS wasn't the greatest either at that time. Nowadays you can drag images to the program. Back then it was usually picking a path/directory. Annoying really. From a viewer POV, things seemed okay.”
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It was more than okay. Even watching these old games back, you can feel the excitement and constant action and engagement. While casting meant  great challenges for the casters to keep track of all the action, and stream operaters faced constantly updating all graphics and current information for viewers, it also made for some of the most interesting and exciting THL-hosted Hearthstone content.

Teams and Success

The initial, short Alpha Season was won by Bob’s Bounty Hunters, a team of BG players that are still considered major community members and content creators in Battlegrounds today. Hapabear, Andrasti, Jumpfloat, and Pocky crushed the competition. Hapabear in particular would go on to boast the highest average lobby rank out of all THL BG players with a minimum of 20 lobbies: 3.22.

As mentioned earlier, Liimurs took the Beta season also boasting a star-studded lineup that included Lii, BvBat, MrIncredible, and Jkirek. “Lii got the team together, inviting a group of high MMR players,.” explains Jkirek. Several of these players would go on to make waves in official Blizzard competitive play as well.

Finally, Concede Ur Match was the third and final champion, winning THL’s Kappa season. Lulnenko, a key member of the team, provides some thoughts:

“There was never a question that [AgentPWE], urmumked, and myself would play together. We were already in a Discord server together and prepped together and were playing games together all the time in BGs and Standard. We just needed to find a 4th person. I brought in [TheLetterW] in the first two seasons. He was a top 200 ranked guy. He ended up not playing Season Kappa, so we were looking for a 4th person, and Snakefawdz was brought in with the assumption that he would play alongside me and if I needed to help him out, I could. He’s a smart guy and a good Hearthstone player.”

This team played all three seasons and were memorably competitive every single season, finally taking it all the third season. Lulnenko reflects that “the team that won Season [Alpha] (Bob’s Bbounty hHunters) had some good players there. In season 2, Lii came in with 4 literally top players in the world. In season 3, with the other two teams leaving, we were the only top team left.”

The End of BG Series

Ultimately, the THL BG Series came to an end after just three seasons. The level of interest began to dwindle with some of the top teams leaving by the second season. Some of this was because the best teams were so far above the rest of the competition, scaring away some casual players who initially showed interest in the format.  In addition, THL's limited rewards became a detriment to the viability of the series. Liimurs and Bob's Bounty Hunters were direct casualties of this, as their players needed to focus on other competitions that had more financial incentives. One of the biggest reasons to shut it down, however, was scheduling. “BGs fell off in part to [scheduling issues], as it was more difficult to attract new players when they needed to fit a set schedule,” according to MartyB. Scheduling 8 players to a set match time was no easy feat, and doing it consistently with a shrinking playerbase is an increasingly difficult task to achieve.

The Battlegrounds Series will forever be remembered by those who played in it as an incredibly fun and challenging experience. Lulnenko put it best: “It’s just a really friendly group of people. I obviously can’t speak for every single person who played, but there were just a lot of cool people in the BG series. Whether they beat me or I beat them, it was always a lot of fun.”

With the new Duos Battlegrounds mode, some ideas and chatter has spread about the possibility of this series being resurrected. So far, it’s just a pipedream… but who knows. Maybe one day.