Hearthstone Battlegrounds Season 14 lets you reshape matches with powerful Dark Gifts
Three choices. Three Gold.
- Dark Gifts add new strategic choices
- Activate keyword changes Gold management
- New Pirate and Beast mechanics arrive
Dalaran keeps its secrets locked up for a reason, but somebody has clearly gone digging anyway. Battlegrounds Season 14, Dark Gifts of Dalaran, is now live, and it brings a new gameplay system, not just another reshuffle.
The big new piece is Dark Gifts themselves. From Turn 3 onward, you can spend three Gold to Discover a minion paired with one of over forty Dark Gifts on offer, ranging from blunt stat boosts to entire keyword grants. The button works three times a game, and the later you wait, the stronger the offers get.
Alongside the Dark Gifts sits Activate, a new keyword that lets certain minions trigger an ability during the Recruit Phase for Gold, once per minion per turn. It changes how you think about spending Gold each round, since suddenly holding some back has a use beyond just buying another minion.
Two new tribal synergies join the pool too. Pirates get Lockbox, which locks a Golden minion away until a later turn unless you find a way to spring it early. Beasts get Fishbait, which lets them attack during the Recruit Phase for the first time, assuming the minion that bites is willing to risk it.
The Dark Gift button is the bit I actually rate. It forces a proper decision every time it lights up, not just another click. Wait a turn or two and the offers start getting properly tempting, right up until someone at your table snaps up the good one first and you are left holding three Gold and some regret.
Trinkets are sticking around too, with 23 new Lesser and 24 new Greater options joining the pool, and the season's Rewards Track has reset alongside it all, bringing fresh cosmetics built around Maiev and Vanessa VanCleef.
If Battlegrounds has you after something else to dip into between runs, our list of the best multiplayer games on Android has plenty more to keep a lobby going.
