While the titular mercenaries are made up of familiar faces from World of Warcraft and Hearthstone lore, Mercenaries is a brand-new game mode that uses minions in a completely different way to Constructed, Arena, and Battlegrounds, incorporating abilities that permanently improve as you level up and other novel battle mechanics. The Hearthstone Mercenaries game mode has its own packs, and you’ll manage your collection and PvE tasks from the Mercenaries Village, where your rag-tag crew plan their heists. As well as the mercenaries themselves, you can also level up and upgrade your village, unlocking things like Heroic difficulty, leaderboards, and cosmetic themes. When you actually jump into a game though, one thing becomes clear: you don’t get much information about opposing mercenaries. It can be tough to remember the strengths and abilities of every single minion, especially in a new mode, so we’ve compiled a list of everything in Hearthstone Mercenaries for you to refer back to while you play. Or if you’re as much of a collector as a battler, it also functions as a checklist for which mercenaries you still need to add to your team, or which to look out for in packs or craft with dust next.
How do battles work in Hearthstone Mercenaries?
In Hearthstone Mercenaries, your party is made up of 6 minions, and 3 fight at any one time with the other 3 on the bench. When a minion is defeated or uses an ability to retreat, one of your benched minions joins the battle in place of their comrade. But the basic thing that you always need to remember is the combat color triangle. Each mercenary has a color: Red, Green, or Blue. Each color deals double damage to another color, but receives double damage from a color too. Red deals double damage to Green. Green deals double damage to Blue. Blue deals double damage to Red. To balance the combat triangle, you need to build your team with a mix of Red, Blue and Green mercenaries, and use them strategically against your opponents to maximise their type advantages.
How do abilities work in Hearthstone Mercenaries?
There are two things to consider with each character’s abilities in Hearthstone Mercenaries: their tier and their speed. As you use your mercenaries in battle, they gain XP and eventually level up. As their level raises, the stat increases they get are permanent. You can also give permanent bonuses to their abilties by raising their tier in your collection. This means an enemy mercenary’s ability can be more powerful than you’re expecting, so bear it in mind. As for speed, the lower the number, the faster the ability. Slow abilities tend to be stronger, but they’re no use if your party has already been wiped before they can use it!
Hearthstone Mercenaries List
First we’ll go over the introductory set of 8 mercenaries you get for completing the Hearthstone Mercenaries prologue. These are sure to be some of the most common foes you face in the early days of PvP, and you’ll need to check back often. Next, there are three Mercenaries characters available as part of pre-purchase bundles: Diablo, Sylvanas Windrunner, and The Lich King. Boujie battlers will have sprung the extra cash for these legendary villains without crafting them. Finally, we’ll run through the remaining list of mercenaries you can pull from Hearthstone Mercenaries packs. With all minions, we’ll list all the level up tiers of their abilities once they’re confirmed in-game.