As we bid farewell to the Year of the Mammoth, let’s give a warm welcome to the new Hearthstone calendar year – the Year of the Raven! It’s already the third year since the start of the Hearthstone standard year format, so we all have an idea of what’s in store – card rotations, expansions, and updates galore, maintaining an ever-evolving meta and keeping the game fresh.
First things first, card set rotations. This year will see the following expansion sets being rotated into the Wild format: Whispers of the Old Gods, One Night in Karazhan, and Mean Streets of Gadgetzan. Cards from these sets will no longer be playable in the Standard format, although the expansion packs and adventure can still be purchased in the Blizzard shop.
Ah, those fond memories of serving C’Thun, unleashing a full board of deathrattle minions with N’zoth, and the ridiculous magic mayhem when Yogg-Saron comes out to play. Old gods, you’ll be missed, but make way for the new!
In addition to the scheduled expansion rotations, 3 classic cards are making their way into the Hall of Fame, a collection of basic or classic cards that are placed into Wild for balancing purposes. These 3 cards are the Coldlight Oracle, Ice Block, and Molten Giant.
The rotation of Coldlight Oracle will see the definitive end to mill and fatigue decks, aimed at forcing opponents to overdraw cards and die to fatigue damage. The Mill Rogue and Fatigue Warrior decks that have been around since the game’s early days, for examples.
Molten Giant’s departure will also affect late-game oriented decks, but it will scarcely be missed since the card’s viability was diminished since its mana cost nerf two years ago. Control Warlock fans will however be glad to hear that Molten Giant will return to its pre-nerfed state in Wild, costing 20 mana instead of 25.
Mages will be taking a hard hit with the removal of Ice Block, a strong card that has been controversial due to its frustrating nature to play against. Along with the rotation of powerful Mage cards like Babbling Book and Firelands Portal from One Night in Karazhan, we can only hope that the Mage’s emptying arsenal will be refilled in future expansions.
The Year of the Raven is also bringing three exciting new expansions, each with single-player content! This single-player content is likely similar to Missions, the free single-player battles introduced in Knights of the Frozen Throne allowing players to attain card packs by beating a series of bosses.
No word on what the expansions will be yet, but the designs of the three circles in the image are providing us with a little hint about their themes. Avid Warcraft fans, got any ideas on what they could be?
Nature must be preserved! Protect the wild this year with Lunara, the new Druid hero portrait. First daughter of demigod Cenarius, Lunara is a feisty dryad and fierce defender of the forest.
The best part? The hero is free! Well, sort of. No purchase is necessary, all you need to do to earn her portrait is win 10 games in the Standard format after Year of the Raven has been launched.
Hearthstone is rolling out a special new feature this year, in-game tournaments! Players can now create their own custom tournaments and invite all their friends, while the game handles player matchmaking and checking decks. The beta will be released later this year, and that’s just the beginning as Hearthstone hopes to continue expanding the feature.
If you’re more keen on watching high-level Hearthstone played by the pros, then look out for the 2018 Hearthstone Championship Tour, now boasting a larger prize pool and more global tour stops. You can read more about the HCT 2018 on Blizzard’s blog.
It looks like it’s going to be an exciting year of Hearthstone indeed!
Joyce is a language nerd whose idea of a good time includes speed-solving Rubik’s cubes and binging Netflix, all fuelled by drinking many, many mugs of tea.
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