Welcome to the Year of the Hydra - The New Rotation Year!
Blizzard announces the Year of the Hydra as the new Rotation Year! Come check out what they had to announce!
Quote from BlizzardIt’s once again time to look to the great Hearthstone clock in the sky as it ticks one more tock forward. Get ready for the next Hearthstone year—the Year of the Hydra! But before we move forward, let’s take a quick look back at what has happened in the last Hearthstone year.
Hearthstone in the Year of the Gryphon
During the Year of the Gryphon, we joined 10 hero-mercenaries on their journey, starting in the Horde’s harsh proving grounds in Forged in the Barrens, then venturing to the Alliance’s capital-city in United in Stormwind, and culminating in a bitter conflict in the snowy Fractured in Alterac Valley. In the Book of Mercenaries solo content, we followed the stories of these characters as they grew stronger, came to know one another, and, eventually, joined together to take down the Black Dragonflight. In the new Mercenaries game mode, these 10 Mercenaries have been joined by over 65 other iconic characters in an entirely new way to play.
Speaking of new ways to play, the Year of the Gryphon introduced the new Classic format and the free Core Set. This year, we will see our first annual update to the Core Set when the Year of the Hydra begins with the launch of Voyage to the Sunken City. At that point, we’ll say goodbye to Ashes of Outland, Scholomance Academy, and Madness at the Darkmoon Faire as those sets rotate out of Standard.
Looking Forward to the Year of the Hydra
The Year of the Hydra will kick off with the launch of Voyage to the Sunken City on April 12. This year, our focus will be on adding to and improving our current systems, instead of creating entirely new game modes. This will include specific quality of life improvements, like the random hero skin feature and in-game reporting, as well as overall client performance improvements. On the roadmap below, you can see this emphasis on improvement and refinement for the upcoming year!
More Core than Ever Before
As we move from the Year of the Gryphon to the Year of the Hydra, we want our expansions to build on a strong Core Set foundation. We liked how the Core Set served in this role last year, but we are also excited to update the Core Set to better fit the specific goals for the year ahead of us. This year, 57 cards are rotating out of core and 72 cards are coming in—that means the Core Set will have 250 total cards, 15 more cards this year than it had last year!
We bid a fond farewell (for now) to the following cards that will not be returning to the Core Set this year:
Demon Hunter: Ashtongue Battlelord, Warglaives of Azzinoth
Druid: Enchanted Raven, Landscaping, Menagerie Warden, Nordrassil Druid, Ancient of War
Hunter: Scavenging Hyena, Webspinner, Bearshark, Headhunter's Hatchet, Lock and Load
Mage: Water Elemental, Mirror Entity, Fallen Hero, Coldarra Drake
Paladin: Holy Light, Pursuit of Justice, Guardian of Kings
Priest: Crimson Clergy, Shadowform, Lightspawn, Temple Enforcer, Natalie Seline
Rogue: Bladed Cultist, Patient Assassin
Shaman: Windfury, Unbound Elemental, Draenei Totemcarver, Earth Elemental
Warlock: Dread Infernal, Possessed Villager, Enslaved Fel Lord, Ritual of Doom
Warrior: Warsong Commander, War Cache, Warsong Outrider
Neutral: Arcane Anomaly, Argent Squire, Cogmaster, Young Priestess, Mini-Mage, River Crocolisk, Toxicologist, Brightwing, Earthen Ring Farseer, Flesheating Ghoul, Ice Rager, Injured Blademaster, King Mukla, Spider Tank, Stoneskin Basilisk, Baron Rivendare, Gurubashi Berserker, High Inquisitor Whitemane, Barrens Stablehand, Clockwork Giant
Any of the above cards that currently only exist as Core cards will enter the Legacy set when they rotate out of Core and will be craftable and playable in Wild.
As you can see, not every class got the same number of adjustments. However, each class is gaining one card more than they are losing, and neutral is adding 5 more cards than it is losing, for a total of 15 more cards than before. But there are a few newcomers that stand out above the rest in a league of their own:
That’s right, the original League of Explorers are coming back to Standard! Other returning favorites include Voidwalker, Wild Pyromancer, Acolyte of Pain, Mossy Horror, Cloaked Huntress, and Fandral Staghelm.
No entirely new cards were created for the Core set this year, but some of the new additions and returning Core cards are getting slight adjustments to update them for the modern game.
Make sure to check out the Card Library to see all the new entries into Core.
The Future of Hearthstone Mercenaries
You may have noticed that the Mercenaries game mode added only one new Mercenary in Patch 23.0: the slippery murloc, Murky—available for free on the Rewards Track. That’s because Mercenaries will be shifting its release cadence in the Year of the Hydra.
Mercenaries will continue to have updates like events, balance changes, bug fixes, and general improvements in every patch, but the team will be shifting its major content beats to the X.4 patches. That means that the next bunch (and we do mean bunch) of new Mercenaries, Bounties, and Tasks will come in a few months. This shift will allow Mercenaries to have its own big moment like the other major modes do, and will allow the team to focus more efforts on the types of improvements that the community has been asking for.
Throughout this year, the team has plans for a way to spend excess coins, an expansive new end-game system to challenge your whole collection, and a series of improvements to the Task system, as well as more events and the continuation of regular updates to Bounties, Zones, Mercenaries. The first of those Task system updates, and a slew of Mercenary balance changes, are going live right away with Patch 23.0, and that’s just the beginning!
Battlegrounds Seasons
Battlegrounds will begin organizing its major moments into “Seasons,” similar to Hearthstone’s expansion cycles. These seasons will help give a clearer idea of when big changes—like special events, keywords, or system changes—are coming to the mode, as well as when they will be ending. It all starts with the first Battlegrounds Season, coming in Patch 23.2. That season will bring a new keyword mechanic, the new Naga minion type, new heroes, and more! Looking ahead, the team is planning to continue expanding on Battlegrounds cosmetics throughout the year, and to add a progression system to Battlegrounds at some point mid-year. Stay tuned for more information about these future developments.
The Year of the Hydra kicks all starts with the launch of Voyage to the Sunken City on April 12! Make sure you check out the 23.0 Patch Notes and the Rewards Track Refresh for more.
Voyage to the Sunken City Card List & Expansion Guide
Learn more and see all the cards in our dedicated Card List.
Warrior mains are so spoiled with removal options that they think a 1 mana kill almost anything is bad
It's called planning and playing against your opponents deck. If you're playing an agro shaman and your mid range, plan accordingly and pay the price.
It's very much can be played around by choices you make, thusly interactive.
guys where you see the new core set cards? when I go and look for the core cards in the playhearthstone website, it shows me the old core set :(
Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnKP-cPrin8
core card reveal starts @ minute 3:55
But it only reveals 40/72 new cards we are getting. And then we have Execute, Equality, and Azure Drake lined in this post, bringing the total to 43/72 cards we know of, so we are still missing quite a bit.
So judging by how one of Mage's new cards is going to be the legendary minion Kalecgos and Warlock is getting High Priestess Jeklik despite neither class losing their current Core Set Legendary, I wonder if that means each class will have 2 Core Set legendaries this time around? Could those be the "one extra card" each class is getting?
Or do you guys think it will be asymmetrical which classes have 2 legendaries in the Corse Set?
All classes will have two legendaries in Core set, I think.
-Demon Hunter: Kor'vas Bloodthorn and Metamorphosis
-Druid: Fandral Staghelm and Cenarius
-Hunter: Houndmaster Shaw and King Krush
-Mage: Aegwynn, the Guardian and Kalecgos
-Paladin: Tirion Fordring and Ragnaros, Lightlord
-Priest: Lyra the Sunshard and Murozond the Infinite
-Rogue: Vanessa VanCleef and Tess Greymane
-Shaman: Al'Akir the Windlord and ???
-Warrior: Grommash Hellscream and Darius Crowley
- Warlock: Lord Jaraxxus and High Priestess Jeklik
Gotcha! And yeah I was mainly wondering who the new Shaman one would be. I had the thought that they might bring in a buffed 3-mana version of Moorabi, but that would have been mentioned with the other buffed cards I think. It could still be Moorabi, but uuung at his current mana cost that would feel so bad =w=
I could also dream and say they being back Shudderwock :P. He doesn't currently have all the other combo pieces that made him infinite, so it could just be a really good power turn.
Yeah, didn't understand why they didn't reveal the other shaman legendary. I don't think why Shaman wouldn't have another. For me would be nice the other legendary to be Hallazeal the Ascended, Kalimos, Primal Lord, Grumble, Worldshaker or even Hagatha the Witch
Agreed, Hallazeal was my favorite legendary back in the day, when healing cards weren't quite as common. I'd be happy with any of these cards, though I think Kalimos has some conflict of interest with the new Bru'Kan Hero Card.
With how powerful this set is looking though, I think Shudderwock would be a great powerful tool for Shaman to keep up, heck maybe even thrive on standard ladder again. I love Shaman, but goddamn the class is inconstant. They seem to want to want Shaman to win games with Bloodlust now that it's back in the core set, which is all well and good, but I think a control Shaman could also be viable with a late game powerhouse legendary. And again, the combo cards that made Shudderwock infinite are not currently in standard, so it could work.
It's the frog!
It is indeed the frog. We are still working on getting the Core set cards to properly work as a set and there's some caching issues for some people, but the 2nd Legendary for Shaman is Krag'wa, the Frog!
They seem to really be pushing the power of the core set, almost none of the rotating cards see any play at the moment. That should be good news for F2P players.
Very happy to see both Brann and Reno return, although I think the latter won't be as much of a powerhouse as he used to be. Singleton decks are by the nature of their inconsistency always very slow value decks, and value will probably remain in a sad state for a while longer.
Many of the other old staples are also great to see return, and most of them seem to be midrange or value focused.
- Pyromancer is a very capable neutral board clear for classes that otherwise lack it, and Doomsayer is obviously insane for almost any control deck.
- For Mage Kalecgos and Blizzard are great cards, and although Pyroblast probably won't see direct play, we'll be seeing a lot of it through discover effects.
- Everything Priest gets back is good, and I'm especially excited for Murozond since it's a direct counter to many quests. Why run the quest when you can simply copy their quest reward!
- Warlocks gets some more Zoo action, which has always been a nice deck to play both as and against, and they get discard synergy which is... probably poopoo without the quest.
- The Rogue cards seem a little weak. Tess is obviously a good card, but does the thief deck have enough support? We'll see.
- Ancient of Lore is a weird card to bring back, seems too weak in the current state of the game, but everything else seems great for Druid.
- Shaman gets Flametongue back, finally a reason to Hero Power again.
- Midrange Hunter gets more tools, that's nice. I've always liked that better than Face Hunter.
- Warrior gets more control stuff, sweet!
- Paladin gets more control stuff, sweet!
- Demon Hunter I can't say anything about since I never played against those older cards.
Yeah my opponent discovering a Pyroblast and ending the game is just what hearthstone needed.
Murozond won't copy the quest reward. He doesn't copy battlecries.
Sorry to say, but I'm pretty sure Murozond did not copy Battlecries, so all you will get is the minion body from the Quest reward.
So I can see what cards are leaving core set, but I can't see which ones are being added? The card library on playhearthstone looks messed up
Yeah, they messed up the reveal. The link is to the current core set, not the new one... They should just have made a blog post with ALL the changes.
Do we have the new expansion logo hints?
Reno and Brann back in Standard. Hype :o
"slight adjustments to update them for the modern game."
So they're powercreeping back to the original unbalanced forms of cards while tacitly admitting they have powercrept the game. HILARIOUS. How about you just stop powercreeping everything??
It's fun to look at the list of cards they're rotating out of core and try and pick which one you saw used in a meta deck this last year. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen a SINGLE card on that list included in one of my opponent's decks except Argent Squire.