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.
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Oh, that's unfortunate. I didn't play when that card was in rotation so I didn't know :/ Well that makes it much worse then.
Don't worry, Murozond is a crazy powerful card anyway.
Hate to see Reno back, I thought his Standard time was over.. anyway, without more support for singleton decks, he will not see play. Maybe they will add it in future expansions. As for Elise Starseeker, she was weak before, weak in wild, will never see play in this version of Standard, that I am sure of.
Elise was played by control decks and Reno was alone enough to make Highlander decks. I think you underestimate these cards or just play the wrong decktypes for them.
We have better options for late game than Elise in today's meta. Kazakusan may steer you into putting less non-dragon minions in your deck but you can eventually get to the point where you can play him as a control deck.
Reno may have helped decks against the terror of Pirate Warriors and Patches with charge but it was a "tamer" meta for sure. Reno Jackson alone won't be enough to counter today's Pirate Warrior. Questline Hunters can plan (the smart ones at least) when to burst you down. Also the meta is heading towards mid-range decks, although Reno might help give you a breather against these, will the rest of your deck provide a plan to win?
Although I am still skeptical about Pirate Admiral Hooktusk, the reveal of more low cost pirate minions does mean Hooktusk can be consistently ready and active by turn 8. If there are any Reno Decks out there trying to make it work, Hooktusk decks may just ruin their day.
Reno is back? Oh god...
It's actually kind of frustrating for them to not include which cards they are adding in the blog post. I have to keep jumping back and forth in the video. Or am I missing something?
In general I really like the core set changes done overall. But they missed the mark again with Mage cards. Although some are a pretty much BIG success (Big archetype support), there are some that are there with not that much of a purpose. If I were on charge, I'd done the following:
It seems they REALLY want us to play nothing but Big Spell Mage only, because it's the only archetype which had support (and by support I mean A LOT of it). Secret Mage got also some love with Runes, but it has anything to do with the current expansion, probably will be something for the upcoming ones. Or maybe they just added that secret for control decks, since it's a very good card.
As I said, overall very good changes, but they don't seem to know what to do with Mage...
Sorry but the cards rotating in for mage are some of the best the class has ever had imo. Explosive Runes, Blizzard, Kalecgos? All very relevant in their day. Pyromaniac also looks like a huge win for ping mage.
I mean, I put on the comment that Big spell mage support are excellent cards. And also said Runes is insane...
My complain is not about those cards. Is about the decision to keep 3 almost useless cards and add one that isn't good. My complain is to giving support mostly to one archetype and not to the two they've just added (Nagas and Mechs). Nagas (specially that one which refreshes mana) seems to like more cheap spells than big spells.
Pyromaniac is bad man, I remember when it came out. We thought it was going to be okayish, and it turned out to be too slow and just a 3/4. The game is A LOT faster than when it got released. How is it that now is going to be good if back when the game was slower wasn't good? How is 5 mana deal 1 damage, draw a card and a 3/4 something good? Multicaster can draw twice or even three times more than this card can do, for one less mana, and can be played on tempo also. Spending 2 mana on a hero power is actually awful if you didn't actually used 2 wildfires before or are with the hero on play. Those are many conditions for such a weak payback. We'd be talking if at least drew 2 cards or if it triggered whenever you use your hero power (having then a synergy with the minion who fires hero powers). And still, Multicaster is better, because it's easily playable on turn 4 for a payback of 2 cards and way more consistent.
I hope these decisions were either an investment on next expansions. Although Conjurer is just plainly bad and a mistake, don't know how that skipped the clear lol.
Pirate Rogue is back baby, better than ever.
Sadly Zilliax didn't make a return to Standard.... none of the Magnetic cards are coming back, I guess they try to exclude this keyword from Standard format..
I’m glad they didn’t added it. Zilliax was very toxic IMO. It would be okayish as a class card. But as a neutral it’s a must on many decks and classes.
Outside of Arcane Anomaly and King Mukla (in some druid lists), the Core Cycle seems like they cut a lot of chaff that never saw any play.
Probably a good direction to guide the core set, but they need to be careful to not make it all bangers.
Your dumb.
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!
Murazond does not trigger battlecries and all of the quest rewards are battlecries….
*You're
second shaman legendary is Krag'wa, the Frog
Execute is an entirely useless card. Even if they made it zero cost it might barely see play anywhere. I think warrior specific cards have the hardest time with power creep minuse a couple control cards.
1 mana execute!?
damn son, it will see alot of play!! good card for that cost