The new set of expansions will be referred to as the Year of the Raven, with the first set being announced "next month." I'm guessing one of the first two full weeks in March. Blizzard also announced tournament support in game, where Blizzard will handle deck validation and matchmaking.

And pour one out for three new inductees to the Hall of Fame: Ice Block, Coldlight Oracle, and Molten Giant. Molten Giant's base cost will also be reverted from 25 back to 20. I'm a little surprised by the Giant and Oracle's inclusion. I know Oracle got a TON of play in mill decks, but that seemed fine. I don't recall the alst time I Saw a Molten Giant, but I also hover around 18-20 each month. Ice Block was kind of a no-brainer.

I'm going to guess that they removed coldlight oracle due to design space problems it could have caused in the future. The card archtype works really well with the Rogue's King's Bane. There was a certain point in this meta where that deck archtype was considered a top tier deck.

A couple other things worth mention are that 40 gold daily rewards are going up to 50 gold and that in-game tournament mode is being implemented.

Also there will be a new hero skin for druid

Well this is exciting news. I've been strictly a Wild player since the first rotation and already have all of those new HoF cards in Golden. That's 8,000 free dust!

Unnerfed Molten Giant at first seems like it would open up some old-school Handlock possibilities, but with Naga Giants and everything else running rampant in Wild it probably still isn't good enough. If anything it's a slight buff to Naga decks being able to play Molten Giants naturally a bit cheaper if you don't have a Naga available.

From the perspective of a Wild player, which I think I'm the only one here, the rotation of Ice Block probably means that Mage is going to get some new defensive cards like the recent Arcane Artificer. That could mean archetypes like Reno Mage get a buff in Wild, which they kind of need right now.

Anyone know which sets are being moved to wild this year?

I stopped playing hearthstone last summer so I haven't really kept up with news.

@beefygrandmole: Everything published in 2016, so

• Whispers of the Old Gods
• One Night in Karazhan
• Mean Streets of Gadgetzan

Everything in the announcement is awesome news, not one thing I disagree with which is great

I really want to get back into this. I use to play consistently but dropped off about August/September. Not sure I will with Slay the Spire out.

@acura_max: They've always been pretty anti-fatigue, which has been popping up again recently. However with the battlecry reasoning (and looking at their history) it's most likely because they came up with some new cool card that would make fatigue way too good. We will probably not see it this expansion though, but since they only do hall of fame changes once per year they have to get it in now before the second or third expansion which includes the card comes out.

I still fundamentally disagree with the current implementation of Hall of Faming cards, especially now that they're hitting a key class card. On the one hand, they don't know how to use the nerf hammer with a light touch anymore, so very few cards get the Knife Juggler "OK, this is still reasonable" treatment, and instead get the "this is now completely unplayable" treatment. So at least Hall of Faming a card preserves it instead of banishing it to oblivion. But what gets me is that they aren't rotating cards from expansions into Classic to balance out the removal. If every year they banish 3-6 of the actually-playable Classic cards into Wild, basically because "they're too consistently good or too good with an upcoming card, and we don't want to ruin them forever with a nerf", what is Classic even going to be in 4 or 5 years?

Aside from that basic complaint, I think their justifications this year are a lot more vague/nonexistent. Last year, they Hall of Famed:

• Neutral minions that were just way too good at their mana cost, so they were auto-crafts and no other minions at that mana cost were seeing play (Ragnaros, Sylvanas, Azure Drake)
• Cards that made for degenerate OTK decks (Ice Lance, Power Overwhelming) that evidently the playerbase must complain about a lot in player surveys
• Cards that made it very hard for Rogue to lose (Conceal) since there is almost no counterplay other than having a powerful AoE in hand

This year seems to have no core reasoning behind what style of cards are being removed, just "here are some card we're HoFing because trust us they're going to combo too well with upcoming cards, or we're just tired of them or something."

Their reasoning for HoFing Coldlight Oracle is bullshit. It seems like they're just trying to remove mill decks from the game. This strikes me as a weird stance, because if surveys show players are that salty about not ever getting to properly play cards in their deck, then why print Dirty Rat, Gnomeferatu, Rin/Azari? Evidently they must be kicking around some upcoming card that is just way too strong if Coldlight Oracle is still in Standard, so I'll have to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this pretty much kills mill in Standard, which was usually a really fringe deck to begin with and a fun challenge to try to win with (recent Kingsbane mill Rogue is just about the only time mill has actually been good ever). Removing the card when it's barely even used except in one or two very specific decks seems needless. First Azure Drake, now Coldlight Oracle. See you this time next year, when they HoF Acolyte of Pain for some arbitrary reason because they're gradually killing neutral card draw.

I also wish they gave a more detailed reason for Ice Block. I've always thought of it as pretty key to the Mage class identity, like Kill Command in Hunter or Shield Block in Warrior (I know Ice Block isn't a Basic card, but still). Their explanation pretty much amounted to "Ice Block has had a good run, we'd like to try something else." I don't think it's a problem card, and I'd argue that it's often the only reason Control Mage decks are even viable at all. The armour gain from Ice Barrier and Arcane Artificer is often too situational/dependent on drawing it at the right time, or the armour just doesn't buy you enough extra time. The only other card comparable to Ice Block in its ability to buy you significantly more time is Frost Lich Jaina. So by removing Ice Block from Standard, I hope they're ready to print a new "keep Mage alive" card every 1-2 years or else Control Mage will be dead, and the only use for Mage will be tempo decks like Secret Mage or the Flamewaker-based Mage of the GvG/Blackrock Mountain days.

Molten Giant change seems fine, just really unexpected. I guess they've decided that in Wild the power level has risen so much that old school Handlock with original Molten Giants isn't a concern anymore, and they just don't want to have to deal with Molten Giant's high mana cost in Standard anymore (possible card like Holy Wrath in upcoming set?). It's such a relatively unused card post-nerf that I largely don't care that it's being HoF'd, though glad to see it back in a playable mana cost.

@bisonhero: I think the idea behind putting away Ice Block is that you'd never ever ever see a control deck that didn't run it. They could make the most broken ass survival tools for mage and they'd still run Ice Block on top of it, if not in place of it. So for other mage control cards to have a better chance at shining they're removing Ice Block. That way they can still make cards for control mage (since more tempo mage is not exactly what we need) and it wouldn't be just pissing in the wind.

I would have liked to see them limit Ice Block over outright removing it. Give it a deck limit of 1 and don't have it come up in Discover/random spell effects and see how things change.

A video with the first card reveals just dropped, and some interesting new keywords were revealed.

Rush: Charge, but minions with Rush can only attack other minions. Seems like a nice compromise to keep Charge as it is but not be limited by its power in dealing face damage from the hand.

Echo: A card with Echo can be played multiple times per turn if you have the mana for it. The example shown in the video was a 2/4 minion for 3, which means if you play it on turn 6, you can play it a second time, 3 times if you play it on turn 9. We saw a bit of this without a keyword in Shaman, I think, in K&C.

Not keyworded but also revealed were "Worgen" cards, where the attack and health swap each turn the card is in your hand. There were two legendary neutral minions revealed with Start of Game effects, a la Prince Malchazaar and his "add five legendary minions to your deck." These were based on card cost - if you have only even cost cards, your Hero Power costs 1 mana. The other is for decks with only odd costing cards, and upgrades your hero power.

One other legendary was revealed, I believe neutral, that discards your hand and replaces it with a copy of your opponent's hand. It's a 7-drop 3/3, so it seems like the power from this comes from the ability to refill your hand if you were behind on draw and to know exactly what options your opponent has...but they have the same intel on you.

There was a tease of either a new type of hero replacement card or a new Deathknight.

Rush is the most exciting thing so far to me, but I do hope they don't change Charged Devilsaur to Rush

I've had a lot of fun with gimmicky Kathrena/Cube stuff with Charged Devilsaur and if it switch it to Rush it might not be able to attack heroes the turn they come out, unless it still functions like a Battlecry in that it has to be played for Rush to be in effect

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