Hearthstone just announced the Year of the Wolf, the new Standard year beginning with the Festival of Legends card expansion. This marks the eighth new Standard cycle of Hearthstone expansions, bringing with it a slew of new cards, content, and Core set.
The Core set is a selection of Hearthstone cards that will be legal in the Standard format for a given year. Once a player reaches level 10 with a given class, its Core cards are temporarily added to their collections until the next Core rotation, allowing them to build decks with them in any format.
The Year of the Wolf Core set will focus on adaptability and versatility. While some cards are being rotated out of Standard from Hearthstone's Year of the Hydra Core set, others are being added to replace them. Additionally, several cards already in the Core set are being adjusted to make sure they keep pace with contemporary Hearthstone design, such as Soul of the Forest and Truesilver Champion. Many Priest cards in the new Core set are also being reworked with the new Overheal mechanic coming in Festival of Legends, and the Tradeable mechanic has become evergreen.
The rise of the Year of the Wolf also heralds the end of the Year of the Gryphon’s run in Standard. With the release of Festival of Legends, cards from Forged in the Barrens, United in Stormwind, and Fractured in Alterac Valley will become unusable in the Standard format, excluding cards added to the new Core set. These cards will still be usable in Wild, though some cards will be nerfed for the health of the format, or have their Standard nerfs reverted to keep them competitive.
The Core set rotation is coming alongside the Festival of Legends expansion dropping this April. This Hearthstone set kicks off the year with a battle royale between the unique rhythmic stylings of the 11 classes, each one themed after a different genre of music. Festival of Legends introduces new keywords like Finale and Overheal, as well as a cycle of instrument weapons, musician minions, and song spells for every class.
Festival of Legends is the first of three card expansions for the Year of the Wolf. Like those before it, this Hearthstone year will have updates Battlegrounds and its other major game modes on top of a new Core set. However, Hearthstone is truly focusing on adaptability moving forward, and is not afraid to add or remove cards to the Core set if it needs to. These innovations promise to make the Year of the Wolf one of Hearthstone’s most dynamic ones yet.
Hearthstone is available now for Mobile and PC.