Year of the Raven – Impact of the Changes & Hall of Fame Rotation

New Standard year – Year of the Raven – was just announced! It’s the third Standard year after Kraken and Mammoth, and the first year with no adventures whatsoever, which means that at the end of the year, we will have most cards we ever had in Standard available at the same time.

In this article, I’ll go through all the changes and analyze them, while focusing on the Hall of Fame rotation, which will have most impact on the meta and how the game is played.

What Rotates Out?

We will no longer be able to play any 2016 expansion in Standard, which means that cards from Whispers of the Old Gods, One Night in Karazhan and Mean Streets of Gadgetzan will be Wild-only.

There are lots of impactful cards rotating out, including staples like Drakonid Operative, Fandral Staghelm, Barnes, Firelands Portal, Potion of Madness, but also all of the Old Gods, whole Jade mechanic and much more. As you can see, the meta is going to change heavily and while some of the decks will most likely survive the rotation (e.g. Cube Warlock), others will simply no longer be playable.

For a full list of the most important cards rotating out, I invite you to check out my other articles dedicated to that matter: Class Cards and Neutral Cards.

2018 Expansions

That’s how the official chart for the 2018 expansions looks like. If you look at the Year of the Mammoth chart, you will notice that they were heavily hinting at the 2017 expansions – Journey to Un’Goro, Knights of the Frozen Throne and Kobolds & Catacombs. It probably means that each of the gems presented roughly represents one of the 2018 expansions. There are already some theories about them, even though at this point it’s just guessing:

• 1st expansion: Moonglade, Emerald Dream (Portal), Well of Eternity, Terokkar Forest
• 2nd expansion: Ethereal, Tempest Keep (or Netherstorm in general)
• 3rd expansion: Trolls (because of the color scheme), Pandaria (Monks)

If you have your own theories about the expansion themes, be sure to share them in the comments!

Hall of Fame Rotation

Three cards rotate into hall of fame. One was very expected, one was actually hinted at, but one really caught me off-guard.

Let’s start with the most important one – Ice Block. It’s a staple card in Mage’s arsenal pretty much since the game got released. It was most commonly played in Freeze Mage, but later it was adopted by different kinds of Control Mage, Exodia Mage and even more aggressive, burn-heavy deck lists. Mage as a class has very limited survival tools. With almost no healing, Taunts etc. they mostly rely on stalling the game with Freezes or simply clearing the board with AoE damage. Ice Block was very useful, as it could buy an extra turn to swing the game around, especially in combination with Alexstrasza.

However, the card was also very problematic. It promoted a non-interactive play style of Mage decks. Between board freezing and Ice Blocks, the deck could stall for multiple turns and basically play solitaire – it didn’t really matter what the opponent did as long as they didn’t play something like Eater of Secrets. It was pretty annoying to play against, not to mention situations in which Mage got more copies of the card. I remember getting FIVE Ice Blocks once as an Exodia Mage before finally winning the game – I can’t imagine how my opponent felt.

The rotation is great for the game, Ice Block was one of those cards that were very hard to balance, and it was just pushing some of the decks into a broken state. The decks that are obviously going to suffer most are ones like Freeze and Exodia Mage. Their basic game plan relies on stalling the game for as long as they can, without Ice Block they would often not have enough time to finish their combos. The decks that are going to suffer a bit less are Control Mage decks. Big Spells Mage build has already proven that it is in fact possible to play without Ice Blocks – some builds do that. Even though the deck isn’t amazing right now, with the right tools it can become much better next rotation. And finally, the decks that aren’t going to feel it that much are faster, aggressive decks like Tempo Secret Mage. Yes, it does run one copy of Ice Block and yes, it is often useful, but it’s definitely not a card you can’t live without.

Right now, it looks like the change will have massive impact on the Mage class. And yes, some decks definitely will be worse, or maybe even unplayable. But I wouldn’t dismiss the slower Mage decks just yet. Remember that they simply couldn’t print powerful survival tools for Mage, because decks like Exodia would adopt them and be even more annoying than they are right now. With Ice Block gone from Standard, it will be possible to print either another Secret that stalls the game (but doesn’t literally buy Mage a free turn), or maybe some good spells that allow you to survive longer.

The second most impactful change is obviously Coldlight Oracle. Even though it’s often seen as a sort of a “meme card”, because it’s usually played in off-meta decks, it’s actually a quite powerful card in the right deck. It seems like they are trying to limit the neutral card draw, and Coldlight Oracle is also one of the more… let’s just say “annoying” cards. Yes, if you play an Aggro deck and your opponent drops Coldlight, you’re most likely happy about that.

But the mill aspect of the card can be quite punishing when you play let’s say Control Warlock. The thing is, you often can’t play around it, as you can’t dump your hand quickly enough. As much as Mill / Fatigue decks are fun to play AS, they tend to be really not fun to play AGAINST, which I guess is a similar story to Ice Block. Also, they seem to be hinting that it has something to do with a “powerful Battlecry” – maybe more Battlecry synergies or ways to double Battlecries (like Brann Bronzebeard) are coming? To be fair, it was one of the cards I would NOT have expected to get HoF’d, but I guess that they do have a point.

And finally, the last card rotating out is Molten Giant. People actually asked about it and one of the devs (I don’t remember right now which one) said that they will consider it. I’m talking about reversing a severe nerf that caused the Giant to be nearly unplayable and rotating it to Hall of Fame instead. The 20 mana Giant will not be overpowered in the Wild (reversing the nerf actually does not change anything when it comes to its synergy with Naga Sea Witch if you’re worried), but it might bring the Giant to classic Handlock or maybe RenoLock too. Heck, people might even experiment with it in Cube Warlock, although I’m not sure if it will be good enough in this specific deck. I’m happy about the change.

And of course, you will get full refund for each of those cards (the “disenchant value” was a mistake, as confirmed by Ben Brode here), for up to two copies of each card. So in the best case scenario, if you own every card (non-Golden), you will get 1,800 Dust refunded. If you decide to disenchant them on top of that (in case you don’t play Wild), you will get an extra 440 Dust for 2,240 Dust in total. At the same time, if you don’t own some of those cards, it would be good idea to craft them (up to two copies, preferably golden) – this way you will get their “disenchant value” for free! Check out our “Crafting & Dust” guide to learn more.

Improved Quests

This is an amazing QoL change. 40 gold quests felt really bad. Getting 40 gold quest from your favorite class felt bad, because on the one hand you wanted to finish it, and on the other you knew that rerolling is a good idea. While it will still be worth to reroll the 50 gold quests (because you simply won’t be able to get anything less, only more), right now those lowest rewards will be closer to the “average”, meaning that you won’t lose that much if you decide to reroll them.

Decreasing the requirements is also a great news for people who are playing casually and don’t have much time to finish the quests. Even though I’m not really a casual players, there were times when I was busy with other things and had quests burning in my log, simply because I didn’t have enough time to play the game. For example, the current 40 gold quest to “win 2 games with Warlock or Priest” will become a 50g quets to “win 1 game with Warlock or Priest” – they will be much easier to finish when you don’t have a lot of time to play.

Overall, good change. Of course, given the fact that the game has become significantly more expensive (with 3 expansions per year and increased amount of staple Epics), I’d like to see a bit more than just a slight gold increase for the quests. But still, this is a step in the right direction and something that I can’t complain about.

In-Game Tournaments

They were pretty vague about this new feature, and it’s not going to come out with the rotation, but it will be pretty big for the competitive scene.

First of all, from what I’ve gathered, it won’t look like the tournament mode that people have been asking about. You won’t just hit the button, queue a deck and play in some random tournament created by the game. Those will still be tournaments organized by people, but they will no longer need to use external sites to do that – the game will now have a platform for that.

But that’s still a big change. Most importantly, players will no longer be able to cheat. Submitting one deck list and playing slightly different version? No longer possible, because the game will just check for that. It will also be impossible to play against a wrong person (yes, it happens sometimes) since the game will handle matchmaking too. Everything should be easier and smoother.

We didn’t get any more details about the mode yet. Will it have bans? (We know that it won’t at launch – but will it have them later?) Will it be possible to add rewards? Will Blizzard organize official tournaments through that mode? Will it be possible to spectate other tournaments (at least those official ones)? And more.

One thing is certain – since the mode isn’t coming out yet, they will have a few more months to polish it. The beta should come out mid-2018, and that’s a great start. Even if it won’t be perfect at first, it’s good to have something they will be able to build upon.

New Druid Hero

And finally, Druid is getting a new, alternate Hero – Lunara. I was hoping that we’ll see Hamuul Runetotem as the Druid Hero instead, especially since we have zero Tauren Heroes right now. As someone who has played Tauren Druid through my whole World of Warcraft journey, I’m a bit sad about that. But still, I’m glad that Druid will no longer be the last Hero with only one, basic skin. I like seeing alternative Heroes, as they’re a great way to make a cosmetic reward – unlike card backs, they draw a lot more attention (e.g. I don’t really pay attention to what card back my opponent runs, but I always notice which Hero skin they use), and new Emotes also make them feel different from each others.

One important note is that Maiev will no longer be obtainable once Year of the Raven starts. If you still, for any reason, didn’t get her, or you want to get her on your alt account / different server, now would be the best time to do it.