In Hearthstone, the Year of the Mammoth has been a successful and exciting one. We saw three expansion releases, new metas rise and fall, and tom60229 win the Hearthstone World Championship. As Year of the Mammoth comes to a close, the Year of the Raven will take its place, and with it, a plethora of new cards, features, and changes will come Hearthstone‘s way.

With the Year of the Mammoth ending, the standard set will be rotating out just like last year’s shift. Whisper of the Old Gods, One Night in Karazhan, and Mean Streets of Gadgetzan will no longer be playable in standard, and these sets will instead find their new home in Wild. Although these cards are no longer available in standard, packs and adventures can still be purchased through the store, and cards can still be crafted with dust. In addition, three Classic cards will be retired into the hall of fame, and they will now only be useable in Wild. Ice Block, Coldlight Oracle, and Molten Giant will all be moved to Wild once the new set is released. In addition, Molten Giant’s mana will be changed from 25 to 20 once moved to Wild.

Year of the Raven will introduce three new sets, all of which are currently a mystery other than a small design tease and their guaranteed 130+ card selection for each set. With the new year comes a new tournament feature, and the new Druid hero, Lunara.

The new on-game tournament feature will allow players to organize their own tournaments directly from the Hearthstone client, either from their own home or from a Fireside Gathering. This will allow tournament organizers, casual players, or friendly rivals to create a tournament type, and Hearthstone will handle things such as matchmaking and verifying decklists, but functionality and new features will be updated overtime. A beta for the in-game tournaments will be released in the coming months.

Lunara, the new Druid hero, will be easily unlockable once the Year of the Raven has begun. All players have to do in order to gain access to her is win ten games in Year of the Raven Standard play.

The first Season of HCT is also coming to a close with two more stops. On March 9 – 11, HCT will host a tournament at EGLX 2018 in Toronto, Canada, and HCT Bangkok will be hosted in Thailand from March 16 – 18 to close out the Season. Season Two will bring more stops to HCT, large prize pools, and even more excitement for Hearthstone esports fans.

The first set of Year of the Raven will be announced in the near future, and with it, the start date of Year of the Raven should come with it.