Hearthstone
Hall of Fame Card Spoilers & Expansion Guide
This is a Wild-Only set comprised of particularly strong or design-limiting cards from other sets that would otherwise remain in Standard format. The Hall of Fame was created on April 4th 2017.
- Intended to house cards that could prevent Standard from feeling 'fresh'.
- Players keep their cards and recieve a full dust refund for those moved to the Hall of Fame.
- Disenchanting the cards will yield the Standard dust values.
- All cards in this set are limited to Wild Format.
- Hall of Fame cards are only obtainable via crafting and will not appear in packs.
- The Rewards and Promo sets were also included but a dust refund was not availible for these cards.
- Thus far, at the beginning of each new year some additional cards have been moved to this set.
It was just before this year that the Hall of Fame was created, and the first wave of cards from the Classic set were limited to Wild:
Azure Drake is a strong Neutral card that ended up being a bit too versatile, and thus became one of the most played cards in the game. There should be more five drop options for players, rather than considering Azure Drake an auto-include. |
Stealth is a very powerful mechanic, and can also be very frustrating to play against—more for some classes than others. Hearthstone should ultimately be a game of plays and counter plays, and Conceal makes it increasingly more difficult for other classes to interact with Rogue minions as time goes on. We considered promoting Gadgetzan Auctioneer to Wild instead, but in the end we decided to move Conceal because Auctioneer has proven to be one of the most skill testing cards in the game. We think the power level of Auctioneer decreases with this change, and games where Auctioneer is played will be a bit more interactive.. |
Freeze Mage is a fun deck that has been around for over three years now, and we’d like to see more variety with Mage decks after each major release. This move allows Freeze Mage to continue existing in Wild, while creating more variety in Standard. Ice Lance also prevented us from making powerful Spell Damage cards and designs that allowed you to duplicate your cards. Ice Lance was also a very high burst damage card, sometimes being a key component of 30 damage combos.. |
Power Overwhelming allows for extremely mana-efficient minion trades or high spikes of damage for only one mana. Keeping this card exclusive to Wild will prevent some crazy combinations and spike damage. Warlock decks also tend to use lots of Classic cards, so the decks changes less when new expansions release. This change will help increase the variety of cards in Warlock decks over time.. |
Similar to Azure Drake, it’s hard to see a card at the six mana cost out-value Sylvanas. In addition, Sylvanas has the most powerful Deathrattle effect in the game—as a comparison, the Priest card Mind Control costs 10 mana. We have exciting Deathrattle build-arounds coming soon, and in combination with Sylvanas, they would be too powerful for Standard.. |
Ragnaros is heavily played in both control and mid-range decks and even shows up as a finisher in certain types of aggro decks. His high immediate value and strength at the eight mana cost made the decision during deck-building, “Is this eight mana minion better than Ragnaros?” rather than, “Is this eight mana minion the best choice for my deck type?” Dozens of cards in the seven to nine mana range never saw play because Ragnaros was always the easy choice in that range, and some decks only want to run one high cost card.. |
Cards from the Rewards and Promo sets were also moved to the Hall of Fame:
Live Stream Q&A VOD
Year of the Mammoth Standard Progression Video
Year of the Mammoth Announcement Blog
When this new Standard year began on April 12th 2018, three more cards were added to the Hall of Fame:
Coldlight Oracle is becoming exclusive to Wild for several reasons. It offers unusually strong neutral card draw which can be detrimental to class identity. Its “downside” can destroy opponent's cards and prevent opponents from playing the deck they built—which in turn limits some designs related to Battlecry and effects that return a minion to hand. Taken individually, any one of these reasons might have been enough to prompt a promotion to the Hall of Fame, but when viewed as a whole, we feel that it’s time for Coldlight Oracle to leave Standard play. |
This Mage secret is a powerful card, and has been the centerpiece of Standard decks for years. It’s time to make more room for new Mage decks in Standard. |
Moving Molten Giant to the Hall of Fame allows us to revert it to its original mana cost, giving players a chance to experiment with decks featuring Molten Giants in the Wild format. |
Hearthside Chat: Year of the Raven
Year of the Raven Announcement Blog
This Standard year began on April 9th 2019 and was announced February 28th 2019. Nine cards became part of the Hall of Fame set at the start of the year:
Developer's Notes: Over the past several years, we’ve seen a number of strong, aggressive Paladin decks. While we like Paladin’s identity as a minion-summoning and minion-buffing class with a fair amount of resource generation, card draw doesn’t also need to be one of the Paladin’s strengths. Divine Favor is one of the most cost-effective draw spells in the game, so to better emphasize other classes’ strengths and to provide better control over the power level of future aggressive Paladin decks, we are moving Divine Favor to the Hall of Fame. |
Developer's Notes: As masters of Demons, Warlocks have long been a powerful board-control class. While we like that minion combat is as much a part of the Warlock’s identity as destructive magic, we want to acknowledge and embrace the class’s weaknesses when they lose control of the board. To that end, we want to limit the amount of damage a Warlock can deal from their hand. As a powerful Charge minion, Doomguard pushes against the Warlock class identity, so we are moving it into the Hall of Fame. |
Developer's Notes: Druids have always had excellent flexibility and a number of different tools when it comes to generating mana, cards, and minions, but have long struggled to remove their opponent’s large minions. Naturalize effectively nullifies that weakness, giving Druids a powerful option in matchups where card advantage doesn’t matter. Moving it into the Hall of Fame enforces the Druid’s weakness in removing large minions, maintaining its class identity. |
| Baku the Mooneater & Genn Greymane |
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| Developer's Notes: Baku and Genn are powerful cards that have promoted new strategies since their introduction in the metagame. Those strategies have been more prevalent than we’d intended in Standard, and we felt that they might end up overshadowing what we’re going to introduce in the Year of the Dragon. In order for set rotation to breathe new life into Standard and maintain overall health of the ladder, we are rotating Baku and Genn into the Hall of Fame a year earlier than normal. |
| Odd & Even Cards |
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| Developer's Notes: As they were complementary to the Even-Odd mechanic that Baku and Genn introduced, Gloom Stag, Black Cat, Glitter Moth, and Murkspark Eel will also join the Hall of Fame. |
A couple of months into Rise of Shadows, it was announced that two more cards would be moving to the Hall of Fame, this time from the Basic set. This was done in an effort to keep class identities consistent and keep the meta fresh when Standard rotates. Two new cards were added to replace them: Plaguebringer & Radiance.
Quote From Blizzard Addressing Identity Issues
As we’ve worked to define what each class should bring to the table, we’ve found several cards that don’t match our established class identities. We’ll continue to adjust the Basic and Classic sets as needed, but for this update we’ve decided to address the following two cards: Mind Blast and Vanish.
While we like Rogues’ knack for getting out of sticky situations with targeted removal, Vanish allows them to effectively clear an entire board. This negates one of their intended weaknesses, reduces our ability to design towards their strengths, and makes it much harder for players to strategize against a Rogue.
Mind Blast gives Priests the ability to inflict a large amount of direct Face damage. We want to limit the amount of damage that Priests are able to deal from their hand, which will allow us to make cards that better emphasize their strengths in controlling the game.
We’ll be adding Vanish and Mind Blast to the Hall of Fame and replacing them with effects that better speak to their classes’ core fantasies:
For Priests, we’ve added Radiance since we wanted to have a low-cost spell that could be used for tricky spell synergies that also provided a powerful baseline heal for the class. Plaguebringer provides Rogues with another way to destroy minions and further establishes this class as the masters of Poison.
Hearthside Chat: Year of the Dragon
Year of the Dragon Announcement Blog
This Standard year was announced March 17th 2020, and began April 7th 2020. A total of 11 cards made their way to the Hall of Fame at this time, with some replacements for Priest:
New to the Hall of Fame
New Classic & Basic Priest Cards
Hearthside Chat: Year of the Phoenix
Year of the Phoenix Announcement Blog
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Comments
I remember it was such a pain trying to get all the needed dust to craft the golden versions for the year of the Dragon rotation
Divine Favor was only really abused in one deck. it shouldn't have been HoF'd
I know this isn't their purpose, but every time they announce new additions, I'm like "W00t! Free gold cards!"
Why?
Oh all the good memories that are in these cards.
yeah idk about that chief
idk, I had a lot of fun playing Odd Rogue and Paladin.
Though honestly yeah, they would've been way too good in this year's metas, like imagine Odd Mage when Conjurer's Calling was still 3 Mana: turn 10 and suddenly you're facing two random 7 cost Minions and a Ragnaros.