With each new Hearthstone year comes an update to the free Core Set that all players have access to. This year, Hearthstone’s 10th year, brings an exciting Core Set refresh designed to celebrate Hearthstone’s history and future with iconic old favorites and a few new friends! The new Core Set goes live when the Year of the Pegasus begins, but it’s just one of the many things we’re doing to celebrate throughout the year. This blog goes over all our Core Set updates, but you can learn more about all the other new year and anniversary festivities in our dedicated Year of the Pegasus blog.
Iconic Cards Return
We’re charging into the new year head-first! This Core Set, we’re making bold calls and bringing back some old favorites we haven’t seen in Standard for a while, including:
Friendly New Faces
We’re also celebrating the many new friends we’ve made along the way with four new Warcraft Rumble inspired cards, added directly into this year’s Core Set: ...
Read moreThe time draws near for the great Hearthstone clock in the sky to count down to a new year of Hearthstone, a year-long celebration of Hearthstone’s past and future: the Year of the Pegasus!
A Message from the Game Director
Greetings, denizens of the Tavern!
This year, we’re celebrating 10 years of Hearthstone. That’s 10 years of defining the digital card game genre through iconic characters, tall tales in the tavern, new and familiar friends, and lots of fun! Over that time, Hearthstone expanded into a wide range of game modes. As we move into the future, we’re focusing on the areas where we can surprise and delight the most players with our absolute best ideas. We’re excited to spend all year celebrating the past and the future of Hearthstone with you.
It all starts soon with birthday giveaways, in-game events, a spicy Core Set update, and the first of three lively card set expansions. Then, just a little further down the line, we’ll be launching Battlegrounds Duos! We...
Read moreI fell for this at first too. Bravo.
I love you, Clay.
Throughout last year, we shared several updates with you about our ongoing fight against unauthorized bots in Hearthstone. This year, we plan to keep the fight, and the updates, coming.
Yesterday, we dropped the largest banhammer the Tavern has ever seen, several times the size of our previous banwaves. Over 135,000 accounts were actioned—targeting bot accounts that real players are most likely to run into on the ladder.
In addition to this latest action, we actioned about 60,000 accounts throughout the month of January for botting. We also banned some bad actors who were using malicious third-party software to cheat in Heroic Duels.
We remain committed to ejecting these disorderly patrons from our friendly tavern and we’re going to keep taking these types of actions throughout the year and beyond.
We’ll see you (real players) in the tavern! And if you think about botting, we’ll see you, too.
Read morePatch 28.4.2 is a small server-side hotfix patch rolling out now with the following bug fixes:
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[Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where Therazane’s Deathrattle didn’t properly work when triggered multiple times.
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[Hearthstone] Fixed a bug where Corrupted Tickatus would remove 10 cards instead of 5 with its effect.
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[Battlegrounds] Fixed a bug where Cultist S’Thara summoned the minion that was destroyed by Archlich Kel’Thuzad (in addition to being the wrong gameplay effect, this bug caused server desyncs, resulting in players seeing different combat results).
Patch 28.4.1, launching today, brings bug fixes and balance changes to Hearthstone and Battlegrounds!
Hearthstone Updates
Dev Comment: This is our first balance patch after the launch of the Delve into Deepholm mini-set. The overall goal of the patch is to help the mini-set launch in two ways: 1) reducing the power and popularity of some of the dominant decks from before the mini-set that are continuing to see lots of play; and 2) toning down some mini-set cards that didn’t land how we wanted.
It’s too early in the new meta for buffs, but we’ll keep an eye out for those opportunities in our upcoming balance patches. Looking a little further ahead, some of the cards we’re adjusting are cards that will be rotating out of Standard with the next expansion—we'll take another look at them when the time comes to see if they should be reverted once they’re out of Standard.
Velarok the Deceiver (created by Velarok Windblade)
- Old: 3/6
- New: 3/3
Shattershambler
- Old: Battlecry:...
Hearthstone esports returns this February! As we head into Hearthstone’s 10-year anniversary, we’re refocusing Hearthstone esports to be all about our core esports experience, with three major Standard events throughout the year: two Masters Tour seasonal championships, leading into the 2024 World Championship!
Each Masters Tour will feature 16 top competitors fighting for their share of $50,000 (USD). Then it all culminates in the World Championship, where the year’s best eight players will try to claim their share of the $350,000 (USD) prize pool and eternal glory!
Climb the leaderboard in February and March to earn one of the sixteen coveted Masters Tour: Spring Championships spots. Twelve slots will go to the top four Competitive Points earners in each region and the remaining four slots will go to the top four total points earners who have not yet earned an invitation, regardless of region.
The Masters Tour: Summer Championship will follow the same structure but will pull f...
Read moreHello everyone,
Yesterday, we disabled Heroic Duels to prevent malicious users from using third party software to break deckbuilding restrictions. This is a violation of our Terms of Service, and the offending accounts have been banned.
We are currently testing a fix to close the vulnerability as soon as possible. Once confirmed, this will be added in a server-side hotfix and the Heroic Duels queue will be reenabled.
Additionally, players who had lost Heroic Duels games to illegal decks will receive 10 Tavern Tickets–these will be granted to impacted player accounts at a later date.
Thank you for your patience.
Edit: Tavern Ticket grants to affected players have now been distributed.
Edit 2: It looks like we missed one category of cheaters, so we’re opening this back up to finish the job.
Edit 3: Okay, NOW Ticket grants should have gone out to all affected players.
Read morePatch 28.4 is now live, bringing with it the Delve Into Deepholm Mini-Set, with new dual-class cards, more Excavate Treasures, old friends, and more!
Follow this post for more information about known issues that we’re tracking in this patch, including the following:
- [Resolved Jan 19 - Hearthstone] Velarok Windblade was unintentionally reverted to its prior transformation requirement (3 cards from another class).
- [Resolved Jan 19 - Hearthstone] We’ve temporarily banned Jotun the Eternal due to a bug with its effect. It will be unbanned once we’ve resolved the issue.
- [Resolved Jan 29 - Hearthstone] Lightshow was unintentionally changed.
- [Resolved Feb 1 - Hearthstone] Tickatus’s effect isn’t working as intended.
- [Hearthstone] Raid Boss Onyxia continues to deny that Starlight Whelp is a whelp.
- [Resolved Feb 2 - Duels] We’re temporarily turning off Heroic Duels due to players using unauthorized technology to exploit the mode. Heroic Duels is now back online, the cheating accounts have been...
Patch 28.4, launching tomorrow, digs up the new Mini-Set, Delve into Deepholm, plus updates to Arena and Twist, and a new seasonal event!
Delve into Deepholm
The Bloodrock Mining Co. dug deeper and deeper until they found something amazing: a whole new world beneath the surface! Teeming with elemental energy, this new land brings dual-class cards, new Excavated Treasures, new singleton payoffs, and more!
The Delve into Deepholm Mini-Set has 38 all-new cards. Get them in Showdown in the Badlands packs or as a complete 72-card* Mini-Set. Get the normal version for $14.99 or 2000 Gold, or get the all-Golden version for $69.99 or 10,000 Gold. The all-Golden version comes with a bonus Diamond copy of the Deepminer Brann Legendary minion! You can see all the cards from the Delve into Deepholm Mini-Set in the official Card Library.
* 4 Legendary cards, 1 Epic card (x2), 17 Rare cards (x2), and 16 Common cards (x2).
New Excavate Treasures
Eureka! Three new neutral Excavate Trea...
Read moreBacon was the codename for Battlegrounds during initial development.