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: 

New Keyword: Elusive 

After years of hunting, we’ve finally pinned down our most evasive keyword yet: Elusive! Minions with Elusive can’t be targeted by spells or Hero Powers. We’re updating several minions to have the new Elusive keyword—including the card that you voted into Core back in December: Evasive Wyrm! We also plan to use this effect a little bit more frequently in the upcoming year. 

Core Card Shakeups 

Because the Core Set is the free baseline set that underpins the entire year of Hearthstone expansions, Core rotation is always a good time for us to evaluate what we want that foundation for the year to look like. We do this not just in deciding what to keep, remove, and add to Core, but also in adjustments to the cards we include. 

This year, we felt it was time to uproot Druid’s ramping mechanic, reduce Rune requirements for several Death Knight cards, and upgrade some of our old favorite cards for the modern game. You can find all the upcoming changes linked here: 

Graphic of cards entering and leaving Core.

Text-only list of cards entering and leaving Core.

Graphic of all Pegasus Core cards getting adjustments.

Text-only list of all Pegasus Core cards getting adjustments.

With that baseline known, you’re ready to jump into next expansion’s reveals. Don’t forget to check out the New Year blog for more details about the upcoming festivities—it all starts soon!