Hearthstone is turning ten years old, and the game will soon be kicking off a massive celebration with many gifts for players — including World of Warcraft players! These anniversary events will kick off at the end of the month with free cards, as well as Twitch Drops, new quests, and more.
Update: some of those rewards are now live! Just log into the game right now to get a total of 24 free cards. These are:
- 1x Harth Stonebrew (neutral Legendary minion)
- 1x Colifero the Artist (neutral Legendary minion)
- 2x Anduin’s Gift (Rare Priest spell)
- 2x Arthas’s Gift (Rare Death Knight spell)
- 2x Garrosh’s Gift (Rare Warrior spell)
- 2x Gul’dan’s Gift (Rare Warlock spell)
- 2x Illidan’s Gift (Rare Demon Hunter spell)
- 2x Jaina’s Gift (Rare Mage spell)
- 2x Malfurion’s Gift (Rare Druid spell)
- 2x Rexxar’s Gift (Rare Hunter spell)
- 2x Thrall’s Gift (Rare Shaman spell)
- 2x Uther’s Gift (Rare Paladin spell)
- 2x Valeera’s Gift (Rare Rogue spell)
But it isn’t all about gifts. This is also our first look Year of the Pegasus, which will likely launch in late March or early April, with an update to the Core Set. Plus we have updates for Twist and Battlegrounds. It’s a lot of news, so let’s get right to it!
Hearthstone’s 10th anniversary rewards
Besides the aforementioned 24 free cards, other rewards will be rolled on a schedule and some require a little more effort. Here’s a brief event calendar:
- February 27 – March 19: New Event Rewards Track with golden versions of all the “Gift” cards, plus a Birthday Coin.
- March 11: Hearthstone’s 10th birthday! For the game’s official anniversary, we’ll get a new Legendary Quest that can be completed by players to earn a celebratory 10-Year Anniversary Card Back. The “Hearthstone: Music from the Tavern (Anniversary Picks)” music album will also be released on Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube, with “over 30 Hearthstone in-game tracks,” and we can expect more music from the game to be available later this year.
- March 11 (10 a.m. PT) – March 12 (10 a.m. PT): Community Day featuring Twitch Drops.
World of Warcraft rewards
Finally, there’s something here for the WoW players: starting on March 11, logging into Hearthstone will net players a new Fiery Hearthsteed mount!
And from March 11 to March 18, you’ll be able to engage in “Hearthstone” matches in WoW’s capital cities, culminating in “a special encounter where you can defeat iconic minions to add to your deck and earn other fun new Hearthstone-themed rewards!” We don’t know much more about this event, but the blog states that more details will be given at a nebulous later date.
Year of the Pegasus Core Set rotation brings back fan-favorite cards
The Core Set update for the Year of the Pegasus is “bringing back several iconic cards from Hearthstone’s history” — and there are some very interesting changes.
Returning (and leaving) cards
Aside from the return of Leeroy Jenkins, other old favorites are coming back — sometimes in much-improved forms. Here are a few of the most interesting returning cards:
- Twisting Nether for Warlocks now destroys Locations in addition to minions.
- Big Game Hunter now has the Tradeable keyword, meaning that he’s much easier to just slap onto a deck.
- Mind Control Tech now costs 5 mana, but now you get to pick which minion you want to steal!
But some cards are leaving the pool as well… including my beloved Darkbishop Benedictus (which means that I’m basically never playing Priest again). You can check out all the changes to existing cards as well as returning cards at the official Core Set blog.
New Elusive keyword
There’s also a keyword update: cards that used to read “can’t be targeted by spells or hero powers” will now have the new Elusive keyword instead to denote that same effect. This is something that the community had been clamoring for for years, and they finally made it real.
Year of the Pegasus expansions and more game updates
We only have a teaser picture to speculate from, but that’s enough to start. We already know the first expansion, Whizbang’s Workshop. As for the other two, if I had to guess:
- For the second expansion, perhaps we’ll travel to a place such as Booty Bay, or even a location that hasn’t been seen in WoW yet, such as Tel’Abim Island. The treasure map makes me think Booty Bay, though, since it has pirates.
- The third expansion is the hardest one to guess. Something about that starry sky seems very wistful and dream-like… perhaps it’ll be an expansion about dreams, in some manner. Or perhaps we’ll meet the Constellar.
New Twist Season: The new Twist Season adds more cards each day! On March 1, only Legacy cards will be legal; whereas on March 2, Curse of Naxxramas cards will be added to the mix, and on March 3, Goblins vs Gnomes cards will also be allowed.
Battlegrounds Duos: The new game mode that we heard about back on BlizzCon 2023will be released at some point during the Year of the Pegasus as well.
With all of that, all that’s left for us to say is… happy tenth Anniversary, Hearthstone! And don’t forget to login right now to get your free cards!
Originally posted February 12, 2024. Updated February 13, 2024.
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Filed Under: Core Set Rotation, Hearthstone Core Set, Year Of The Pegasus
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