Hearthstone's Year of the Raven Brings Custom Tournaments

Hearthstone is moving into the game's new year while introducing a new tournament feature to kick off the Year of the Raven.

In the announcement post that detailed the Year of the Raven's features, Blizzard said that the new tournaments would be launchable by individual players as custom tournaments.

"We're working on a feature that will help you run a Hearthstone tournament from your own home or Fireside Gathering!" the update read. "You'll be able to create a custom tournament and invite your friends--all from within the Hearthstone game client. To start, the feature will include matchmaking and checking decks, but we'll continue to add new features and functionality over time."

To start, the in-game tournaments will be launched as a beta "around the middle of this year," but there's more planned beyond that. These in-game tournaments will be improved throughout the year and moving forward based on players' feedback.

The transition to a new year of Hearthstone means more than just tournaments, though. It also means that old cards will be transitioned into the "Wild" format with newer cards becoming "Standard," another way of saying usable in tournaments. Several Classic cards will become exclusive to the Wild format soon, those cards listed below along with explanations on why they're being cycled out.

• Ice Block – 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.
• Coldlight Oracle – 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.
• Molten Giant – 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.

Full details on Hearthstone's Year of the Raven can be found through the announcement post.