One of the best changes made in the lifecycle of Hearthstone [Free] was the addition of a well structured card rotation cycle. If that's all gibberish to you, effectively what Hearthstone does is the same as many other collectable card games in that they're constantly releasing new sets of card but to make the game approachable to new players (and to keep the metagame evolving) they "rotate" card sets. In the case of Hearthstone, they do this via annual rotations. We've already gone through the Year of the Kraken and the Year of the Mammoth, so this and this year Hearthstone takes to the sky with the Year of the Raven. Once the first card set of 2018 is released (which will be announced next month), cards from Whispers of the Old Gods, One Night in Karazhan, and Mean Streets of Gadgetzan will only be playable in the anything goes Wild format. Standard will then be limited to cards from Journey to Un'Goro, Knights of the Frozen Throne, Kobolds and Catacombs, as well as the three future card sets released in 2018.
With these rotations, Blizzard often moves cards from the Classic set to the Hall of Fame, which retires them from Standard play. In this particular rotation, three cards are being smoked out and Ben Brode took time to explain the methodology behind these decisions. First off, the Mage card Ice Block is out. The idea behind these Classic cards is to give decks the class flavor without necessarily being cards you would specifically build a deck around. Ice...