Next week, 16 of the best Hearthstone players in the world are heading to Taipei for the Hearthstone Championship Tour (HCT) Finals. Running from April 25 – 28 (local time), the tournament is the culmination of a full year (and then some) of fierce competition, but it’s going to be so much more than that. This year will be the most unique competition Hearthstone has ever seen, and I absolutely can’t wait.
For a big chunk of the player base, the most exciting part of this year’s World Championship is probably the fact that it’s taking place after the Standard rotation. What does that mean? Well, when the first set of cards in a new calendar year hits the game, three old sets rotate out. This means 135 new cards come in and 400+ old cards go out. It’s a huge shake-up because a lot of the existing strategies rely heavily on those 400+ cards, so are lost altogether or drastically re-worked, while a whole lot of new archetypes emerge. It also means that the new set has a big impact, because it’s a larger percentage of the overall card pool than the expansions later in the year.
Source: IGN.com Hearthstone: Why Next Week’s World Championship Will Be One of a Kind