Returning player here. I got a few questions.
I heard you can craft Hall of Fame cards to get free dust, how does that work?
At the beginning of each game year (spring IRL) some sets are banned from Standard format.
Next rotation is going to happen at spring 2020.
IIRC Witchwood, Rastakhan Rumble and Boom Day. There will be a lot of announcements you cannot miss them if you keep your eyes open.
For cards that go to the Hall of Fame you may just get dust (if you have them). Again, watch announcements at https://playhearthstone.com/en-us/blog/
Just adding a bit of explaination about what Hall of Fame is and the difference from normal rotation.
As SSD explained, the spring rotation kicks the 3 xpac that relased 2 years prior to it. So in spring 2020, all cards from the 3 expansions that release in 2018 are rotated out to wild. In 2021, all cards from 2019 will be rotated out.
Hall of fame, on the other hand, is when a single card is rotated out before its time. (Exemple: Baku and Genn, from witchwood). Also, same thing apply if a classic card is no longer avaliable to play in standard. (Exemple: Sylvanas, Ragnaros and Ice Block). Those cards enter what is called hall of fame. If it happens to a card that you have in your collection, you will be given the full dust crafting cost AND you are free to keep the card if you want to play it in wild.
So do you get anything for cards moved to wild or not? I assume not, since u can still dust them?
If it moved to wild because it has been hall of famed: You get the full dust crafting value automatically and you keep the card for playing wild.
If it moved to wild because of the normal rotation (It’s 2 years old when the spring rotation happen): You keep the card for playing wild but you are not given anything.
Why are cards “Hall of famed”?
Too OP to nerf?
Typically, cards that are moved to Hall of Fame have an effect that is hard to nerf, and that gets in the way of new design or makes the game too predictable.
Example: Ice Block. This secret was key for a specific archetype of Mage decks (“freeze mage”). According to Blizzard, this deck type had been rather dominant for too long and they wanted to see more change, so they HoF’ed this card.
For cards such as Ragnaros or Sylvanas, they were basically auto-includes. If you had them, you played them in each deck. Neither was played for their stats, their strength was from their effect. Even a cost change wouldn’t really do much.
Other cards were HoF’ed because, as Blizzard put it, they “limited their design space”. In other words, they too often couldn’t print a card they wanted because of the interactions in decks with cards such as e.g. Coldlight Oracle.
I think the basic reasoning is:
“Card is too strong in all game modes” --> nerf it.
“Card is too strong / not a good fit in standard but just fine in Wild” --> HoF it.
Reality is of course much more complex and nuanced then this.
Cards are not “Moved to the Wild”. They are banned from Standard, nothing more.