Blizzard has pulled back the curtain on cards that will be included in Hearthstone's revamped core set, due out around the start of the Year of the Gryphon. Somewhat oddly, the exact date is not yet known, but it coincides with the release of the "Forged in the Barrens" expansion and the Standard Format set rotation. You can view a gallery of all core cards on Blizzard's site.

Core sets replace Classic and Basic sets as the foundation of any Hearthstone player's collection. As such, players will be able to acquire all 235 cards for free simply by playing the game and leveling up in each class. This also means that by the time the "Year of the Gryphon" goes into effect, many players will have already unlocked the cards.

Blizzard's intention with the core set is twofold: to make it easier for new and returning players to get into the game by providing tools that are not hopelessly underpowered, as many of the Classic and Basic cards were, and to provide the next expansion cycle is to create sets that can be changed annually to provide a better foundation for the next expansion cycle. Free card sets allow the development team to make changes, including adding or removing cards, without upsetting players who have spent resources on creating them.

The cards in the core set are a mix of unchanged mainstays from Classic and Basic, other vanilla cards that have been balanced to make them more relevant, some brand new cards, and returning cards from older expansions that are currently only playable in Wild mode

The last 1.

The last one seems to have won a bit of mumbo jumbo, but that's okay. It's worth taking a closer look at the gallery, as the impact this will have on the meta going forward is likely to be substantial. Also, take a look at some of the older cards that were not chosen and will live out their remaining lives unloved in the "Wild". O Ancient Watcher, we hardly knew (or played) thee.

Below is a small gallery of the new cards. They are perhaps the most interesting, and are handily arranged from lowest to highest mana (i.e., the big scaly bois are last).