Team IHearthU Deck Guide: Creative Corner #1 – Beast Druid

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The number one thing I love to do in Hearthstone is build decks. It’s the most interesting part of the game for me and it’s always been the number one thing I enjoy in every TCG. I always love to find the new best deck and sometimes I do and sometimes… well… I don’t. If I do, however, they end up being really awesome, such as the Echoing Ooze Zoo I won the Sunshine Open with, long, long ago. I also have a lot of ideas that I think are almost there, almost good enough to be top tier competitive and I think that these decks are something that should be explored and not something locked away in my stack of deck lists, never to be seen again. This is where you guys come in – every week I am going to come up with a new deck idea that I’ve played around with and I want you guys to enjoy them for me.

Today’s deck idea comes from arena, actually. I was playing Druid and Stranglethorn Tiger is a very strong pick for a 5 drop in arena. So naturally when 3 of them came up and the other choices weren’t as good, I went with it and grabbed all of them. The next couple of cards were uneventful, some standard stuff I’d grab along the way like Wild Growth and Innervate, Druid of the Claw, so on and so forth. When I was presented with a Druid of the Fang however, I almost immediately went with another card until I noticed that I had 7 beasts in my deck. I snatched it up and then during my games, it went on to win me 5 or 6 games all on its own. Something as simple like coining out Stranglethorn Tiger and then playing Druid of the Fang left me with a 5/5 and a 7/7 on turn 5. Most opponents simply couldn’t deal with it and folded under the pressure.

The next few weeks I experimented with the Druid of the Fang concept in constructed and found that the deck only had 1 real weakness, an early Big Game Hunter. Luckily for me, this deck isn’t as affected by the Big Game Hunter as others because Druid of the Fang would bait out Big Game Hunter which allowed Dr. Boom and Ragnaros the Firelord to dominate the game when they’d come into play. Stranglethorn Tiger and Shade of Naxxramas also allowed me to play a pair of stealthed minions that I could keep hidden until I was ready to use my Force of Nature Savage Roar combo to win the game. It added an extra 12 damage minimum (!) to my combo potential and I found myself winning games out of nowhere. The problem I have with Druid in the current metagame is that I don’t think it can withstand Paladin or Zoo’s early aggression and that would always make it a tough choice for me to explore further. However, for those of you who love Druid like me (one of my first early tournament successes was with Stranglethorn Tiger Druid) – you’ll fall in love with this deck fairly quickly. Lets look over the list:

2 Innervate
2 Haunted Creeper
2 Wild Growth
2 Wrath
2 Savage Roar
2 Shade of Naxxramas
1 Big Game Hunter
2 Keeper of the Grove
2 Lost Tallshrider
2 Swipe
2 Druid of the Claw
2 Druid of the Fang
2 Stranglethorn Tiger
1 Force of Nature
2 Ancient of Lore
1 Dr. Boom

This list focuses on getting on board early with stuff like Haunted Creeper, Shade of Naxxramas, etc, while ramping up with Wild Growths and Innervates. Stranglethorn Tiger can provide a lot of pressure while Lost Tallsrider deals with Sludge Belchers and trades with Loatheb efficiently, giving it minor edges over Chillwind Yeti anyways. It also allows you to have a turn 4 beast for a turn 5 Druid of the Fang. Druid of the Fang is excellent at baiting out Big Game Hunter, which you can easily deal with through Haunted Creeper and your hero power, Wrath or Swipe so if they’re spending their turn 5 playing Big Game Hunter and hero powering, you’re still going to be ahead most of the time. I love to use Druid of the Fang to bait out the Big Game Hunter so that I may dominate the game later with Dr. Boom and Ragnaros before comboing…. But lets talk about when they don’t have the Big Game Hunter.

Druid of the Fang is essentially a 7/7 for 5 mana. When you look at most 5 mana cards, you’re probably getting roughly 10 stats for your 5 mana, whereas here you’re getting 14. That means the removal required to deal with the 7/7 is a lot harder to find. It’s immune to silence so it’s naturally just a hard 7/7. It can punch through Sludge Belchers, take down Loathebs, but what’s even more exciting is it can push 7 directly to the face. In a deck with only 1 Force of Nature (for consistency reasons) being able to get in so much early damage so you can kill with the Savage Roar is astounding. All of the stealthed minions help you build up big boards as well as Dr. Boom, allowing for some insane Savage Roar kills. We completely skip the 6 drop here because we’re so heavy on 5 drops that most of the time, you’re fine paying essentially 6 mana for the Druid of the Fang. On turn 6, I like to Innervate out a big threat if I can as well, because it’s simply too much for them to handle if they couldn’t deal with the Druid of the Fang. Consider it like a ‘Giant’ for Druid. If they can’t handle the first ‘big’ threat then the odds are good they won’t be able to deal with more so if you’re able to build up a big board with this deck, it’ll almost always snowball.

As with any druid deck, you should look for Innervate and Wild Growth and prioritize them over any other card. Throw away any card that isn’t one of those. If you have them, look for Lost Tallsrider, Keeper of the Grove and Stranglethorn Tiger. These are your cards that will bridge you to the lategame. Haunted Creeper is a card you should look for towards your combo turns because you can play it cheap then play Druid of the Fang. Later on consider running it into something for damage and have 2 1/1 bodies alongside many threats for a Savage Roar combo.

This deck’s stronger matchups are versus Priest, Shaman, Warrior, other Druids and Handlock and is weak versus aggressive decks. Give it a go and tell me if you like it in the comment section below. See you next week with more Creative Corner!