(RANK 5) Hand Druid Does Have Legs!
- Last updated Apr 18, 2018 (Witchwood)
- Edit
- |
Wild
- 12 Minions
- 17 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Plague Druid
- Crafting Cost: 5500
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 4/13/2018 (Witchwood)
- MattSeal
- Registered User
-
- 4
- 7
- 11
-
Battle Tag:
MattSeal#1944
-
Region:
US
-
Total Deck Rating
405
Lots of people were worrying about he viability of hand Druid but I think it has potential in this evolving meta.
Right now, at rank 5 I’m mostly seeing tempo rogue, a couple aggro pally’s, buttloads of elemental mage (thanks Dog), and MY JAWS THAT BITE MY CLAWS THAT CATCH shaman
We've seen a major shift in the meta since the beginning of this expansion, mostly seeing aggro paladins, cube locks, and taunt-druids
Game plan:
Play hand- refilling cards early game to bring out big minions like Mountain Giant , Twilight Drake , and the new Bewitched Guardian . Witchwood Apple is your friend!
Use standard control-Druid cards to stay alive against aggro and even out board control while buffing numerous tokens and taunts from Witchwood Apple , Wispering Woods , and Spreading Plague .
Modifications
10 upvotes
Wow, thanks for all the support on this deck! I apologize for not getting some guide/card choice information, its been a busy week!
Some of the main problems I've been seeing with this deck is its either too slow to compete with crazy aggro decks like Baku the Mooneater Paladin and Hunter, but not control-y enough to deal with Cubelock and some Baku Warriors.
One of the main things that leads to success especially higher up in the ladder is deck adjustment for sort of "mini-metas" that can vary from day to day or between rank ranges, for example on Monday I can play only odd paladins at rank 5-4, but then on Tuesday from ranks 4-3 it can be all priests. This requires adjustments to your deck that really can separate good players from bad.
One thing I've opted to do for this list is to not modify the base list at all, since this is what has brought me some success and what I'm basing the following card replacements on. Feel free to tinker with this deck.
Cards to be Replaced:
Fire Fly : If you are playing lots of control, this small 1 drop will probably not do much for you. It will get cleared easily and might be better replaced by another burst-potential card
Tortollan Forager : This card is included because it allows for a nice 2 drop that keeps your hand at the same size and can generate some value. But, if you are not finding success, it can also be replaced
Ultimate Infestation and Nourish: Sometimes, if playing more aggressively, I found that one copy of UI or a Nourish can refill my hand and give a boost to my Twilight Drake s and Bewitched Guardian s. However if you feel that this is not needed, and you are playing this deck more slowly, especially without the two cards mentioned above, these cards can be omitted.
Power of the Wild : This card is often not included in many decks, but I find it extremely useful for buffing up your wisps against an easy Defile clear. Once again, if playing a slower version, this card may not be as great.
Lesser Jasper Spellstone : This card is undoubtably strong, but it could be replaced as well if you want more punch. Most likely with Naturalize
Card Replacements:
These are cards that can replace the cards mentioned above, or holes in your deck if you are missing cards/dust.
The Lich King : No surprise here, this is just a generally great card. Amazing 8 drop, taunt, large body, value generation, and Ironbark Protector power creep.
Splintergraft : Some players have been reporting success with this card. Generating a 10 mana Bewitched Guardian , The Lich King or others can be great lategame for a slower version of this deck. I haven't tested it with Mountain Giant , so I'm not sure if this gets the mana reduction as normal. If it does, this could be an amazing play as well.
Savage Roar : In a faster version of this deck, this card can be a great finisher. Many are reporting success with this card as well.
Void Ripper : In a similar vein to Savage Roar . If you want a finisher, you can bait out a Spreading Plague and use this card to get up to 30 burst damage.
Wispering Woods : A second of this card could be quite good, in a more aggressive version or even in the slow version. Easy pick for a replacement.
Naturalize : A very strong pick, most likely a replacement in a more control version of this deck. Often with this deck I found myself having a hard time dealing with large minions, and without Silence , which also might be worth running, this can help deal with that. Against aggro it is obviously not great, since you are giving them more cards, but in control it is amazing, with mill and fatigue potential.
Be sure to check out the comments on this page, several talented players have posted their own versions of this deck they are having success with.
Showcases:
Kiwiinbacon created a couple showcases for this deck, which I very much appreciate. Here is the first of the two.
User Whitebeard1 also created a showcase, worth checking out as well!
AllArounder (Whitebeard1)'s Deck Showcase
Thanks for your patience with this guide/deck and thanks again for all the support. Enjoy!
Currently Rank 14, pushing up to 10 with a variant of hand druid I made. I've tested it out a bit and made some changes to work better against the current meta. I found that playing a bit more aggresively is better than playing the control game with this deck.
True, it is not the best deck, nor is it tier 1 by any means. But dang is it fun to play!
Changes from the base list is as follows: -1 Fire Fly, -2 Tortollan Forager, -1 Stonehill Defender, +1 Wispering Woods, +1 Soul of the Forest, +2 Savage Roar
Edit: New changes I made suck. Really difficult setting up against a lot of the matchups I face. Decided to just find what changes worked better for some people cause I obviously suck xD
Nice one. They will not see the burst coming :D
This deck is nice, but gents all I have to say is if you run into a non-baku quest warrior, just insta concede. Played against 2 druids running similar versions to this and they got absolutely HAMMERED by cards like warpath and reckless flurry.
Played a couple of games with this deck just to test it out. Doesn't work simply because it has too few threats and is countered to easily by opponents. Then checked out the deck on hsreplay.net and exactly as I thought: get butchered by priest and warlock (35% & 36% winrate) and very unfavorable against druid and paladin (41% and 44% winrate). This deck is fun but I think it would show some love to recreational players to remove the rank 5 remark. You might have achieved that during first hours of Witchwood, but in current meta this deck has no chance.
The main issues with the deck are that you're vurnerable to both aggro and cheap board wipes, and unless you get the combo of Witchwood Apple + Mountain Giant off, you're gonna be behind and nearly all game without a solid comeback mechanism. By the time you can buff the wisps with Power of the Wild, the dudes gonna be 3/3 taunt. To have this card against defile is a waste of space too. Warlock has ton of easy tools to bring 1 back to 1 health or drop a 1 health minion themselves.
You're hand is gonna be filled with junk too often which disables you from drawing to your answers. You're gonna spend entire turns just to get those 2 mana 2/2's out of your hand while opponent spends half a turn to get rid of them.
If you wanna play wisps, you would be better off playing full token druid and leave the hand cards out. Something like https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1099844-token-druid gives you same winrate against warlock (34%), but you are even against Druid (51%) and absolutely crushing paladin (68%), priest (60%) and all other classes. You will climb very quick because of the win streaks you're getting with so many paladins on ladder.
Thanks for sharing the deck, although it doesn't work out :)
Immediate improvement would be to drop the Mountain Giants for Sea Giants and drop the Bewitched Guardians for Arcane Tyrants. The taunts don't help enough against aggro, but dropping a free Giant and Tyrant after playing spreading plague turns the game in your favor. But then without the giants, you wouldn't need the apples and without the apples no drake.
1/5 in standard. non-ranked. awesome...
Are you using Spreading Plague wisely? Maybe you're panicking early game against Aggro?
I have no problems whatsoever dealing with aggro, this deck easily counters Odd/Even Pally for me with my version.
this man has a way with words
I have 20-30% WR with this deck, and Taunt. Have no clue what I'm doing wrong either. I just can't win shit.
it would help if u told us what decks u were up against and how many games
hey,
yes, with Splintergraft and a giant you get a 0 mana 10/10!
thats one reason why i use also Sea Giant in the version i created ,independent from the net ;)
I wonder why you wouldn't run 2 Wispering Woods as it is one of the most broken cards druids ever had. Specially in this deck.
I'm not a big druid fan -- the only class I do not have golden hero... still, I like hand decks and was intrigued by this one. At first it wasn't working well for me. Ultimate Infestation in particular I think its too slow for the current Meta (at Rank 10), and also more often than not I would have it with my hand full, so I switched it for The Lich King
I also think Lesser Jasper Spellstone was not a great synergy with the amount of armor I was pulling, so I switched it for 2x Naturalize.
Finally I switched one Tortollan Forager (which is also kind of slow and situational) for Savage Roar for some finishing or clearing moves.
I know all of these are suggested, I just wanted to tell people what has been working well for me.
For sure! Try The Lich King or if you’re on a tighter budget a second Wispering Woods could be good as well.
I have been playing with this deck over the week and at a WR of 12-2 I believe that the deck has a lot of reach and could even beat most of the mainstream stuff we are seeing so far on the ladder. I recommend giving it a try even it if is only for one game, you will not regret it.
Here is a video showcasing the deck which I really hope you all enjoy!
I like the deck, but I don’t have Malfurian. Is the deck worth playing without him? I don’t have the dust. What would a reasonable replacement be?
I wouldn't say it's a necessity. The deck is strong enough on its own.
Witchwood Apple is essential for your Mountain Giant and Wispering Woods to activate effectively.
You’ll want to tank up with Ferocious Howl maximizing it's effect from your Apple.
A Tortollan Forager and Ferocious Howl are enough to get you into mid game along with Apple.
You want to bait the opponent into filling up the board for Spreading Plague.
Ultimate Infestation is not worth it in this archetype imo, too slow and you should always have 5+ cards in your hand excluding tokens from Apple.
Savage Roar is very situational, most of the times you don’t have enough minions on the board for it to be effective (2-4) so I take 2x Branching Paths which is better situationally and 1x Savage Roar.
Living Mana is a shot in the foot, you’re better off sticking to Wispering Woods, Crypt Lord is discoverable from Stonehill Defender so you’ll want to keep your Stonehill for possibly better taunts that you can sacrifice.
Wild Growth is also too slow, take an Innervate and save it for after you play a Drake, Guardian, or Mountain Giant.
Remember: It is key to watch how many cards your opponent has to maintain tempo in your favour and set up for mid-late game.
Cubelock?: https://imgur.com/XCmhOjW
320 votes and still no guide, gj
I'm not sure why no one has thought of adding Evolving Spores to this deck for some serious counterplay/aggression for your tokens.
I've gone from Rank 18 to Rank 15 (4/5 stars) casually today. With the 15 cap will definitely push into 10-12 territory looking for Cubelock and then will switch to a different class/meta that counters Cubelock because of getting over-valued by Cube. Thinking Spiteful Lady Priest but should observe as metas are still fluctuating. Otherwise this is a solid deck and can hold it's ground to most other metas.
1x Stonehill Defender is good enough to save you from early aggro, and the discover to save you again later.
2x Tortollan Forager because I feel you get much better cards than Stonehill for pushing tempo, worst thing you can get is Emeriss
MAIN COMBOS:
Turns 2,3,4: Witchwood Apple into Tortollan Forager into Ferocious Howl
(Mountain Giant should be played early if you're lucky with a big hand from Witchwood Apple)
Turn 7: Evolving Spores + Savage Roar
Witchwood Apple into later Wispering Woods can scare your opponent if they have no board clear, Evolving Spores and Savage Roar soon after is a major tempo win, and you can repeat the process by putting Soul of the Forest on your Wisps even using them as a bait/setup for a better ES + SR combo.
Nourish can help fill your hand to look for big cards like your Twilight Drake or Bewitched Guardian maybe even Spreading Plague for a save. Alternatively, +2 Mana and use Witchwood Apple for a setup.
Thinking of removing 1x Lesser Jasper Spellstone as it's not clutch enough, needs more testing but Spellstone is probably core. But finding that it's more of an mid-late game tempo card when you've used your Branching Paths or Malfurion the Pestilent so overall not a consistent opportunity because of the Spellstone condition.
Toss in Void Ripper for some fun, watch that Spreading Plague turn into Wrecking Plague, as well as make a monster of your Twilight Drake Bewitched Guardian to shake up the board.
Most of the times you'll want to take poison scarabs from Malfurion the Pestilent.
### Hand Tempo Druid
# Class: Druid
# Format: Standard
# Year of the Raven
#
# 1x (0) Innervate
# 2x (1) Lesser Jasper Spellstone
# 1x (2) Power of the Wild
# 2x (2) Tortollan Forager
# 2x (2) Witchwood Apple
# 2x (3) Ferocious Howl
# 1x (3) Savage Roar
# 1x (3) Stonehill Defender
# 2x (4) Branching Paths
# 1x (4) Evolving Spores
# 1x (4) Soul of the Forest
# 2x (4) Swipe
# 2x (4) Twilight Drake
# 2x (4) Wispering Woods
# 2x (5) Bewitched Guardian
# 1x (5) Nourish
# 2x (6) Spreading Plague
# 1x (7) Malfurion the Pestilent
# 2x (12) Mountain Giant
#
AAECAbSKAwhf/gH9AvcD5gWfwAKbwgKZ0wILQOEHjQikwgKgzQKY0gKe0gK37gLX7wK/8gLB8wIA
#
# To use this deck, copy it to your clipboard and create a new deck in Hearthstone