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Quote from dps_kane >>

legend part: I see :) congrats on taking the deck to legend, btw, imo quite a feat.

first off i need to make sure we have the same footing about the capabilities of our respective highlander druids. leaving dirty rat pulls by you or the opponent aside:
A) combo decks are our biggest banes. we don't have enough tempo to outmaneuver their defensive moves. all we can hope for is using 1-4 rats
B) control decks are our best matchup: renolocks, renopriests, renomages, renohunter - unless they have a combo win condition, or a nice rat, they cannot defeat reno druid.
C) that leaves aggro decks. i.e., basically all non-core cards need to be chosen to beat this archetype

Hadronox: maybe I just have to try it out myself, but I just don't see it. I mean, to guarantee its protection you need to have H & naturalize in hand, and without mana boosts or ET both come on turn 10. But now you need 2 cards out of your singleton deck....
If you need a guaranteed N'Zoth, what about adding a melon to your deck, just to tutor N'Zoth? Means of course that you need to waste 4 additional mana when you are fighting for survival.
I can't tell you with certainty that Hadronox is bad, but back when taunt druid was a thing, Hadronox plays were hard under pressure even with 2 naturalizes in the deck. counting to have both H & your single Nat in hand to refill your defenders seems a lot.

brann: yes, i noticed the CO combo and the rat. elise? no. zola? whatever you clone with zola either wins you the game with a single copy, or it makes no difference. brann & reno? no. what else?
brann & CO: if i need to mill, i go for naturalize & elise to create 2+ copies of naturalize.
brann & rat: that's the best use i can see, tbh. brann & rat and floop sounds awesome against combo :D

LK: what about the 2 cards that remove cards from the top of your deck? i mean, i didn't try it out, but when you fight your easiest matchup (control), these cards are basically dead in your hand. if you play them you risk to remove a key card like banker from your deck. if you don't play them, then you cannot use elise to copy them. if in the matchup you thus decide not to play LK: well then you have LK dead in your hand.... LK to me is a value card. but elise provides me with infinite value against control and enough value otherwise.

Plague: You are right. Plague does not prevent you from playing Hadronox and even if a lot of 1/5s are reborn, it's good enough to win the game. i apologize for my shortsightedness :)

Crawler: I don't have the insight you have, didn't play much the last 4 weeks (vacation). Even a plain 2/3 on turn 2 is often good, so, why not? but i simply had the feeling that mr. no-more-in-charge-now was a rather rare sight.

 

anyway: i did never take reno druid to legend (and i never will, don't have the time), so i can't compare with your experience. but i still would suggest to possibly try to only run N'Zoth instead of Nzoth & Hadronox. At the same time I might try out running mr. H ;)

 You have some fair points about Brann, I'll have to try the card more until I can reach a conclusion. The Lich King I find to actually be useful against aggro (Pulling 5 cards from your deck is usually game winning against aggro. Plus the other cards are generally pretty helpful as well) and with Hadronox in the deck, Control is practically a guaranteed win. I'm still not sure about DragonQueen yet, it may be to much top end. I was thinking a card like Jeppeto could be pretty crazy in this deck instead of Dragon Queen (although pulling Dragon Queen from Jepetto is a pretty bonkers play). 

many LK cards are pretty good indeed. one card is particularly good against both combo and control!
I just wonder about the times you need to play a 30min match and calculate carefully all your cards.
but many LK cards are indeed very helpful....

as mentioned in the beginning under B) - control is not an issue. i mean, hadronox guaranteeing a win against control is neat and i can imagine how good it will feel to close out matches like that, but careful handling of n'zoth, floop, banker and elise does also practically guarantee a win. Most control decks can build a big board only a few times and have no unstoppable combo piece (except reno mages today....). while one needs to play carefully to not tempo too little and not to make any counting mistake, one can still get a big board at least every 2 turns. so i personally think it might be better to focus on surviving aggro even better.

i believe we think the same about the queen. but she can do so many funny shenanigans :D

jepetto: i realized that almost all minions are either in the deck for their battlecries OR their deathrattles. dane managed to hit many times something with low cost, like a zola and a applebaum, but even then the mana reduction was very useful, also for combos.
furthermore, consider that elise copies the mana cost, so jepetto on any minion you want to copy with elise: yes!

Yah pretty good analysis. I tried brann but I felt he ultimately didn't add much and so I replaced it with twig atm. I can't wait until the expansion goes live today so I can test out the new taunt and further improve the deck.

that new taunt should be almost as good for hadronox as khartut is for nzoth (khartut is of course also good with hadronox).

so i hope you have fun with that heavy taunt addition :)

 I run almost the same list , got to rank 3 and droped back to 5 , maybe this one will do better than mine :)

Made my own versioncomments welcome 

https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1328172-druid-is-life

Quote from zeroxz >>

Hi kane you sound passionate about highlander druid could you post your list you use I'm very keen to try yours :-) 

Quote from Varengal >>

Thanks for the comment. What is your decklist then? I'd really like to try it out as I don't seem to have very much success with this one here.

Quote from mateorix >>

hey @dps_kane which Highlander Druid are you playing with? can you share your cards list? I've been trying to find a good highlander Druid but haven't had yet
Thanks

 Hi guys!

That's an unexpected amount of feedback! The grandmaster of all reno decks, dane, was the first to inspire me to play highlander druid, and here is his list:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1313897-reno-druid-wild

unfortunately i have no jepetto joybuzz and i am not really willing to craft him. and a few other minor differences here and there did let me end up with a deck that's more similar to this deck by EzWin_HS:
https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1307997-renozoth-druid-metabreaker
I don't use starfall and no mulch, but i have the other 28 cards in deck. i am a huge fan of crystal merchant, which is either a 3 mana 1/4 draw a card with *very soft* taunt or a 2 mana 1/4 tempo card against very aggressive decks with lots of 1 health minions. my 30th card is an MC Tech. i think i did also swap nourish again for overflow (overflow has left and entered my deck many times), i almost never chose getting 2 mana and i got better in avoiding overflow duplication.
EzWin_HS also has a very nice guide written up there. i prefer him getting the credit for doing that than posting my own version of almost the same deck.

you might thus want to check out dane's original deck for the sake of seeing some options and his posted video, but otherwise the second link is most likely more useful.

final notes on crafting: i assume you have all commons & rares. twig is not essential in this deck. it might actually be a downside in most matches. but it can be fun. zola is not essential neither and 3 mana 2/2 hurts. but she's super flexible and getting another dirty rat against combo or another elise against control, etc. is great. banker, rat & branching paths are imo must have epics for this deck. i can imagine that mulch is actually very strong - dealing with 8/8s or similar. other legends are absolutely necessary, with maybe 2 exceptions: malfurion & ET - but these should be in your collection anyway. floop cannot be cut.

Haha thanks for the shout out ;) 

I haven't personally tried out Reno Druid this expansion. First, it was Sniplock, now it's Reno Quest Mage and tall aggro decks holding it back. I hit Legend with the deck back in September, but it just doesn't seem like you can actually win matches anymore. There are so many mech paladins and other stuff that simply hard-counters you, such as Mecha'thun lock, and with no new cards added from DoD, I've pretty much just given up all hope. Reno Druid can definitely work in specific pocket metas, but it's not nearly as good as it was back when I first posted my version of the deck. 

It's still a lot of fun to play though, especially when you pull off some crazy Elise shenanigans, so I would also definitely recommend anyone to try it, provided they have the cards required.

Hey thanks 

@HeadHunterHS: I agree on rat, but not on Zihi. The deck needs tons of mana

@AuraBarbs:
I cannot imagine that this deck gets you to legend *easily*. I have been playing highlander druid for a while now and I am confident that it is tier 3 at best, but my guess is that it does not even touch tier 4.
It has almost no means to deal with a very tall board and it's tempoing really badly compared to other decks.
Main reason being that it does not *cheat* in the early game.
E.g.: secret mage tempoes so hard that keeping mana to spare and then playing "fair" taunts is not enough to stop the onslought. Not even if you get a Reno out (which you need to get out latest once you are below 13 HP and then you heal probably less than 20 HP).
Handbuff Paladin: erm... yeah, small chances of survival. Biggest chances if your opponent draws no cards with crystology.
evenlock: too many fatties
odd decks with albatross: ouch.

The way I see this deck is like this: Against combo decks you win only with rat (and that is why I agree with HeadHunterHS). In this meta it's almost impossible to rush down a combo deck with something as defensive as a quest reno druid. So combo decks are this deck's bane.
Aggro decks: depends a lot on the type. if the aggro deck goes very large (like handbuff or evenlock): pray for zephrys and naturalize or lose. If it goes very wide: also here you are in a tough spot because if the opponent gets to buff his wide board (quartermaster, everyfin is awesome, ...) then they overrun the taunt defenses.
Any other aggro deck: very good chances indeed.
Finally: other control decks. Oh boy, any other slow deck that has no one turn kill combo loses *HARD* to this deck. Ranks 15-5 they have absolutely no idea about the power of Elise.

I do have to say that I play a different version of the deck though, one similar to the one that Dane published initially - no untapped potential (and hence very few choice cards) and no hadronox (and hence access to spreading plague). Dane explained that the little amount of choice cards does not make it worth to complete the quest plus the fact that wild is often so damn fast that you don't have the luxury to float mana until turn 6. I agree with him on the luxury part, actually. Though I find myself also doing very little the first 3 turns, usually.
IMO, hadronox is a bit of a win more card. it costs 9 mana and does nothing against aggro. if i get to 9 mana with my version, then i don't lose anymore to neither aggro nor control, so i also don't need hadronox.
I can't say with certainty that the version I play is stronger, but floating mana on turn 4 & 5 seems like a no-go to me. you gotta stop the opponent or die if he is aggro. And I also think that spreading plague offers more protection than hadronox.
but: even though i think that my deck is stronger, maybe my skill is lacking :D

anyway: consider swapping something out for rat and something else for baleful banker: bb & elise defeat *every* control deck out there. I would say those two (and nzoth or hadronox) give a 90%+ chance against those decks. and rat + floop (and sometimes + elise) give you a fair fighting chance against combo decks. of course, banker does little against aggro and rat can be risk

Wow biggest comment I've even seen lol I vote up for time that took to write 

Thanks for that :)

I just had to leave my 2 cents. I absolutely *LOVE* highlander druid and I recommend to everyone owning the cards to try it out. I never enjoyed a deck as much as this one - and I don't just say that, I know what I enjoyed the most in the past and this one, by a small edge, beats my previous favorite: *control* kingsbane. and your opponent usually has no idea what your deck is about!

unlike old KB, highlander druid has a very tough stance in the meta, so i cannot recommend the deck for climbing nor to craft cards unless you don't care too much about the dust making a long term impact.
Untapped, Loti, Elise, Hadronox - none of these have seen any relevant play in wild for a long time and LK also is rarely played nowadays. Especially Loti & Hadronox most likely would be dead crafts if you don't have them already.

Hi kane you sound passionate about highlander druid could you post your list you use I'm very keen to try yours :-) 

Thanks for the comment. What is your decklist then? I'd really like to try it out as I don't seem to have very much success with this one here.

hey @dps_kane which Highlander Druid are you playing with? can you share your cards list? I've been trying to find a good highlander Druid but haven't had yet
Thanks

Sorry to jump in here but I've been playing highlander druid since last expansion and I've spent well over 200 games tinkering with the deck across multiple expansions. Here is the latest list (using GA cards but still succesfull) and I think it's the best version of highlander druid around: https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1308974-legend-ga-highlander-wall-druid

Would you mind checking out my list? I've been updating it since I hit legend in November with it and I've played well over 200 games with the deck. I'm curious to see how my list is similar to yours: https://www.hearthpwn.com/decks/1308974-legend-ga-highlander-wall-druid

are you asking me?

first i have to admit that i am currently clueless what GA means. galakrond's awakening? how can this be a legend deck if it hasn't been tested as such in the field?

In all cases it contains hadronox and is therefore quite different from what I play. I have hadronox, but I think that N'Zoth is more than enough to wall in - hadronox wins more and thus helps less in more difficult matchups. and with hadro i cannot play spreading plague (without cringing, that is). IMO brann is not good in my deck version nor in yours. LK looks like a trap, too - he actually can give you cards you never want to play => can lose you the game.
i suggest to try going N'Zoth only. I mean.... there are plenty of means to play him 3,4,5, ... times in one game. if you're not up against aggro you can usually play him as often as wanted (unless a key card gets ratted).
i don't have DQ alex, but she looks also a bit like a win more card. sometimes on turn 9 you just need to stay alive for N'Zoth. Not sure she does that for you. But I haven't tried her, maybe she really rocks :)
pirates are dwindling it seems, not sure the crawler is still good. maybe. winged guardian .... might be a good addition, but maybe to costly for wild. the spell protection is really good. but i fear the cost is bad....

i do like the doomsayer though, tbh. if i had one (i think it's the only classic epic i don't have a single copy of) i would maybe put it, too. never considered it before.

The Legend piece came from before I uodated the deck so granted I haven't play tested the current build. I seriously disagree in regards to hadronox. I played plague with hadronox and they work together fine. Hadronox just gives you so many more ways to win and acts as a second/added win con.

Dragon queen may be a bit much, but I figured it's worth a try as draw in this deck is generally slow. I use to think Brann was relatively pointless too, but combo-ing with cold light can be a game altering play and it has a few other case uses that make it good enough.

Lich King can never lose you the game. I don't even get what you were trying to say there. Pretty much any card from the Lich King is good in this deck, and the added value from multiple recitations is a nice deck (especially because we lack lots of draw).

That being said if the meta is more aggressive, I would sub The Lich King for Plague. It doesn't really matter if you get a few spiders from Hadrononx because if you're playing plague you're playing against an aggro deck and against aggro all you care about is protecting your face.

Pirates are prevalent in just about every aggro deck, certainly not dwindling. Druid, Rogue, Paladin, Warlock, Hunter, Warrior, sometimes even Shaman all run patches in aggro builds. Especially against embeggen druid not being able to deal with a 3/3 + 1/2 body is an instant lose. Crawler is as or even more essential then doomsayer (a card you should really craft. It really is important for early game survival) for early game survival.

legend part: I see :) congrats on taking the deck to legend, btw, imo quite a feat.

first off i need to make sure we have the same footing about the capabilities of our respective highlander druids. leaving dirty rat pulls by you or the opponent aside:
A) combo decks are our biggest banes. we don't have enough tempo to outmaneuver their defensive moves. all we can hope for is using 1-4 rats
B) control decks are our best matchup: renolocks, renopriests, renomages, renohunter - unless they have a combo win condition, or a nice rat, they cannot defeat reno druid.
C) that leaves aggro decks. i.e., basically all non-core cards need to be chosen to beat this archetype

Hadronox: maybe I just have to try it out myself, but I just don't see it. I mean, to guarantee its protection you need to have H & naturalize in hand, and without mana boosts or ET both come on turn 10. But now you need 2 cards out of your singleton deck....
If you need a guaranteed N'Zoth, what about adding a melon to your deck, just to tutor N'Zoth? Means of course that you need to waste 4 additional mana when you are fighting for survival.
I can't tell you with certainty that Hadronox is bad, but back when taunt druid was a thing, Hadronox plays were hard under pressure even with 2 naturalizes in the deck. counting to have both H & your single Nat in hand to refill your defenders seems a lot.

brann: yes, i noticed the CO combo and the rat. elise? no. zola? whatever you clone with zola either wins you the game with a single copy, or it makes no difference. brann & reno? no. what else?
brann & CO: if i need to mill, i go for naturalize & elise to create 2+ copies of naturalize.
brann & rat: that's the best use i can see, tbh. brann & rat and floop sounds awesome against combo :D

LK: what about the 2 cards that remove cards from the top of your deck? i mean, i didn't try it out, but when you fight your easiest matchup (control), these cards are basically dead in your hand. if you play them you risk to remove a key card like banker from your deck. if you don't play them, then you cannot use elise to copy them. if in the matchup you thus decide not to play LK: well then you have LK dead in your hand.... LK to me is a value card. but elise provides me with infinite value against control and enough value otherwise.

Plague: You are right. Plague does not prevent you from playing Hadronox and even if a lot of 1/5s are reborn, it's good enough to win the game. i apologize for my shortsightedness :)

Crawler: I don't have the insight you have, didn't play much the last 4 weeks (vacation). Even a plain 2/3 on turn 2 is often good, so, why not? but i simply had the feeling that mr. no-more-in-charge-now was a rather rare sight.

anyway: i did never take reno druid to legend (and i never will, don't have the time), so i can't compare with your experience. but i still would suggest to possibly try to only run N'Zoth instead of Nzoth & Hadronox. At the same time I might try out running mr. H ;)