Hearthpwn

My feedback on this deck. I run exactly like OP and not teching anything. I have some experience with the aggro taunt druid, last season I played quite a lot of this kind of deck, the Viper version. Last season Diamond 5, start playing this deck on Diamond 4. Currently 7W-10L (41.2% win rate). Total 17 game played, recorded only 14 game, picture down below.

1st game: lost against quest shaman (forgot to track)

2nd game: lost against warlock (forgot to track) (Thalnos into Soul Rend 6dmg total clear my 2 Greybough)

3rd game: won against handbuff paladin

4th game: won against meme druid (I don't know what he was playing)

5th game: won against murloc shaman

6th game: won against garrote rogue (the shark version)

7th game: lost against quest shaman

8th game: lost against warlock

9th game: won against warlock

10th game: lost against elemental shaman

11th game: won against face hunter

12th game: lost against quest shaman (2 of his serpentshrine summon the best 3 drop, Cargo Guard and Injured Blademaster)

13th game: lost against secret paladin

14th game: won against warlock

15th game: lost against quest hunter

16th game: lost against Il'gynoth demon hunter

17th game: lost against elemental shaman (forgot to track) (my draw sucks)

Proof: https://imgur.com/a/ME5Xws5

My conclusion: shaman and warlock are dominating the ladder, they are the worst matchup, if you watch Grandmaster you will see there is no aggro taunt druid deck because everyone knows what you are playing, no suprise element and I think Diamond 5 bracket is at the same scenario. I have read all the comment on OP post, mulligan as he said but still it lacks something, if your draw sucks you can't do shit, say there are times that you just instantly conceded on turn 6 7. Warlock Shaman and Mage are the most played right now and are the toughest. Since Viper publiced his aggro taunt druid at the beggining of stormwind. I just watched all the content creator played and tried it but idk man last season my winrate with aggro taunt druid is better than this, it's not great but still above 60% win rate. I don't know why people get so lucky winning so easy and my opponents just clear my board with ease.

Update: Play for 3 more games to make it a 20 matches

18th game: lost against quest shaman

19th game: lost against control warrior

20th game: won against elwynn boar warlock (first time seeing it being played on warlock)

Total: 20 games: 8W-12L (40% winrate)

I tried the deck and wanted to go for a bit more draw and put Cornelius Roame , Taelan Fordring and 1x Toad of the Wilds instead of the Teacher's Pet and the 2x Park Panther

Got a 9 win streak from Plat 5 till Dia 9 with the adjusted version, so many thanks!

Hello again,

quick update, so as previously stated I swooped from Plat5 to Dia9 and in the end almost directly to legend with the adjusted deck as mentioned above and got stuck because of the many decks with board clearing
I revisited my decisions and put back the 2x Park Panther instead with some other adjustments and got a 16-4 from Dia5 to Legend

I just wanted to say thanks again for it is my first Legend in Standard and I wouldn't have got it if I haven't found this deck

Thanks, just climbed from d10 to legend with this!

magniffecent deck! Without any practice navigating through diamond 6-3…. Greybough is an mvp, I would-be not change him for mankrik, card draw is the weak spot…

Yet another satisfied user!!! Couldn't expect such a positive feedback from the community, I'm so happy the deck is working for so many players :)

Doing great with this deck so far! I'm at a 57% WR at Diamond 4 right now. I replaced Greybough with Mankrik. Thanks for posting. 

 

*edit* I didn't have Greybough at the time of posting this, but I do now and he works much better than Mankrik! :)

So happy it's working for you too, keep it up! :)

I've been having really good success with the deck! So far I'm 10-1 from (Silver to Plat w/ Diamond 5 MMR) having subbed in another Teacher's Pet for Greybough because I didn't want to invest the dust just yet, but honestly I might, since I think this has been the strongest deck for me the entire expansion! 

Any chance you could do a mulligan guide? I've been referring to the HSReplay list but it's slightly different, and having explanations for certain mulligans would be super helpful. 

Either way, thank you bro!

I have never written a mulligan guide, but I will try to do it now and to be the most accurate possible. I will break down each single matchup, with and without coin. In general, the most important cards to search for at mulligan vs. pretty much everything are a 1 drop and the Razormane.

VS. DEMON HUNTER
The most popular DH decks right now are the Quest/Brute and the Fel/Jace: the former is quite a favorable one unless they do things like double Brute on turn 4. The latter I think is the worst matchup for us alongside with Quest Shaman. However, the mulligan is the same, let's see why.
In both cases, having or not the coin isn't relevant for the mulligan strategy since they aren't going to develop any threatening board in the first couple of turns. The Quest/Brute variant can play the 1/1 or the 1/3, and the Fel/Jace variant could play a Mo'arg, but nothing more than this, so they don't affect what we are going to search for in the mulligan. 
In both cases, their HP costs 1 so we are not going to keep 1-drops with 1 health, basically all of them except for Sow the Soil, that must be kept. 
In both cases, Composting is so important, either for trading our board into the Brute or to recover from an AoE.
In both cases, Cultist is a must keep cause it blocks big draw turns or removal turns. 
So, alongside with the Razormane, we are going to search/keep: Sow the Soil, Composting, Cultist, and Augmerchant only if we already have a minion with at least 2 health.
NOTE: against the Quest/Brute variant Oracle is devastating, but we are not going to keep it since it's always better to assume that we are facing the worst matchup. 

VS. DRUID
First of all, it must be acknowledged that the matchup against slow spell Druids like Anacondra and Celestial is basically a free win, because the board we build is uncontestable for them except for Celestial which can use the C'Thun AoE spell, but we can easily recover from that.
Therefore, we are always going to mulligan for the mirror, in which we should have a slight advantage thanks to the Kodo (90% of lists don't run it) that can swing the board in our favor in mid-game. 
The most important cards here are Razormane, Panther and the Mount Kodo. However, the 4-drops are never a keep in any matchup, but it's important to draw them later in the mirror to shut down their board. Razormane instead can be game deciding if one player sees it and the other doesn't, so we must mulligan hard in order to find it.
Without coin: always keep the Razormane and at least one 1-drop, if you have multiple ones keep the best one (my personal ranking in this matchup is: Peasant, Sow the Soil, Squirrel, Augmerchant), otherwise toss everything to search hard for the Razormane. 
With coin: keep Razormane, and toss everything, even 1-drops, to seach hard for the Razormane, because it can be coined on turn one.
In both cases: keep Augmerchant if Razormane is already in hand.

VS. HUNTER
Here we win by snowballing the board early. In order to do so, we must prioritize any 2-drop instead of just the Razormane, because if we toss a 2-drop to search for the Razormane, we risk to draw other cards that aren't a 2-drop. 2-drops are so important because of the things Hunter can use to contest our 1-drops that have 1 health, namely Crescent, Wolpertinger, Wound Prey. Also, most of them are taunts with good statlines, that can both do value trades and prevent the Hunter's damage going to our face. Cultist is also very good because it slows down Rexxar's cheap spells.
Without coin: keep at least one 1-drop (Sow the Soil has the priority) and any 2-drops, Oracle if we already have a 2-drop, and keep Augmerchant if Sow the Soil and a 2-drop are already in hand;
With coin: keep Sow the Soil, any 2-drop, always Oracle, and the Augmerchant if we have wither Sow the Soil or a 2-drop. 

VS. MAGE
Apart from Razormane, priority here goes to Composting for recovering after the opponent's removals, and to Cultist for avoiding AoEs. We win through constant pressure, especially thanks to our 4 and 5 cost cards.
Without coin: keep at least any 1-drop, Razormane, Composting, Cultist, and Augmerchant if Sow the Soil, Razormane or Cutist are already in hand.
With coin: same as without coin, unless toss 1-drops that have 1 health, and keep Oracle.

VS. PALADIN
Same rules as against Hunter. 

VS. PRIEST
Same rules as against Hunter and Paladin. 

VS. ROGUE
Here we keep everything playable in the first couple of turns. We must pressure them in every way possible. If they answer us, gg, they eventually reach their Garrote win condition (I'm speaking of Miracle Garrote Rogue, the Poison variant is a free win). If they don't, we win. Only exception is that if we have coin, we toss 1-drops with 1 health since they get contested by HP.

VS. SHAMAN
Same rules as against Mage.

VS. WARLOCK
Same rules as against Mage and Shaman.

VS. WARRIOR
Haven't faced a single Warrior with this deck, can't give any tip unfortunately.

Hope this can be helpful. If anything's missing or not detailed enough, please let me know so that we can discuss it.

Updates on the deck's performance: currently 43-18 (70% winrate), still in top100. Proof: https://imgur.com/gallery/6BL8q25

Hello!

 

Can we replace Greybough with something else? Missing him right now.

Hi, sure! 2nd Teacher's Pet will do just fine: even if it hasn't the same power level, it's still a good card that can be cheated out on turn 3. 

You could also try Traveling Merchant, a card that I would like so much to test cause to me it makes a lot sense here, it fills the 3 mana slot which is kinda empty and it synergizes with the wide boards we build. 

Please let me know your choice in the end, and if it's the Merchant, maybe tell me something about it :)

Mage and shaman got so many good AOE spells this deck gets demolished pretty quickly and by turn 6-7 they always complete the quest and your face explodes to burn damage(while having absolutely no board because it gets demolished by spells every turn)

HS went to total shit this days... oh yea and there's still quest warlock but he at least rarely survives due to lack of proper AOE in standard

Hi, thank you for your comment.

The matchups you have mentioned are easily the worst ones, especially Shaman. Good removals equals hard time for this deck, but it is not necessarily auto-loss since we have multiple ways to try to deal with them, starting from our own gameplay which should pay more attention to resource consumption/hand size not to fall to too much behind if and when our board gets cleared. Options like holding to a Oracle+Composting combo, playing Arbor Up on an empty board, or Composting just a couple of minions might be useful in this regard. Other than this, we have 2 natural divine shields and 2 applyiable divine shields for more stickyness, Greybough which also sticks, 2 kodo's which give more resilience to our board (that if gets wiped, we are still left with a 4/2), and the Squirrels that help refill the board and the Mules that help refill the hand.

I mean, if controls manage to have all kinds of answers and/or we brick, it's just helpless for us, and it's totally okay cause that's how the matchup is supposed to work. BUT Aggro Taunt Druid doesn't come with 0 chances of getting through those matches. It actually has pretty good refill/comeback chances vs. control if compared with Shadow Priest or Face Hunter, which are way faster at eating HP but once they fall behind it's much harder for them to recover unless they have already dealt a significant amount of damage. Even if my stats aren't very significant (29 games are definitely not enough to fully evaluate the matchup trends), it's mildly shown that these matchups aren't this oppressive.

Also, if your pocket meta is crawling with controls, maybe there are much better decks to climb with than Aggro Taunt Druid. 

this deck is the bomb m8 well done currently 90% winrate from gold to d4 still going strong

Glad to hear that! Wish you the best climb :) 

Been running an almost identical list except with toads and blooms over brawlers and cults. I'll give this one a shot! The blooms are definitely hard to judge, win some games early on with them, but they're basically a dead draw after turn 5. I like that you're doing the Kondos and Panthers too, that's something I switched to a while back with great success.

After a little testing I still like the blooms (allows crazy things like a turn 1 panther, etc), but think the annoy-o/brawler/mule package is better than with the toads. I would try subbing cults for blooms and seeing what you think!

Hi HearthPillow, thank you for sharing your thoughts! 

Honestly I have never tried Blooms cause on paper they have just one pro that imho it's too mild to catch up with their two big cons. Yes, they can enable big tempo swings such as the one you mentioned, but at what cost?
- First of all, I believe that 2 Overload for a deck that just does one thing, namely developing board by playing cheap minions from hand, could be nothing less than crippling vs. control, since if what we have done with our Bloom gets contested, our next turn risks to be so crappy that it may cost us the whole game (control matchups are all about constant pressure, giving them just one turn of stabilization is hella dangerous).
- Also, based on my experience, this deck dramatically excels at winning the board in board-focused matchups (I think it would only lose to Rush Warrior if it was a common deck), so I don't think that +2 mana for a swing turn might be that helpful in these games and, combined with Overload and the fact that after turn 5 Blooms are a dead draw, I wouldn't run them. However, having never actually tried them out, these are just theoretic thoughts so I may be wrong, but there aren't definitely good premises.

Regarding Brawler, I think it's the most powerful 2-mana taunt we have since it can spiral so bad for the opponent, be it through value trades, Augmerchant or Kodo.