Hearthpwn

Hello everyone! This is Jotto and today we'll be looking at my taunt druid for BRM!

Given the rise of a meta game filled with Hunter, Druid and Warrior, I felt as if taunt druid was perfectly situated to ladder with, So lets take a look:

Deck Breakdown

First we have the ramp cards, Innervate and Wild Growth, these allow you to ramp in the core of the deck, the taunts:

• 2x Sen'jin Shieldmasta
• 2x Druid of the Claw
• 2x Sludge Belcher
• 1x Sunwalker
• 2x Ancient of War

Looking at the core of the deck, it is a curve of taunts with Sunwalker as a fill in at 6 as it is an efficient blocker against aggro decks and is very annoying to remove for control decks. Double Sen'jin Shieldmasta is also a bit unusual but as the number of taunts in a deck increases, the effectiveness of each one also increases, the reason for this is that taunts require investment into killing them, eg. The Black Knight, however once these answers have been used each other taunt gets better so by forcing decks to use their harder removal on smaller taunts the large ones get better which is very important in this deck.

The top of the curve is taken up by three cards:

Ancient of Lore: Being able to draw off of playing a 5/5 all for 7 mana is just absurd in this deck as the sheer power level of each card is extremely high, it can also heal you if you are in a bad spot.

Ancient of War: Nicknamed Ancient of Wall, this monster will stop any aggro deck in its tracks, it also take advantage of the increased number of taunts that I talked about earlier to the point that once you play it later in the game your opponent will most likely be out of hard removal and will have to kill it with 10 damage which is very hard to do.

Kel'Thuzad: The big legendary of choice, Cenarius is the other alternative, KT has been amazing in this deck as you just wait until a taunt sticks then you slam him onto the board and win in most situations after reanimating a taunt or one of the other major threats such as Sylvanas Windrunner.

A few other staple cards:

Keeper of the Grove: Arguably the single best silence in the game, the damage mode is the most used however as it will allows you to kill almost anything that can be played early on in the game, this helps you stabilise for your midgame.

Sylvanas Windrunner: Probably the best 6 drop in the list, works very well with Mark of the Wild. The tempo lose from playing her is almost negated in this deck due to the taunts mopping up a lot of the damage that would usually punish you for playing her.

Emperor Thaurissan: The only addition to the deck from BRM, he allows you to play multiple threats, each with high impact on turns 7-9 which is normally not possible.

Removal wise, Swipe and Wrath function as early game removal and aoe in the case of Swipe both work very well with your hero power.

Tech cards and Considerations

Antique Healbot helps with hunters in particular and a lot of decks will try to burn you out so the extra healing is very handy to have. Mark of the Wild is the other spicy additions and is primarily used to unsilence your taunts or to taunt up Sylvanas Windrunner, making her very hard to deal with.

A few cards that might have a place are, Cenarius instead of Kel'Thuzad and maybe a second Sunwalker instead of Antique Healbot if the game slows down a bit.

In this particular list I would not include Dr. Boom or Ragnaros the Firelord as the list currently has no Big Game Hunter targets to speak of.

Harrison Jones is something to consider if you are playing against a lot of weapon classes, such as hunter and warrior, I would say replacing Sunwalker is a safe bet.

*Edit* Kezan Mystic has been very good on the ladder recently due to the mages and hunters, if you are playing against a lot of them I would reccomend replacing Mark of the Wild with it.

Gameplay