Hearthpwn

10020 dust, theory-based Ancient Watcher Druid deck.  Last modified 5/3/14.

Including Ancient Watcher, Sunfury, Defender of Argus means putting in a lot of early 2/3s and board presence, leaving yourself vulnerable to mass removal.  This deck includes a chain of durable minions to maintain pressure after board wipe, a bit of card draw, and spells to allow a player some flexibility to do something other than simply being forced to over-commit minions onto the board.

The base theory is Ancient Watcher & Co. isn't suited to early aggression, nor lategame legendary control and draw engines.  None of the cards in the Watcher setup do either well.  So this deck attempts to do, in theory, what I think Watcher Druid should be best at - midrange.

The goal is to maintain constant board pressure and do moderate damage to opponent until able to do lethal burst damage with Force of Nature and/or Savage Roar.  The Black Knight and Big Game Hunter are board presence that double as problem minion removal.  With so many minions in the deck, theoretically opponent removal should run a little dry, making Cairne Bloodhoof and Hogger more effective.

Other Watcher decks include cards like Keeper of the Grove, which allows Ancient Watcher to be used aggressively or to remove enemy weenie minions (but Keeper itself does not have good attack stats), Ancient of Lore for life gain recovery against weenie aggression or card draw against control, and the Force of Nature / Savage Roar combo that is in this one.  Those other Watcher decks do not emphasize midrange board pressure as much as this deck, but have the advantage of added card draw and flexibility.

Even in theory, the deck probably needs a few tweaks - particularly I don't like the fact that there are no 1-drops, which ought to allow for more applied pressure and flexibility in putting hand on board.  Argent Squire, Claw, and Abusive Sergeant are likely candidates, but their reduced effectiveness-for-card value would push the deck towards needing Ancient of Lore, which is a shift towards late game, which again is something I think not best suited in theory for Watcher Druid.