Watcher/Ramp ( Rank 20->3, Four Days )
- Last updated Jun 14, 2014 (Live Patch 5506)
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Wild
- 18 Minions
- 12 Spells
- Deck Type: None
- Deck Archetype: Unknown
- Crafting Cost: 8200
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 6/10/2014 (Live Patch 5506)
- kakamaemae
- Registered User
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- 1
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- 8
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Battle Tag:
N/A
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Region:
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Total Deck Rating
64
"We can never have enough of nature." - Henry David Thoreau, Walden
My Greetings
I am Neil (Kakamaemae) and this is my current druid deck. This deck got me to rank 4 (1 win to 3...) in just 4 days in Season 4. It may seem kind of fast but it is possible. I am now currently using this deck again and I am about to hit rank 5 in just about a week!
Strategy
The strategy to the deck is to WIN! Right?? Obviously but how? It's simple. You want to keep the board clear and take control of the game forcing them to hit your taunts. That doesn't mean you should to keep hitting their face if they have cards on the field. It is always better to make sure the board is clear before you ever go for the face unless you are going for the kill. There will be times when they have control over you early so you want to get rid of those with your spells such as Wrath/Swipe and taunts like Ancient Watcher + Sunfury Protector and Innervate + Druid of the Claw combos. The deck like most druid decks has the Awesome Finisher: Force of Nature + Savage Roar Combo. Not only that, but if you have control you can just use Savage Roar to finish them off!
* Note *- Ramp Druid decks can be hard to play if you are a new player, but if you are an experienced player you should be able to win lots of games with the deck.
Card Explanations
Innervate
I shouldn't have to sugar coat this one. It's Mandatory! for every druid deck!
Mark of the Wild
Great card. It can be used on Ancient Watcher early game against those aggro decks.
Wild Growth
Mandatory in every ramp druid deck to get ahead of the game and put those bigger minions out there.
Wrath
Helps remove early game threats and can even recycle itself while killing a minion with 1 hp! Great Value!
Ancient Watcher
The early game threat for every deck including those aggros. Combo Taunt or Silence with this guy you got a turn 2 yeti! The only thing that counters this guy when he is taunted is Black Knight. Therefor, they are forced to kill it wasting cards early game for your advantage.
Bloodmage Thalnos
One of the top legendaries used today. Combo this card with Swipe and Wrath for more value! He can also recycle himself for another card after he dies! (Can be replaced with Kobold Geomancer or Loot Hoarder if you prefer the draw power.)
Sunfury Protector
To help taunt those Ancient Watchers! Decent early game card too! Do not be afraid to play this early even if u don't have anything to taunt up because it is always better to play something than nothing. Take out 1 if you feel you need more stronger minions, preferably a Chillwind Yeti.
Savage Roar
A finisher card to increase those attacks if you have control and, of course, the famous combo with Force of Nature!
Blood Knight
This card gets its value pretty often. The meta right now has lots of divine shields so stealing that Argent Squire and becoming a 6/6 on turn 3 is devastating (Can be replaced with Big Game Hunter if you run into lots of Handlocks.)
Swipe
Mandatory for druid because of one of our weaknesses (removals). But do not forget, Wrath helps!
Keeper of the Grove
Combo with that Ancient Watcher! Or use it to deal 2 dmg and silence something else that's giving you too much of a threat. Play it with care because there will be times when you need to decide if you want to silence your watcher or silence / 2 dmg their minion. The deck has many other combos with the watcher so it is okay to skip the combo. Keeping this card in hand can be great for aggro decks early.
Spellbreaker
I find this card very important because the extra silence to combo with Ancient Watcher comes in a lot! (It can be replaced with a Chillwind Yeti but Imo it's a must have.)
Nourish
This is an interesting one. You can replace this card with any other cards of your choice. I use this card for late game to have extra draws and it really helps sometimes. It can also be a bad draw early game unless u innervate combo or coin for the extra mana crystals on turn 5. (Recommended replacements would be Faceless Manipulator, Azure Drake, Chillwind Yeti, or a Sunwalker.)
Azure Drake
I feel like 1 Azure is enough. Feel free to add another but sometimes after turn 5 it feels too weak even though it does give you that draw value, but the deck has many other draw power and if you play correctly, you shouldn't have problems keeping your hands with options.
Druid of the Claw
One of those must have card in all druid decks. This card can even be another finisher late game combo with the Savage Roar if you use it with charge!
Force of Nature
This is pretty much the main finisher combo with Savage Roar. Sometimes you will have to use it to clear the board. There are lots of ways to beat your opponent so use it that way if you have no other option.
The Black Knight
I have not been able to use this card much this season and am considering replacing it. But I'd still keep it since it can combo with Mark of the Wild to kill off one of their minions. Excellent in a mirror match up. (Can be replaced with Chillwind Yeti, Azure Drake, Sunwalker, and Cairne Bloodhoof.)
Ancient of Lore
The option to heal or draw cards makes this card very good. Using this card for heals will most likely happen against aggro decks. I would recommend using this card for heal when you are around 10 hp unless you really need cards or if you have a few taunts protecting you.
Ancient of War
This is the best late game taunt card imo. It is safe from Big Game Hunters and has 10 hp, which is really hard to deal with. Some people fear that it will be Hexed early by shams or Polymorphed by mages but I recommend you to just play it unless you think you can to bait those cheap hexamorphs first.
Cenarius
Savage Roar can combo well with this card, but Cenarius may be replaced with a Ysera without the combo. This card can also be used like a high mana Savage Roar to finish the job.
The Forces of Nature are Watching...
Mulligans and Explanations
- Most of the time you want to mulligan for the lower cost cards like Wrath, Wild Growth, Sunfury Protectors, and Ancient Watchers.
- For the Blood Knight if you are playing a deck that you know uses Divine Shields, keep this card if you draw it. You can also keep it if you want a safe 3 drop.
- You can also keep Innervate if you draw it in the opening hand, which I decide to keep around 50% of the time.
- If you have replaced some cards with the Chillwind Yeti, you can do the turn 1 yeti (The Coin + Innervate if going 2nd or Innervate on turn 2 for going 1st), which is very annoying to deal with. The deck has a large variety of strong decisions.
- Be careful on how you use Wrath. If you have a bad hand, try to get its draw power out of it. Do not forget to use your hero ability.
- My favorite start is turn 2 Ancient Watcher and turn 3 The Coin + a silence card like Keeper of the Grove or Spellbreaker to get that value of the turn 2 Yeti.
- If you are playing against a Zoolock deck, I highly recommend to try and taunt that Ancient Watcher early and save the Keeper of the Grove to deal dmg and clear the board with its effect.
- As for the absolute best hand Imo, it would be 1 Ancient Watcher, 1 Sunfury Protector, 1 Wrath, and 1 silence of some sort. *
**Important**
- Sometimes the deck can be inconsistent if your luck is bad. When you don't draw your Ancient Watchers and value it, it can be a dead card.
- My 2nd version of this deck is also just as good, which runs 2 Chillwind Yetis and 1 Harvest Golem instead of Nourish, [card]The Black Knight[/card], and 1 Sunfury Protector for more consistency with the curve.
Matchups & Difficulty
Please leave a comment below if you want more information about a particular matchup :).
Miracle Rogue (Medium-Hard)
- Mulligan: Try to get Wrath, Innervate + Nourish, Ancient Watcher & silence cards (like Keeper of the Grove or Spellbreaker).
- If you can bait out the Sap early, you pretty much win the game.
- Try to get your high taunts out early to force them to waste their cards.
- For Ancient of Lore, you want to use it more for card draws rather than heals because Miracle Rogue can kill you in one move.
- Get as much draw power as possible to get the Savage Roar + Force of Nature combo to end the game.
- Try to finish him off before turn 10.
Zoolocks (Easy)
- Mulligan Phase: Try to get Wrath, Ancient Watcher, Sunfury Protector, Blood Knight
- Keep clearing his board & maintain board control; never go for his face unless you have a big taunt out.
- Watch out for the turn 5 Doomguards. Big taunts will stop them.
- You have a large chance of winning once you get Ancient of War out.
- If you survive until mid-late game, you usually win the game.
Handlocks (Medium-Hard)
- Mulligan Phase: Try to get Innervate, Ancient Watcher + silence cards (Keeper of the Grove & Spellbreaker), and Wild Growth.
- Not Wrath because their threats are usually mid-late gate.
- The only cards you have to really worry about are the giants (Molten Giant & Mountain Giant) and the Leeroy Jenkins + Power Overwhelming combo because you can just silence the Twilight Drakes and Handlocks are slow.
- Try to bait out the Siphon Souls by silencing/taunting your Ancient Watchers or rushing them down fast to force them to heal themselves, so they don’t use it on your big taunts.
- Use The Black Knight carefully and get them low fast by using your Druid of the Claw “charge” effect to force them to stop life tapping.
- Don’t be afraid to make him taunt the giants once you have The Black Knight in your hands.
- Sometimes he won’t have the giants if you force him to stop tapping early and you pretty much win.
- I usually save my Swipes to finish him off unless you have to kill a card with it.
Shaman (Medium)
- Mulligan Phase: Try to get Wrath, Ancient Watcher + combo cards (cards that taunt - Mark of the Wild & Sunfury Protector / silence it - Keeper of the Grove & Spellbreaker), and Blood Knight.
- Force them to Hex your Ancient Watchers, which is a good trade for you.
- Once Shamans use both their Hexes, your chance of winning greatly increases.
- Shamans use Feral Spirit + Mana Tide Totem to protect it, so save your Swipe or Wrath if you can unless you are forced to use those abilities to kill other minions/cards (such as the Flametongue Totem).
- It isn’t always bad to use The Black Knight on Feral Spirits because Shamans usually don’t have any other taunts besides Defender of Argus.
- Watch our for their finishers (Bloodlust and Rockbiter Weapon + Al’Akir the Windlord / Doomhammer combos); 99% of the time they will Earth Shock your Ancient of War so be careful.
- I wouldn't Innervate [/card] into the [card]Ancient of War in case it gets Earth Shocked unless you really have to.
Control Warriors (Medium-Hard)
- Mulligan Phase: Try to get Wrath, Ancient Watcher + combo cards (cards that taunt - Mark of the Wild & Sunfury Protector / silence it - Keeper of the Grove & Spellbreaker), and Innervate.
- Pay close attention to this matchup; watch for how many Executes / Shield Slams they use.
- Be careful not to overextend because of Brawl.
- Use your Nourish for drawing cards and save your Ancient of Lore to heal yourself after they use Alexstrasza unless your health is already 15 or below and pay attention to Gorehowl if your health happens to be around 7.
- You can use your Ancient of Lore to draw cards if it is still early game.
- Saving a silence or 2 can stop Grommash Hellscream and Ysera if you think it’s necessary.
- Make sure you keep their armor down so Shield Slam becomes useless.
- The matchup becomes pretty annoying because the only real way to finish them is by comboing Savage Roar if they happen to have a lot of armor.
- However, if your run into a lot of Control Warriors, switch out the Blood Knight for Big Game Hunter.
Priests (Hard)
- Mulligan Phase: Try to get 2 Wraths, Ancient Watcher + combo cards (cards that taunt - Mark of the Wild & Sunfury Protector / silence it - Keeper of the Grove & Spellbreaker), and Innervate +Nourish.
- Don’t get Nourish without Innervate because it can’t be played early without it.
- Priest is a very annoying matchup imo. The cool thing is you usually win if you can get ahead of them quickly by using Innervate + big cards or Nourish for mana crystals and getting out the Ancient Watcher + silence.
- Wrath those Northshire Clerics. What sucks is that it’s kind of annoying to remove them when they combo it with Power Word: Shield and it’s hard to deal with the early game Injured Blademaster when they heal it with Circle of Healing.
Druids (Easy-Medium)
- Mulligan Phase: Try to get Ancient Watcher, Innervate, Wild Growth, Wrath and any card that combos with your watcher.
- Usually this matchup depends on luck from both players. But, If you happen to get the watchers combo early, silenced or taunted, it would increase your chance of winning significantly because druids has little removal so having them to waste cards early to kill the watcher can get you a huge head start along with having that one extra silence which comes in handy against cards like Ancient of War.
- In the mid to late game, use your Black Knight wisely and care for the Savage Roar combo.
- I have a high win ratio against other druids so you should too hopefully. May the best one win!
Paladins (Easy)
- Mulligan Phase: Try to get Wrath, Blood Knight, Ancient Watcher plus the combos, and Keeper of the Grove.
- If you are going against an aggro pally, it should be easy. Just quickly bait those Equality and you have yourself a win.
- Also, try to use your cards and mana efficiently as you can to keep your hands low on cards so he cant get much value out of his Divine Favor.
- That being said, use your Ancient of Lore for heals only because of Avenging Wrath unless you are behind and need cards.
- For other pally builds I have not played enough against them to explain and rate..."sorry about that." >_<
Hunters (Easy)
- Mulligan Phase: Try to get Wrath, Ancient Watcher + combo cards (cards that taunt - Mark of the Wild & Sunfury Protector / silence it - Keeper of the Grove & Spellbreaker), and Innervate.
- Hunters, rush type or not, usually are easy because all you have to is not overextend by mid and late game.
- Since the Unleash the Hounds nerf, they haven’t been much of a threat. Just bait out the Hunter’s Mark and you should be fine.
- Using your Ancient of Lore to heal yourself can throw them off by one or two turns because Hunters usually try to rush you down.
- Silence those Savannah Highmanes.
- The Black Knight can come in handy here against Animal Companion and Houndmaster if it’s a Midrange Hunter.
- Watch out for Leeeeeeeeeeeeeroy Jenkins!
Freeze Mages (??)
Will explain another time because I have only played against a few of them. So far, it was a pretty easy matchup.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Very strong start if you get the Ancient Watchers silenced on turn 4 or below
- Has good draw power
- Very versatile
- Strong late game
- Fun to play
Cons
- Ancient Watchers can sometimes become a dead card
- A little bit slower than other decks if draws are not great
- Only 2 cards that cost 3 mana
Thank You!
Thank you so much for reading my guide! I hope that this deck was fun to play and that you've learned a lot! Feel free to ask me any questions or leave me any comments below! Let me know if there is anything I can do to improve this guide :). I will be making changes when needed.
**Note** (Deck Change Up Coming Soon and will be a faster version so we can silence those watchers quicker!)
Change Log
6/13/2014 1:04AM - Added Matchups & Difficulty. Added Pros & Cons.
meta changed don'y use this game anymore :)
What can I replace Ancient of War with? I have none. I'm guessing Ironbark Protector? It's weak to BGH, has 2 HP less and costs 1 more mana, but it's a fat taunt regardless.
seems not :(
hello kakamaemae. do you still play this deck ?
I have been playing a similar deck with ramp\watchers but without the cards that can be dead sometimes (nourish blood knight etc)
also using 1 ancient of war because it is too slow. great deck.
I did get to rank 3 quite fast.
First 5 Matchups:
Won: Paladin (Rush), Druid (Some kind of Ramp), Rogue (ofc Miracle)
Lost: Warrior (Ctrl), Priest
I think its a nice deck, but for me its really strange to play.
Indeed it takes time to get used to. The deck is as good as other druid decks. The difference is it can sometimes be slower and sometimes be better because of the watchers makes the difference. For example, getting watchers early you will have a better start then what other druid decks usually get. But drawing watchers when u don't have cards to combo it slows you down a little bit but not too far behind. It is really fun deck to play and I would consider it to be a competitive one also. It is a bit unfavored against Priest but luckily their isn't so many atm.
about two days ago...went on a streak of 11 wins with this...now i think its too slow...too much luck based.
Yes it happens which is why I am making more versions of the watchers. Some days it will be slow. I am currently testing out 3 types of the deck finding out which one works the best.
It wouldn't be a bad replacement if you like. But this deck is already heavy on 2 mana cards and needs more mid game cards. I will be posting a 2nd version of this deck which has more 3 and 4 mana cards to make it flow with the curve better :).
Hello I can prob make a video of the deck in play. But if anyone wants too, feel free. I will need some time haha.
I don't have Cenarius, any semi decent replacement for him? I do have enough dust to craft him though, would you recommend it?
If you have Ysera, then I would use her for replacement. If you are going to main druid decks then I would recommend crafting him because most druids uses Cenarius anyways. If you dont have Ysera, then add any card you feel comfortable with like Ragnaros or Cairne Bloodhoof or some more 4 mana cards like yeti.
Yes Nourish can be slow sometimes but I just hope to draw it late game and it becomes really good and gets you to stay ahead. Missing that Ancient of Lore is pretty important so get that extra 1!!!. But if you need to replace it, then I would recommend another Azure Drake for more card Draws if you need it. Otherwise it can be anything above 4 Mana imo like Yeti.
My faith on the Druid class has been restored. Most stable Druid build I run atm.. This deck should be renamed as " Watchers on the Ramp". :D
Awsome!, I might consider changing it to that name xD
This deck gets absolutly mauled by handlock of which every 3rd deck on ladder is. plays into all their strengths.
Win against handlocks most of the time. Replace blood knight with BGH and play it smart you should be fine. There isn't any difference between other druid decks against handlocks. From being rank 3 I don't run into many here and seems to be a lot less of them this season.
I love this deck, i win against all aggro decks, now climbing like a beast.
Thank you
Do you mind leaving a change log somewhere? It kind of bugs me that I can see you updated but I don't know what it was that you did. Maybe at the top?