Hearthpwn

Update: Rise of shadows

Archmage Vargoth and hecklebot is a nice upgrade to oaken summons.

It's pretty disgusting when it pulls archmage and he re-casts oaken summons giving you a scary 2/6 with a 3/8 taunt and 12 armor for 4 mana and thins your deck by 2 cards.  Broke back high roll.

Update:post 2019 wild tournament 

Turns out Jade druid is still good with the wild growth and nurish nerfs (Just don't run wild growth!!!).

Match up's:

Strong against: 

aggro decks (murlock/pirate paladin, kele rogue, zoo lock, secret mage, hunter, aggro druid)

raza/anduin priest - try to armor as much as possible to get out of velens/radiant otk combos, try to maintain 50 total hp after raza anduin.  Usually best to gain armor with branching paths instead of draw cards except if your hand is dry in early game.

Weak against:

Cube lock - cube lock has way too much value and burst potential with gul'dan and doomguard cube

Big priest - before the expansion this match up would actually be fine and maybe even favored for the druid but the new spell stone is too much of a tempo swing

Big spell priest - slightly unfavored but very winnable

Mill rogue - this deck is slow to put on big pressure and naturally has an insane amount of card draw.

otk mage - new deck list is much stronger against aggro with oaken summons/ironwood golem but that makes the jade ramp even slower dropping jade spirit and mire keeper making this bad match up even worse.

Thankfully half the bad match ups rarely see play at the higher ranks (above rank 5).  Main concearn is cube lock followed by big priest.  Mill rogue and otk mage has such polar match up's that top players tend to avoid playing those decks competitively, especially on ladder.  Big spell priest is fairly rare and not a terrible match up.

 

Mulligan:

always keep wild growth and jade blossom, always keep one and only one copy of jade idol especially going first.  If you have an early ramp (wildgrowth or jade blossom) keep nurish.

always keep UI with 2 ramp cards, generally keep UI with 1 ramp card vs control

always keep oaken summons, NEVER keep ironwood golem or fandral

vs aggro (except secret mage) keep spell stone

plan your turns and count your mana, work your way from wild growth and jade blossom up in deciding what higher mana cards to keep when you have those two card already.

 

 

Strategy/tips:

Always play proactive, not reactive, only remove high priority minions.

Try to ramp mana and jade size instead of play removal game when reasonable.

Don't coin wildgrowth unless you have a 3 mana play (jade blossom).  The coin is really valuable don't waste it playing a ramp card and have no follow up the next turn.  Just wait till the next turn to play your ramp card and you'll have an extra coin.

NEVER shuffle the first copy (unless you draw it late game with auctioneer and extra mana), 2 main reasons: 

2 main reasons: 

1. you need to ramp jade size to fight for board

2. you don't want to draw jade idols till very late in the game, they are bad cards early and you would much rather draw other cards.

Try to avoid shuffling 2nd copy early.  Often times better to delay because you don't want to dilute your deck/draws.  Never shuffle at all vs aggro, jade ramp and body is almost always better.

Almost always right to ramp with first nurish on turn 5/6 even if you don't have UI in hand.

Don't pass the turn after playing UI and drawing with nourish until you see the cards, you might draw arcane tyrant.

All three optionns from branching paths can be useful, take your time and chose carefuly.  Don't forget that armor gain buffs spell stone and sometimes savage roar or turning ur plagues into senjin shield masters is the way to go.  In the mirror match up you'll probably want to primariy draw cards.