by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Some claim Hearthstone is Pay to Win. We believe that’s simply not true. With a little bit of practice and understanding of game mechanics you can easily find success with cheaply made decks. Each Monday we’ll give you a budget deck that you can easily craft with little to no time/effort/gold. Some of these will help you get up in the ranks early on, some may even get you to legendary. Make sure you check all our past budget decks if this one is not to your liking.

Druid decks are really the toughest to do a budget deck on, and as a result have a tendency to be the most expensive budget decks. So while past decks have been around 1,000 dust to craft or less, this deck is going to be closer to the 3k mark. The biggest reason for this is because of what most Druid decks in the current meta depend on – Keeper of the Grove x2 (rare), Force of Nature (normally 1 or 2 – epic), and Ancient of Lore x2 (epic).  Needless to say if you want to play a Druid deck these are 3 cards on your must craft list to begin with. As far as the neutral cards here, there is nothing out of the ordinary to craft as these are cards you should be aiming for in general with the exception of Violet Teacher.

With that said, this is a VERY strong deck and could get you up to a high ranking. In fact, played be the right player this is a top tier deck that can get you to Legend rank.  Like all of our budget decks this also doesn’t use any legendary cards. In fact, adding a legendary card to this deck could potentially hinder how successful it is.

Let’s take a look at the deck:

Total Crafting Cost: 2,880 Dust

Midrange Budget Druid
Class: Druid

Cards sorted by Low Cost

Druid (18)

• Innervate x2
• Power of the Wild x2
• Wrath x2
• Savage Roar x2
• Swipe x2
• Keeper of the Grove x2
• Druid of the Claw x2
• Force of Nature x2
• Ancient of Lore x2

Neutral (12)

• Argent Squire x2
• Faerie Dragon x2
• Harvest Golem x2
• Violet Teacher x2
• Azure Drake x2
• Argent Commander x2

The Strategy

If you’ve ever played any kind of ramp/token druid then you should see very quickly how this deck is played. On a more aggressive match-up against something like Warlock Zoo you want to try and mulligan to have a wrath, Swipe, or even Keeper of the Grove in your hand early on. For more control match-ups it’s best to hold on to Violet Teacher. Of course, having an innervate early on is never a bad thing either, especially if you can save it for a turn 3 Druid of the Claw or a turn 5 Ancient of Lore.

As far as how to play this deck, the whole idea is to keep board control throughout the game. Do enough damage to get your opponent around 14 health and then blast them turn 9 with a Force of Nature/Savage Roar combo which guarantees at least 14 points of damage and more if you have other minions on the board. Ideally you want to save Force of Nature/Savage Roar for those finishing moves rather than playing them, but if you find yourself in a bad situation it’s not a terrible idea to use it for board control. Just realize that if you do, it puts you in a bad position that could be hard to come back from.

Violet Teacher has a very strong synergy with Power of the Wild and Savage Roar as well if you have tough time digging for the Force of Nature. Your Ancient of Lore should only really be used to draw 2 cards and never for health unless it’s possible you’re going to die next turn without the extra 5 health.

The deck plays very much like some other decks in the meta where you control the board and make smart plays to gain card advantage until you can do your burst damage at the end to win the game.

Try out this deck and let us know in the comments how it worked out for you!