Even Druid

Wild Hearthstone has thousands of cards, and a wide variety of possible decks. This incredible deck diversity is sometimes lost when only looking at the few decks common in the highest ranks. Wildest of Days is a series aiming to highlight a different off-meta deck each week with an in-depth guide into its strategy and gameplay. The decks are selected for having interesting synergies and using rarely seen cards.

Everyone knows Even Paladin, Warlock, and Shaman, but how about the other classes?

Even Druid is an aggressive deck that relies on getting board control and then using its minions to win. It can have some burst damage from cards that give your hero attack, but minion based board gameplay is the main gameplan of this deck. It has the potential for early game tempo snowballing with Razormane Battleguard, and later in the game Embiggen will make your smaller minions bigger threats. The deck has a decent amount of card draw and can last for a while into the midgame even if the early threats are removed. It can be aggressive against slower decks while playing defense with taunts against more aggressive decks to eventually take board control and win. The latest expansion has brought it Unending Swarm for a great refill and E.T.C., Band Manager who should have great odd cards Savage Roar, Loatheb, and Wildheart Guff.

Now, let's get into a guide on playing the deck. It's going to go through major overarching strategies to keep in mind, how to mulligan, gameplay tips on key synergies, and card choices.

Strategies

This is a tempo/Aggro deck that wins and loses on board contro. While it can generate a bit of burst damage, it's by far the most important to keep control of the board. Embiggen allows the deck to raise its curve during the game to become able to be like a Midrange deck and not run out of steam in the midgame.

Aggro - Use all your synergies in combination with each other to fight for the board. This includes Taunt, hero power, buff, and attack gain. You can snowball a Razormane Battleguard or Wickerclaw into an early win.

Midrange - Embiggen turns your 2 drops into buffed 3 drops, and a second one into even more buffed 4 drops. This turns your deck into a Midrange deck and you can win through sheer stat domination. Unending Swarm can lead to 7 resurrected 2-drops including a Wickerclaw protected by multiple taunts - E.T.C., Band Manager can then be used for Savage Roar lethal. You can also use him for Wildheart Guff for more refill potential.

This deck is good at getting on board early and fighting for board control, but decks with a lot of removal can outlast your minion waves. Decks that cheat out a ton of stats early can be tough to win against as well.

Mulligans

• Always keep Embiggen, keep both if you get them.

• Keep Aquatic Forms.

• If you have Razormane Battleguard, keep taunts and try to mulligan other non Embiggen cards to try to get more. The exception is mulligan Encumbered Pack Mule if you have another taunt in hand as well or if you don't but can mulligan at least 2 other cards.

• If you have neither Embiggen nor Razormane Battleguard in your starting hand, mulligan all of it. You really want one of those cards for the early game.

Overall, when you mulligan aggressively for Embiggen or Razormane Battleguard early game highrolls, you get at least one of these most of the time, and sometimes both. Even if you don't, mulliganning so aggressively rarely hurts you because you have a lot of 2 cost minions in the deck and will likely get a playable hand anyway.

Gameplay

The key to playing this deck well is balancing pushing face damage and controlling the board, as well as balancing tempo from your synergy cards vs waiting to get maximum value from them.

Below are gameplay tips regarding many of the synergies in this deck and how to use them effectively.

Generally play Embiggens as early as you can, it's a key card to improve the strength of your deck and cards like Encumbered Pack Mule and Blademaster Samuro will benefit extra from this buff.

Coining out Razormane Battleguard turn 1 or playing it turn 2 into a Taunt minion is a great play. The Taunt will help Razormane Battleguard survive more turns to tempo out more taunt minions for free.

Make sure to play Wickerclaw before you hero power, play Pounce, or attack with Park Panthers on any given turn so he can start getting buffed. Be aware the Savage Roar from E.T.C. buffs him as well.

You can almost always get a 2 drop (or another Aquatic Form or Embiggen) from Aquatic Form on turn 2 (or turn 1 with the coin), so you can safely play Aquatic Form on that turn. The exception is if you have used Embiggens, play Aquatic Form with 3 or 4 mana remaining depending on how many you've played.

Use your Taunt minions strategically to protect key minions like Wickerclaw and Park Panther.

Your only Battlecry is E.T.C., so Nerub'ar Weblord can be great vs opposing decks while not affecting your own deck so much.

Card Choices

This section is going to go through the main packages of cards in the deck. Each package has cards that help the deck with a specific goal. When playing the deck, it's useful to know what purposes each card serves and what other cards in the deck have synergy with it or help achieve the same purpose. This section might also be useful if you're interested in the reasoning for why each card was included in the deck.

Hero Attack Synergy

These cards have synergy with either benefitting from or giving your hero power attack. Something to note is that Wickerclaw gains attack from each source of hero attack damage. So in one turn, if you hero power, play Pounce, and attack with a Park Panther, Wickerclaw will gain 6 attack.

Taunt Synergy

Taunts can be cheated out with Razormane Battleguard for great tempo, and are good by themselves to protect key minions and against aggro. Encumbered Pack Mule gives 2 taunts to your hand when drawn which is extra fuel for Razormane Battleguard.

Other Good Cards

Aquatic Form is 0 mana discover a card from your deck. Moonlit Guidance can discover a buffed card or Embiggen which you then get a second copy of. Frenzied Felwing is good for this deck in general for more pressure and also can be a 0 mana 7/7 after 2 Embiggens. Nerub'ar Weblord disrupts opponent decks. Finally, Unending Swarm is a huge source of midgame board generation and E.T.C. used for Savage Roar, Loatheb, and Wildheart Guff has many uses for either finishing or having lategame draw power.

Even Druid is a flexible Aggro deck that can shift to midrange using Embiggen, has a board based playstyle, and has many different synergies to play around with. If you have a question or comment, or are wondering about a card substitution, post below.

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Looking for more decks? Look no further than the Wildest of Days tag to see more in this series.