Dream of Medivh [Even Druid]
- Last updated May 27, 2019 (RoS Rogue Nerfs)
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Wild
- 13 Minions
- 17 Spells
- Deck Type: Ranked Deck
- Deck Archetype: Ramp Druid
- Crafting Cost: 9200
- Dust Needed: Loading Collection
- Created: 9/3/2016 (Karazhan)
- RavenSunHP
- Registered User
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- 11
- 36
- 204
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Battle Tag:
N/A
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Region:
EU
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Total Deck Rating
302
"The sleeper has awakened"
Foreword
Versatility has always been the very core of the Druid class, and I think this deck is a great expression of that concept.
Indeed, I am particularly proud of this deck because it has an efficient mix of Ramp and Card Draw system, together with solid Choose One options.
IMPORTANT: This is an old homebrew Ramp deck, that i keep twisting in WILD. Updated now to an Even setup. This is NOT a meta-breaker deck and is not meant to be, but plenty viable for laddering, and can actually counter some of the top dogs in the meta.
This is basically a Midrange deck, now with a Tempo focus with the Even setup.
A secondary attribute of this deck is the surprise factor: nobody expects an Even Druid (so far), so they will hardly have any idea of your game plan.
Key Cards
Wild Growth: your basic ramp card. If you are already high on mana, keep it as a card draw after turn 10 (it gives you Excess Mana).RIP Wild Growth, you will be missed. The decks still holds 4 very efficient ramp cards, so ramping is still a solid option.- Darnassus Aspirant: great board presence, that can lead to a subtle but insane ramp advantage the more she stays alive.
- Mire Keeper: incredibly versatile card. It chains perfectly with the two previous cards. To be used mainly as ramp, unless threatened by a large board.
- Medivh, the Guardian is the final key card of this deck, since its inception. It synergises very well with a lot of spells in the deck, acting as lategame steam and Tempo swings. The ramp engine of the deck helps at getting him out early.
Cards Explanation and Synergies
- Genn Greymane: other than being a cool guy, the Even setup allows for continuous pinging, good for board dominance against Aggro.
- Savage Combatant: new MVP of the Even setup. Incredibly strong card in an Even deck. Insane Tempo.
- Fandral Staghelm: do I really need to say anything? Well, this is a ramp deck, so you have plenty of mana as to use Fandral greedily in a good combo. But you can dare to play him on curve against Aggro, or when you know that he's safe for the next turn.
- Shellshifter for versatility. It can basically turn either into an anti-Aggro or anti-Control card. Great at stabilising the board, especially after ramp.
- Branching Paths: this card has always been OP and there is no need to explain it. It offers emergency draw and armor, but it turns into a lethal if you use it as a buff. Either way, this card is a major wincondition.
- Spreading Plague: huge defensive tool, and insane Tempo swing. Synergy with Medivh and Branching Paths.
- Starfire: good removal with a built-in card draw. Its high cost is particularly affordable in a ramp deck. Synergy with Medivh. Notice that it can go to face, and nobody expects you to have such an apparently slow card in your deck.
- Ultimate Infestation your Starfire on steroids.
Mulligan
ALWAYS keep Darnassus Aspirant.
More in general, your priority is to curve out, so it is wise to keep at least one 2-drop. Definitely Replace anything that costs (6) or more. Additionally, you should consider:
- Mire Keeper if you already have a Darnassus Aspirant and/or if you are against Control.
- protect Darnassus Aspirant with a taunt, such as Druid of the Swarm.
- absolutely keep Acidic Swamp Ooze against any Weapon classes, including Warrior, Rogue, Paladin, Hunter, Shaman.
Strategy
- Ramp & Curve during the early game (notice that many cards are multipurpose, so you can choose for the best path every time).
- Don't worry if you can't ramp early. Play on Tempo, control the board with pings.
- Use Fandral Staghelm wisely. On curve only if safe enough, or to buy vital time against Aggro.
- Use Swipe carefully against aggro, don't rush. It is often worth to ping with hero power for a few turns and let your opponent to build some board that can be fully cleared with a swipe.
- Similarly for Spreading Plague: don't rush it, wait for your opponent to go wide, as much as possible while staying safe.
- Keep your health far from opponent's lethal burst with taunts and armor.
- At this point you should have either repelled a good amount of your opponent's efforts, and/or you have ramped up quite well. Or, your opponent has been more conservative than you. In any case, TIME TO PRESS ON.
- ALWAYS check for lethal: very often, while playing on Tempo, you are so busy to trade that sometimes you are in reach to finish off your opponent, but you don't realise it.
Remember that many of your defensive cards are also good as burst/finishers: Starfire, Swipe (these two together account for 18 damage total already), Ultimate Infestation, and Branching Paths.
Options
- - Druid of the Saber => Golakka Crawler. This option is necessary in case Pirates become popular (mainly Pirate Warrior, Odd Rogue, Kingsbane Rogue). Otherwise, the Druid is just more versatile, so it's better in general. Plated Beetle could be a fine compromise.
- - Medivh, the Guardian => + The Lich King. Better against Aggro/Midrange, worse against Control/Combo.
- - Shellshifter => + Saronite Chain Gang.
This helps with board buff, and sometimes with defense too, but in my experience the turtle's flexibility is just great. - Moonglade Portal used to be a key card as well, but in time, it grew obsolete, now even more, with the demise of Wild Growth. You can still try it as a one-of.
Replacements
- Medivh, the Guardian > Tending Tauren. Doing so makes you slightly more aggressive, but it gives you much less lategame value. Also, you carve out half of the soul of the deck...
- Fandral Staghelm > Tending Tauren. This one is a solid replacement, just worse for early game purposes against Aggro.
For new players - this is an old deck and has no chance in hell to work. OP added two cards and "updated" his deck to stay in the recent patch. Ignore and move on.
In case you didn't notice, this is a WILD deck. New players don't play Wild.
I added two cards because they fit the original Ramp archetype of the deck, and this is how i am using it now.
Next time, learn to read the title, and at least have the decency to ask. Keep your BS for yourself, thank you.
Well aware it says wild. :) it’s still click bait. Don’t get mad because I called you out on it.
Sure, this is clickbait and your post is bullsh1t. :)
This just doesn't work anymore...
Updated for the new Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion.
Created an account just to upvote this deck! Made some changes to it that I found better. Still a really fun deck though!
Here is my version of the deck:
Oh I forgot about this deck! Thanks for updating it, and I plan on playing it again :)
Yogg is quite impossible to sub,in his role of (unreliable) emergency button.
Depending on the meta you are facing, you could go for one more ancient of war, or starfall, or sylvanas.
The quote is correct as i wrote it. I took it from druid of the claw in warcraft 3
This deck is strong enough WITHOUT Yogg: most of your victories will happen without him being played. However, a small, yet relevant percentage of wins happen thanks to Yogg intervention in clearing an overwhelming board.
That's why extensive testing is needed about its chances of clearing the board BEFORE it kills itself.
If chances are high, the deck can stay untouched. If Yogg is too unreliable as board clear, I'll see for a plan B.
My bet for now is that Yogg can stay in this deck. Not as reliable as before the nerf, but hopefully good enough for the role I assigned him here (board clear).
Hey RavenSun,
I like the concept of the deck, but I wasn`t happy with every card you have put in so I have changed the deck quite a bit and the results so far are pretty, pretty good (4-0, kicking ZooLock, double shamans and a Tempo Mage). Maybe you want to check out some of the changes I did and alter your deck a bit to improve the performance?! You got my upvote anyway, so don`t worry! :D
Here are two of the games I played today: VOD Ramp Portal druid
Best picks so far with the Moonglade Portal are Sylvannas Windrunner and a Sunwalker, but the rest was also decent as well. Can't complain at all :)
Youtube-player
Thank you for your feedback! I am glad to see the deck do its job in proper hands.
I see you are playing a version that differs from my Yogg deck just by 3 cards, which, however relevant, shouldn't make that much of a difference. Anyway i'll try your setup as soon as i can get my hand on raven idol.
Let me know if you can reach even higher ranks!
Oh, wow I didn`t see the second deck at the bottom. So we are thinking in the same direction indeed. The Starfall for the Nourish might be a decent swap in the 5 mana spot if there are too many flood decks on the ladder. Might do the trick against Shaman and ZooLock especially, so I might test that one as well.
I've been trying to get this to work this season, and sure enough moonglade portal and atiesh is just so much value but can't get a positive winrate. I have been running it with Aviana + innervate as another late game huge tempo swing. The problem is that any controllish deck with enough board clears to survive the current meta dominates this deck because they only need 2-3 board clears and the deck loses. In a meta where your opponent isn't likely to catch up to your 20+ mana value play, I think this deck would be great. But the problem is in this meta even if you wipe your opponents board and have medivh + 2 6 drops, you are still likely to get burst down by miracle rogue, discolock or Mid-aggro shaman, and warrior has the removal to counteract your tempo plays. I honestly think its a working deck archetype, but it works well on the other tier 2 and 3 decks more than the tier 1 decks.
I'm personally having some winstreaks, but I avow I am not on high ranks so far.
Anyway, you pointed out real problems.
This deck is vulnerable to both zoo and paradoxically to lategame burst. Also Mage can be a problem, especially with antonidas.
While solution for aggro can be found, at least on an average favorable mulligan + card draw, and possibly with the inclusion of more taunts, lategame burst counter is hard to find and you can only hope to erode their hp throughout the whole game, so that you can easily finish them off before they reach their burst.
This is the reason why I am actually running the Yogg-Saron, Hope's End version of the deck, so that I have a jolly for burst myself, which the deck would lack because it provides strong late cards, but never burst otherwise (unless you were lucky enough to have Starfires and Swipes spared in hand).
Finally, this deck was never meant to be top tier, just a new kind of ramp and an affordable, yet effective control deck, even for laddering. And I think it's particularly good at that. :)
btw...i've just beaten a legendary-backed Control Warrior, who used double Brawl with the best possible result to him.
Without Yogg. And I am no legendary player. ;)
Again, the deck might not be top tier, but it's surely competitive.
I've beaten my share of golden hero portraits with it to, including warrior. I winstreaked from rank 17 up to rank 12, but then fell back to rank 17. I guess the way I see it is that if both decks get their ideal draw, this deck wins because its tempo rush is just so huge. But if both decks have less than ideal draws, then this deck suffers considerably more than other decks do, so it ends up losing to decks that have heavy consistency (either early game aggro or super-late game combo decks like we identified) more often than it wins. But it preys upon midrange decks well by having a bigger tempo rush than those mid-range decks can deal with it. That's why I said I think its good, but could be great in a more favorable meta.
I especially like that it has a decent shot to win even unfavorable matchups; don't think I don't like the deck, I do and I'm really trying to get it to work. But I'm notoriously unlucky, so I end up playing the less-than-ideal draws more often than not and that may explain why i feel the inconsistency more.
Why are we running an Ironbark Protector? Ancient of War has a better stat distribution and costs 1 less mana. If you just want the big taunt and were running Barnes I could maybe see why, but even then Bog Creeper is probably better.
because ironbark also has 8 attack, and at that point of the game you also want some serious threat, not just big taunts.
Sure Bog Creeper might work because at least it costs less mana, but I would not run 2 ancients.
When it comes to taunts Health > attack. If you want an 8 mana threat run Ragnaros the Firelord it is much more threatening.