Beginner Druid Deck List Guide & Tips 2017

Welcome to our Beginner Druid Deck List Guide! If you are just starting out in Hearthstone this guide will help you learn how-to build and play this completely free Druid deck list. The guide includes card explanations, mulligans, play strategy, and future card replacements/substitutions.

Find More Beginner Decks: Beginner’s Hearthstone Decks for Every Class

Beginner Druid Deck Overview

Druid is known for its ability to accelerate its mana pool with cards like Innervate and Wild Growth. This allows the class to produce stronger minions faster, however, the class also struggles with removing large minions due to a lack of hard removal. Wide boards can also be problematic unless they play directly into Swipe. These weaknesses have not held down the class, and even through nerfs to Innervate, Druid has continued to stay in the top tier for a long time.

Don’t understand some of the terms in this guide? Check out our Hearthstone Terms & Glossary!

Card Choices

These card choices are broken down into two sections: Class and Neutrals.

Druid Cards

Innervate – Once upon a time this might have been the most powerful card in the game! Those days are gone now that it has been nerfed, but you can still use it effectively as a way to accelerate minions onto the board.

Claw – Cheap early game removal, but something you’ll want to get rid of pretty quickly. Wrath would be a good replacement.

Mark of the Wild – Solid for protecting your face or getting a value trade. Buffs are usually best when you can use them right away, but sometimes it’s worth just playing if you have no other options.

Wild Growth – An absolutely core card to the Druid’s class identity. Wild Growth is super powerful and allows you to accelerate your mana pool giving you access to cards you wouldn’t be able to play otherwise. This isn’t listed on the card, but if you play it on turn 10 you get a 0-mana draw a card spell called Excess Mana. This means you will generally want to hold onto it in the late game and use it for the card draw.

Swipe – Another very well-known and often used Druid card. Swipe is great for removing wide boards, removing a larger minion, or even finishing off your opponent. One of the problems for Swipe is that if your opponent has played Hearthstone at all they will generally always try to play around it.

Starfire – Very slow card, but it cycles and somewhat compensates for Druid’s lack of ability to remove minions. This also can provide you reach to grab lethal at times. We’re only running 1 because it can be a dead card in a lot of circumstances.

Ironbark Protector – Big and powerful taunt that can roadblock your opponent from doing anything and demands an immediate answer. This card is very slow, however, and if it gets answered by cheap removal you will have just wasted your turn and gotten very little out of it.

Neutral Cards

Acidic Swamp Ooze – Decent stats and an ability that is very relevant against certain classes. It’s generally best not to be too greedy with the effect unless you know for sure they are going to play a weapon. It’s almost always better to play something rather than wait and hope to destroy a weapon. Be more conservative with this card against Warrior.

Bloodfen Raptor – Mostly just a body for stats and a cheap cost.

Razorfen Hunter – A pretty bad overall card, but spreading the stats out across minions can be valuable.

Shattered Sun Cleric – Solid minion that has a strong buff attached to it. While it’s nice to get the buff, it’s usually best to just play the minion on the board rather than hope for a best case scenario.

Chillwind Yeti – One of the best basic minions. 5-health is very important and can trade and survive against most minions of the same cost or below. The card saw some really early play in meta decks in the beginning of ranked play, but is just purely outclassed by better minions now.

Gnomish Inventor – We need a bit of card draw because cards like Backstab are great but do tend to force you to cycle through cards fairly quickly.

Sen'jin Shieldmasta – A good way to stop early aggression with a pretty decent stat line for the cost.

Boulderfist Ogre – This is essentially the 6-drop version of Chillwind Yeti. 7-health is very hard to remove with a single card unless it’s premium removal like Hex or Polymorph is used.

Beginner Druid Deck Mulligan Advice and Strategy

Wild Growth is hands down the best card you could possibly have in your hand (I wouldn’t keep both). You want to accelerate your mana pool as quickly as possible to start getting to play some of your more powerful minions. You’ll want to keep your other 2-drop minions, but don’t keep Mark of the Wild because it really doesn’t do a whole lot unless you can guarantee it landing on a minion. Innervate is a tricky card to keep, it was a pretty easy keep before it was nerfed, but now you’ll only want to keep it if you have a need to fill out your curve. For example, if you have a 2-drop and a 4-drop and you are going first then you’d keep all three because the Innervate will fill the hole in your curve.

Keep your 2-drops, and if you get one in the opening mulligan you can look to keep a 3-drop. If you are going second then you can consider keeping a 4-drop if you already have a 2-drop.

• Always Keep: Wild Growth, Acidic Swamp Ooze, and Bloodfen Raptor
• Keep w/2-drop: Shattered Sun Cleric and Razorfen Hunter
• Keep w/2-3 drop Curve or 2-Drop & The Coin: Chillwind Yeti, Sen'jin Shieldmasta, and Innervate if you have a hole in your curve and you aren’t going second.

Play Strategy

You really want to start out with Wild Growth. Having an extra mana crystal than your opponent is a huge advantage, and since Druid isn’t great removing minions it has to use the board to do so. Having higher level minions makes this a whole lot easier.

Be pretty proactive with Claw, but if you can play a minion that challenges the opposing player’s board it is usually better to be proactive than reactive. Whatever you do don’t use this just to go face, this card is for trading into a minion or maybe grabbing lethal in the late game. You can increase the attack of this by using your hero power which will give you +1 more attack. Also, remember that the attack will go away at the end of your turn so you don’t get to carry it over (the armor carries over).

Generally you’ll want to use Mark of the Wild on a minion that can attack on the same turn. Whether this is attacking the face or making a trade. You would prefer not to get caught in a situation where you play Mark of the Wild on the minion, pass the turn, and then have the minion get removed or silenced essentially wasting the card completely.

Use that Innervate to fill in your curve, and try not to be super greedy with it. The longer the game goes on the less valuable the card gets. It still has worth in the late game and could allow you to play something extra, but it’s generally best to use it earlier.

Card Replacements and Substitutions

I’m going to list cards that you should start to look to replace to stick with the theme of this deck which is a Ramp Druid. You should start to look towards budget decks and build towards them once you start to acquire cards. Once you’ve built a budget deck, you can then start to build towards a meta deck.

Find Budget Decks: Hearthstone Budget Decks for Every Class

Get Wrath into this deck as soon as you can. The card sees play in most Druid decks, it’s very versatile and can help draw you cards and remove minions.

Druid of the Claw doesn’t see as much play as it once did, but is significantly better than Sen'jin Shieldmasta and should be added as soon as you get it.

Jade Blossom is another solid Wild Growth style ramp card that you can add to the deck. This isn’t a jade deck, but you can slowly head in that direction if that’s the budget or meta deck you are looking to create. You can swap out Razorfen and Shattered Sun Cleric for these, you are mostly looking to skip your 3-drop anyway.

Bonemare fits in most budget decks, so stick that in for Stormwind Champion the first chance you get.

Once you’ve gotten a few of these upgrades it’s time to start looking into those budget decks listed above! Good luck out there on the ladder.