Spiteful Druid Deck List Guide – Boomsday – August 2018

Spiteful Druid Mulligan Strategy & Guide

VS Everything

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Prince Keleseth – When looking at the stats for the deck, keeping Keleseth in your opening hand is one of the highest spikes in percent win-rate. If played on curve, almost every minion you play from then on will be over-statted, giving you a significant edge throughout the game.

VS Fast Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Fire Fly – An extremely versitile minion. On turn 1 it’s a fine play, and on turn 2 it’s almost like having an on-curve minion if you wiff Keleseth. The 1/2 body trades well with popular early minions, such as Silver Hand Recruits.
• Crypt Lord and Tar Creeper – Super efficient Taunts for the mana, Creeper will often trade with two or more minions and Crypt Lord keeps getting bigger as the game goes on. If you don’t have a 1-mana card going first there is some merit to throwing all your 3-mana cards back. The tempo loss of not playing a minion the first two turns (you won’t have Keleseth on curve most games) can be hard to come back from.
• Druid of the Scythe – The only card from Witchwood that made it into the deck. The versatility of this card is pretty valuable. If your opponent has a bunch of small minions then it trades well in its Taunt form, but it can also remove a lot of bigger minions in its Rush form.

Lower Priority (Keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Glacial Shard – Glacial Shard is a decent turn 1 play going second. You can freeze an opponent’s minion and then trade into whatever you want next turn pretty reliably. Glacial Shard does nothing worth doing turn 1 if you go first though.
• Mindbreaker – Odd/even decks (such as Odd Hunter and Odd or Even Paladin) cripple their mana curve to improve their Hero Power, and Mindbreaker removes that benefit. Not only is turning off an upgraded Hero Power strong, but the 2/5 body trades very well with popular early minions. If your opponent is playing Hunter or Paladin, this is a good keep.
• Spiteful Summoner – Your goal is still to play Spiteful Summoner as soon as possible, but against aggressive decks you really need to be playing cards before turn 6. If you have any optimal early game play it’s great to keep Spiteful Summoner in your opening hand.

VS Slow Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Spiteful Summoner – With the exception of Prince Keleseth, there’s nothing you want to see more in your opening hand against control than this card. Against aggro it can be a very risky keep, but against control you’re very likely to survive long enough to play it.
• Greedy Sprite – This deck has a relatively unimpressive early game, so skipping it and going straight to its powerful mid-game is really strong. Your opponent will often realize this and avoid killing it to keep you from your Spiteful turn, which lets you get a bunch of damage in.

Spiteful Druid Win Rates

Winrate stats are currently unavailable for this deck at the moment!

Spiteful Druid Play Strategy

Most of the power in this deck lies with Spiteful Summoner and Prince Keleseth, so you’re looking to play those cards as soon as possible against most things. Up until turn 6, you’re trying to keep control of the board and maintain as much tempo as possible. If you’re ahead on turn 6 your Spiteful Summoner is a lot more likely to stick something big, and this will often win you the game outright. If not, you can out-value your opponent with Ultimate Infestation and finish your opponent off with a barrage of smaller minions.

VS Aggro Decks

Against aggro you just have to stay alive until your opponent can’t keep up with you anymore. This list is filled with Taunt minions to protect your life total, and your early minions trade well with most early aggro boards. If your opponent is playing a pure aggro deck like Paladin than your minions eventually become too large for them to trade into efficiently. If you’ve been able to keep your life total out of burst range then you can take over the game from here. Try to keep your Taunt minions alive, in these matchups they are protecting your life, not your other minions.

Keeping your opponent’s Silver Hand Recruits off the board is more important than it’s been in a while. Odd Paladin has started running Level Up!, which can be devastating if they have any Recruits left from last turn. This deck has a lot of low attack, high health minions; use them to remove the Recruits so your opponent is forced to Level Up! a board that can’t attack right away.

There are so many Taunts in the deck that it doesn’t have too much issue with Odd Hunter. Hunter doesn’t have the powerhouse odd-costing cards that Paladin does and relies heavily on its Hero Power and Kill Command to close the game out. If you get past the early game without taking too much minion damage this match can be pretty easy, especially if you draw Malfurion the Pestilent. Mindbreaker can really shut them out of the game, especially if you can keep it protected behind a Taunt minion.

VS Control Decks

Against control you are the aggressor. Keep Spiteful Summoner in your opening hand and play it as soon as you can. Think about what removal your opponent is likely to have and do your best not to play into it. Don’t be afraid to play Ultimate Infestation if it will cause you to overdraw a little. By that point in the game, this deck cares very little about which specific cards it has in hand, and more that it has multiple things to play. Unlike other variants of Druid running the card, this deck has absolutely no other draw cards in it, so you can often play both Infestations without fatiguing.

Cube Warlock is the premier control deck right now. Silencing Possessed Lackey is important, as doing so slows the Cube-lock down significantly. If you silence the Voidlord that the Lackey summons they can just make more with Carnivorous Cube and Dark Pact. Mind Control Tech can be handy in this matchup if they have a desirable minion out alongside a Voidlord. Popping this Voidlord puts 3 Voidwalkers on the field which, if they have another minion, activates MCT’s battlecry, and with a little luck you can gain some momentum this way. This deck typically doesn’t play Siphon Soul so once you play your Spiteful Summoner you can often close the game out from there.

Spiteful Druid Card Substitutions

This deck runs a lot of filler cards, so there’s a lot of room for substitution. In general you want your minions to be on the cheaper side because you want to have tempo leading into your Spiteful Summoner turn, but you could also fit in some late game cards. Spiteful Summoner and Ultimate Infestation are the only mandatory cards in the deck.

• Dire Mole, Worgen Infiltrator or Argent Squire – I do feel like deck could be low on 1-drops. Especially with the popularity of token decks right now its pretty important to have something to play turn 1. Argent Squire and Dire Mole can often trade a couple times. Worgen Infiltrator is very likely to be around until the next turn and can trade into slightly higher health cards like Knife Juggler. Adding too many can be bad, but a playset of whichever you like the best might be a good idea.
• Vicious Fledgling – With the nerf to Innervate it isn’t quite as easy to steal games with “Flappy Bird”, but it can still be done. This deck runs a lot of Taunt minions, which Fledgling likes to hide behind.
• Ironbeak Owl – Just about everything in Cube Warlock needs to be silenced, and most of the other popular decks have at least a few prime silence targets. Ironbeak Owl is pretty pathetic stat-wise but with how weak minions are right now it’s not that bad. I would really only add this if you play against Cube Warlock a lot.
• Fire Plume Phoenix and Blazecaller – Along with Fire Fly this makes a pretty decent Elemental package. Much like Firelands Portal, Blazecaller can remove a decent minion while putting a significant threat on the board. I wouldn’t craft these for this deck, but if you have them you could try them out.
• Bonemare – After the nerf it really isn’t that great but it isn’t awful. It competes with The Lich King‘s spot now, so it’s mostly a budget suggestion.
• Acidic Swamp Ooze and/or Harrison Jones– No Keleseth? No Problem. There are a lot of targets for weapon removal like Acidic Swamp Ooze right now, and since this is a deck full of techs, it’s a suitable (but not optimal) replacement. If you have Keleseth but still want to ruin your opponent’s weapons than Harrison Jones and Gluttonous Ooze are good choices.
• The Lich King – Big, powerful Taunt minion that gives the deck a lot of value. Ultimate Infestation does a good job of keeping this deck from running out of steam, but The Lich King can help with that as well if UI isn’t enough for you.