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Introduction
[DKMR]BorN is back to bring you DKMR’s updated Watcher Druid. Watcher Druid has always been a great deck, but hasn’t been dominating the meta as much as it was several weeks ago. We at DKMR revisited the deck and made some much needed tweaks. We have been having a lot of success with this new build and would like to share it with you; along with some tips on how to mulligan. Link to the original article.
Modifications
Taking a look at the decklist, you can see the new inclusions: Loot Hoarder and Blood Knight. A lot of the powerful decks in the current meta revolve around cycling through the deck to draw answers as well as a lethal combo: Miracle Rogue, Warrior Control, Warlocks, etc. Although it does not have as much, Watcher Druid does have some draw power with its Ancient of Lore, Bloodmage Thalnos, and Wrath.
However, sometimes the draw option on a few of these cards is not used, limiting the hero’s draw power. To avoid this problem and to create more tempo, we added Loot Hoarders. This minion gives us the ability to start cycling through our deck early on to get that Force of Nature plus Savage Roar combo; and at the same time, get a body on the board.
The other card we are utilizing in the deck is Blood Knight, replacing Harvest Golem. There is an insane amount of Divine Shield minions being played right now; whether it’s Argent Squire, Scarlet Crusader, Sunwalker, or Argent Commander. Blood Knight is great addition to increase our board and steal away that pesky shield. Harvest Golem is still an all-around great card to use, but with all the decks that are using Divine Shield, an early 6/6 minion is easily achievable and hard to pass up.
Another card worth mentioning is Spellbreaker which was not normally seen in the old Watcher Druid decks, but is seeing more play in newer versions. Having Spellbreaker is not only another way to activate your Ancient Watcher, but allows you to use your Keeper of the Grove more freely with the additional silences.
Mulligans
Now that we’ve seen the new changes, we’re going to look at a mulligan against each hero with this deck, and see what should be kept and what we should throw back.
Mage
So we have an Ancient of Lore, Loot Hoarder, and Ancient Watcher. We’re going to want to throw back the Ancient of Lore in favor of an early minion drop or removal spell. Ancient Watcher and Loot Hoarder are great for our early game and we’d rather have them now than draw into them later, so we’ll keep them.
Hunter
Going first against a Hunter; we have Spellbreaker, Wrath, and Sunfury Protector. We’re going to throw back the Spellbreaker because it doesn’t work well with our current hand and we want either early minions or removal spells against Hunter. The Wrath and Sunfury Protector are good turn 2 plays, but hopefully we’ll get an Ancient Watcher to use with the Sunfury Protector from the Spellbreaker we throw back.
Warrior
Here we are going second against a Warrior. We have a Wrath, Keeper of the Grove, Big Game Hunter, and Ancient of Lore. They are all good cards, but we should consider throwing some back in favor of an earlier minion drop to give us some tempo; we want to finish the Warrior quickly. Let’s keep the Wrath, it will give us card draw and removal, and will help us if this turns out to be an Aggro Warrior. We could throw the keeper back, but we should consider keeping it since we have the Coin. We should throw back the Big Game Hunter and Ancient of Lore, since they’ll be used later in the game and we can afford to let ourselves draw into them. This way we have an activator for our Ancient Watcher ready.
Shaman
Once again we’re going first; we have a Loot Hoarder, Ancient Watcher, and Keeper of the Grove. The only way this hand could get better is if we had the Coin and an Innervate to get our Watcher activated on turn 2! All in all, this is a solid hand, we have a turn two Loot Hoarder, turn three Ancient Watcher, and silence the Watcher turn four with the Keeper of the Grove for a lot of damage real early against a class that typically takes some time to get going.
Druid
Time for the mirror match; we’re going second and have a Wrath, Ancient of Lore, Chillwind Yeti, and Swipe. Wrath is always a great card in almost every matchup, so let’s keep that. Ancient of Lore is not affective early game, we can draw into later so we’re going to toss that back, as well as the Swipe. The reason behind our decision is because we have the Coin and Chillwind Yeti and if we can pick up an Innervate, we can play the yeti on turn one. Also, we don’t have a minion to play cheaper than the yeti, so we could really use something like a Loot Hoarder.
Priest
Our starting hand now consists of Sunfury Protector, Bloodmage Thalnos, Chillwind Yeti, and Big Game Hunter. We definitely want to toss away the Big Game Hunter since it won’t be used until late game. We could keep the rest of the hand or toss back the Bloodmage Thalnos. It depends if you feel like you would rather have something else early like Wrath, or you want to get the draw power from it right away to start cycling. We have the turn two Sunfury Protector, so we already have a play, but it could be used turn three if we choose to keep it. In the end, it’s fine either way.
Rogue
Now up against Rogue, we have a Keeper of the Grove, Ancient of Lore, Swipe, and Wrath. We could use a 2-drop minion, as well as an Ancient Watcher to pair with the Keeper of the Grove. We could keep the Swipe in order to kill any non-stealth Gadgetzan Auctioneer if this happens to be a Miracle Rogue, and Wrath will help deal with SI:7 Agent. However, in order to have the best chance to win, we’ll want to curve out well, so we’re going to throw away everything except for the Wrath.
Paladin
Our hand here against a Paladin is a Blood Knight, Swipe, and Ancient of Lore. Paladins almost always have a Divine Shield minion, so Blood Knight is a great card to have at the ready here. Swipe and Ancient of Lore won’t help us early on, so we’ll throw them back in favor of an early minion to play. Paladin is tough, most people are running rush decks and we are not seeing a lot of control Paladin decks.
Warlock
It can be difficult to mulligan against a Warlock since we do not know if it will be a Handlock or Aggrolock; we’ll try to make our hand work for either. We have an Innervate, Keeper of the Grove, Ancient of Lore, and Spellbreaker. Innervate is always great to keep. Keeper of the Grove will help us silence Twilight Drakes against Handlock, and kill weak minions if it’s Aggrolock and since we have an Innervate we should definitely keep this for its flexibility. Ancient of Lore we won’t need early and we already have a silence so we can throw this back and the Spellbreaker as well. We really want a Big Game Hunter if it’s Handlock so let’s hope we get one back.
Conclusion
Watcher Druid is a great consistent deck to ladder with. We hope you enjoyed a look into this new variant and we are confident that you will have just as much success with this deck as we did. Make sure you create you deck on Hearthstats, to track you progress! Feel free to reach out to us with questions here, on Twitter, or over on our website. See you next time!
[DKMR]BorN streams most tournaments and weekdays, you can find him at http://www.twitch.tv/born_hs. You can find all of DKMR’s streamers at www.dontkickmyrobot.com with the days they stream!
Guide written by [DKMR]BorN
Discussions about this topic brought to you by Team [DKMR]
Decks to Watch Out For
In the current ever-changing meta, we’re seeing a lot of new interesting decks emerge. Players are doing a lot of experimenting and it seems like every day there’s a new deck. With that being said, here are this week’s decks to watch out for:
