Introduction
Hello ladies and gents! This was a guide requested by premium user Iros16. I decided it would be cool to take this request in because Midrange (Fast) Druid is the deck I have played the most in all my Hearthstone career, and although we had a lot of these guides in the past, they all seem to be quite outdated.
To top the whole “me wanting to write a Fast Druid guide” thing, I recently won a tournament using a Fast Druid deck in my composition. Just so you know, every deck I used in the composition was posted beforehand in Hearthstoneplayers, and in case you want to know which ones were the other ones:
https://hearthstoneplayers.com/decks/nuba-warrior/
https://hearthstoneplayers.com/decks/hybrid-paladin/
Well, let us start this deck guide!
Explaining How I built the Deck
After a lot of thinking, I came up with what I think is the perfectly balanced Fast Druid build. This list was posted a long time ago in this website, where I also made the same claim. Of course, different builds can pop up and perform better, but overall I like this build a lot because it seems like it has the highest odds spread around the whole metagame of winning a game.
Double wild-growth and double darnassus-aspirant make up the whole ramping process, innervate is something I would consider more of a uhh.. Tempo gain, than anything else.
The fact we add double Darnassus Aspirant means we have to drop some Midrange card, ok ok the deck becomes more consistent, but we need to add more draws to make up for the Mid-game loss, and that is where the azure-drakes come in.
emperor-thaurissan is the deck’s prime 6-drop, giving yet another way to boost tempo there simply is no better option to make the deck as consistent as it is.
Because of me wanting to make the deck as consistent as possible, and because the deck is already so good against Hunters, I don’t have any copy of living-roots in it. I believe the card to be a fine Tech, but I also think it makes the deck worse against both Midrange and Control decks, thus me not using any copy of it.
I am the kind of person that prefers consistency over anything else, thus the double force-of-nature on the deck.
Other cards in it are standard Midrange Druid cards, I don’t think we need to discuss those here.
Playing the Deck
Fast Druid is a deck built to be good against everything, or mostly everything, and it is so versatile that it can play very differently according to how the opponent is reacting to the game.
Let us try to take a look at how games should be played:
Hunter – “Kill him before he kills you” is the name of the game here. Druid is a deck capable of dealing with Hunter’s board while dealing damage to him (the best examples of this are keeper-of-the-grove and swipe), and that is what makes Druid so much better against Hunters than most other classes. Go over the plan to kill their beasts, since beasts gives them extra kill-command damage, and don’t bother much in killing mad-scientist since it gives them value anyway, but it is nice activating their traps with darnassus-aspirant so I would be force killing their Mad Scientists just to activate the traps with Darnassus.
Warrior – Tempo is the name of the game here. You want to generate value and draw a lot of cards and keep that Tempo in your hand until you can kill your opponent. Warrior Control became much better at dealing with Druids after TGT due to the addition of justicar-trueheart to the deck, because the Warrior is capable of leaving the danger zone a lot quicker, however that doesn’t mean Druid isn’t still favorable against Warrior, because it still is. Don’t overextend into brawl – they have 2 of those!(most of the times) – but try to always have the Control of the board until you are able to set up for lethal.
Mage – There are 2 types of Mage decks: The Freeze one, where you simply want to rush them down before they combo (and you usually are able to). and the Aggro one, which is the most complex one and the one I will be focusing the most in this explanation. There are 2 types of Aggro Mage: Mech and Tempo, both are very good against Druid Midrange because they have similar strategy but with a much lower curve. So the plan here is to take, and retain, Control of the board at all times. Try to make favorable trades, and in case you have to choose which minion to kill, always choose the Mechs (in Mech Mage case) or the flamewaker (in Tempo Mage case). Board presence is the most important thing in this matchup, and I don’t mind overextending here.
Druid – An overextend contest. Basically, whoever has more board presence wins. Druids don’t have efficient ways to deal with the board outside of minion trading, so both you and your opponent will most likely be spamming minions on the board and whoever has the biggest and do the best trades wins. Usually we like to say that whoever wild-growths wins, but since we added darnassus-aspirant to the equation, it is not really easy anymore to tell who is winning the game from the start since Druids can indeed deal with opposing Aspirants. So, basically: Drop big minions, do wise trades, force lethal, win.
Rogue – Are there even rogues in this game? Well, in case you come to face any, remember they can always blade-flurry combo you for your whole board, so don’t overextend, but try to rush him down, putting as much pressure as possible. Rogues won’t usually have time to deal with all your threats, so you should be fine playing against them as a Druid.
Priest – Alright now this is a matchup I have to talk a little more. Priest’s hero power works in such a way that whenever they are able to use it on their minions after a good trade, they will gain a lot of value in the process, this means that Priest’s minions should be killed on sight. The gameplan overall against Priests (regardless of version, Vanilla Control or Dragon Control) is to kill everything they drop on the board and play around lightbomb. If possible, never let any minion a Priest drops stay on the board, that is the main idea of playing against Priests – because in case they do, they’ll most likely generate a lot of value with it through buffs and healing, and that will get you very hard behind. Besides that, just do the usual: Try to set up for combo, push in for damage, do decent trades, etc…
Paladin – It is not easy to explain how this matchup works just with words, a lot of experience comes when we are talking about the Paladin matchup. The non-secret Midrange Paladin matchup is a resource management game, that can be closed quickly depending on how you setup up the combo, but knowing the opponent’s deck plays a big part on this, however the non-secret Paladin decks are in decline, and the matchup you are supposed to face the most is the Secret Paladin matchup, and this is where we should focus more on playing it. I don’t want to extend myself a lot here, but knowing the deck’s secrets, how they operate, and how to properly play around them give you a great edge on the game. Fortunately we have a full “How to Beat Secret Paladin” article that was written a couple of weeks ago that is still up to date with the best lists, go check it out if you want to fully understand the matchup!
https://hearthstoneplayers.com/beat-secret-paladin/
Shaman – Shamans are pretty strong against Druids given their ability to deal with Midrange Minions and suppress Druid’s main tactics (use resources to drop big minions). There isn’t much to say about this matchup: If you are lucky enough, you’ll win. Shamans have a lot of inconsistent cards that can make their game bad overall, but in general they have a good advantage when playing against Druids because of how hex can easily get rid of Innervated minions, and how their small/free minions can “combo” up with flametongue-totem to deal with your Midrange-size minions. My suggestion? Fight this as you would in any Midrange game, take control of the board, kill their totems, kill their minions, and try to win the value game or set up for combo.
Warlock – The Handlock matchup! I won’t talk much about Zoo, because its both the same thing as the Mech Mage matchup as well as Zoo isn’t a playable deck these days. Alright, so for the Handlock, the matchup is pretty simple: Don’t force them into molten-giant range, set up for combo, try to always have a plan to kill their first-big-bomb (the turn 4 bomb, which is either twilight-drake or mountain-giant), and win in 1 turn with the Combo doing 18+ damage with another minion on the board. Other than this? Resource Management, draw cards, take your time, this matchup isn’t bad, but you need to know how to play it.
Mulligans
So the mulligan strategy!
Let us start with cards that you’ll always want in your starting hand:
wild growth, darnassus-aspirant, innervate, shade-of-naxxramas (this last one is not good against Hunters).
These cards should always be kept in your starting Hand. In case you are playing against non-aggro classes (classes that are not Hunter, Mage or Paladin) if you already have Ramps, feel free to keep a Midrange minion to Ramp into.
Now for specific Keeps:
- Druids, Rogues, Shamans and Priests: Nothing extra.
- Hunters, Mages and Paladins: wrath, and in case you already have a Ramp: keeper-of-the-grove.
- Paladins: swipe.
- Warrior: piloted-shredder.
- Warlock: keeper-of-the-grove.
Conclusion
And with this we close this quick guide on Fast Druid! I wanted to make this guide as simple as possible because of how the deck already seem to be known and that we don’t need to go into full detail on card choices since they were already done a thousand times over.
I hope you guys liked this article, and I will – from time to time – be taking request guides from Premium users. I still don’t know how to make this a thing, but i’ll be talking to the website admin to see how we can do this the best way possible for you guys! :3
I love you all, see ya next article!
Much cuddles,
Nuba
