Introduction
Ramp druid got a lot of new toys to play with. And while we don’t know how good those toys are going to be, we actually have the chance of testing every single one of those on a well-rounded build I am working on.
This build features a lot of the new cards, such as: grove-tender, recycle, malorne, piloted-shredder and piloted-sky-golem.
Now, I know a lot of you haven’t been really impressed by these cards I mentioned and am adding to the deck, and this article is here to try to explain their possible uses and possibilities!
Explaining the New Cards
On this section of the article I will try to explain every single point about the newly added cards to the deck and their uses, I hope you understand my ideas and in case you have any comments about them, feel free to throw them in the comments section!
grove-tender: This card is really tricky, both its effects and bilateral which means there is a chance this card will not see play at all. But there is something that we have to remember: we’re the Ramp! Ramp decks are known to be the heaviest decks in the game, and the Tender’s ability means you are most likely to get more benefits from the bilateral Ramp than your opponent. This card also has a good anti-aggro body for the curve 3, which makes it so that although this card may not see play, I do believe its got a big chance at it, and I’ll be trying this card out as soon as GvG hits.
recycle: Probably the most important Druid card in the expansion.Many people might think this card has no uses, because its effect is really different from what we have seen, but this card even tho it’s not good when compared to other cards from other classes such as Hex and Polymorph, this card is huge in the fact that it gives druid what the class never really had: A Hard Removal. Now yes this card puts the card back into the opponents deck and he can eventually draw it again but who cares?!?! I mean it’s an uncontidional removal, which makes it already huge, it triggers no Deathrattle and leaves no vestige in the board or the opponents hand whatsoever, if the opponent can eventually draw into the card later in the game, he would be drawing into something else anyway, and he’s still having to draw the card regardless. I believe this card is huge, it does have a downside of being useless in the fatigue wars, but only once the fatigue wars actually starts. And since we’re talking about Druids, the game is usually decided in the mid stages of the game and I don’t believe, as a Druid, that we’ll be seeing the fatigue counter a lot. I believe this card will be running probably as a 1-of in every single druid deck.
malorne: First of all I think this card isn’t as great as people may evaluate it as of now. Yes I do believe its good but it has a lot of restrictions, regardless of that I believe this card has a good shot of being played in the Ramp versions of druid, which this one is! Malorne is that kind of card that actually counts as more than one in the Deck, because the opponent is most likely to not want to spend a silence on this, rather just BGH-ing it or trading it to get rid of it, which means you are likely to draw this card once again later in the game. The fact this card exists allows you to thin the number of big late-game threats you put on the deck, because you’re most likely to be playing this guy more than once, which allows you to have extra slots for mid game or different tools, whatever demand is bigger.
The Piloted Crew: So it begins, the RNG war people are having! Well I have some things to say: Firstly, the piloted-shredder is always good. Because the chances of getting a good 2-drop body out of this are way over 90%, the number of good 2-drops is a lot bigger than the number of bad 2-drops which makes it so this card is huge, this is easily in the top-3 cards of GvG. Now, the piloted-sky-golem is another story, there is a big number of 4-drops that aren’t that good, the average 4-drop stats are 4/4 without ability, because most of the 4-drops have only battlecry which will not be trigger whenever they get summoned by the Golem, regardless of that I believe the 6/4 body is very relevant seeing as it kills all the playable 4 and 5 drops in the game, it trades 1 for 1 with Loatheb and kills a Belcher but still lives, meaning it’s easier to generate value from this than it is with cairne-bloodhoof: Dont get me wrong, I am not saying this is better than cairne, but it has the potential of being better than cairne and that is why I want to test 2 of those in my deck. Keep in mind the odds of getting something between a 4/3 and a 5/6 are around 85% which means the chances this card will be better or Equal to Cairne Bloodhoof is big, and once again: since it has good attack that can be used to deal with previously dropped minions in 1 hit, I think its good enough that I want to test using 2 of those in my deck.
Thoughts on Ramp Druid post-GvG
Overall I believe that every single viable post-GvG strategy is getting boosted, which means the only way Ramp is going to be playable is by getting equally buffed, and even tho we already got a huge addition to our class in the form of recycle and piloted-shredder, I believe that Ramp will still need other additions in order to be as competitive as other decks will be, and in case Grove Tender shows up to be as good as we (druids) want it to be, we’ll be having a very good time playing our Rampant Minions.
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Post-Launch Opinions
Hello everyone, I played a lot with this deck and I would like to say that, first of all: grove-tender is amazing. All the time I used her, the bilateral effect helped me a lot more than my opponent(even the draw!). At the same time, I can’t tell you much how piloted-shredder is strong, I liked the card and the fact your opponent is always eager to trade it, generating value for you, is very good, but the fact it has no taunt might make it so it wont help you later in the game whenever you need the taunt guy to act. Regardless of that, I think it’s a really neat addition to the deck. I also am having some little issues getting the late game to roll properly so this deck might require future adjustment.I will keep on giving you guys feedback thru here or the comments, responding questions whenever you throw them at me!
PS: I have not tested Malorne yet, still need to craft him and he is the next on my list! I also would like to test Spider Tank instead of Piloted Shredder.
Update 2.0
Hello everyone, I have been working pretty hard on Druid and just developed a very strong version of the fast druid. This is the current version of work:
Conclusion
GvG added a lot to the game, that is a fact: Different Strategies, different approaches, but you have to keep in mind some things will not change, such as undertaker being the best 1-drop in the entire game by a long shot, loatheb being uncontested as the best card in the entire game and sludge-belcher being the prime anti-aggro pick for Midrange and Control decks.
Blizzard’s obvious idea about GvG is to make the game more “Midrange-y”, and let us hope they were able to do what they aimed for in this expansion.. only time will tell!
In case you want to know more about the GvG Cards, feel free to check out my Video-review of the entire expansion where I discussed those cards with another good Legend Player:
https://hearthstoneplayers.com/video-review-lastest-spoiled-gvg-card/
https://hearthstoneplayers.com/video-review-spoiled-gvg-card-part-ii/
And this is it for now, I hope you guys enjoyed reading this and got some of my points regarding the new cards being added to the game, and expect to see a spam of posts from me this week since I’ll be playing a ton of different decks :3
Love you guys!
Nuba,
 
 
 
