Introduction
Hey everyone this is llVoltagell and I am gonna talk about a great mill deck today. I am an avid Hearthstone player and have been playing since right after the Beta. My favorite class is Mage and way before the Mech Mage popularity. My highest rank is 2, but I will not stop trying to hit legend every season. I love taking decks apart and breaking them down to see why/how they work and what I can do to make them better.
The Deck
The deck I want to talk about is the Mill Druid Deck “Natural Remedies” by Chaos Following. I’ve seen this deck pop up every once in a while and it’s quite interesting to see that play out in a mirror match. I feel that most players that attempt to use this deck are going about it all wrong and I hope that I can help you succeed with this deck. I was able to achieve rank 5 with this deck before the end of Season 9 so it is possible to do well with it.
For only 2,520 Arcane Dust this is a relatively cheap deck to craft. There are just 2 epic cards Tree of Life and Big Game Hunter and no legendary cards to keep it cheap. Now just because this is a cheap deck, does not mean that it is lessened in any way. I mean sure you could throw in a Lorewalker Cho or King Mukla to fill the enemy’s hand, but this deck does just fine without them.
Synergy
I want to start off by talking about the synergy in this deck. As most mill decks, you want to have your opponent draw as many cards as possible to make them overdraw and potentially lose a few of their core cards. Also from my experience, if you still have cards and your opponent has reached fatigue, you probably have already won.
I cannot stress how important the timing of this card is. Play it too early and you might as well concede, but when you wait til your opponent has 8 or 9 cards in their hand and you get to burn a card or two, pure joy. It doesn’t always matter what card gets destroyed, because milling will lead to their fatigue, which is another way to take over the game. Plus it is more than a great effect, you also have a 2/2 minion on board. So for only 3 mana, this card works great and can be a game saver.
naturalizeThis card has been overlooked since I first started playing. Great for those control decks. Just watch out for when that giant minion has a deathrattle and you accidentally zap it and are forced to take on more minions and lose your tempo. This has happened to me a few times, so I speak from experience. I mean for only 1 mana, you can destroy a threat and force your opponent to overdraw and burn valuable cards.
A great little GvG addition. You can either have both players gain a mana crystal or draw a card. Since you want your opponent to overdraw this card is a little step in the right direction. Also if you are trying to have enough mana to make a comeback with combo, this might provide that mana boost you need next turn to make it happen.
youthful-brewmasterThis card is one of the go to’s for mill decks since they first came around. For only two mana you can return any of your minions and leave a 3/2 minion in its place. I personally find this card to work the best with antique-healbot, keeper-of-the-grove and coldlight-oracle situationally.
Secondly I want to address the HP retrieval available from this deck.
healing-touchThis card speaks for itself. 8 HP is a lot to regain for only 3 mana, and having 2 in the deck equals a total of 16 HP from just 2 spells. I primarily use this card when I have been focusing on milling the opponent and need to bring my HP to about 20 or higher at the end of every turn, depending on the threats they have ob board.
tree-of-lifeGvG brought this beautiful masterpiece and for this deck it gives you the ability to go from 1 HP to 30 HP with a single card. It costs 9 mana, but since this deck is made to keep you alive basically forever, you can afford to wait to turn 9 to use this beauty. Just be aware that is also heals your opponent and all minions on the board.
Another great addition for GvG, this card is great for only 5 mana. You can heal your hero for 8 HP and put a 3/3 minion on the board. Great combo with ancient=brewmaster especially when you need a little HP boost.
Now when we do the math we have at least 32 HP from both healing-touch and both antique-healbot, and a possible 29 HP to your own hero using tree-of-life for a total of 61 total HP to be regained. That’s the equivalent of having enough HP to revive yourself 2 times during a match.
Mulligan
Now one of the most important parts of this deck would be the mulligan.Board clears are extremely important in this deck also. It has great combo potential with Wild Pyromancer and Swipe, as well as Poison Seeds and Starfall. Timing is what makes this deck work, so if you try to remove or play around their board too early, it can definitely cost you the game. Remember you have heals to keep you alive and removal to keep your tempo up.
Aggro Decks
Since aggro decks are so prevalent in the current meta, the mulligan can make or break the game. You want to start with at least one of these: wrath, ironbeak-owl or wild-pyromancer with an innervate. This deck is all about ruining their board control while keeping your HP up.
Control Decks
I find that anything with a Silence(i.e.ironbeak-owl, keeper-of-the-grove is extremely helpful to start with. Also wrath,swipe,poison-seeds andstarfall are all great to have early on. Remember that naturalize and big-game-hunter will help to deal with the threats in the later game. Sometimes if you can tell that there will be many creatures such as molten-giant and mountain-giant, then it would be a good idea to combo the ancient-brewmaster with big-game-hunter
Recent Changes
There has been very few changes to this deck because it is so solid, but the most recent one was the loss of 2 Starfire which have been replaced with Dancing Swords and Force of Nature. Card draw and 5 damage is great when you are playing against control decks most of the time. Since aggro is everywhere there had to be a chance and the replacement cards are great for that.
dancing-swordsWhether you need a cheep 4/4 man on board against aggro, or want to make your opponent overdraw when playing a control deck, this card has shown how much potential it has. For only 3 mana, the deathrattle on this minion is enough to regain tempo and will almost always force your opponent to deal with this minion. One word of advice is do NOT play this early against a control deck, it isn’t strong enough on its own to stay on your board.
Great combo potential when you need to trim down that zoo decks board or when you that giant minion will cost you the game. When played at the right time you can combo this with poison-seeds to build your board presence with 3 2/2 minions which is enough to take back the game sometimes from those pesky aggro decks.
Conclusion
If you guys like this deck and have found it to be useful, make sure to upvote this and to do the same thing for the original author, ChaosFollowing. You can find his original list and post on reddit. Mill Druid
Please let me know if you have any specific comments about this deck or if you would like to see more deck breakdowns by me in the future. Thanks to everyone who reads this and I hope that you liked my very first post on this site!
Published: Jan 10, 2015 01:04 pm