Running Wild: Obscure Mill Druid Deck Guide

Introduction

Welcome, dear readers, to another installment of ”Running Wild”, the weekly article series where I cover things regarding the wild format. A little while ago I’ve made an article (click me) regarding some of the more obscure wild decks and how can you upgrade them with your new Journey to Un’Goro cards. I did read all of your feedback and it appears that you like when I talk about some really obscure stuff so I’m going to throw an additional obscure wild deck to the mix. That’s right, today we’re going back into obscurity and I’m going to cower a very different deck, a my very own mill druid deck. I know, the last time I’ve done this I’ve covered more than one deck but, in return, I will go super in-depth with the mill druid deck and trust me when I say that this mill druid is unlike any that you’ve seen before (I sure hope so) 🙂

Sit back, relax, and let’s dive right into this! 🙂

Jungle Giants

jungle-giants? jungle-giants?! Heh, please, step back and let me show you how it’s done!

First let me give you a brief history lesson. Mill druid is one of those decks that have been experimented with ever since Hearthstone came into being but the deck had never really lifted off. The main problem was that no matter how much you try to make it work you will fill your opponents hand with cards, they will draw stuff to play, you won’t have any ways to clear the board because you’re playing druid and druid doesn’t have any good board clears, and you will lose because you just gave your opponent stuff do play while you have none. Best case scenario is when you manage to fill your opponent’s hand with 10 cards and then force them to draw even more so that you can burn away some of their cards but if you haven’t reached fatigue than you’re still probably going to die on the next turn thanks to all the cards that you just gave your opponent. Because of this problem the idea of a mill druid deck has been abandoned in the favor of mill rogue. None could find a solution to fix that problem and the developers never gave us any because they don’t want mill to become a valid strategy. This is my solution!

Welcome to Jungle Giants, an ancient relic of mine that I’ve used to play during Goblins vs Gnomes days, and the perfect mill druid deck…in my opinion. You see, I’ve played around with various ways of making a mill druid deck work but I’ve always encountered the same problem as the one that I’ve just described. That problem is a general theme among mill decks, they are way too reactive. They usually don’t take the initiative and just focus on milling your opponent while using various means to try to stay alive (which they usually don’t). If being reactive isn’t working out for you than what you need to do is to stop being reactive and start being proactive. seize the initiative, don’t wait for it to come to you because by the time that it does it might just be too late (lessons learned from playing mill decks). This is what Jungle Giants does best!

Oh, man, where do I start with this deck? First off we’re still a mill deck and milling our opponent is still what we’re trying to do. However, this time, we’re actually going to take advantage of that milling for both offense and defense. Now, one might say that playing minions in a mill deck is bad because your opponent can just spend cards that are in his or her hand to remove them but we don’t are about that. Our minions are huge, powerful and can soak in a ton of damage. If they want to focus on killing our minions than that is fine. If they want to focus on killing us instead that is also fine. What they can’t do is focus on both fronts and the same time. If they are going to kill our minions than we’re going to continue putting the pressure on with our mill tools or to stabilize. If they’re going to focus on killing us then we’re going to kill them with our gigantic minions. Either way we’re going to come up on top one way or the other. So, how do we win with this deck?

The deck itself is only good if it finds itself in a metagame that suits it aka a very low aggro metagame aka probably at the points when a new expansion was just released and nobody wants to be ”that guy” who instead of making clever new decks just picks up the best aggro deck and runs with it. Not many people want to be ”that guy” and if you’re ”that guy” than…idk…I hope that you start your every first round with patches-the-pirate in your hand? Nevermind, the point is that this is a deck that performs the best when the metagame is very slow but there are ways of making it work even in a faster metagame and the current version of it, the one that you’re seeing right now, is built for a little bit heavier aggro metamage though some cards could be replaced for other cards. Now I’m going to go into a step by step explanation of card choices and how they function in this deck 🙂

Card Choices

Although I’m not a fan of separating my articles in such a manner I’m going to make a hyperlink to each part of the article simply because the guide is huge and I don’t want it to look like one big wall of text. Besides, this way you can easily go skip through different parts of the article through the links in the description box which is always a useful tool 🙂 So, in this part of the article I’m going to go through the various cards in this deck and explain why are they here and when do you play them.

innervater is a self-explanatory card. You’re using it to gain 2 temporary mana crystals so that you can either play more cards in a turn or play cards that cost more mana then what you currently have. Most druid decks, and by most I mean all of them, play 2 copies of innervater and 2 copies of wild-growth but because we’re not a deck that is looking to ramp itself up we’re not going to play wild-growth. When we play innervater we’re looking for immediate results and in this deck those results usually come in the form of minions. The best use of innervater is to get your clockwork-giant or mountain-giant out as soon as possible (you will be surprised how often can you play these minions in the extremely early parts of the game and, when you do play them, it is usually a gg).

naturalize is our bread and butter. This card serves as both removal and mill engine and, most importantly, as a cost reducer for our clockwork-giant. Yes, I’m going to talk about clockwork-giant a lot because that is your key giant minion and the one that is going to win you games upon games. naturalize is a great card in this deck because we’re forcing our opponent to draw 2 cards, making it easier to raise their cards in hand count to 10, and it is an amazing removal when playing against a slow deck. It is a 1 mana removal card with an upside, something that we don’t see these days, so of course that we’re going to be using it. Be careful how you use it against an aggro deck!

Ah, grove-tender, my favorite druid Goblins vs Gnomes card. I really love playing this card because I find the effect to be extremely fun and helpful. Unfortunately the card doesn’t see play outside of this deck but here it really shines. If you don’t have giants in your hand and your opponent is far away from 10 cards in their hand then getting an extra mana crystal (and giving one to your opponent…eh, drawbacks) is not a bad deal at all. If you have giants in your hand then drawing a card for both you and your opponent is extremely powerful because it lowers the casting cost of both giants. In summary this is a very solid card and I do recommend playing 2 copies of it.

This one was the most difficult choice to include. To be perfectly honest I did put poison-seeds in first but I’ve come to realize that they aren’t that useful anymore. If you’re going to face against slow decks than you’ve got other cards that can deal with them and, usually, you have the upper hand against them. If you’re going to face aggro decks that poison-seeds will usually do you more harm than good. Besides, we want our giants to remain as 8/8 minions. starfall had seemed like a decent replacement because it is still a board clear that you can use against aggro decks or you can use it as a single target removal spell against slow decks.

doomsayer fulfils the exact same role as the wild-pyromancer and that role is board clear but I’m going to focus on the wild-pyromancer because it is more flexible. As you might have guessed by now, wild-pyromancer is here to clear the opponents board and is super powerful against aggro decks because their minions usually don’t have more than 1 HP. It also completely sucks against grim-patron warrior. Depending on the situation you can usually deal about 2-3 damage to your opponent’s minions which will clear just about anything that an aggro deck can throw at you. It is a must include, just like the doomsayer.

Another bread and butter card of this deck, coldlight-oracle is your main tool of milling your opponent. This is the minion that you’re going to combine with youthful-brewmaster and cbrann-bronzebeard. There is really not that much to say about this minion except that try not to get your coldlight-oracles killed because you can run only 2 copies of it and if they die than your entire mill engine suddenly stops dead in its tracks and, from that point onward, victory may not be possible anymore. In summary, the card is amazing and you can’t run your deck without it. Use it well, take good care of it and you’ll be fine.

You’re going to draw a lot of cards, right? You need to find a way to make use of all of those cards and even though that’s why you’re running 6 giants in your deck sometimes it is just not enough. Sometimes you just won’t get to draw those giants in time and, for those situations, you’re going to use the second best option which is twilight-drake. twilight-drake is a great minion in this deck, especially because you have ways to give it taunt which then turns it into an amazing wall that will soak a lot of damage for you, especially now that the ironbeak-owl days are waaaaay behind us. It is also amazing with faceless-shambler.

Speaking of the devil, faceless-shambler is an amazing card as a 1 of in this deck. I thought about using two copies of it but it turns out that I really don’t need two copies and that one works just fine as a ”I really need a big taunt minion” panic button. It goes great with your giants and it goes great wit you twilight-drake. Overall it is a good card and I think that it is safe to use a single copy of it although it is not a ”must include”. If I could replace it with anything I might go for another weird choice which is sir-finley-mrrgglton because your hero power isn’t doing you too much good in this deck.

We’ve finally reached the giants. mountain-giant is a must have in this deck. The card is absolutely amazing! Your opponent is going to draw cards but you’re going to draw cards as well and if you’re already drawing cards than why shouldn’t you add a huge giant minion that becomes cheaper for each card in your own hand? It is only logical to include mountain-giant in this deck although it is more often than not a lot slower than the other giant, the wild exclusive one, clockwork-giant. Nevertheless, it is an extremely powerful cheap minion that will win you a lot of games and it is a staple in this deck. Amazing card!

Oh, boy, this one is my favorite! When I came up with this deck, 3 years ago, clockwork-giant giant was the first card in the deck. At first I’ve wanted to build a ramp druid and I’ve really, really wanted to make clockwork-giant work, but as soon as I’ve played it into my deck I’ve figured out that ramp may not be the best way to go. Then I’ve figured it out. Mill druid deck is the absolute best deck if you’re planning on using clockwork-giant. Besides, unlike with mountain-giant you can actually use innervate to get this bad boy out on turn 3 if you’re lucky enough because playing cards doesn’t lower its cost. Although the deck is a mill deck at its core, this is the card that it all revolves around. This is the minion that is going to win almost all of your games. It may not seem like much at first glance but after you’ve played it a couple of times you will notice just how insanely powerful it is.

Conclusion

We’ve reached the end of yet another ”Running Wild” article. I’m really glad that I’ve got to cower this deck because I’ve enjoyed playing it and I like my own unique spin on the entire mill druid archetype. I did promise you more obscure wild deck so next week I’m going to do my best to cover some more of them. Tell me would you rather have multiple obscure wild decks in a single article or would you rather have me go deeper into explaining why are certain cards in the deck like I did with this deck? I’m new to writing a single deck deck guides so I hope that it didn’t turn out awful. I’ve got a couple of more obscure decks up my sleeve and I can’t wait to show some more of them. 🙂 If you’ve got an idea for a crazy deck and you want me to explore it and feature it here then by all means give me a heads up either on my twitter or in the comment section and I’ll see what I can do.

What are your opinions on my spin on the mill druid archetype? Have you ever played a mill druid deck? Have you played a similar mill druid deck?  Leave your opinions and feedback in the comment section below and I will respond as soon as I can. As always  if you’ve liked this article do consider following me on twitter https://twitter.com/Eternal_HS. There you can ask me all sorts of Hearthstone questions (unrelated to this article) and I’ll gladly answer them as best as I can!