There are many decks which are a staple in the meta game of Hearthstone. Playing them is very effective if you plan on climbing the ranks. But this series isn’t about that. Here we’re going to go into some of the more unconventional decks and discuss their goals and their viability.
Egg Druid Guide
Introduction
This deck has been around forever, but never really gained popularity. That is, until one user, J4CKIECHAN, posted that he got legend using it on the very first day of the season. He’s been known for playing the deck for months, but it reached a place where it was quite good in the meta, at least for a brief period. Now it has once again fallen out of favour, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have the potential to steamroll many of the other popular decks on ladder through simply making too many small minions for your opponent do deal with. This deck plays much like conventional Zoo decks, but with more board-wide buff spells, meaning that if you are able to establish a board, you aren’t going to lose it. One of the biggest attractions to this deck is the fact that it takes cards that have been in the game since it was released but never played, and puts them into a competitive deck.
Decklist
There isn’t a ton of room for changes in the decklist, as it has already been optimized to create the perfect level of sticky minions to be targets for your buff spells. If you play it right and get decent draws, with this list you’ll be able to build a board that takes more than one board clear to remove.
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Playstyle
As stated, this deck plays very much like conventional Zoo decks. You build a board quickly using small minions and then buff them and make favourable trades, while increasing their stickiness. You will want to remove basically everything your opponent plays, as this deck is able to create favourable trades in many situations. Once you’ve establi
shed a decent board, simply search for and use a Savage Roar to take the game home. It’s not unheard of for this deck to kill its opponent on turn four, given a perfect curve. The reason that Force of Nature isn’t used in this deck is that it’s simply too slow. It’s not good unless used in conjunction with Savage Roar, and you’ll very rarely play a game that lasts until turn nine. Without conventional Druid ramp methods, the combo isn’t the goal, it’s simply flooding the board so that Savage Roar is even more useful than in the combo variant. One thing to keep in mind is the importance of Soul of the Forest. It’s a strange card to play in any deck, but here it provides a huge amount of stickiness, forcing your opponent to board clear twice before they make a dent in your aggression. Often times their first clear will actually make your board stronger. You will want to create a board as sticky as possible, so if you’re about to, say, suicide a Mounted Raptor, you’ll want to play Soul of the Forest afterwards usually, so that the resulting minion has a sticky effect, rather than having two minions upfront. As long as your opponent can’t clear the board, you’re setting up for a perfect lethal turn with Savage Roar. The eggs simply provide another set of cards that can’t be cleared easily, and if you buff them they are more minions that have to be dealt with twice.
Good Matchups
The best matchups you have are control decks and aggressive decks. This deck is so fast and sticky that board clears are largely ineffective, and it steamrolls most other aggressive decks that try and fight for board control through the powerful buff effects. Ironically, one of your easiest matchups is Combo Druid. They simply cannot build a board against you, meaning that their combo doesn’t have anywhere near the potential it needs to be able to kill you. This deck is even fairly good against Secret Paladin, because of the speed it has and the ability to throw small minions into Noble Sacrifice, or clear their Mustered minions with your own slightly larger but equally cheap minions.
Bad Matchups
Warlock. Warlock absolutely wrecks this deck, particularly the Reno variant. The biggest reason is that they run Demonwrath, and turn three is the most vulnerable your board is, before you can play significant buffs or Soul of the Forest. I lost every single game that my opponent had Demonwrath or Coin-Hellfire on turn three. And even if I dodged those, a plain Hellfire on four can be bad too, as it does more damage than most early board clears. Tempo Mage is also particularly bad, for the same reason that it beats Zoo. They have a lot of little spells that do small damage to everything, allowing them to clear your board reliably. Flamewaker is your biggest enemy in this matchup, if you can dodge it you should be fine.
Level of Overall Viability
This deck was very strong for a short period, but since then the meta has shifted just enough that this deck got left out. The rise of Reno and the number of Warlocks on ladder were a huge downside to it. Priests also risen up and the matchup is very iffy for the Druid, as you need to get an incredibly sticky board early, before they double clear, something Priests excel at. In the current meta Egg Druid isn’t the best deck, by any means, but it’s still very effective when it works, and being able to fill your board every turn can be incredibly satisfying.
Level of Overall Fun
This deck isn’t nearly as gimmicky as the other Unconventional Decks. It certainly can be a lot of fun to play if you enjoy playing Zoo-style decks, but for the average player this is simply a new spin on an old idea. The most enjoyment you’ll get from this deck is playing cards that aren’t typically played, and actually being able to win games with them. If that unique-factor alone doesn’t interest you, this probably isn’t the deck for you.
