This is a Druid deck focused on the and their Deathrite abilities, providing a chance for advantage on all fights and removal.
Even after the Druid nerf it remains a strong Avatar. Just keep Tawny back and flip earlier, a free 4 power body guard is still great.
The deck pushes to 5 Sites, then can take a turn or two off to draw more sites or flip.
Druid tokens:
stays back as a great target for or . Also great to fly forward and throw a down a column.
Flip for earlier, turn 5 or 6, soaks up removal or pressuring a big beater for free.
Key synergies:
[[Squeakers]] - An early Squeaker has a 25% chance to flip into at least one . This isn't high but the chance increases as the game continues and Cards are drawn.
[[Pond]] for a turn 2 [[Lugbog cat]] or [[Pigs of the Sounder]] - The typical Pond play, but Sounders are also a great back up. A turn two Sounder only has a 17% chance to hit a but if it is removed and you hit, that's a massive power swing.
[[Assorted Animals]] and [[Hamlet]] - This helps to find Squeakers but works best with a Hamlet out. Tutoring for a , and and playing them out instantly to a Hamlet on turn three, possibly turn two with a core. Gives you three blockers and five power with a chance to flip into a Sounder. Also great targets for a Shapeshift.
[[Feign Death]] - This is the best card for this deck from Gothic. Flipping for the next pig, while keeping the existing one can really up the odds you will hit something. Adding Stealth and Card draw to it is almost broken.
[[Saintweald]] - Easily one of the most powerful sites in the Deck. Playing a to this and hitting a means you might hit a , all for 1! Unlikely, but who knows you could pull out 5 of the pigs adding 19 power to the realm!
Deathrite - , , add to the Deathrite theme of the deck. Further enabling Feign Death and Saintweald.
[[Shapeshift]] - This won't trigger deathrite on the Squeakers but essentially acts the same with two upsides, avoiding summoning sickness and leaving the Pig if the revealed cards wiff. Wild Boars, Swamp Buffalo, Plague of Frogs and Tawny round out the targets with and being the best hits. is also great but needs to be on a water site, if you haven't seen it yet try to shapeshift on a water site. Avoid as his Genesis won't trigger and he is much worse without it.
[[Goat for Azazel]] - This card feels a bit clunky with Squeakers, taking damage for them and preventing their Deathrite. However it is easy to tutor up with Assorted Animals and can save you for a turn. It also work amazing with , rolling it up as well as your other minions means they will not take any damage from the Snowball, then it nicely deposits them ready to fight anything else that survived at the other end. Just don't play it out till you need it.
Downsides:
Firstly, it's obviously all luck! A game with bad flips is a hard game to win. The deck lives and dies on its ability to break parity and force advantage.
If a dies on your opponent's turn any flipped Sounders won't be able to block. Summoning Sickness is removed at the start of each turn, meaning the summoned Sounders will remain sick until your turn. This does mean you can attack with it on your next turn, so it is still often good to block but be aware it won't allow further blocks even on a good flip.
Graveyard removal removing Charge from a makes them much worse.
With only two ways to Shuffle the deck, after the removal of Common Sense, revealing a on the death of a Squeaker drastically lowers the chance for the Sounders to flip well. Keep track of where you last saw each Pig and how many are now on the bottom of the deck and use that info to gauge how good a future combat trades/ blocks could be.
Removal/ Interaction:
[[Snowball]] is great in this deck. A few cheaper minions and deathrite abilities means we are happy to pile them up into the ball. If you can push pigs down to their Avatar as well you deal damage with the ball followed by a chance to summon bigger Pigs into their Avatars location. Casting a along with the snowball can remove essentially anything in the Snowballs path and really ups the damage on the Avatar hit. also allows you to move sites around to better line up a good Snowball.
[[Gargantula]] is a great tool to deal with most threats. Disabling a big threat and essentially taking out another minion for a turn or two while they move to free them. This also gets around and removes a Ward, then if the minion is weaker Gargantula can freely kill it on its next turn. The 3 earth threshold can be hard to hit if you push to only 5 sites but it can be played to a Pond to get around this.
[[Pollimorph]] is permanent and cheap removal, banishing the target and replacing it with a frog. This isn't dependant on site placement like bury or drown effects but does match up worse into wards. Also worth noting that while a frog is tiny, it's not nothing, still being able to block and be used for other token synergies.
[[Geyser]] is more of a personal choice. It deals with annoying burrowing Minions (looking at you ) and enables surprise flying Pigs or enables Stormy Seas.
[[Zap!]] in the collection is a Deaths Door answer. It can only be cast if the is in play meaning it isn't reliable, but certainly surprising. This also works even better if your opponent is running , as they will give you the air threshold.
Drowning and Burying:
[[Atlantean Fate]] is just one of the best removal cards in the game. In a match up without water removing the threshold can be backbreaking in the early game. And it shuts down any frustrating defencive sites.
[[Call of the Sea]] is another fantastic removal card. While a bit expensive it can essentially wipe the entire board with good placement, especially with support from .
[[Cave in]] and [[Stormy Seas]] replace and in the main deck as they work much better on Warded minions. These might be Replaced with two copies of Call of the Sea eventually, Though the smaller cost and better coverage is a big advantage.
Burrowing/drowning a Pig along with aggressing minions means you have a chance again to replace it, coming out on top.
Hate Sites and Control:
[[Bower of Bliss]] is a very strong site. Totally shutting down many of the top played cards, as a lot of them are mortals. However, it does also turn off Sir Yvain and Ruler of Thull.
[[Mismanaged Mortuary]] is technically a water site and will prevent most graveyard synergies like Archigamio. Playing both out will reset the effect however, so only aim to have on out at a time.
[[Garden of Eden]] can really help prevent your opponent running away with card advantage. It does prevent your own draw, making and any cantrip cards much worse. If you know you will be casting one or activating their ability to draw you can draw a site for turn to still get value from that.
Notable Changes and Updates
Added/ Increased:
[[The Inquisition]] - This is essentially a free Sounder with hand hate stapled on available to any of the flips from Pigs or Feign Death. However it is uncastable, and drawing it to hand is really bad. Unless you have an opponent who runs Treetop Hideout!
[[Pnakotic Manuscript]] - Added in to provide more draw in the late game, while also able to reveal the Inquisition for a free summon. It can be given to a pig and used to kill them to force their Deathrite, or at least get a squeaker in the yard for future Boars. If the opponent picks it up it then enables a decent swap target, just be careful a deck that can really make use of it, e.g. Necro, doesn't get hold of it. This deck however will not be able to abuse it like many decks that do run it, probably providing one extra card a turn at most.
Removed/ Reduced:
[[Sylvan Splendor]] (-2) - This was proving to be inconsistent since the reduction of the number of cheap beasts in the deck. It can be a massive flood of cards, but with only 6-10 cheap beast/ fairies it was proving more often a dead draw. Casting it on curve often meant no protection and it would get dispelled. Drawing it late often meant no beasts in hand to cast into it to draw.
[[Symmetric Suffering]] (-2) - Felt really bad when you are behind. Often meant you had to Sac a minion you really needed to hold onto while the opponent had enough to not need to worry.
[[Toolbox]] (-1) - These are fantastic, but drawing too many in a game isn't helpful. The Collection is full of removal and a few edge case uses but you wont need more than two Toolboxes in a game, often one is enough. Reduced to 2 copied to help prevent drawing too many in a game.
[[Kelp Cavern]] (-2) - Not very useful. Often just giving you a card to put on top that wasn't a Pig and making the next flip one card worse.
[[Gnome Hollows]] (-3) - This is a fantastic defensive site, however it is terrible to draw at the start of the game. The Druid doesn't want to start on one, as Bruin can't be summoned and if a Squeaker dies in one you cannot summon a sounder. These have been removed and replaced with more double sites.
[[Deep Sea]] (-2) - Not needed when Floodplain exists. Floodplain replaces this card in almost every deck as it can be used to add more Water threshold to your sites, or even offensively to opponents sites. Clearing out burrowed minions or enabling Stormy Seas, Call of the Sea or even allowing Mester Stoor Worm to attack.
[[Crusade]] and [[Pudge Butcher]] - Have been removed. With the increase of the overall number of water minions Crusade was no longer adding enough value. Pudge was also often too slow, and was replaced with .
[[Algor Omphalos]] (-1) - Omphs are some of the best and consistent card draw in the game, however it proved to be very inconsistent in this deck. With Gargantuars, Lugbogs and Stoor Wurms in the deck requiring specific placement for maximum value it ended up being a bigger hinderrence. Replaced with Pnakotic Manuscript.
