Druid Primer:
Preamble and Tips:
If it’s a good card - I won’t explain its inclusion for the sake of time.
Plan A:Play tempo, use movement tricks, make positive trades.
Plan B:Make an impenetrable bunker and stall for as long as possible.
This deck does nothing turns 1 and 2 - aside from maybe some removal, ramps hard 3 and 4, and hopefully wins sometime after that.
Choosing the Elements:
Initially, I ran three: Water, Air, and Fire. I eventually cut the fire as trying to commit to three colors at once was a difficult feat to pull off.
Why Water? I like water.
Why Air? Movement and card selection. Having access to Thundering Giant and Whirling Blades is fairly self-explanatory, and Lightning Bolt alone is excellent at removing ‘token good-cards’ (like Morgana le Fay, Ruler of Thul, Lillith, etc.)
Why Fire? Decent removal - good for positive trades. Not relevant to this list, but worth pointing out.
Why lose the Fire? Out of the three - I felt it was the least relevant to what I wanted out of this deck. Also, I didn’t really want to be another ‘steam’ Druid list; hence, the ‘Fog’ (or ‘Mist’).
Mainlist:
This will only cover ‘unusual’ inclusions/inclusions that I feel are worth talking about.
Minions:
Lady of the Lake: As this list has progressed, she’s gotten better! Especially since I finally added a collection (more on that later). She gets Silver Bullet’s back, she gets the Drums back, she gets Ruler back, you get the point.
Tufted Turtles: Overperformers, people often overcommit to kill them because their defensive potential is superb. They are also decent targets for Shapeshift.
Thundering Giant: Great Death’s Door finisher, enables big swings through ‘disabling’ blockers, built in movement shenanigans, etc. They are just a solid mid-to-late-game tempo shifter.
Mester Stoor Wurm: Floodplains enable attacks, its ability completely hoses aggro, also a great mid-to-late-game tempo shifter.
Dormant Monstrosity: With Tawny and some kind of cost reducer (be it den of evil + Failed Mutation/Vampires, or a tower into something) you can get these guys out early pretty consistently. It is very common to ‘double-up’ on spells - Example: turn 4 play one of these + another set-up spell, or turn 4 play one of these guys + another threat of some kind to threaten big damage come turns 5 and 6.
Magics:
Lightning Bolt: Another overperformer - it is a one to one trade with some really great targets. 9 times out of 10 the target will be alone so the randomness is negligible. Also, it’s one of my main DD finishers.
Disenchant: Due to my lack of Toolbox, I mainboard one. This is simply to remove a problematic enchantment or artifact/be my only Enchantress hate.
King’s Council: At its worst, it;s a pay 3 draw 1 - at its best, it’s a pay 3 draw 5 or 6. The average is a pay 3 draw 3 and that’s a decent enough investment for me.
Murder of Crows: Token and Ward hate, it can also enable some cheeky trades.
Swap: Trading Tawny for someone’s Ring is hilarious, Trading someone’s blocker for a cornered Dormant Monstrosity is great, Swap is just great. I run my third copy in my collection as it seemed the right thing to do.
Frost Nova: A one-sided Babbling Brook? Yes, please! Pretty good against Aggro lists - helps buy some time and enable some crowd control/crowd clearing. I have another in the collection for redundancy.
Stormy Seas: This is Omphalos and Failed Mutation hate. There is an argument to be made for Call of the Sea in its place. Call of the Sea doesn’t hit Omphalos’s, so I prefer Stormy Seas - also Stormy Seas is less of a mana investment. I got another in the collection for redundancy.
Into the Abyss: Great removal against ‘Lightning Bolt proof’ guys - it's essentially my fourth Lighting Bolt.
Shapeshift: Transforms Tawny into a threat, digs through the deck and, in Druid, creates card advantage.
Snowball: Better than it seems! It started as a gag, but movement, plus hard to avoid damage, plus crowd control is awesome - I run another in the collection because it’s that good. It’s also a funny DD finisher!
The Collection:
I debated including a collection for quite some time, and it wasn’t until I played in a physical tournament that I finally came to understand why one should. I initially thought that Toolbox, and by extension the idea of the collection, were dumb. The collection is actually pretty cool - I'm mostly against Toolbox for encouraging homogenous deck-building; therefore, Silver Bullet seemed like the better choice. My thinking was most people are running Toolbox, so if they steal my Bullet’s they won’t get much use out of them. Consequently, this also means I can’t capitalize on an opponent’s Toolbox… Honestly, just wasting an opponent’s Toolbox is good enough for me.
Skeleton Mage: This is my way of including an Ordinary spell in my collection, mine just comes with a body!
Scatter: Forcing my opponent’s to step into my thorns is always nice - under the right circumstances it can even be a DD finisher!
Mimic: This is mainly a fun way of hating on Ring - I can also hit cores, mixes, weapons, etc.
Upwelling: This is Interrogator hate - it forces the redeploying of all those spammy early game threats, it can also act as decent Omphalos/Necromancer hate.
Maybeboard:
Fade x2: Oftentimes you find yourself unprotected. Sometimes it happens to be on your opponent’s backline. I looked at fade as cheap protection plus potential cycling as it draws the card if you’re in an aggressive position.
Tufted Turtles x1: I used to run four, I cut one for Sir Pelleas as he gives the possibility for more aggressive plays - better damage and movement. However, a more defensive list may want the full set of turtles for late game stalling.
Sites:
Almost every land site is an Ordinary for the sake of making Atlantean Fate useless. Anything that isn’t serves a purpose.
Den of Evil: Ramp.
The Towers: Also Ramp.
Lookout: Nice opening site, helps with preparing the first few plays.
Floodplain: Root Spider Killer, Waterbound enabler, Threshold fixer, it does everything.
Babbling Brook: Free disabling? Yes please.
Troll Bridge: Defensive - best in the early game. This or Thin Ice - this provides more immediate results, Thin Ice has a higher ceiling.
Sinkhole: Also Root Spider hate - is also my only answer to things like Wuthering Heights or Perilous Bridge.
Watchtower: This guy is a one off, it serves one purpose: Anti-Infiltrate tech. It’s also a decent site to hit in the opening hand.
Decks I Don’t Like to See:
Interrogator: Too Aggro too fast - by the time I can stabilize I’m already at DD.
Archimago: Ironically the opposite problem, the control is so intense I can’t even establish myself - the Failed Mutations buy me the most value since half of Archie’s removal relies on damage (What do you think inspired me to add them..? I bet you could never guess…).
Enchantress: It’s just such a unique strategy that I don’t have a lot of answers for - it’s the classic, “I can answer, but by the time I do so I’ve been hit for 15.”
Pathfinder: Specifically the mono-fire variant - too much pressure too early really hurts.
Decks I Do Like to See:
Savior: I run sufficient ward hate - plus the Druid itself hates wards. Mortal tribal can give me a little trouble.
Necromancer: I run sufficient Skeleton hate - plus the Druid itself hates Skeletons.
Bladedancer/Battlemage: I can capitalize on them getting in close - too much too early I get stomped, but if they can’t close it out I can get it back.
Decks That Go Either Way:
Impostor: If I can hit my direct damage I can make transforming really inconvenient - best case is stopping a Pathfinder transformation before they get out of hand. However, if I don’t hit my anti-transformation tech I lose the arms race.
Persecutor: Same thing as Bladedancer/Battlemage, I can hit them hard when the get close. However, if they hit their removal I drown fairly quickly.