Classic Midrange Combo Druid Deck

Classic Midrange Combo Druid Deck Mulligan Guide

Midrange Combo Druid is a deck reliant upon accelerating its Mana Crystals quickly to rush out bigger minions than opponents, making it very imporant to look for cards like Innervate and Wild Growth in your opening hand.

• General Mulligan (keep regardless of what your opponent is playing) — Innervate, Wild Growth.
• Mulligan against Aggro (also keep if you think you are playing against an aggressive deck) — Wrath.
• Mulligan against Control (also keep if you think you are playing against a slow deck) — No further cards required against Control.

Additional Mulligan Considerations

If you already have a copy of Innervate or Wild Growth, keeping a 4 drop like Chillwind Yeti to utilise your Mana advantage can be greately beneficial. This can be extended to 5 drops like Azure Drake or Druid of the Claw if you have 2 copies of these cards. If you are facing an Aggro deck like Face Hunter or Zoo Warlock, you can alternatively opt to keep a copy of Keeper of the Grove with your Mana Acceleration to swiftly deal with minions like Knife Juggler and Flame Imp.

Depending what kind of Aggro deck you are facing, you can also look for a copy of Swipe. Aggro Paladin and Face hunter specifically utilise a lot of 1-Health minions, making Swipe an excellent keep to secure the board as you enter the mid game.

If you have an exceptional opening hand, such as 2 copies of Wild Growth or Wild Growth and 2 copies of Innervate, you can also look to keep a copy of Ancient of Lore against Control decks, as the draw 2 option will help replenish your hand after you accelerate your Mana.

Classic Midrange Combo Druid Deck Strategy

In the early game, your priority should be to gain Mana Crystals as quickly as possible, ideally through the use of Wild Growth. In most situations you should simply wait until Turn 2 to play Wild Growth even if you have The Coin. However, exceptions can be made for this if you have a second copy of Wild Growth in hand, a strong 3 drop and 4 drop follow-up, like Harvest Golem and Chillwind Yeti or a copy of Innervate and a 5 drop like Druid of the Claw.

In tandem with your Wild Growth usage, you should also plan carefully how you plan to use any Innervates you may have in hand. For example, it may be tempting to use The Coin and Innervate to play a Chillwind Yeti on Turn 1. However, this will often leave you with nothing to do on Turns 2 and 3. Conversely, it is better to use the Innervate on Turn 2 to play the Chillwind Yeti, allowing you to use The Coin to play another 4-drop on Turn 3, resulting in you only skipping Turn 1 instead of Turns 2 and 3. While the aforementioned example is a common situation, there are many card combinations you may come across. For these, you should apply the same thought process, looking for the combination of cards that allows you to smoothly get as many of your minions onto the board as possible, instead of simply rushing out one minion very early.

When playing against Aggro, it can be very distracting following your early-game plan as the board continues to flood with minions. However, in most cases, you should not sacrifice opportunities to play Wild Growth. If you do choose to engage in a scrappy low-Mana battle, you will most likely lose to the multitude of low-Cost tools they have available. Instead, you should look to retake control of the board once you reach the mid game. Keeper of the Grove is an excellent tool for doing this, as its 2-damage Choose One effect allows it to swiftly remove pesky 3/2 minions like Knife Juggler and Flame Imp, while its 2/4 stat line allows it to stick around long enough to trade with multiple cheap minions.

In addition to a wide array of minions, the deck also has access to two flexible damage spells, Wrath and Swipe, that have excellent uses in all matchups. Against Aggro, Wrath can be cheaply fit into almost any turn, either with Innervate or any Mana you have remaining, to help remove key minions as you continue to develop your own board. Against slower decks, its ability to draw you card can be used to help cycle through your deck and put you one step closer to drawing your key combo cards. Swipe, on the other hand, requires a much larger Mana commitment and should therefore be saved until it can remove multiple minions at a time, such as damage minions, Leper Gnomes, and Abusive Sergeants. If there are no 1-Health minions available, the card can be saved to be combined with Spell Damage from Bloodmage Thalnos or Azure Drake to boost the damage to all minions to 2, allowing all 2-Health minions to be cleared. Against slower decks, the card can be saved as a source of direct damage later in the game if additional damage is needed to soften your opponent up to put them into burst-damage range.

Once you reach a comfortable mid-game position, your aim is to simply spend all of your Mana as efficiently as possible, unless Mana is needed for any of the aforementioned damage spells. Depending on the matchup, you should prioritise your minions, but use them slightly differently. Against Aggro, you should primarily look to use your defensive minions, Keeper of the Grove, Sen'jin Shieldmasta, and Druid of the Claw in Taunt mode. These will help you secure the board, slow the game down, and minimise the damage that you take. In other matchups, you should take a more proactive approach and opt for card-draw minions like Azure Drake and Ancient of Lore where possible, to give yourself more options going forward. In slower matchups, you should also prioritise using Druid of the Claw in Charge mode and attacking your opponent directly as this will force your opponent to start making defensive plays and also brings their Health lower, which is important later in the game.

When it comes to choosing which minions to play, playing against Rogue deserves as special mention. The popularity of the card Sap means that any moment a minion could be returned to your hand, and as your minions all have a respectable Mana Cost, this can be very painful. To play around this, you should prioritise lower Cost minions, such as a 3-Cost and 4-Cost minion over a single 7-Cost minion or play minions that have an immediate effect, such as Druid of the Claw with Charge or card draw from Azure Drake.

Although it is almost correct to deal as much damage as possible to your opponent each turn, there is one very specific exception when playing against Handlock. Handlock uses powerful Molten Giant cards, which get cheaper as your opponent's Health goes down, becoming free at 10 Health and below. These minions will almost always be immediately given Taunt with Defender of Argus or Sunfury Protector if possible. The only response you will have to this is either Big Game Hunter or Keeper of the Grove, which will most likely have already been used on a Twilight Drake or Mountain Giant. The solution is therefore to never allow your opponent to play their Molten Giants. This can be done by keeping your opponent's Health at or above 10+their current mana-1. This ensures that they will only have 1 Mana left if they play a Molten Giant, which is not enough to Taunt it up with a Sunfury Protector. Whilst doing this, you can freely use any excess damage you have from minions on board to efficiently trade with your opponent's other minions. Eventually, your opponent will be in range of your burst damage to close out the game.

To finish off games, the deck uses the renowened combination of Force of Nature and Savage Roar to burst down opponents. While the cards can be used seperately early in the game as removal tools if there is an urgent threat that needs removing and there is no Wrath or Swipe in sight, you should avoid doing this if there is any other option. If you have the combo in hand, you should routinely do a count of your opponent's Health and how much damage you can deal. As a starting point, the magic number is 14: this is the amount of damage you can deal with 3 2/2 Treants, buffed to 4/2 with Savage Roar plus an additional 2 damage buff for your Hero. However, the damage can be so much more as any minion you have on board at the start of the turn will also receive a 2 damage buff on top of their base damage. In rare cases, you may also be able to cast 2 copies of Savage Roar, which can be done with 2 copies of Savage Roar, Force of Nature, and a copy of Innervate allowing you do 22 damage plus an additional 4 for any other minion you have.

Classic Midrange Combo Druid Deck Card Swaps

Midrange Combo Druid uses a core set of cards consisting of Innervate, Wild Growth, Ancient of Lore, Force of Nature, and Savage Roar.

If you wish to tech against Aggro, adding in a few additional Taunt minions, such as Sen'jin Shieldmasta, Sunwalker, or Ancient of War, in place of Bloodmage Thalnos, Sylvanas Windrunner, Cairne Bloodhoof, or a Chillwind Yeti.

If you wish to add in more power against Control, Ragnaros the Firelord and Cenarius are excellent cards for doing so and can be used in place of Harvest Golems or Sen'jin Shieldmasta.

Changelog