The Comprehensive Festival of Legends Preview

Data Reaper Report - Druid

Peaceful Piper

Peaceful Piper

Historically, 1 mana 1/1 tutors have always seen play. The discover option is rarely going to be picked, but it is nice in case you drew your target beasts already, leaving an otherwise ‘dead’ Piper in hand. It gives you some leeway to run a 1:1 ratio of Piper/Beast in the deck, which you normally wouldn’t do for a tutor (a good example is Stonehearth Vindicators being historically ran alongside 4 spells).

There are some important beasts introduced in this set: Groovy Cat and Free Spirit. Since Piper helps us find these cards more often, it makes a hero power package, as well as its resulting payoffs, more consistent.

Score: 3

Harmonic Mood

Harmonic Mood

This card seems quite weak when compared to Claw, a card that saw very little play throughout its time in Standard. It costs twice as much for a rotating +2 bonus to either armor or attack. It does synergize with the hero power package and Rake, but it might be redundant since utilizing the scaling hero power is going to be a more efficient use of mana once you’ve played a couple of the ‘Justicar’ beasts. We’d play this if we wanted to layer more damage on top of an upgraded hero power, but ultimately this is a bad constructed card.

Score: 1

Spread the Word

Spread the Word

This is Cutting Class for Druid, and we strongly suspect this will become a cornerstone draw engine for the class. There are many ways in which Spread the Word can be significantly discounted. You can use attack buffs such as Rake and Harmonic Mood. You can utilize Timber Tambourine. Most importantly, this works fantastically well with Groovy Cat and the hero power package, where it will likely always be cast for 0-1 mana.

It’s hard not to see this card become a permanent staple considering its flexibility and multiple applications.

Score: 4

Groovy Cat

Groovy Cat

The best comparison for this card is Wildfire. Wildfire gives you a +1-attack buff to your hero power. Groovy Cat gives you a +2 attack buff. In terms of late game scaling, Groovy Cat is the stronger standalone card. Mage did have stronger late game synergies with Wildfire thanks to Reckless Apprentice, Magister Dawngrap and Mordresh, but Groovy Cat is no joke. A couple of Groovy Cats means that your hero power starts hitting for 5 every turn. It is also the best enabler for Spread the Word and Rake in the format. That’s a lot of utility and finishing potential for such little investment.

Score: 3

Summer Flowerchild

Summer Flowerchild

Flowerchild is the definition of a late game draw engine. At its baseline, it’s already a reasonable investment. A Chillwind Yeti that draws two cards for one extra mana is decent enough, but the fact it tutors the top end of your curve means you can manipulate it to draw and discount your win conditions. The possibilities here are endless and we can’t think of a single non-Aggro Druid deck in 2023 that shouldn’t play it.

There’s some impact on Ramp Druid deckbuilding too. You might not invest heavily into ramping while utilizing Flowerchild, since you want to make sure you can hit the Finale discount. Your late game might become leaner too, with a package of 4-6 cards that cost 6 or more, making your draws highly targeted.

This card changes the way Druid plays the game.

Score: 4

Drum Circle

Drum Circle

Drum Circle is not a very good standalone card. The option to summon 5 2/2 Treants is very weak and slow. An aggressive Druid wouldn’t consider it because it’s so expensive, while a slower deck doesn’t really leverage wide boards particularly well. The taunt buff option is a bit more interesting, since it can function as a stabilizing finisher in combination with Timber Tambourine or Rhythm and Roots. The main problem of these cards is that they’re very slow and that the Ancients they summon don’t have an immediate impact on the board. Drum Circle can be played on the turn the Ancients come down, turning them into massive taunts and shutting down the opposition’s advance through the board.

This line of play can also be made more consistent thanks to Flowerchild. It’s something to consider, but the flaws are obvious. It takes a long time to set up (three turns is eternity in Hearthstone). It requires a combination of cards in a specific order. It is vulnerable to mass removal.

Score: 2

Free Spirit

Free Spirit

Back in the day, we used to pay 6 mana for a 6/3 legendary to buff our armor gain by 2. Now we have a 1-drop accomplish the same. We can run two copies of it and we can draw it with a specific tutor that also costs 1 mana.

Free Spirit just makes sense in any deck that runs Groovy Cat, as you get twice the benefit from pressing the button. Not only do you present a lot of damage, but your sustainability also makes it quite difficult to burn you down. All you must do is run a 1 mana 1/2, which is barely a sacrifice, allowing you to gain 5 armor a turn in the late game. Tempting.

Score: 3

Timber Tambourine

Timber Tambourine

Druid might become the Titanic with this card: a huge stats producer that’s very slow to turn the corner. Timber Tambourine is awfully slow. 2/3 weapons with upsides struggle to see play at 3 mana, so a 4-mana weapon that doesn’t kill most things on the board is the equivalent of taking a turn off. That clunkiness comes with massive potential though. If you can play multiple high-cost cards as a follow up, you can summon a pile of beefy Ancients on turn 6. The ceiling without any synergies appears to be three Ancients on turn 6, but Green-Thumb Gardener and Anub’Rekhan are strong enablers that allow you to upgrade the weapon multiple times on a single turn.

The big problem is that the Ancients have no immediate impact on the board and can only attack on turn 7. Playing a low-impact weapon followed by more expensive cards is a recipe to get hit in the face and die before you break Tambourine. This is where Drum Circle comes in. It’s an interesting way for Druid to turn the corner, but it’s no Scale of Onyxia.

Score: 2

Rhythm and Roots

Rhythm and Roots

You can think of this legendary spell as a 3rd pseudo-copy of Timber Tambourine. It has the exact same timing of summoning the 5/5 Ancients. You play it on turn 4 and they come out on turn 6. The difference is you don’t have a weapon, but the card doesn’t need to be upgraded in the following turns. Two ‘weapon upgrades’ are built in.

We feel this card is as good as Timber Tambourine. If the format doesn’t allow one to be successful, the other is unlikely to do much better.  The option to summon 8/8’s is almost never viable. Perhaps you do it if you have a Tambourine already equipped and want to space out your threats, but it is obviously very slow and the opponent has plenty of time to find mass removal to answer it. The value in the choice being ‘secretive’ isn’t high, as the opponent should be able to tell what you’re trying to do.

Score: 2

Zok Fogsnout

Zok Fogsnout

Zok is seemingly linked to the hero power package. The idea is to upgrade the hero power to an extent the taunt Quillboars become big. A fully upgraded hero power by Groovy Cat and Free Spirit produces 6/6 taunts. That’s solid but not amazing for a turn 9 play, unless you have a Tour Guide setup for turn 7. We’re also not incredibly likely to have a fully upgraded hero power by the time you play Zok.

The other major application for Zok is in a package with Anub’Rekhan and Underking. This can lead to some hilariously high health taunts that completely shut down an aggressive deck’s ability to hit your face ever again. It’s not something that threatens a defensive deck at first glance, but Crazed Alchemist could turn those taunts into game ending threats in slower matchups too.

Zok is also drawn and discounted by Summer Flowerchild alongside its enablers, making this blow out turn quite consistent. You might be looking at the cornerstone card of Druid’s new late game.

Score: 4

 

Final Thoughts

Festival of Legends Set Rank: 1st

Overall Power Ranking:  7th

Druid needed a strong set. It needed it badly, because rotation nukes both its major late game pieces as well as its survivability and ability to turn the corner. Without a powerful FoL set, Druid would have been pronounced dead on April 11.

So, it’s good to see Druid is getting major love and the possibility of branching out to several new win conditions. The glue that makes them possible is Summer Flowerchild. This is the most powerful card the class has received. Its utility in both tutoring and discounting your late game pieces should be extremely valuable. Whatever Druid deck emerges in this expansion, you can guarantee it will utilize Flowerchild.

The hero power package should also be a common feature of Druid decks. It provides both survivability and consistent late game damage. It reminds us of the Wildfire package. You can lean heavier on it, but you can also just slap it into a deck and get its baseline benefits.

Druid’s ability to turn the corner has several pathways. One that already exists is the Topior/Nature package. Topior can be drawn more consistently by Summer Flowerchild and played on turn 6. Another is the Timber Tambourine/Rhythm & Roots angle, which can set up a board of Ancients taunted up by Drum Circle. The final one might be our favorite, which involves an Anub’Rekhan/Underking/ZoK blowout turn to produce taunts with massive health, instantly shutting down aggression. The added benefit is Zok’s synergy with the hero power package.

How does Druid win the late game? We’ve just mentioned multiple ways to produce massive boards, but these boards are vulnerable to mass removal tools utilized by defensive control decks. This is where the Jailer/Tony combo comes in. If this combo is successful (read about it when we discuss Tony in the Neutral section), Druid will have the pieces required to win any matchup. If it manages to live to that point…

This brings us to one big question mark remaining that keeps us hesitant about Druid’s ability to dominate a format. Its anti-aggro tools are nearly non-existent. For the Druid to survive, it needs to race to its board blowouts, but standalone swing cards in these matchups are lost and have not been replaced. The departure of Scale of Onyxia and Spammy Arcanist should hurt.

To sum up, Druid is a class that looks to reinvent itself. It needs a new late game after the loss of Wildheart Guff and Brann. It needs a new early game to survive aggression. Can it find both? If it does, it will be at the top of the meta. If it finds one of them, it will become a polarizing class. If it finds neither… it will take a holiday.

 

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