Malygos Druid Deck List Guide – Uldum Doom – October 2019

Check out alternative versions of this deck on our Malygos Druid archetype page!

Malygos Druid Mulligan Strategy & Guide

VS Fast Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Untapped Potential – The Quest is essential. You always keep it.
• Crystal Merchant – By far the best card to keep in every matchup. Early minion and card draw. What’s there not to like?
• Wrath  – Flexible early defense tool.

Lower Priority (Keep only if certain conditions are met)

• Oasis Surger  – Keep for defense against decks that do not swarm the board (Hunter, Priest)
• Starfall  – Keep for defense against decks that swarm the board (Shaman, Warlock)
• Nourish  – Keep if you already have some tools to defend yourself.

VS Slow Decks

Higher Priority (Keep every time)

• Untapped Potential – The Quest is essential. You always keep it.
• Crystal Merchant – By far the best card to keep in every matchup. Early minion and card draw. What’s there not to like?
• Nourish – Against slow decks you want to draw through your deck as quickly as possible.

Malygos Druid Play Strategy

You are playing a combo deck. In general, combo decks care about three things:

• Drawing cards
• Survival
• Winning the game with the combo once available

Every card in the deck attempts to advance one of these three goals, some of them multiple at once. Draw cards whenever you can afford to do so. Use your tools to ensure your survival, including sacrificing some combo pieces as necessary. Figure out how to use your combo to win the game. That’s what playing Malygos Druid is all about.

Malygos Druid is a somewhat unusual combo deck in that it does not have one specific combo that ends the game. All of its combos are based on Malygos and damage spells, but there are many variations of the theme, and the deck does not need to draw all of its cards to win, unlike some other combo decks such as Holy Wrath Paladin or Mecha’thun Warrior. Therefore, you need to constantly evaluate how you intend to win each game, depending on the resources you find first and any combo pieces you need to sacrifice in order to survive.

Some of the most common Malygos Druid combos include:

• Play Elise the Enlightened to make additional copies of Flobbidinous Floop and Moonfire. Play Malygos on the following turn. On the turn after that, play both copies of Flobbidinous Floop as Malygos and play three copies of Moonfire to deal 33 damage or four copies to deal 44 damage.
• Play Emperor Thaurissan to discount both of your Swipes to three mana each. Later in the game, play Malygos. On the turn after that, play Flobbidinous Floop as Malygos and play two copies of Moonfire and two copies of Swipe for exactly 30 damage for 10 mana.
• Play Jepetto Joybuzz and draw Malygos as a one-mana 1/1. Later in the game, play Malygos and play two copies of Moonfire and two copies of Swipe for exactly 30 damage for 10 mana, or play Malygos, Flobbidinous Floop, and play two copies of Moonfire and a Swipe for 36 damage for 9 mana.
• Play Dreampetal Florist to discount Malygos to two mana. Later in the game, play Malygos and play two copies of Moonfire and two copies of Swipe for exactly 30 damage for 10 mana.

As you can see, there are many variations of Elise the Enlightened, Emperor Thaurissan, Jepetto Joybuzz, Dreampetal Florist, and Flobbidinous Floop interacting with each other to deliver lethal damage.

Note that while sometimes you need a lot of damage against slow decks that armor up, often you can also deal considerably less damage to win the game, as you have already dealt some occasional face damage during the game. For example, just a simple Malygos + Moonfire + Moonfire is 12 damage.

Furthermore, you can often afford to sacrifice some of your combo pieces for survival, because Elise the Enlightened enables you to create additional copies of your cards.

There are several important interactions with these special tools that you should be aware of when playing the deck.

Elise the Enlightened makes a copy of your hand from left to right. Therefore, if you do not have enough space in your hand for all the copies, you know exactly which cards you will receive (the left-most ones) and can plan accordingly. When Elise the Enlightened makes a copy of Flobbidinous Floop, that copy will remain a copy of the same minion it was when Elise was played and will not become a copy of Elise. The original Floop will become a copy of Elise. Both Floops will become a copy of whatever minion you play next. Any cards copied by Elise the Enlightened keep their discounts, so if you copy a two-mana Malygos, for example, you will then have two copies of two-mana Malygos in hand.

Jepetto Joybuzz turns the minions it draws into one-mana 1/1s, but many Druid minions have special rules:

• Wardruid Loti will become a one-mana version of itself with full stats, as it gains its stats from the choose one effect, not from the card itself.
• Flobbidinous Floop will turn into a four-mana copy of the next minion you play, it will not keep the discount.
• Oasis Surger has a Battlecry effect to gain +2/+2. Therefore, a Jepetto-generated Oasis Surger is a pair of 3/3 Rush minions after you have completed the Druid quest.

Flobbidinous Floop in general will not keep any discounts when it changes into another minion. Emperor Thaurissan or Dreampetal Florist hit on Flobbidinous Floop is largely wasted, unless you want to play it as a copy of one or the other. Playing Flobbidinous Floop as a Dreampetal Florist is very useful sometimes, if you can then guarantee a discount on your Malygos.

VS Aggro Decks

You are mainly concerned about two things when playing against aggressive decks: getting run over before you can stabilize and big minions that you cannot effectively deal with.

You can fight against getting run over by compromising on your quest completion speed: sometimes it is correct to use all your mana and delay your quest in order to clear some boards: for example, a Starfall on turn five to deal two damage to all minions can win a game even though it delays your quest by a turn.

Big minions are a more difficult problem. Wardruid Loti is your only hard-removal piece; other than that, you need to kill big minions with damage, and Starfall deals only seven damage to its main target after the quest is completed. Wardruid Loti with its spell damage bonus can help, but often need to Rush Loti into a big threat t remove it, so it is not always available. Wrath for four damage and a pair of Oasis Surgers for five damage each can accomplish something, but big minions remain scary. In particular, early Sea Giants and Evolve boards can be incredibly problematic, because they are often out of reach of your damage spells. Try to prevent them from being created in the first place by limiting the number of minions on the board, and selectively remove some of them or wear them down over multiple turns if they nonetheless manage to hit the board.

You have a lot of healing, if you can survive long enough. As long as you can stay out of reach of the opponent’s burst damage in the mid-game, you have a chance to recover from extremely low-health positions.

VS Control Decks

Against slow decks, you want to draw cards as quickly as possible. Prioritize card draw over everything else. Whether your opponent wants to defeat you with an OTK combo or with an endless stream of N'Zoth, The Corruptors, you just want to get to your win condition first and burn them down. Your ability to clear large boards is limited, so board after board of pressure in the late game can be fatal, unless you are very close to your combo by the time your opponent gets rolling. On the bright side, even a board full of Khartut Defenders matters little to you if you have enough health left, because you can deal 30 or more damage in a single turn.

If your opponent has a damage-based combo, you also have the option to out-armor it with Ferocious Howls and Kun the Forgotten King. You can even make copies of them to gain crazy amounts of armor. If you can identify that you are playing against a deck like that – Holy Wrath Paladin, for example – early enough, you can focus on maximizing your armor gain to render their combo null and void, if you cannot race them and get to your own combo first.

Malygos Druid Card Substitutions

Malygos Druid is a combo deck, albeit a very flexible one. The most important combo pieces – Malygos, Flobbidinous Floop, and Elise the Enlightened – cannot effectively be replaced, but there are some secondary cards that can.

• Untapped Potential and Wardruid Loti are essential survivability pieces that cannot effectively be replaced. You can try to replace Wardruid Loti with Worthy Expedition, but it deprives the deck of its only guaranteed hard-removal piece.
• Jepetto Joybuzz is by no means mandatory. It can be replaced with a variety of cards, such as Bloodmage Thalnos, Zephrys the Great, Dreampetal Florist, or, as a budget option, Worthy Expedition.
• Crystal Merchant is difficult to replace, as it is the best early-game card in the deck. You can try Pounce or BEEEES!!! to have early-game removal, but you cannot effectively substitute the card draw. Bloodmage Thalnos in a non-budget option, if you happen to own that one.
• Anubisath Defender is an excellent survival tool that is not easy to replace. Pounce, Worthy Expedition, or BEEEES!!! may help you plug some of the defensive gap left by removing it.