Addled Grizzly Aggro

Hello all,

   My name is TwoMelodies, I’m not very well known, but I’m a two time legend player (shitty I know), with one season placing as high as top 20 with FaceDruid when Fel Reaver was extremely big. Although the Knife Juggler, and Leper Gnome nerfs were a significant derailing to an aggro decks full tool kit, it has only changed the way aggro decks will be built heading into future formats involving WotOG. Involving druid particularly, the Force of Nature & Keeper of the Grove nerfs were particularly big for the archetype as a whole, and the aggro druid strategy of always controlling the board well early with always having the option to push for lethal turn 6+. Nowadays, the ladder is not as much of a threat, but the potential to still dish out large amounts of damage early through spamming the board pre-3, then setting up a huge roar from 4-6 is real.

Moving onto WotOG, I feel like Druid got nerfed for a few reasons, they were blantly overpowered and still are as a class. They have the most balance and versatility of all the classes in Hearthstone next to the Warlock class. The introduction of WotOG might have brought nerfs to the class, but ultimately also brought it a few interesting choices, as well. Specifically, addled grizzly, which is a 2/2 3 mana beast that is basically a pseudo HobGoblin for any minion. This is particularly good in combination with the ability to manifest tokens pretty much at will with 6 methods. Not to mention you can always combine it with a charge minion or even the new Force of Nature (which I was running for a moment, before the addition of Leeroy). The card would be better as a 3/3 for 3, but the additional stats it grants to other minions diversifies its damage distribution, and makes it a powerful addition in the aggro druid toolkit. Next, we’ll take a look at the new Keeper, and Murloc 2 drop. First, let’s start with the Murloc because most people will think I’m nuts for giving this a shot, but hear me out, if you open innervate on turn 1 with the new Murloc and Grizzly, maybe with going first, you effectively have a way to drop 2-3 minions on turn 2 each with 3 additional +1/1s. So say you go innervate Grizzly, next turn Murloc into turn 3 R aptor into turn 4 Keeper. See where I’m going? Grizzly sets up so much extra damage, it creates the same type of scenario the old Ooze/Hobgoblin decks used to create, but worse. With Keeper, you can summon the 2/2 ooze, and have both get stat increases. It also works with living roots, where if you open Innervate + Coin into Grizzly + Roots you can start off with 3 2/2s on turn 1. The flexibility is really good.

The new druid 1 drop also ties into this deck really well. It’s got the possibility of replacing Fel Reaver, with also being able to spam the board early on if you want to drop it as a 3/3 or 4/4. Savage Combatant is still also a power house, with the ability to just turn your face into a consistent 3 damage, it’s essentially a Fel Reaver in itself. I was originally running 1 of the old Keeper for silence factors and/or damage, but cut it for Gormok because the body seems better and it essentially does the same thing a lot of the time.

Last but not least because I’m trying to make this short, I originally ran the new FoN as another method to potentially set up a big Grizzly play later on, but soon realized this deck does not do well into the late game anyway. So adding a potential dead card that can’t push for lethal right away with that mana cost was inconsistent with the decks strategy. I figured a third charge minion, Leeroy would be a better fit. I have yet to test this change much, but well see.

All in all, the focal point of the deck is to control the board early, spam minions, and push for lethal around turn 5-6 with a cheese Roar. Savage Roar is what ties this deck together, and can sometimes be too overwhelming to deal with.

I’ll write more on this deck when I can test it more and/or am not crammed with Uni work. Thanks for looking.

TwoMelodies