About James Law
James can usually be found wearing dungarees.
Our Token Druid deck list guide features the best Forged in the Barrens deck list for Season 85 of Hearthstone (April 2021). Our Token Druid guide also contains Mulligan advice, card combos and strategy tips.
Token Druid is a Hearthstone deck that we’ve seen riding high in most metas since the dawn of Hearthstone. It’s a really powerful deck in the right hands, and we recommend hopping on the hype train if you haven’t tried it already.
This build uses primarily spells to generate tokens, rather than stacking your deck with a bunch of small minions. This is because of the enormous power level of Fungal Fortunes, which draws you three cards for as much mana (provided you don’t hit a Gibberling). Here’s how you should be looking to play Token Druid.
Token Druid deck list and strategy
Here is the best version of Token Druid available to play in Hearthstone right now.
| Druid | Neutral |
|---|---|
| 2 x Lightning Bloom | |
| 2 x Innervate | |
| 2 x Gibberling | |
| 2 x Nature Studies | |
| 2 x Adorable Infestation | |
| 2 x Thorngrowth Sentries | |
| 2 x Power of the Wild | |
| 2 x Lunar Eclipse | |
| 2 x Solar Eclipse | |
| 2 x Guess the Weight | |
| 2 x Fungal Fortunes | |
| 2 x Pride's Fury | |
| 2 x Soul of the Forest | |
| 2 x Glowfly Swarm | |
| 2 x Arbor Up |
Select and copy the long ID string below, then create a deck in Hearthstone to export this deck into your game.
Deck Import ID: AAECAZICAA/lugPvugP5zAObzgO50gPw1AOJ4AOK4APR4QOM5AOt7AOz7AOunwTXnwTZnwQA
General strategy
This iteration of Token Druid takes minions out of the equation and forces your enemy to deal with absolutely mountains of minions summoned by spells. It’s not as immediately ridiculous as other aggressive decks, but if your opponent fails to clear a couple instances of minions for a single turn, it can be game over really quickly for them.
Early game: Chuck your minions onto the board as quickly as possible. Gibberling is the only actual minion here, but summoning extra copies by casting cheap spells like The Coin, Innervate, and Adorable Infestation can provide a very scary board for your enemies to have to deal with. If they don’t have AOE damage, you can often just chip them down before going for a full-board buff and winning immediately.
Trading is often not ideal. You don’t want to be wasting damage when it could be going face, so only do so if the enemy is threatening lethal (or a board clear like Ras Frostwhisper), or if there’s a Taunt in your way.
Mid game: Keep getting your board nice and wide, setting up for future turns with a Soul of the Forest to keep your minions sticky and resistant to board clears. Remember, as soon as you have a few minions stay in play ready to attack, buff them up with something like Pride’s Fury or Arbor Up, and you’ll be a great deal closer to victory.
Board clears are scary at this point, so combining a Solar Eclipse with a Pride’s Fury to double up on it really helps to remove the threat.
Late game: If the game isn’t won yet, your opponent is, hopefully, on their last legs so you can finish them off very soon. Glowfly Swarm is an immediate way to instantly present a threat once again if your hand is somewhat full (helped on by Fungal Fortunes and Guess the Weight), so keep on getting those face hits in. If your control deck-toting opponent has stabilised by this point, it might be a lost cause, unfortunately.
- 1. Best Budget Decks - Hearthstone: Best Budget Decks for Ashes of Outland
- 2. Tier List - Hearthstone deck tier list (Ashes of Outland)
- 3. Embiggen Druid - Embiggen Druid deck list guide (Ashes of Outland)
- 4. Token Druid - Token Druid deck list guide (Ashes of Outland)
- 5. Treant Druid - Treant Druid deck list guide (Ashes of Outland)
- 6. Quest Druid - Quest Druid deck list guide (Ashes of Outland)
Aggro opponents
These tips will help you overcome aggro decks you face on ladder:
- 1. Wrath and Swipe are your best bets for board control in this deck. The latter you might want to prioritise in aggro matchups as a way to clear their board and keep your minions safe.
- 2. Aggro decks often lack strong board clears, so once you start generating and buffing token creatures you can make more efficient trades and take control of the game.
- 3. If you absolutely must, you can use Savage Roar to give you some extra attack power to kill off your foe’s minions, although you'd prefer to save it for the kill.
Token Druid Mulligan guide
These are the cards you’ll want to have in hand at the start of the match when playing Token Druid:
- 1. Fungal Fortunes, for three mana lets you draw three cards. That's massively valuable, and this deck contains barely and minions so the card's downside is far less relevant.
- 2. Gibberling is the only minion in your deck so would be discarded when drawn by Fungal Fortunes. Also, you can start building a board with the extra Gibberlings generated every time you cast a spell.
- 3. Glowfly Swarm is one of your more expensive cards, but can spell victory on turn 5 if your enemy can’t deal with it immediately.
- 4. Adorable Infestation offers extra minions, stats for your existing board, and even a little token in your hand to play out later.
Token Druid tips, card combos and synergies
It’s a fairly straightforward deck, but these are some of the important combos to Token Druid:
- If you cast Solar Eclipse before Soul of the Forest you get two times the number of Treants summoned as a Deathrattle. This means you can turn a board of three minions into a board of six with their Deathrattles, further disincentivising your opponent from killing them off.
- Be careful with your mana. Several times, we’ve accidentally cast Lunar Eclipse before using Innervate or Lightning Bloom to get to the play we actually want to make. This ruins the Lunar Eclipse effect, as it only discounts the next spell you play, regardless of whether it costs zero mana or not.
- Fungal Fortunes will almost always draw you three cards for three mana, unless you’re unlucky enough to draw out one of your two Gibberlings. If you do that, they’ll get discarded.
- Arbor Up can be played on an empty board if needed - the two 2/2 Treants summoned will also benefit from the buff and turn into 4/3s.
- Count out the spells in your hand before playing Glowfly Swarm - you get a single 2/2 for each.
- Nature Studies can be played on turn three, and can discount Glowfly Swarm or Arbor Up for an early play on turn four.
Comment on this article
The reason for the cards you've mentioned being in the article - yet not in the list - is explained in the intro to that same section ("as well as some cards that see play in variants from our deck:")
Token Druid is top of the list for a Rise of Shadows update and there'll be a proper overhaul of the guide then.
It runs no card draw or armor in the class with the most available card draw and armor. If you don't curve out you will instantly lose board, and when you do curve out your cards are weak so you'll lose board anyway.
It also talks about Violet Teacher and Malfurion but they're not in the deck, and it says Whispering Woods "is based on the cards in your hand so is more effective earlier on in a game" which is literally the opposite of when it's good.
Just play the Witchwood version from a year earlier + Zilliax, it's way better than whatever this is. It's a great treant deck but an awful token deck.
Could I add one or two copies of Evolving Spores to this deck? Half for fun, but half because SOME of the adaptions are great (+3 attack, windfury etc.) for Token Druid, and I think it would be a very good experimental mechanic.
Should I add some copies; if yes, should I add one or two, and what card(s) should I remove?
I’d love to hear your comments!
I've also tweaked the rest of the guide to reflect those changes. I'll take another look at the deck when the November season starts.
PS: in the 'card choice and substitutions' Oaken Summons and Violet teacher are still mentioned --> remnants from an earlier version of this deck.
I just wanted to get a fresh deck list in front of people first and foremost, so everyone's got a new version to get stuck into. There are dozens and dozens of articles to update fully in launch week but we'll get there eventually!
This isn't true, as it can also summon either of the Violet Teachers you have in the deck.
Having mentioned this current uncertainty right there in the update section of the guide though, I think those with limited resources to spend on crafting dust should consider themselves fairly warned. That's critical thinking...