Budget Token Druid deck guide – Hearthstone March 2020

One of the few viable budget decks that you can build without Galakrond is Token Druid. The archetype has been around for a long time, and it is still going strong: flooding the board with tokens, buffing them up with spells, and ultimately using Savage Roar for burst damage.

In Galakrond’s Awakening, the Budget Token Druid to go for is the Treant version. Mech Token Druid is still possible to build, but because it comprises mostly Year of the Raven cards that will rotate out of Standard format in April 2020, it is not a great investment right now.

Budget Token Druid decklist

Deck code: AAECAZICAv0CypwDDu0D9wPmBd/7Ar/9AtWDA8OUA86UA9OcA6+iA+2iA/ytA/6tA/+tAwA=

This is the Budget Token Druid I recommend at the moment as the best compromise between cost and power. It requires two Epic cards: two copies of Force of Nature are mandatory for the synergies with Garden Gnome and Mulchmuncher.

One card that I want to highlight in particular is BEEEES!!! – Token Druid is quite straightforward and does not allow for many interesting plays, but BEEEES!!! enables you to respond to the board in a much more proactive way. I find this to be essential especially for the budget version that needs to use any advantages it can find.

In some earlier metas, the budget version of Token Druid has wanted to cut The Forest’s Aid for speed, but currently, all the expensive spells are core for the Treant synergies.

Budget Token Druid mulligan

You want to get on the board early, and therefore mulliganing for your one-drops and Shrubadier is so important. If you have some early game already, you can also keep cards such as Landscaping and Garden Gnome, but you need to get out there early, or you will have a hard time gaining board control.

Budget Token Druid tips and tricks

Do not overtrade when you play Token Druid. Your main, and only, threat comes from your ability to buff up your board and make it much bigger than it is. If you trade with unbuffed minions so that they end up getting destroyed, you lose board control. This is, of course, situational and needs to be balanced depending on what your opponent can do to wide boards, but in general, you want to preserve your minions so that you can get the most out of your buffs.

BEEEES!!! is really, really good. You can use it to clear a four-health minion, but often you can also make some of your bees survive and stay on the board, ready to be buffed. Sometimes trading a two-attack minion to get two bees on the board can be the right move, you want to go wide, after all.

Aeroponics is a great card draw tool. Note that when you have three Treants on the board, the spell is free. Force of Nature can make it free alone, and Landscaping can make it cost just one mana. Plan your Treant use accordingly when you have it in hand.

Budget Token Druid upgrade path

I played with several different versions when building this budget list. In fact, the most successful version was one where I used Wispering Woods instead of Soul of the Forest (but double Dreamway Guardians was worse). However, because Wispering Woods is an Epic card that is about to rotate out of the Standard format, and it is not generally used in the full-cost version, I do not recommend that version because of the cost. If you happen to have a copy of Wispering Woods, you could use it in this deck though.

Upgrading the deck to the full version is straightforward.

Replace Dreamway Guardians and Soul of the Forest with Anubisath Defenders, and replace one copy of Blessing of the Ancients with Goru the Mightree. You can do the replacement in any order.

Budget Token Druid gameplay video

Finally, here is a recap of the guide and several matches of gameplay with the deck on video. I hope it gives you a deeper understanding of the archetype!