Highlights
- Conservator Nymph turns a 2/2 into a 5/5 and summons a 3/4 Ancient with Taunt, providing immediate impact on the board against aggro decks.
- Witchwood Apple is a valuable tool for Treant-based token decks, allowing you to create multiple bodies over multiple turns, making it great for going wide and buffing minions.
- Arbor Up summons a pair of 4/3 Treants, providing a good deal for five mana, and becomes even more effective with each additional minion on the board, creating a constant threat.
Hearthstone’s Treants are an odd category of minion, as they exist almost exclusively in Druid, the only exceptions being a few Dual-Class cards that allow other classes to access them. While they aren’t an official minion type like Murlocs or Beasts, Treants have all the synergies you would expect.
As a result, Treant decks have not only been viable but quite powerful at various times in Hearthstone’s history. Some decks have even been built entirely around these little trees. Let’s take a look at which Treant cards have had the largest impact on the game.
Those who haven’t played Hearthstone in about a decade might expect to see Force of Nature on this list, a card that dominated the meta early in the game’s life. Sadly, nerfs and power creep have relegated that once-great card to history.
12 Conservator Nymph
The biggest disadvantage to Conservator Nymph is that it requires you to have a Treant already on board for it to be effective. That being said, turning a 2/2 into a 5/5 is a powerful effect, especially since you get a 3/4 along with it.
Conservator Nymph’s ability isn’t quite as good as a traditional buff, as the extra stats can’t attack right away. Still, the fact that your new Ancient has Taunt means that it will have an immediate impact on the board, particularly against aggro decks.
11 Witchwood Apple
Witchwood Apple is a card that has changed a few times in the many years since it was first introduced to Hearthstone way back in 2018. In its current state, though, this card can be a valuable tool for token decks, particularly Treant-based ones.
Combining its stats and mana cost, this Nature magic spell amounts to a three-mana 4/4, which is decent enough. But it’s even better than that because you can both spread the mana cost over multiple turns and create multiple bodies, which is great in decks that want to go wide and buff a bunch of minions.
Witchwood Apple has experienced a massive glow-up over the years; in its original form, the card was unplayable, and now it’s making lists like this one.
10 Natural Causes
Neither of Natural Causes’ two effects is quite worth two mana since you can find cards for one mana that deal two damage or summon a 2/2 and have an additional effect on top of that. However, combining both effects into a single card makes a big difference.
Sure, Natural Causes won’t have much of an impact against higher-cost minions. In the early game, though, killing an enemy minion and summoning one of your own can represent a significant tempo swing.
9 Plot Of Sin
Plot of Sin represents a direct power creep over an older card, Landscaping, which also summoned a pair of Treants but lacked Plot of Sin’s Infuse effect. Unlike most Infuse cards, however, it isn’t always going to be better once you fill the Infuse requirement, since the 5/5s Plot of Sin Summons aren’t Treants, which means they won’t activate your synergies.
Choosing when to wait and when to just slam Plot of Sin early is crucial to getting the most out of this spell. While it is often tempting to be greedy and wait for the 5/5s, sometimes it’s better to take the higher-tempo play immediately.
8 Soul Of The Forest
One of Hearthstone’s oldest Treant cards, Soul of the Forest doesn’t push for lethal, like many buff spells. Instead, it protects your board, making it much more difficult for your opponent to clear and setting up for more impactful buffs later on.
The card did fall out of favor as newer, more powerful options were introduced to the game. However, Soul of the Forest has seen a recent resurgence after being buffed, dropping its cost from four to three mana and making it significantly more competitive with modern cards.
7 Arbor Up
Even on its own, Arbor Up summons a pair of 4/3 Treants, which is a pretty good deal for five mana, especially when you consider that most buff spells don’t do anything at all when played on an empty board. Better still, each other minion you have in play increases the effectiveness of Arbor Up dramatically.
This provides enough of a buff that even if it doesn’t end the game on the spot, your opponent will need to deal with a much larger board than they were expecting. That makes Arbor Up a constant threat, no matter what your board position happens to be.
6 Forest Seedlings
Technically, Forest Seedlings does not summon Treants, since Saplings, despite being in a similar thematic vein, don’t benefit from the same synergies. That said, a pair of 1/1s isn’t terrible for one mana, so sometimes you’ll just play Forest Seedlings early.
If you can be patient, though, you’ll get multiple Treants for that same cost, making this spell rather similar to Witchwood Apple from earlier on this list. It’s not quite as versatile, but the total stats are the same despite coming at a much better price.
5 Sow The Soil
As one of Druid’s signature Choose One cards, Sow the Soil gives you options. Most of the time, it will be best used as a buff on a wide board, allowing you to take favorable trades or just push some extra damage at your opponent’s face.
However, a one-mana 2/2 Treant isn’t bad in a pinch, especially if you have a lot of Treant synergy, so even if it isn’t the ideal use of the card, it’s substantially better than wasting your mana in the early turns. After all, there are few things aggro decks hate more than wasting mana.
4 Blood Treant
Blood Treant is the only Treant in Hearthstone that you can put into your deck directly, as all of the others are created by spells or minions. Aside from being a rather interesting minion, Blood Treant also has the more practical feature of being free 2/2 if you don’t care about the Health cost.
Aggressive decks, particularly those in Warlock and Paladin, consistently trade life for powerful effects, and in. In the case of Blood Treant, it is both a surprise body for your buffs to hit and allows you to exert extra pressure in the early game, making it a dream minion for tempo and token-based strategies.
3 Drum Circle
Drum Circle is a decent card in a vacuum, able to provide an alright buff or refill your board after your opponent clears it. However, this card excels when you combine it with another spell, Embrace of Nature, which allows you to activate both of a Choose One card’s effects at the same time.
Summoning five 4/6 Taunt minions is broken, especially since you also buff any other minions you have in play at the time. Unfortunately, Embrace of Nature proved oppressive and was nerfed from one to two mana, but the change wasn’t so drastic that the strategy couldn’t still be powerful.
2 Cultivation
Treant Druid decks are often focused on building a wide board, and Cultivation is a potent finisher for that archetype. Given the number of cheap ways to create Treants, some of which summons several of them at once, it’s easy to get Cultivation down to a reasonable mana cost extremely quickly.
Even at four mana, it’s already a decent play, and it’s not particularly hard to summon four Treants in the first three turns of the game. Eventually, you’ll reduce Cultivation’s cost to the point that you can play two in one turn, and even moderate boards threaten to win the game.
1 Poison Seeds
Poison Seeds doesn’t seem all that impressive at first glance, but in practice, it can be a surprisingly effective removal tool. Though it won’t fully clear the board on its own, it can get rid of any minion; even a 30/30 with Divine Shield and Stealth will be reduced to a 2/2.
And yes, on a larger board, you’ll still have a bunch of 2/2s to deal with, but that’s often much better to face than whatever they were before. That’s a lot of power for just four mana, particularly in Druid, which historically has struggled to deal with both big minions and moderately sized boards.
Poison Seeds is an interesting example of a card that has gotten more powerful with age. Minions are much more threatening and difficult to kill than they used to be, so having an easy way to get rid of them is crucial.
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