Druid is absolutely my favorite mage. A strategy that I find very effective is running several plant creatures - I personally prefer vine snappers and thornlashers - with an altar of the iron guard. I normally pack one or two larger nature creatures as well. Having a garden of guarding plants can be very aggressive and intimidating and cost effective with the vine tree! The thornlashers are obviously used to pull the enemy creatures closer to you or away from you while the vine snappers deal the heavy dice damage. Plus your plants regenerate so if you pack a few brace yourselves you are increasing their staying power and effectiveness. I like to include five tanglevines because they are such a great spells- you are essentially giving your enemy something to deal with instead of pursuing his main strategy which is killing your mage. Plus if you have a guarding plant in the zone with a tanglevined creature - that creature is forced to deal with your plant and can't attack the tanglevine. I don't think that a battle forge is necessary if you utilize the in--school enchantments such as rhino hide, brace yourself, regrowth, or bark skin as well as your treebond. My druid likes to hide in the background until forced to attack. Another effective attack for the timid druid is burst of thorns which bypasses blocks, reverse attacks, retaliates, etc. Its better than you would imagine. Since the druid is able to use level 1 water spells, I also find that is important to include a couple rusts and acid balls to really break the enemy down and make them easier to deal with. And then the corrosive orchid is the best way to dissolve armor and bypass nullifies. I have been very successful utilizing this strategy and hope it was helpful.