1: Midrange Druid
Midrange Druid is easily the most common deck seen in tournaments, and has been since the release of The Grand Tournament and Darnassus Aspirant. Druid has always been a very strong class if it got Wild Growth or Innervate early on, giving it the boost it needed to ramp into strong lategame cards. The problem was that it was wildly inconsistent, as many casters stated, either you get the Wild Growth and win, or you don’t. The Grand Tournament and League of Explorers have been very lackluster in terms of competitive Druid cards, with one exception: Darnassus Aspirant. Darnassus acts as both an early game card, which Druid was missing, as well as a pseudo Wild Growth, giving Druid the time or the accelerant needed to reach their incredibly strong late game. This new-found consistency bumped Druid from being an all or nothing deck into a consistently strong deck pumping out strong minions and combos earlier than their opponent can handle.
2: Secret Paladin
Secret Paladin appeared with the release of The Grand Tournament, and only got stronger with the release of League of Explorers. Secret Paladin is a deck based around pumping out the strongest minions possible on curve to simply overwhelm your opponent. Because of Paladin’s extremely strong minions, they are able to take control of the board early on, and maintain that advantage all the way through until they drop the three strongest minions in the game back to back, Mysterious Challenger into Dr. Boom into Tirion. The only downside to this deck is the potential issues you can run into if you draw all of the secrets rather than drawing the Mysterious Challenger. However, if you do draw Challenger, pulling all of the secrets out of your deck allows you to have a much higher chance of getting to your big lategame cards more reliably. With League of Explorers came Keeper of Ulduman, which allows them to keep the steam-roll going by either making one of their own minions bigger or making an opponent’s minions easily manageable.
3: Aggro Shaman
This deck appeared very recently, with the release of League of Explorers and Tunnel Trogg. Shaman has been a joke class for a long time, sitting at the bottom of the classes for nearly a year now. However, the release of Tunnel Trogg gave them exactly the push they needed to be able to curve out as an aggressive deck. With cards like Doomhammer and many low cost direct damage spells, the early damage from Tunnel Trogg and Totem Golem allows the shaman to simply burst their opponent for upwards of fifteen damage in a single turn. They also make good use of Sir Finley to lose their biggest weakness: the Shaman hero power. By taking a Hunter, Druid, or Warlock hero power they smooth their damage and curve, giving Shaman the consistency it needed. With few classes being able to survive the onslaught of damage, Aggro Shaman was able to slide into its place in the tournament meta, knocking slower decks for a spin.
4: Reno Warlock
This is another newer deck, coming out with the release of League of Explorers as well. Reno Jackson Warlock takes traditional Warlock decks and mashes them all together, creating one giant list filled with a variety of strong cards for all situations. The strength of Reno himself is enough to win games against most aggressive decks, and give a huge boost against slower decks as well. It works so incredibly well in Warlock because of their hero power, which not only causes damage, but also allows for searching for Reno easily. Warlock also has a variety of cards to handle different situations, so they aren’t made significantly weaker by only running one copy of each card. There is a decent amount of variety in this archetype, as people test variations with demons, or ones with Feugen and Stalaag (SP?). All of them are very powerful, however, simply because of the strength that Reno Jackson lends to a deck.
5: Freeze Mage
This last slot was one that was hotly contested, and is one that will change week to week. However, I personally decided to give it to Freeze Mage simply because of their strength over several years, and their current strength against most of the other decks on this list. Freeze Mage is one of the oldest decks in Hearthstone. It is based around stalling out the game until you can burst your opponent down using direct damage and Alexstraza. This deck is extremely effective against aggressive decks that don’t run healing as long as it is able to get through the first few turns. Freeze Mage is extremely good against Secret Paladin especially, meaning this deck will always be one that is present. The only reason this deck isn’t a staple of the tournament scene is because of its weakness against Warrior, and the fact that the current tournament scene doesn’t run a ban. However, the deck is still extremely strong and whether it makes the top five or not, it won’t be going anywhere any time soon.
