Hearthpwn

Excellent work with this! I didn't have the Paladin DK, but I substituted it for a Scaled Nightmare which also worked perfectly and makes the deck even more budget friendly! Once the Nightmare had scaled high enough to one-shot the Lich King, I was able to use the Stoneskin Gargoyle to break Frostmourne and hit him before he had a chance to Obliterate.

Quote from Kunigunde53 >>

 Fandral would be my top choice ...

Second choice would be alextrasza ...

Quote from twitchy >>

Alexstraza, without any doupt.

But seriously tho... You're aiming at playing tournaments with those decks, yet you obviously have never played those decks since you don't even own all the cards? You need to play hundreds of games with any deck before you bring it to a tournament, which is especially true for freeze mage. 

That's pretty much the same as saying 'I'm going to play in a chess tournament, but so far I've only played with half a board since I don't own all 16 pieces yet'. 

I have a sizeable collection and am largely focusing on tournaments. Looking at 3200 dust and a couple possibly decent tournament deck options that are out of my reach and leave me less flexible to countering the meta. I'll list my top three crafting considerations and the decks they'll help fill. Open to thoughts on which to prioritize.

1. Alexstrasza. Needed for Freeze Mage, and useful for some iterations of Control Warrior and Renolock which fade in and out of the meta.

2. Yogg-Saron, Hope's End. Would be included for Tempo Mage and Token Druid, both of which can be powerful against certain metas and lineups.

3. Fandral Staghelm. Almost seems necessary to the power level of any Druid deck.

This seems like one of the best suited lists I've seen for extracting genuine tempo and value from Varian Wrynn. Very few card pulls I would be disappointed to see. I'm tempted to finally give him crafting priority.

Also enthused to see Argent Commander find his way out of the unemployment line.

How do you find the Bloodhoof Braves holding up at that high end of ladder? I don't suppose you're seeing the type of decks where the slight rise in Stampeding Kodo is a noticeable factor.

Bravo, I say.

Someday this insect will live, and carry the Lightlord into battle.

Yeah, if there's still several cards in the deck and my opponent still has not played their big win condition legendaries, I am not going to play monkey and lose out on my hard removal cards. If they are behind on cards due to drawing too much earlier on and are facing an eventual loss in fatigue, then it could make sense to play monkey as a desperate last effort. But in that case their mistakes were made at an early stage of the matchup.

I was playing Elise in my Control Warrior pre-Standard. She is useful in allowing Control to cut the number of massive legendaries they had to include in the deck (I topped out at Boom and Grom, occasionall teching in Archthief Rafaam as a counter to Control Priest or burst mirror Warriors to get ahead on the fatigue game). With this freed up space Warrior could put more early stalling options like running two Brawls and a couple of midrange minions.

In the matchups you are describing, it sounds like your opponents are playing it poorly. You are dominating them at that point with good reason. In the mirror matchup the goal is to avoid drawing cards (not to fall behind in fatigue) and save Elise until the very, very end of the match. This lets us use our removal against your Ysera and other big drops (or as you have done, effectively combat legendaries when our opponent drops the golden monkey prematurely). The goal is supposed to be to force you to spend your hard removals, shield slams, executes, a brawl, before we play golden monkey. Then you are out of removal options, we turn our card draw and anti-aggro cards into more useful legendaries and can make a final push as the game enters fatigue. It sounds like your opponents are playing Elise too soon, failing to pressure you into spending your removal, and failing to save their own removal for your biggest threats.

Enjoy the wins! It might be a factor of not having faced more experienced players with the deck at higher ranks. But it's nice knowing some of the weaknesses of your opposition and being able to hone in on their misplays.

Played 10 games trying out TheTardHunter's list. It's a pretty typical Patron Warrior which can have or leave the Ragnaros. So far Rag has had no impact in any of my games, though it is a small sample size. At no point have I thought "Rag would be really essential on this board" or "I hope I topdeck Rag." A couple of times I've been disappointed to draw him instead of something else.

If you want to try teching out that one card, it's a normal Patron list. I'd say Grom is worth a craft if you want to commit to learning Warrior. Antonidas is good for your Mage decks. Maybe pick one of the two and save the rest of your dust for when the meta settles in another week or so and it's clearer what kind of deck you could craft and be successful with.

If you want to go a Patron route, Grommash Hellscream is first priority. He has a couple of activators with Blood To Ichor and Inner Rage, which allows you to drop Grom for a 10-12 damage burst that wins games. He also has high health, which still makes him hard for some decks to remove if you have to play him out as tempo.

Ragnaros the Firelord is an interesting option given that Patron is mostly a tempo deck now. That said he is not necessary for the deck and might make the 8-slot a little too crowded to be truly efficient for this type of deck. Good legendary to have, but I wouldn't prioritize it.

Sylvanas Windrunner is a top tier must craft eventually. But it is difficult to imagine just how useful she is, and in my experience it can take a while to learn to fully appreciate her once you do have her. It took me a couple quite a lot of games to begin feeling comfortable with her. Now she's one of the first 6-drops I look at to see if I can fit her into my deckbuilding. Eventually you'll benefit from having her.

How much do the players complaining in this thread pay attention to anything happening outside of the game client?

I see a lot of complaints at running into Face Shamans constantly. But this makes sense if you've noticed that streamers left and right and a large portion of grandmothers are stating that Aggro Shaman is the best deck, or next to best right now. Add in the fact that we're in the first three days of the season and everyone has learned and is taught that aggro decks that win or lose quickly are the best way to climb quickly early on.

We're also reaching the point where people have experimented a bit and now players are turning more and more to netdecking and testing the decks the streamers are using. Check a few popular streamer decks and the next time an enemy class pops up you'll be able to predict 90% of their deck.

This stuff about rigged matchmaking and throwing salt at matchup or starting hands RNG simply doesn't make sense when a look at the broader Hearthstone community has perfectly good explanatory power for the trends we're seeing.

Last thing, fast decks are optimized toward increasing the odds of effective starting hands, odds which are further increased by the fact we have a mulligan to get a second chance at hitting the cards needed. Decks with mostly 2-ofs and low curves will be extremely consistent. Decks with wider curve ranges and a few 1-ofs will brick much more often. Trying to find 1 or 2 answers to counter an opponent will miss fairly frequently against opponents who are looking for any 6-8 acceptable starting cards.

Is the only answer to join in the aggro? No. Build a deck with a combination of early game minions that can trade well along with spells for key removal of aggro minions in the first 3-5 turns. Now you have a half dozen acceptable starting cards of your own to mulligan for. Increase your odds of winning. Does this make you too weak to the other spectrum of high-value control decks stomping around? Focus the rest of your deck around a midrange build that will let you push for fast pressure to beat out those greedy control decks, while still having your anti-aggro options. Play the rock-paper-scissors game a little bit.

Now let's get back out there and devour some Aggro Shaman! ... or just wait a few more days when the speed climbers aren't in your ranks anymore and you see more deck variety. Either way, I guess.

Shaman, because I put in immense effort to produce quality work from the get-go, but get overloaded and subsequently lack the mana (motivation) to get anything else done.

My capabilities (Hero Power) may or may not be effective in the circumstance I find myself in, and it's pretty hit-or-miss whether I can get it to work for me when I need it to.

Shaman, the anxiety/depression class.

Heck, I'm tempted to try this deck. I'm kind of backwards it seems in that I play midrange and control styles (in this and practically every other game I touch) and I feel like I need an education on how to pilot an aggro deck well.

What's to pilot? Just drop cancer and SMOrc!
So everyone says. But if an aggro deck is best suited for a given tournament or event, you'd better know how to run one properly. From events I see it looks like one squandered opportunity or inefficient play can be the difference between lethal and the opponent consolidating for a turn 5 swing.

Plus, know thy enemy, right?

Tried imagining the play testing that went on with each of those design iterations, but Yogg-Saron ate my mind and I forgot what I was blue sledding taste like Tuesday.

Good advice above. A few cards always capture the excitement of the community and feel really powerful in the first few days to couple weeks. But that's all when deck designs are still little tested and against a chaotic meta of people testing and countering different things. After about two weeks the more refined decks will start to win steadily and that's when the meta starts refining around those decks. At that point, the cards that are actually good tend to look completely different from the ones that looked good before, and people who jumped in crafting early on wind up feeling buyer's remorse 

Wait two weeks. Fight the itch. Heck, I'd even suggest waiting with dusting choices, because a card you thought was bad might turn out surprisingly good in the decks you pick and then you'll lose dust crafting them again.

This deck allows for some interesting problem solving. Thanks for the variety in one-ofs.

I'm lacking Gorehowl (on my to-craft list once the meta settles) and I subbed it for a Doomcaller. A bit greedy, but the greed has paid off against big taunt Druids. Tried a couple other techs (Arcanite Reaper, Malkorok) that I wasn't feeling good with. We'll see how this spot plays out.

Still facing some fast board-flooding decks, so I switched a Psych-o-Tron for an Abomination which has felt way more comfortable. I'm trying to give the other Tron time to prove itself, but I'm tempted to test a Crazed Worshipper in that spot, too.