wow, the "meta-defining" votes on this seem really weird. while i think the card (at least according to this poll) is very overrated by many people, i also think it is underrated by many others.
before writing this card off as just "a worse River Crocolisk", you should keep two things in mind:
1. you will most likely see the removed card. that means you get information about your opponents deck and when you see a key card like a hero, a combopiece or just a strong legendary being removed, you and your opponent might change your gameplan according to this. in these regards Gnomeferatu can be compared to Dirty Rat.
2. fatigue games can be a thing, controlish warlock decks can definitely get there and fatigue games may be more likely in the new meta. new cards that make fatigue games more likely are for example The Lich King and Arfus and most people agree that at least one of them will see a lot of play. three of the eight DK cards directly remove cards from a deck: Army of the Dead removes your top five cards, Doom Pact can remove up to 14 cards (though on average probably more like three or four) and Death Grip removes one card from your opponents deck. In addition to that we have Skulking Geist, that can remove a good amount of cards from some decks and people might even use it to thin out their own decks. oh, and druids might run Ultimate Infestation, which as a two-of would draw a third of their deck and can probably lead to some overdrawing and higher fatigue risk.
this second point is of course hard to evaluate and we will see how much of an impact the new meta has on fatigue games. if fatigue will be reached more often, it will of course also make Archbishop Benedictus and Dead Man's Hand better and these cards will then in return lower the value of Gnomeferatu again. also, aggro matchups will not be affected by this argument at all...
sooo, i think Gnomeferatu is by far not meta-defining, but also not a bad card and a lot better than River Crocolisk.
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Makes sense...and yeah, I'll hold up on crafting.. just open free packs and play the adventure before making any new decks.