Each week, we'll be bringing you the top performing decks from the most recent top level Hearthstone tournaments and some of the world's best players. This week, we'll be taking a look at the decks played at the Abios Grand Tournament (with just a dash of the eSports Arena Invitational thrown in.) For the first time in quite a while, Patron Warrior is not sitting on top! However, this could very well just be because of how conscious players are of trying to counter it, so the argument could still be made that Patron is #1. It's still looking like (for the most part) Patron Warrior, and the decks that are expected to counter it, are what almost all of the pros are playing to keep their tournament hopes alive. If you want to know what the strongest deck types are right now, look no further!

1) Mid-range Druid

While the deck didn't change drastically after The Grand Tournament, the introduction of Darnassus Aspirant introduced another way to ramp up the mana, and improved the consistency of the deck's early game. This pairs well with the old classics of Innervate and Wild Growth, allowing the Druid player to quickly accelerate into the mid game. While the class suffers from not having any sort of board clears outside of Swipe, putting big minions such as Druid of the Claw or Ancient of Lore on the board earlier than usual can often swing things in Malfurion's favor. The game can often end just from that dominating board presence, but if not, the old combo of Force of Nature + Savage Roar will usually do the trick. Druid is usually seen as at least a somewhat favorable matchup against Patron Warrior and some aggro decks, making it continue to be a popular choice. In fact, it's seen as such a counter to the top decks that it's actually become the top deck, as the only class used by all of the players in the top 8. With that said, we're actually going to go to Xixo's list from the eSports Arena Invitational, due to its ingenuity with including Feugen and Stalagg:

2) Patron Warrior

Nothing really happened with TGT to change the deck much, though it has forced players to re-think their deck lists a little bit. A new tech card had briefly arisen in Shield Slam, though it seems many players still choose to leave it out of their lists. In its place, some had begun to include Harrison Jones, helping to deal with the both the mirror match, and the expected rise of Secret Paladin. However, with Secret Paladin very quickly losing steam on the tournament circuit, Harrison has already fallen off of most Patron lists, meaning that almost every Patron deck is now almost card-for-card the same. Make no mistake about it; despite its immense popularity, Patron Warrior is not simple to play. Particularly in a tournament environment against skilled opponents, the player definitely needs to be on top of their game. When they are, Grim Patron, Warsong Commander and Frothing Berserker become some of the scariest cards in the game. This is a true combo deck, yet boasts a fair amount of removal with cards like Whirlwind, Cruel Taskmaster, Execute, and the weapons able to remove threats (with some of those doubling as activators for the Patron and Berserker as well.) Here's what Kaldi used in the Abios Grand Tournament:

3) Secret Paladin

He's baaack! After being noticably absent from this list for the past couple weeks, Uther made a strong showing in the top 8 of the Abios Grand Tournament. Secret Paladin has been seen played as both an extremely aggressive deck with 1 drops like Secretkeeper and Argent Squire, and also as a more mid-range deck that makes room for bigger late-game threats such as Loatheb, Dr. Boom, and Tirion Fordring. Whichever variant it is, the deck focuses heavily on the extreme tempo swing afforded by Mysterious Challenger, putting up to five secrets from the deck immediately into play. If the Paladin player is even or ahead when that happens, that one play can be almost enough to seal the game right then and there. The deck can be prone to poor draws by finding secrets when it needs minions, but is still consistent enough that many top level players feel comfortable bringing it to tournaments. Let's take a look at the mid-range version played by RDU:

That wraps things up for this week, but we want to know your thoughts. What decks have you been having the most success with? What archetype is most likely to become the new flavor of the month? Tell us in the comments below!

Want to know how things compare to the meta of weeks past? Check out our previous top decks articles!

• September 30th, 2015: StarLadder Season 1 Last Chance
• September 23rd, 2015: Road to BlizzCon Regional Qualifiers
• September 16th, 2015: Archon Team League Finals
• September 9th, 2015: Gfinity Summer Masters II
• September 2nd, 2015: GEICO ONOG at PAX
• August 26th, 2015: Archon Team League, Week 7
• August 19th, 2015: Archon Team League, Week 6
• August 12th, 2015: Archon Team League, Week 5
• July 30th, 2015: Archon Team League, Week 4
• July 22nd, 2015: Archon Team League, Week 3
• July 15th, 2015: Archon Team League, Week 2
• July 8th, 2015: Archon Team League, Week 1
• June 17th, 2015: DreamHack Summer Hearthstone Championships