[The Prefect]

Just for the sake of the conversation, what are some of the archetype speed decks?

[Naetor.Ret]

Just for the sake of the conversation, what are some of the archetype speed decks?

I'd call these the "traditional" speed decks Kris was referring to.:

Insane Tain
Old Men and Women
Cadets
TOS weenies

The common theme is cheap personnel and some value-draw engine.

[jadziadax8]

Goal for tonight: Klingon speed deck revolving around new Boreth mission.

Stretch Goal: Deck qualifies for Bare Minimum achievement.

[Hoss-Drone]

Dead. And all the designers who cared to give it help got pushed out or left.

[Naetor.Ret]

Dead. And all the designers who cared to give it help got pushed out or left.

What type of cards would actually help speed decks? More 0 and 1 cost personnel? Most traditional speed designs play with few or no verbs, and you might have a hard time justifying creating a 4-cost ship with 8 range and 9 weapons.

After a recent game with Kris, I mentioned he should play Aceton Assimilators to get rid of an opponent's Timescape. He didn't seem convinced, which is fine; it might not be a great solution. But I question whether the tools do or do not exist vs. speed players just don't want to "pay" the extra cost of using those tools and take the risk that they may or may not need them.

I mean, you can run the Valiant in a cadets deck if you want to prepare for battle or Outclassed, but I've almost never seen it played in favor of the Excelsior.

[monty42]

I don't believe speed is dead. It's just currently on the bottom of the "naturaly cycle" of deck archetypes.
The mostly event/interrupt reliant midrange solvers that currently dominate the scene can be effectively countered by decks that rely heavily on e/i prevention. Those decks however tend to be a little more sluggish and vulnerable to speed solvers.
I think once people get tired of getting beaten over and over again by the same old , and decks and start to dig into the countermeasures, we will see a revival of the old speed solver.

[Armus]

Did I miss a memo? Last I looked DS9 rainbow speed has been around for 2-3 years. Tain solvers are around in both Standard and HoF.

What am I missing?

[monty42]

Apparently some people think rainbow isn't a thing because it's not winning high level events...

[Naetor.Ret]

Did I miss a memo? Last I looked DS9 rainbow speed has been around for 2-3 years. Tain solvers are around in both Standard and HoF.

What am I missing?

Maybe speed isn't the right word since I (and I think Kris) is referring to the Minnesota-brand speed that was dominant in the sets 1-12 days that tries to attempt on turn 2 or 3 vs. the European/east coast version of "speed" that might spend turn 3 stopping their personnel to draw cards.

Over the years the game has definitely slowed down. I used to never play a deck that couldn't get out solving on turn 3 or 4; now with the right deck turn 5 or even 6 is very winnable. I don't think this is bad, but speed decks are a necessity to balance a meta of combo decks that are essentially tiered based on how well they download -- I'd argue most of the top decks would be classified as such.

It's likely this phenomenon is the natural progression of increasingly stronger dilemma piles -- they can only get better over time unless strong dilemmas are continuously removed from the card pool ala HoF. You have to be careful though. For anyone that played Excelsior, this was its major weakness as the dilemma pool was much stronger than the draw decks and each game played out in the same, grinding way.

[jadziadax8]

Goal for tonight: Klingon speed deck revolving around new Boreth mission.

Stretch Goal: Deck qualifies for Bare Minimum achievement.

Finally finished this a little late, but in time for my tourney yesterday.