While any of the decks can win or lose to others based on RNG-related-factors, I've played enough to know that some of the decks will win more often than others. In anticipation of the end of this event, here's a list based on my experience with them, I'm curious if your experiences with them line up with mine.
Tier 0 - These decks require no help:
Cardassian, Dominion, Voyager
Tier 1 - These decks are reasonably close to the top:
- DS9 - This deck benefits a lot from an extra copy of each of the "common" cards. There's just not much space in the deck while maintaining 7x mission skills, star power, and affiliation diversity. I could probably bring this deck down by one ship and add a Common Purpose or Common Cause - it draws so effectively (and doesn't need to play multiple ships in most games) that it doesn't really need to have a full five ships.
- SF - This deck suffered more than anticipated from the loss of Lustful Distraction (it was previously tier 0). Accumulated Knowledge is still powerful enough to keep it on the map, but the LD replacements I've tried haven't quite cut it.
Tier 2 - These decks are slightly below average:
- TNG - I love TNG and have poured so much effort into replacing this deck, because it's kinda average and more complicated than I'd like for a beginner. A pure (non-AU) Davies deck just gets hit too hard by the weenie hate and isn't as fast as the TOS deck so it can't compensate as effectively. I've tried a few different two-mission-win decks; they're also fairly complicated, and without Shelly/Disadvantage, they get hit by weenie hate too. I'm still working on it, but at least, in the meantime, the deck is functional.
- TOS - All the decks' performances can fluctuate based on playstyle, but none more so than the TOS deck. I'm not sure that there's anything I can do about it other than update the article. I'd love to tune the average personnel cost a bit lower (replacing some of the 2 cost personnel with 1 cost personnel), but that's hard to do while maintaining mission skill ratios and star power.
- Maquis - There's just not a lot that makes this deck stand out power-wise. It has flavor though, and it is one of my favorite decks to actually play. I might switch its pile depending on how the Borg pile upgrades work out.
Tier 3 - These decks need help:
- Klingons - I often use Klingons in live demos because they're very recognizable and they're very (very) easy to play. But... they're also just not very powerful. Relentless and Gowron often don't work because the other Klingons in the deck don't have enough Honor. The weenie hate hits them hard and they don't have the speed of the TOS deck or the interference of the Maquis deck or The Central Command. I know I should just make it a Past Klingon deck, because that would solve a lot of the problems, but it also makes the deck harder to put in a beginner's hands (since they need to read abilities before they play cards). That said, the cards are just cheaper (generally), so they may be a bit better than other "when you play" cards for a beginner.
- Borg - I've played a ton of games with this deck because it allows me to demo the battle components of the game. While it can win, it's just super clunky, slow, and unreliable. Playstyle matters for this deck almost to the degree it does for the TOS deck, but it's also a harder playstyle to articulate. I could make the deck faster by making it an AQ deck, but then I lose the space I need for the battle cards. I think the answer (or at least, the next thing I'm going to try) is to switch to an ACE/Guillotine kill pile in order to buy the draw deck more time to do its thing.
(A final side-note: since these decks are primarily focused on the beginner experience - easy to learn and aiming to be something they can easily modify and bring to an event - absolute balance has never been the primary goal of the decks. I need them to be
roughly balanced so that players can print them out and play kitchen table games and not hate
me the game, but these decks don't all need to have an exact 50% win rate against each of the other decks. When we were making these decks, Maggie also updated the V-starters for use in sealed tournaments. But I think people have been drawn to these decks for sealed events because they are definitely more complete decks - though I consider that more of a bug than a feature when it comes to sealed events. The V-starters are less robust, but that just means that you're more likely to get cards you can use in your deck in your sealed pool, which makes the deck-building more fun. With your help I will continue to try to balance them - because balance is good - but the fundamental goal of the decks means that I only seek to do so by strengthening the underperforming decks.)