Intro:

In Speed Duels, there are plenty of different cards out, meaning there are plenty of different decks to choose from. But what are the best decks and how would you rank them? I am here to answer that question.

Ranking System:

I am going to be using 4 tiers to rank the decks:

Tier 0: Must play to have a chance at winning, almost everyone plays this deck/engine (There isn't always a tier 0 deck)

Tier 1: One of the best decks, usually gets the win against decks below it

Tier 2: A pretty decent deck that can win against tier 3 and sometimes beat Tier 1

Tier 3: An okay deck that can beat Tier 2 and 1 occasionally, but is pretty inconsistent. Some of these decks are made to counter tier 1 and can beat them regularly, but then they'd be not good against other good decks.

Decks for Consideration:

Viral Despair: A deck centered around stalling with “Despair from the Dark” and decking your opponent out with “Viral Infection”

Spell Proof Armor: A deck centered around summoning level 5-6 machines without tributing with the effect of “Spell Proof Armor”

Serpent Night Dragon: A deck centered around “Serpent Night Dragon” and “Nightmare Sonic Blast”

Relinquished: A deck centered around “Relinquished”

Gravekeepers: A engine revolving around "Gravekeeper's Oracle"

Parasite: An engine revolving around “Parasite Paranoid” and “Cocoon of Ultra Evolution". This allows you to special summon "Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth" to OTK your opponent.

Warriors: A deck revolving around “Command Knight”, "Gearfried The Iron Knight” and sometimes "Blade Knight"

Today we will be looking at Spell Proof Armor and Viral Despair. 

Spell Proof Armor:

Strengths:

The deck can play high level machine monsters with high attack points and defense points like “Pendulum Machine”. They do this with the skill card “Spell Proof Armor” since you can use one less normal summon to summon non-effect machine monsters. It is also is good because your machine monsters are unaffected by your opponent's spell effects. They also run cards like "Metalmorph" to boost the attack of the machine monsters. This is so the monsters can get over higher attack point monsters.

It has a good matchup against Parasite engines. The engine needs to use a monster that turns the opponent's monsters into Insects, which is "Parasite Paranoid". The spell effect doesn't work so they can't use one of your machine monsters with the effect of "Cocoon of Ultra Evolution". Spell Proof Armor is also good against decks like Serpent Night Dragon. The decks main form of removal is spot removal and they can only destroy one monster at a time. The deck can get one of their strong monsters out very quickly and can beat over "Serpent Night Dragon" using "Metalmorph". The deck is a pretty straight forward deck and is very easy to play.

Weaknesses:

You can only run machine monsters and nothing else because if you run non-machine type monsters, you can't use the skill card for the rest of the duel. This means you can’t add any good engines to this deck that aren’t machine engines. Another problem is that there are only 2 ideal monsters to summon with this card “Pendulum Machine” and “Giant Mech-Soldier”. Another problem is they only have 1750 attack, so they can be beaten over by 1800 attack monsters. This deck has a terrible matchup against stall decks because cards like “Despair From the Dark” have 3000 defense. Decks like Relinquished also are pretty good against it, because Spell Proof Armor decks can usually only bring out one monster at a time, and don't have a lot of monsters.

Because of these weaknesses, this deck is at tier 3. It can counter decks that use equip spells, but it has a slim chance at winning against a stall deck. Even against decks focused on cards that are treated as equip spell cards (mainly seen with Parasite focused decks), the low ATK stat of your monsters mean they can often be beaten over without using the skill at all.

Viral Despair: 

Strengths:

Amazing at stalling and also can be aggressive when it needs to be. You can use “Viral Infection” to deck out your opponent by discarding a card and calling a type of card that your opponent has to send from their deck to their Graveyard. If you send “Despair From The Dark”, you can use “Book of Life” or “Haunted Shrine” to bring it back with a whopping 3000 defense points. You can slowly deck out your opponent by using “Floodgate Trap Hole” and “Spellbinding Circle” to make their big monsters useless.

Weaknesses:

One of the weaknesses is if the opponent has an anti-stall engine in their side deck, you aren't able to deck out your opponent. For example, “Jar of Avarice” and “Mask of Darkness” are an anti-stall engine. If your opponent gets multiple strong monsters on the field, this deck can get destroyed before it gets set up. 

Because of this, I rate Viral Despair a Tier 2 deck. Viral Despair does well against low attack point aggressive decks.

Conclusion, for now:

Speed duels is a format with many relevant decks, but there isn't a definitive tier list. Soon new speed duel decks will come out, potentially changing the format. I plan to finish all of these rankings, as if they didn’t come out and then adjust my rankings later. Also put where you think Viral Despair and Spell Proof Armor should be on the tier list in the comments, I’d love to hear what you think. This is Atlanta_Reign, signing out.