Yes it is still king. It is not however the Kim Jung Ung (I would say Il but he's dead now
) of Redemption.
My analysis is that the dom cap does not give any less reason to use speed. It does however harm speed
decks. Here's why, the dom cap gives other decks more room for more defense. In the decks that I have made I have added more ways to block the opponent. Making it more difficult for a speed deck to totally overwhelm the opponent since there are more things that they have to overwhelm.
So the dom cap hurts speed but not much, in fact had the dom cap alone been implemented you probably wouldn't have seen too much difference in deck building at all. What really takes speed down a tick is the rescue opponent's souls only rule. This makes for more situations where a speed deck is just sitting there, decked out, with no lost souls in the opponent's land of bondage, while the opponent waltzes in for free lost souls. Another hurt that this rule made was that Speed can't use Sog/NJ for an auto block like they did before. Often times SoG/NJ got a block as well as rescuing two souls. Another harm is the lack of burial. Coupled with the no SoG/NJ on your own soul, Burial lost its effectiveness since it can't help to get an auto-block either, which is why no one includes it in their decks anymore.
So, what does this mean for speed? How does it counter these things? Easily. Add in a couple more soul gen cards and a couple battle-winners or defensive cards. Speed is the most adaptable strategy out there because it's not built around battle winners and combos, it's built around getting to those battle-winners and combos, all you have to do is switch out a few cards. For example in a non purple Sam deck, just add in Amazing, Ahimilek, Jehoash and maybe a brown enhancement. This gets you 1 Another battle winner 2 another soul gen source 3 another EC and another EE to block with.
Anyway that's my opinion on how the new rules hurt speed and how speed needs to adapt, I think that the Sam decks that decked in 4 turns are gone, but the ones that decked in 5-6 are here to stay.
