The Hero Beat deck, Neos Alius, other 1900 attackers, maybe a cyber dragon or 2 or 3, plus lots of spells and traps is very popular right now. Even with such fast decks on the market, Hero Beat can do what it does very well. The deck is designed to slow the opponent down to your pace. You often always have an answer to what your opponent tries to do, and eventually, they will get frustrated enough at never being able to play out their combos. This war of attrition works very well with how the decks has monsters that can be summoned immediately(so long as its a normal summon). Many versions of the deck use Miracle Fusion, this way, if your normal summon doesn't work as planned, you can pull the moment back in your favor. It is pretty cool, but what is even cooler is that MANY decks can play exactly like Hero Beat! And to be honest, I hate Light Gemini/Little City/Hero Beat/Alius.dek or whatever you want to call it, but there are definitely some fun alternatives out there.
Chaos Stun is equally as responsive as Hero Beat. The "Stun" part means that it focuses on answering what the opponent does, rather than having its own proactive combos. The best Chaos Stun decks use monsters similar to what you would find in Hero Beat: Thunder King Raioh and Doomcaliber Knight. Not everyone has Doomcals (myself included) and T.kings are on the rise in popularity. Once Gold series 4 is released, I know that Stun will make a come-back. As I was saying, it does a lot of the same things that Hero Beat does, it may even have MORE answers to tough situations. The deck has 2 boss monsters that Hero Beat won't/can't have, Chaos Sorcerer and Dark Armed Dragon. Most decks have 3-5 outs to monster cards in Chaos Stun - Bottomless, Warning and Judgment. If they don't use those cards, there is a good chance that the T.king, Doomcal or Chaos Sorc you summon will at least pay for itself. Put Dark Armed behind these cards and your opponent will run out of resources very quickly. Of course, you can expand the deck with synchro abilities. The popular one right now is Dekoichi and Black Salvo. Running these alone takes a bit of the stun away from the deck, but the cards aren't bad at all. It give you the ability to destroy the field with Black Rose Dragon or attack over Stardust Dragon. You just have to be careful because with every extra card you add in, the more you move away from a controlling deck to a combo oriented deck.
Koakis are supposed to be the real anti-monster deck. The deck has Doomcalibur knights in the form of Rock monsters and one can negate traps and the other can negate spells, all by choice. In fact, when you combine the Koaki rocks with other Stun monsters, you can make a Rock Stun deck that is almost as suppressive as Hero Beat. The rock lineup includes Neo Spacian Grand Mole, that can bounce some of the WORST monsters you can pit against the deck - Thought Ruler Archfiend, Scrap Dragon(in scrap decks), Heraklinos(without war chariot). Another rock is Fossil Dyna Pachycephalo, which is a great anti-monster monster. So great that I wish I had 10 of them, but there is still hope with Gold Series 4. If you don't want to go with Rock stun, you can still build pure Koakis. Probably the biggest selling point to the pure version of the deck is that the monsters are even BIGGER than Hero Beat. You still get the koaki rocks and a few tech monsters, but you also get Urnight and Crusader. So long as you have the iron core in your hand, which is easy with gold sarc and pot of duality, you can toolbox ANY rock out of your deck. Excessive backrow? Use Sandman. Gorz in hand? Use Guardian. Opponent has to topdeck to win? Use Wall. Opponent is losing? Use Crusader. You are losing? Use Boulder. The monster lineup is just as skillful as Hero Beat. The other big deal about the koaki deck is the broken spell and trap support. By broken, I mean their effects are VERY good, you just have to have that iron core in your hand to use them. The deck gets a war chariot that is fairly easy to use. There is also Iron Core Luster, that will negate any spell or trap so long as you have the iron core in hand. Perhaps the best card, that has one me many games last format, is Reckoned Power, which will Delta Crow all of their face-down spells and traps. I say it was good in the last format because there are a lot of decks you may face now where Reckoned Power should have been MST. The simple solution is just to side deck Reckoned Power. In fact, Koakis have the best side deck options because they can run any spells and traps after your 2 Iron Cores, 2-3 Gold Sarcs and Pot of Dualities.
Pure Gemini Beat is my new toy. I haven't gotten all of the kinks out of it, but is a lot of fun. It takes a key feature in Hero Beat and expands it across multiple cards, and that is replacing your cards after your opponent gets rid of them. In Hero Beat, you have Gemini Spark, Hero Blast, and Honest. In the pure Gemini deck, you also have Gemini Spark that you can use with ANY card in your deck(and there are plenty of 1900 geminis to choose from). They also have access to Supervise, which is the best Gemini support in the game right after Spark. Supervise does 2 things: 1) It replaces your monsters with other monsters when your opponent responds to you. If they destroy your field, you will get 1 monster back from your grave yard. If you attack into an Honest, you will get a monster back. If you lose your monster to Mirror Force or D.prison, you can summon another and attack again. 2) Supervise gives you access to the gemini monster effects, some better than others. Evocator Chevelier can destroy 1 card by sending Supervise to the grave. After that, you get to summon a gemini from the grave. Blazewing Butterfly can tribute itself with Supervise to get a gemini from your grave, then Supervise will get you another, turning your 2 card investment into 2 monsters. Tuned Magician, equipped with Supervise becomes a level 4 tuner. You can synchro for a level 8 Synchro Monster like Black Brutdrago, then use Supervise to get a gemini back.
The gemini deck can also run a boss monster, the 2800 ATK Phoenix Gearfried. Gearfried's effect is pretty nasty, but shouldn't be used as the primary function of the deck. Each time your opponent activates a spell card, Gearfried activates and summons a gemini from your graveyard. It may not sound like much, but the key idea is that Gearfried grants you "pluses" while it is on the field. With every extra summon you get, that is 1 more resource your opponent has to spend to get rid of it. If you summoned Gearfried without spending a lot of resources (such as Featherizer and Birthright) then you did even better!
There are other decks that play similarly that don't require insane combos to win the duel. I picked these 3 because they are my favorites and because I have seen them do very well. Feel free to leave comments about other decks that work this way. The idea is to have as few dead draws as possible, with a monster-lineup that can still destroy your opponent. Then you need a system that can replace your cards when your opponent responds to them, wasting away their resources.
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