We frequently received the question " I am new to the game, should I buy a starter deck or should I go for a pre-built meta deck?".
If this question was asked during the BT1/2 meta then my suggestion would be easy: go for a starter deck to understand the game mechanics and whether the color works for you and your playing style, and decide which deck or Digimons you want to invest into. (You may refer to the article: Digimon Card Game: How to Know Which Color suits you the Most)
But if someone asks me that same question now with English is moving into BT6 and Japanese at its 7th booster set then the answer is no longer that.
Starter decks have gone obsoletely off-meta.
Usually, when we decide to buy starter decks we would normally purchase 2 sets for each color just to have a playset of certain cards (such as Gaia Force and Nail Bone, where only 2 copies are included in their respective starter decks). However, there will be many vanilla cards or even SR (Super Rare) cards that are no longer competitive in the current meta hence would be a waste. So I would now instead suggest to try your hands on a meta deck that is easy to play, has a straightforward strategy, and affordable. A strong first deck can help to boost your confidence in the game. Haha!
I think that the deck color that can satisfy most new players are red and blue.
In my opinion, a red deck's playing style is the most straightforward: stockpiling and going for big hits, trying to finish the opponent's security as fast as possible. Though its defence is gradually improving through the new metas it is still not comparable to other (natively defensive) colors like yellow or black.
Article to check out: Hello Colours
Strong red decks such as Shoutmon-DX in BT5, Jesmon and Agumon Bond of Courage in BT6 are all great decks to experience if you want to play red getting into this card game.
For the cost to build these decks, I believe that they would be very affordable as long as you do not go for the Alternative Art cards. 🙂
In BT6, the Gabumon BOF deck is best when run with AncientGarurumon, allowing for rapid attacks through steps of his digivolutions while having strong board control, always having a solution to move your game. This deck however, can become pretty expensive due to the Secret Rare AncientGarurumon.
This Gabumon BOF is still playable without AncientGarurumon, but you might get stuck if you are not able to draw your tamer cards (which is where AncientGarurumon comes in). Not until the next EX1 set when we will have a LV3 Gabumon that provides a tamer-searching inheritable effect that stabalizes the BOF deck without needing AncientGarurumon.
Another deck that may also win you tournaments being a security control deck, which is also (in my opinion) not a lot of fun to play with. Also note that security control decks can be quite expensive to build (running maximum copies of Zwart Defeats).
Every color in Digimon Card Game have a unique playing style and I believe that player will tend to try different colors as they spend more time in the game, ultimately finding comfort in their most suitable playstyle.