This is the first time I am really getting into a LCG. I'm pretty happy that I am getting in on the "ground floor" as it were. I have a question for the folks who have been playing this type of format in the past.

I don't think that it's a stretch to say...there are going to be a LOT of similar decks for a while, bearing that in mind, how long is it going to take before we start seeing a lot of individual decks...how many packs in before we start seeing some really unique decks?

I think in this LCG the first cycle (6 months) and into the first deluxe decks are going to seem similar.

It's not a bad thing persay as it'll come down to who plays best

If you play in tournaments, I'm sure you'll see a lot of similarity. But I remember on Cardgamedb, for netrunner, there is a blog that challenges people to create effective decks around less popular or just generally considered worse, cards. They may not survive in tournaments, but they are can be fun to craft and test out.

Fortunately with 7 Factions in the core and 2 more on the way there should be a fair amount of variety even off the bat,

I would say by the time the first cycle of war packs are done, we should have some more variety, if only because we'll have more warlords. So far we've seen a warlord a pack, and I fully expect that one of the packs will include two warlords, so that every core factions has some options near the start of the game's life cycle.

Just going off of alliances, there are currently 21 different decks you can make. Three per faction: mono and the faction's two allies. That jumps up to 42 once we have an alternative set of warlords and their signature squads. And maybe they won't revolutionize the ways a faction builds a deck, but they will provide new build opportunities, new strategies. Once Blackmane, the new SM warlord, comes out in the first pack, it will open the door to a more aggressive, warlord-hunting approach for SM decks.

And even some of the warlords we have now will become more specialized. Another Dark Eldar warlord might prove to be better suited for control DE decks, while Packmaster Kith and more yet-to-be-released cards could boost up a swarmy khymera rush deck. More cards that exhaust enemy units could make Starbane the preferred choice for a sort of hyperkneel archetype, while another warlord will be the "default" warlord, until more come out. And it will be interesting to see what an Ork deck without planet-wide Brutal will be like.

And of course eventually--hopefully soon--we'll have the Necron and Tyranid added in deluxe expansions. That alone will certainly shake up the available decks being built. If Star Wars is any indication--where the Scum and Smugglers expansion came out in the middle of the first cycle of Force Packs--it hopefully won't take long for us to get our eighth and ninth factions.

It will depend greatly on how competitive the environment is.

The more competitive the less variation in decks, because ppl will only use optimal builds.

The more casual the environment the more diversity of decks we will see, cause ppl will try whatever best suites they playstyle os just colorful decks based on personal preferences about the setting.

Yeah, with 7 factions, each of which have the ability to play 3 distinct ways, Mono-Faction or the ally on either side, there will be 21 basic styles of deck.

I think you are correct in saying that the mono-faction decks will all be pretty much the same in the beginning, due to the need to use almost all those cards to get up to 50. The Allied decks have a good chance for more variety, but i think it still comes down to the lens you look at it through (i know in my IG/Orks my only allied unit is the ork artillery [although i am considering stormboys], so it plays in a very similar way to mono-faction).

I think that PP recognized this as well, and that is why they are putting out new commanders as the first expansion (and starting with the most popular SMs), in addition to fleshing out the factions with more cards.

Once each faction gets their second commander that will basically triple the deck styles up to 63, and will have added a slew of other faction cards such that the same style deck could have no overlap.

Granted the same could be said of magic with color combinations and yet you see copycat decks all the time... but that seems to be due to the philosophy of quasi-competitive gamers and the group-think mentality of, "This seems to do well competitively, ill do that too!"