I'm looking through the catalog and I am seeing these decks. Are any of these required or are these things that are found in the rule book but people opt to play with these flash cards for easy access?

Not required. But for some it does make it easy for people to remember what talents they have by having the cards in hand to look at.

I have been told the Adversary decks are very handy. I'm certainly intending to get those, to make managing NPCs easier without having to flick pages in books. There are also things to be done with them for creating stories etc as well (flipping cards to get the adversaries and developing a story to suit for example).

None are needed, but the adversary decks get used every session I run. They are a fantastic, space saving resource.

No one at my table has bought the talent decks.

Adversary Decks are incredibly useful. I got a set of them for a newbie GM friend of mine, and she's found them indispensable for running her AoR campaign. Sadly, the group's gotten powerful enough that most of the Rivals would be little more than speed bumps to our group, but the variety of Nemesis and Minion adversaries still proves useful to her.

The specialization decks aren't worth the money in my opinion. I generally use OggDude's character generator to create a sheet with the necessary talent trees for my characters, or barring that the talent tree PDFs found on the Begging for XP website.

I'll also chime in on the Adversary decks. They're nice to have in case something goes a direction you weren't intending it to go an you find yourself needing stats for someone that you didn't think you'd need stats for.

How do you guys typically use an Adversary deck?

Like, off the cuff the GM will say, "hmm, I need a good enemy here like a bounty hunter", and you just pick the bounty hunter guy?

What if you needed a different bounty hunter later on? Use the same card, but just describe him as a different character?

Do you ever draw a card at Random and just say, "here's the enemy that walked in the room"

They work pretty well for generic enemies. I've used the nemesis cards to introduce BBEGs, so you can use it for the moment, then fix it up later.

I love the adversary decks and use them often saves a lot of flipping through pages

Casting Scum and Villainy

1-5 Swoop Ganger

6-10 Smuggler Baron

11-15 Black Marketeer

16-20 Hired Thug

21-25 Street Tough

26-30 Arms Dealer

31-35 journeyman Bounty Hunter

36-40 Master Bounty Hunter

41-45 Corrupt Bureaucrat

56-50 Slaver

51-55 Shipjacker

56-60 Slicer

61-65 hutt Crimelord

66-70 Black Sun Vigo

71-75 Infochant

76-80 Assassin Droid

81-85 Pirate Crew

86-90 Apprentice Bounty Hunter

91-95 Pirate Captain

96-100 Smuggler

I'm hoping for a force and Destiny edition