One of the highlights to conclude the Into the Inklands metagame was watching this absolutely amazing rogue deck that swept the first ever Disney Lorcana Challenge in Atlanta. While Amber/Amethyst is typically known for being more of an aggro-oriented deck, we saw some creativity that felt just right and proved it rightfully so.

Join me on a trip down memory lane to revisit Joshua Paultre's list and let's try to figure out how if this could work with Ursula's Return!

Deck Breakdown

Let's take a look at the list as it currently stands:

Amber/Amethyst | Stefen Delgado

• Characters (60)
• 1 Chernabog - Evildoer
• 2 Merlin - Goat
• 2 Peter Pan's Shadow - Not Sewn On
• 3 Merlin - Crab
• 4 Chernabog's Followers - Creatures of Evil
• 4 Cinderella - Ballroom Sensation
• 4 Fairy Godmother - Mystic Armorer
• 4 Fairy Godmother - Pure Heart
• 4 Kuzco - Wanted Llama
• 4 Madam Mim - Fox
• 4 Madam Mim - Snake
• 4 Merlin - Rabbit
• 4 Mufasa - Betrayed Leader
• 4 Pascal - Rapunzel's Companion
• 4 Perdita - Devoted Mother
• 4 Piglet - Pooh Pirate Captain
• 4 Rapunzel - Gifted with Healing

Taking an initial look, you can see it's leveraging heavy reliance on the Mufasa - Betrayed Leader synergy where we want to play characters for free from the top of our deck. Because of this, this deck does not run actions, items, or locations. This ensures Mufasa's on-banish effect has a 100% hit rate on a character. Another thing to note is the high reliance on Perdita - Devoted Mother. This allows you to "reanimate" characters from the discard pile with both on play and on quest effects. With a high Willpower, Perdita is a tough character to deal with when challenged. However, by the time she's banished, she's already put in some decent work with bringing back something from the discard pile.

Speaking about Perdita's ability, we have to address that her ability can target 24 of the cards in this deck. This is absolutely phenomenal because you'll always maintain threats on board forcing your opponent to deal with these answers. Of these options, there's a lot of toolbox type solutions that can help in varied scenarios. Let's take a look:

Despite her Singer 3 ability, it's her synergy with Fairy Godmother - Pure Heart that can allow you to pay 1 to put a character on the board and exert an opponent's chosen character. This can help in deal with opposing threats that haven't exerted yet through questing, challenging, or activated effects.

This is one of the aspects of drawing in the deck for a low cost when playing from the hand, or you can simply have Perdita bring it back and quest to activate its banish effect to draw a card.

Pascal is a great cheap 1 cost character that can gain Evasive if you have other characters on the board. He's great to have around throughout the game to gain cheap lore and provide more value to having characters on board for the next card.

At a 2-drop, this character provides maximum value once you have two or more other characters in play. This allows Piglet to quest for 3 lore during the right situation, making it another great cost-to-lore addition to the deck.

Kuzco is also another component for drawing once he's banished. Given synergy with other characters in the deck, you can actually put Kuzco on the offensive and allow him to replace himself since he draws a card when banished.

Madam Mim is one part of the bounce package included in this deck. She can help synergize with other cards benefiting from bounce, such as Merlin - Rabbit, Merlin - Goat, and Merlin - Crab. She can also be used to help keep priority characters alive by bringing them back to hand for them to be replayed again.

Next, I want to discuss how Fairy Godmother - Mystic Armorer becomes an absolute game changer. In a meta with locations and a varied amount of high Willpower characters, the Challenger +3 helps, but another aspect is the following ability where when the character is banished in a challenge, you may return the character to your hand. This adds even more value to characters with bounce effects or on play abilities.

Matchup Analysis

Let's take a look at some of the more popular decks being played right now and see where the strengths and weaknesses for those matchups:

Against Emerald / Steel

Emerald / Steel's primary objective is to discard your hand through on play effects with Floodborn characters synergizing with Bucky - Squirrel Squeak Tutor, while removing on board threats with traditional Steel removal cards. It's important to maintain a healthy hand size by being conservative on what to play vs what to use for ink. Cards like Chernabog's Followers - Creatures of Evil and Rapunzel will help out immensely here, but make sure you're keeping an eye on an exerted Diablo - Devoted Herald, which can draw cards for your opponent while you draw cards. Another benefit in playing against discard is that your characters in the discard pile are not gone forever, thanks to Perdita. I would try to focus on dealing with Diablo by using a Peter Pan's Shadow - Not Sewn On or Pascal with a Merlin - Crab or Fairy Godmother - Mystic Armor synergy. The same can be said when dealing with Flynn Rider - His Own Biggest Fan. Once Emerald / Steel gets to the late game, look out for Robin Hood - Champion of Sherwood and Tinker Bell - Giant Fairy. Otherwise, make sure to try and maintain a lore advantage with Piglet and friends, while making efficient trades and you should be good.

Against Amethyst / Ruby

Amethyst / Ruby has pivoted towards more of a switch-aggro build, focusing on an explosive early lore gain thanks to Flynn Rider - Frenemy and Sisu - Emboldened Warrior. Unmatched, you can expect the majority of their lore gained early on, with a steady flow on the rest through maintaining control/tempo with removal and card advantage. Since Flynn is rarely exerted, we may need to force it by playing Cinderella once we have a Fairy Godmother - Pure Heart in play. From there, Fairy Godmother can challenge Flynn and still live to tell the tale. Once past that point, it's a good balance maintaining lore gain through board advantage and card advantage through your draw. With Ruby's strong removal, this is going to be a tough matchup. Brawl completely destroys a Perdita when it comes to a value-to-value comparison. Madam Medusa - The Boss, not so much. The advantage here is that Chernabog becomes insanely cheap, or free, granted you draw it in time. We'll need to make sure the new deck has answers for this.

Against Ruby / Sapphire

Ruby / Sapphire is extremely greedy when it comes to ramp. Take advantage of this by going with an aggro approach. Piglet and friends are going to be a huge help early on. Given that we don't have ways to deal with items in this deck, you will need to race the opponent once you see a Lucky Dime in play. Watch out for a Sisu - Empowered Sibling and be sure to try and play around some of the inevitable board wipes. Thankfully you have some Challenger +3 across Merlin - Crab and Fairy Godmother, you could swing pretty high at an exerted Tamatoa or Sisu.

Adapting the the Current Meta

Based on our local scene, these are the changes I would consider:

Amber/Amethyst Ursula's Return | Stefen Delgado

• Characters (60)
• 1 Chernabog - Evildoer
• 2 Cinderella - Ballroom Sensation
• 2 Hades - Lord of the Underworld
• 2 Lilo - Making a Wish
• 2 Merlin - Goat
• 2 Peter Pan's Shadow - Not Sewn On
• 2 Rapunzel - Gifted with Healing
• 2 Simba - Protective Cub
• 3 Fairy Godmother - Pure Heart
• 3 Kuzco - Wanted Llama
• 3 Merlin - Crab
• 4 Chernabog's Followers - Creatures of Evil
• 4 Fairy Godmother - Mystic Armorer
• 4 Madam Mim - Fox
• 4 Madam Mim - Snake
• 4 Merlin - Rabbit
• 4 Mufasa - Betrayed Leader
• 4 Pascal - Rapunzel's Companion
• 4 Perdita - Devoted Mother
• 4 Piglet - Pooh Pirate Captain

Keeping true to the core that this is a character-centric deck, we will not be adding any other card types. This is even tougher that I thought since each card synergizes with each other so well. Given the amount of hate Perdita will generate, I feel like we will need to support her and friends with Hades - Lord of the Underworld. We will be going +2 here, while going -2 Rapunzel - Gifted with Healing. We're sacrificing a bit of lore gain here, but without having characters with a lot of willpower, I don't see us fully utilizing her draw ability to its fullest potential.

To support the loss in lore gain, we're going to -2 Cinderella - Ballroom Sensation and go +2 with Lilo - Making a Wish. I understand with a lot of Steel removal in play, she will become highly targeted. However, given that she is a 1 cost and can be brought back thanks to Perdita and Hades, there's only so much removal one could have before they've exhausted themselves of resources. Then you can quest with her safely, or bounce her back and replay her to keep her ready and avoid any potential challenges.

Lastly, we will be looking into utilizing Bodyguard to protect our highly valued characters. I wanted to go with something that was cheap so that Perdita can play it, as well as playing it from your hand. We're going to go with 2x Simba - Protective Cub, while removing 1 Kuzco and 1 Fairy Godmother.

Conclusion

With these changes, we brought the deck to be a little lower to the ground for some initial lore gain while giving more value to bringing back characters from the discard pile. With this approach, we're adding consistent threats to the board that must be answered. I'm curious though, what changes would have you made? Does this deck have a place to perform just as well as it did before? Do we let this one hibernate a bit more and strike again when the time is right? Be sure to let me know on Twitter/X: @_EmeraldWeapon_.

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