Locations
There are a handful of decks giving Amethyst/Ruby Bounce a run for their money - and maybe none better than Mufasa Midrange. But this deck utilizes Midrange traits while creating a play pattern that Amethyst/Ruby can't interact with. Through songs and items, you can gain momentum fast enough to outpace Mim and Merlin making the matchup more of a race. The deck list here comes from Frank Zheng who took third in a recent Pixelborn tournament.
Amber/Steel Songs | Frank Zheng
- Characters (39)
- 4 Ariel - Spectacular Singer
- 4 Beast - Tragic Hero
- 3 Benja - Guardian of the Dragon Gem
- 4 Cinderella - Ballroom Sensation
- 1 Cinderella - Stouthearted
- 4 Gaston - Baritone Bully
- 4 Hercules - Divine Hero
- 4 Hercules - Hero in Training
- 2 Prince Eric - Dashing and Brave
- 3 Rapunzel - Gifted with Healing
- 2 Robin Hood - Capable Fighter
- 4 Tinker Bell - Giant Fairy
- Items (4)
- 4 Sleepy's Flute
There are a few key pieces to this deck that keeps it afloat, but none more important than Sleepy's Flute. Using A Whole New World and Ariel - Spectacular Singer, our goal is to cycle through our deck to find them early. Don't be afraid to aggressively mulligan away your high-cost cards in your opening hand to search for a Flute, or at least one of those two search cards above. Once we get a Flute or two in play, all we need to do is keep our opponent's board in check.
We pack quite the removal suite, in the form of Songs, to achieve this. At the heart of the deck, we're trying to sing at least one song a turn to get lore from our Flute. But the more singers we have, the more Actions we can play without ink stacking our action economy. Let the Storm Rage On deals a small amount of damage - but more importantly replaces itself. In a deck where you can play multiple songs a turn, that card advantage is vital. If you're looking for some removal that's a bit beefier, we run a couple of copies of World's Greatest Criminal Mind. With all our singer's not taking place in challenges, we'll sit on more characters in play meaning we can take advantage of Strength of a Raging Fire. Finally, if our opponent's board is getting out of control, we can try to even the playing field with the song Grab Your Sword, or by utilizing Tinker Bell - Giant Fairy to splash some damage around all our enemy characters.
Our shift characters give us some more aggressive removal. Hercules - Divine Hero can see action as early as turn four while shifting from Hercules - Hero in Training. With Resist +2 he'll take out a considerable number of your opponent's characters with his massive 6 Strength. Ultimately, Hercules is one of the best swingers in this deck. However, we also have Cinderella - Stouthearted. I wrote a bit about her in my Top 10 Rise of the Floodborn cards recently. Cinderella has Resist +2, and 5 Willpower which will keep her around longer than Hercules - and if push comes to shove you can shift onto her with Cinderella - Ballroom Sensation. However, Ballroom Sensation is one of our key singers. She's capable of singing 8 out of our 17 songs for only 1 ink. The longer the game goes on the more likely you'll want to shift her. However, you'll also want to take advantage of The Singing Sword. Especially while playing against Amethyst/Ruby Bounce Control taking out a ready character can be gaming changing. In fact, this ability is so crucial in that meta mashup I would consider making room for another copy or two.
We also have some early characters that will help us get control of the board early. Prince Eric - Dashing and Brave only costs 2 ink, and smashes similarly costed characters when he challenges. The most interesting choice in this deck is the next small body, Robin Hood - Capable Fighter with his ability to exert and deal 1 damage to any character. Unfortunately, his inability to go to the inkwell makes me undervalue him. Frank seems to have utilized him well in this deck, but there are other characters I would pick first.
Amber and Steel ink both have a slew of high utility cards that fit in just about every deck. This one is no different. For dealing with Sapphire and Steel decks, or other archetypes that rely heavily on items (such as the mirror match) Benja - Guardian of the Dragon Gem comes in handy, and might even net us 2 lore later. Rapunzel - Gifted with Healing is another way for us to draw cards, assuming we have characters in need of rescuing. And for even more drawing or a character who can get into a real challenge, there's the best card in Rise of the Floodborn; Beast - Tragic Hero.
One small adjustment I would make to this list is finding room for Ursula's Shell Necklace. While utilizing my singers to play my songs, I free up my ink to get further into my deck and look for my key pieces. Hopefully we can see this deck more fleshed out over time, and polish it up for Into the Inklands.
As midrange, we need to make sure that we stay on curve with our ink until at least turn seven, preferably turn eight so that we can play one of our damage dealing songs after Grab Your Sword to insure a kill. That ink reliability is something this deck struggles with, especially with 17 total uninkable cards. Use your mulligan wisely to make sure you hit the curve and the deck will work swell.
Good luck piloting this deck. It shows some promise against the meta dominating deck - but you'll have to put some work in to make it happen.
