Welcome to the Valentine's Day special deck tech. We're not looking at anything high tier or meta - instead we're peaking into a special theme deck surrounding one of Lorcana's most prolific couples; Aladdin and Jasmine. With only two sets released we're limited on the number of available cards with each of these characters - so we're sticking with Ruby and Sapphire. This gives us a few copies of each character and only eliminates Aladdin - Cornered Swordsman and Aladdin - Prince Ali in Emerald and Steel.

Ruby/Sapphire Valentine's Day Special | Will Sobel

• Characters (26)
• 2 Abu - Mischievous Monkey
• 4 Aladdin - Heroic Outlaw
• 4 Aladdin - Street Rat
• 4 Jasmine - Heir of Agrabah
• 4 Jasmine - Disguised
• 4 Jasmine - Queen of Agrabah
• 4 Lefou - Instigator

• Items (6)
• 4 Shield of Virtue
• 2 Fishbone Quill

• Songs (12)
• 2 Be Prepared
• 2 Four Dozen Eggs
• 4 Go the Distance
• 4 One Jump Ahead

• Actions (16)
• 4 Develop Your Brain
• 2 Dragon Fire
• 2 Fan the Flames
• 2 He's Got a Sword!
• 4 Nothing to Hide
• 2 Work Together

As a theme deck focusing on the romance featured at the center of Aladdin, we need to focus on those characters to create our lore engine. In that case, we're going to focus on Aladdin - Heroic Outlaw. Luckily, this character alone has an efficient way not only to get lore, but to reduce your opponent's lore. Unfortunately, this card has two flaws. The first is that he doesn't have good survivability. The second is that he's very expensive. Thankfully we can utilize many of the Jasmine cards to help heal our Heroic Outlaw so that we can take advantage of his ability multiple times. Hopefully, supporting one another will lead this deck to victory against other romantic couple decks.

To fully take advantage of Heroic Outlaw's ability we're going to utilize effects that will ready him. Unfortunately in Ruby very few effects ready him without penalty or restriction which means we have to rely on effects like Fan the Flames and Shield of Virtue which will ready Aladdin without the ability to quest. But given his effect we get more lore out of him challenging anyway! And this is where our Jasmine healing comes into effect. Once Aladdin challenges and defeats a character, we'll play his sweetheart to remove damage to prepare him for another bout of combat. Of course if we manage to have a Jasmine still on board she can sing Go the Distance for Aladdin for the same effect while also grabbing us another card in hand.

Utilizing this play cycle we quickly dominate the flow of lore on both sides as soon as Heroic Outlaw hits the table. Given how expensive he is, how do we play until then? Good question. The first plays we're looking for are Nothing to Hide and Develop Your Brain which lets us dig deeper into our deck to make sure that we can get Heroic Outlaw.

Once we find our key cards, we need to fortify ourselves a little to make sure our opponent doesn't run away with the game. That looks like playing our vanilla characters like Jasmine - Disguised and Abu - Mischievous Monkey and pairing them with He's Got a Sword! and our other ready effects. On top of that, we can also prepare ourselves for Aladdin and save some ink by playing Aladdin - Street Rat. This also lets us control our opponent's lore flow just by coming into play. This is also where our character package weakens at, so we need to hold onto Dragon Fire and Be Prepared in case the game looks like it's running away from us.

If we've got our heavy hitter down and we can't escape the damage fast enough, we run an ace up our sleeve that can help us win in a single turn. Four Dozen Eggs and other Resist-granting cards can be incredibly beneficial with cards like Heroic Outlaw, and especially pairing them with effects that let them challenge multiple times in a turn. These cards not only duct tape themselves together for a pseudo Be Prepared but it will also gain you lore in the meantime.

Given our comfort in Sapphire we also play a small suite of cards to ramp our ink faster, which hopefully leads us to playing Heroic Outlaw a turn or two early. One Jump Ahead is classic, and also thematic for our couple. It's more likely we'll get an early Jasmine to sing this for us than an Aladdin, but take the extra ink where you can. I've tried to play with more Fishbone Quill but I never find the right time to play the second one. Sometimes it may not even be worth playing the first one given how card poor this deck can get in the late game.

One way or another you'll have a good time playing this at the kitchen table, especially with other decks of a similar theme. It's a shame I couldn't make room for a good Genie or even A Whole New World which would make this deck shine with a brand new hand. This game has so many fun themed decks that could really shine in the right circumstances. If you're looking for a deck to play with your significant other, try this deck out and brainstorm some other romances in the Disney universe.