Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Lurkana. podcast. My name is Max. And I'm Sam. We are back at you this week. We had discussed in our previous episode kind of our emergency episode, if you will, due to the banning of Hiram Flavers from Toymaker and Fortisphere. We had our good friend HyperHippo over. Big shout out to him. Thanks for coming on and talking with us. We also did an extended episode if you want to hear our kind of raw thoughts and much longer
thoughts. That's available for you to check out. I appreciate everybody who has listened. This week, to start kind of where the metagame is, but first and foremost, a tournament report from me and Sam. We discussed briefly that we had a tournament to go to the weekend after the bans were announced. We talked about that during our banisode. Sam and I did in fact go to that tournament. We didn't just give up because cards got banned and we didn't know what to do anymore. We endured.
We tested some stuff and we took decks over there to the Encounter Comics and Games in Allentown. Big shout out to them. They put on a heck of tournament was streaming on Twitch. So you can check out the VODs there. Just look for the Forbidden Mountain. You'll find it easy enough. And you can check that out. Lots of good folks announcing that event and a shout out to Forbidden Mountain for putting that event on stream. Really appreciate
that a good deal. Sam, you and I got to be on stream a few times each as a matter of fact. So do you want to tell everybody how our results went over at Encounter Comics and Games? I got second place and Max got third place. I received the prize of an enchanted bell, strange but special. Sam, what did you get for a prize? I got two booster boxes of Rise of the Floodborn and then three Japanese booster boxes of Rise of the Floodborn. That was a lot of Floodborn. It was. The Floodborn
hath risen over there. So yeah, we walked away with a good amount of prize support. Really appreciate that. It was really fun. I ended up playing good old Ruby Amethyst. Sam, what did you play? I played Amethyst Steel. And we both did pretty well. Sam and I had to duke it out on coverage, as a matter of fact, in the semifinals. It was a pretty close match, and I think the better player ended up prevailing out of that one, just because I think you played a little bit tighter
than I did in the match. You went on to face your only loss in the Swiss rounds? Yes. Which was David Nunez in the finals, and another major squeaker. If your top two cards were reversed, you would have taken away the W. Yeah, it was rough, but I was super happy with how... Both of us did that day. Yeah, it's really rare that you and I both get to do well in a tournament. Yeah, it's usually one or the other or neither. True. So I was leading into this event. The thought
on everybody's mind is, oh God, Diablo. And we tested a lot of Diablo decks. I tested a lot of Diablo decks and forced you to endure hours of testing against Diablo decks. For this tournament, I was going to play Emerald Steel. Initially, that was pretty much my odds on favorite deck going into the weekend. I was also less often, but somewhat consistently through testing different things in Ruby Amethyst to see if there was some
play there. Because my thought pattern was kind of what we talked about on the longer ban episode or the bonus episode about the bannings is that if... these mid -range decks are going to take over and prey on the aggro decks. I definitely
don't want to be on a purely aggro deck. On the other side of the coin, I think I'd like to try to next level some of these mid -range decks by playing with the Ruby Amethyst deck and just being able to b -prep out a bunch of people because I know that generally that matchup is favorable for Ruby Amethyst when it comes especially to Emerald Steel in the discard variant. And I am so, so, so seasoned at playing. that matchup
from both sides of it. And I am very confident no matter which one of those two decks I bring to an event, if I have to play the other one, I'm confident I at least know what I'm doing. And I know my role very well in the matchup and the cards that are the important ones that can turn a game. So I was thinking that I could maybe go over the top of a lot of these decks with the power level of Ruby Amethyst. So that is what I ended up doing. And I think the results
speak for themselves. I wish I had more time in testing and a little bit more thought. behind some plays and things that the deck could do. Because I do think that coming away from the weekend, this is going to be a deck we're going to see pretty regularly moving forward through the rest of the season and sword champs. Yeah. And then my tech card for the abundance of discard that we expected to see was Helga Sinclair. Helga
Sinclair, the new Helga Sinclair. The two cost uninkable zero four challenger three with evasive on your turn. Yeah, that card is a menace. So one of the things that pushed me over the Edge was in our team testing playing against Helga Sinclair with the Emerald Steel package. She was nigh impossible to remove outside of something like a We Don't Talk About Bruno. She's very
frustrating to deal with. It was hard to create a board that was able to weather the storm of what the Amethyst Steel decks were doing while still presenting potent threats for key cards like Helga Sinclair. I even ended up swapping for a little while and testing with Amber Emerald. together, the Under the Sea discard variant, which gave me a much easier time into a 0 -4, but obviously has its bad matchups. So it was a tough call for me. I love the Amber Emerald
deck. It's one of my favorites, but I ended up opting to play the Ruby Amethyst deck, and I'm glad I did because coming out of this, coming out of the large tournament over in Germany the same weekend, we saw between those two events combined total just under 200 participants. and we got to see this play pattern emerge in Amethyst that is starting to redefine the meta now. That was included in my deck, just not as numerous
or as strongly as it was in other decks. And what's interesting is this all kind of spawned out of a fear of what we were going to do against the dreaded Diablo, because I needed to have a plan against it. Ruby does have the benefit of having Brawl, which is a nice, clean answer to Diablo. It's harder to answer Diablo when they move it to a cove, or if... If they have a second Diablo, things like that can snatch.
If it's the under the sea variant, they can use bare necessities to take your brawl away from you. So there are some things that Diablo decks can do to add that resiliency back into their play patterns. And one of the things that is, I think, a really nice underutilized up to this point tool was Peter Pan's Shadowfinder. So I decided to follow the insights of the great Artabax who said that this was Peter Pan's time to shine.
So I was like, let me... test it out and see how it goes so i played pegasus the 3 -1 evasive in ruby i played peter pan shadow finder i played genie and i played elsa fifth spirit all in my deck and i could create this really cool play pattern that we're seeing expanded even more and i personally had to play against it a couple times which was peter pan shadow finder then either genie or iago the giant parrot the four six with vanish and evasive then either elsa
fifth spirit or that iago coming down these giant gigantic, evasive characters that now conveniently get Rush from Peter Pan. There are a lot of very, very oppressive things that play pattern can present. And when paired up with Ruby, it gets even nastier because you get the aforementioned Pegasus at the front end of that, or in the middle of that if you need to. I know I surprised you once on our coverage game by playing out a Pegasus with the Peter Pan and having, oops, here's five
more damage for your library. And we also get the oh -so -dreaded Maui Shark. in there as well as a card that we both called out during our set review, not to pat us on the back too hard, but we did point out the new 4 -drop inkable Moana that is a 4 -3 evasive whenever she challenges a character. She gives another character of yours plus 3 strength until end of turn. So play pattern by using Peter Pan on 3, then playing Moana with Rush, challenge, give a boost to Peter Pan, can
take out a hugely statted character. So there are a lot of really awesome play patterns. that you can do with this. And we are starting to kind of see the emergence of this play pattern being a real go -to for the Amethyst color, especially decks that lean towards the mid -range or control side of their play style. Lots and lots of that going on. Sam, how much of that did you see over the weekend when you were playing? Did you see a lot of that play pattern or was it just here
and there? For me, it was just here and there. I played a variety of different decks. I know you played against Emerald Amethyst that I believe was rocking that. Yeah, I didn't see Iago, but I did see the Peter Pan Shadowfinder. But yeah, luckily, I didn't have to see it too much. To me, it's really interesting that this could have been a play pattern all along. We've had Peter Pan Shadowfinder since, was it the fourth set?
I believe it was set four. And it's really cool that because of the way the meta has changed that we're seeing these new decks emerge. And that was the hope, right, with the bannings. The shakeup was we want to add decks back into the metagame, lines of play that have been available, but were just a little bit too... nebulous. Like if we name this play pattern off, right, you list these play patterns, they're still not that
good against Hiram. Like it requires multiple cards for it to be pretty good against Hiram. It doesn't offer a variety of things to do. So it's not exactly the most potent, but now in a world where we don't have Sapphire with an insane draw engine, Sapphire has kind of backed off a little bit. Still very controlling, still very in the DKP style of like Sharkburn. It's definitely still able to win. Yes, very capable.
deck i think on the control side of things and we'll touch more on the metagame we're gonna see a lot more ruby amethyst and a lot more of the ruby sapphire decks they just aren't all in the best control deck by a decent clip is now and always has been ruby sapphire now we're seeing that eb away where it's like that's one style and now we're starting to see this amethyst version start to push through that's offering the similar play patterns with something like
maui shark so you still can maui shark for a pirate's life we're seeing a lot of inclusion of dragon fire We're even seeing a copy here and there of Finders Keepers as we shave more rabbits for more genies to up our evasives for
that Peter Pan line. There are a lot of cool things that the Amethyst deck can partake in from a Maui Shark perspective now, which makes Amethyst kind of this color that is starting to define early game by way of characters that can turn into cards later and then control the mid game and even be able to hog out some control elements combined with the right color when you pair with things like Maui Shark. Maui Shark kind of becoming the card that's defining control
right now. I think if you're playing a very controlling deck, often you're going to see Ruby and you're often going to see that Maui Shark. That's pretty much a hallmark of, okay, I'm playing a deck that's comfortable playing a long game and is going to have generally very strong card elements, right? They're going to be very potent threats. They're going to often be multiple cards for one exchanges is what they're looking for to
stay in the game, right? We see that in the Ruby Sapphire style decks with Maui, the hero to all Maui. We see that more in the Ruby Amethyst decks that are coming up with things like Iago, where it's like, oh, I can trade multiple for one with these cards, and I'm comfortable playing a very long game because I know the inevitability is going to go to the person who has the... higher quality of card. Very much Control Not Dead.
Control took a big hit and needed some time, and I think will continue to settle itself out till we see exactly what it is. I think that our prediction of mid -range becomes top of the heap is kind of true. We see the most playable decks that fall under the mid -range category, but I do think on the whole, and if you disagree, jump in, but I do think on the whole that Luricana is kind of a game that wants two mid -range decks
duking it out, right? You want to play a card, and then it's like, okay, well, I'm going to counter. that with a better card. Well, I'm going to counter that by playing this and then playing a card that does well in this situation. Okay, well, I'm going to play this card that does even better than that. And it's kind of this game of back and forth and leveraging small micro
advantages. I think if you look at Amethyst as an ink identity, it's very much doing what the design team wants Lurkana to be doing, right? It's a lot of challenging. It's a lot of questing. It's a small benefit, like quest for additional. It's rush. It's challenger that gets these incremental advantages, but it's not static all. the time. We get to see a lot of that in this play pattern. I didn't realize it probably till round two or three when I had assembled a board of all evasives,
and I was like, oh. I can just quest and they really can't do anything to stop me because I accidentally made like half my deck evasive. Yeah, and I didn't even really realize, like I didn't run into that until I played you in the semifinals. Yeah, it becomes kind of an annoyance and an accidental side effect of dealing with Diablo was the, oh yeah, now I can just win by questing because it's real hard to challenge
into this. Except obviously for the mirror matches where you're going to see a lot of those little things come up. So it's pretty interesting what we're seeing here and this is beginning to evolve.
things a lot right we're starting to see an uptick in amber steel a deck that i think that was on a lot of people's minds coming out of the band i think that deck really gets to be a big winner because it's a lot harder for these amethyst decks because they're shaving on brawls like dkp's current list doesn't play any so the more we're shaving on brawls the more we're seeing steel based removal things like that the steel song decks get to really pray because now their
aerials get to actually exert and sing songs and their large will -powered characters get to survive these hits from things like genie things like peter pan shadow finder it's just like okay cool it's a daisy duck though so gonna keep questing with it your pegasus is cute but uh daisy literally beats it in a challenge like you challenge all you want this is a one for your pegasus it's a three one it's a real bad day for your pegasus yeah and i we've seen a
lot of the ruby amethyst decks taking out the bounce package yes and i did play an amber steel deck in the tournament and if i didn't have my foxes there was no way i was winning we're seeing the elements that matter against the amber steel deck specifically get really taken down a peg because we're so focused on this evasive play package. So I personally, I was still playing rabbits. I was playing the full bounce package
in my deck. I wasn't playing all the snakes I could have played, but I was playing four foxes. I was playing three snakes. Yeah. Sam was holding up three fingers there. Yeah. I was playing three snakes and I was playing my rabbits and I was
playing my genies. I was playing more of a secondary evasive kind of idea with, I have some genies in there, but I'm leaning on the rabbit draw engine to get me out of a lot of problems versus what we're seeing now which is much heavier on genies and little to no rabbits because we're shaving the full on bounce package sometimes even including merlin goat and do you think you would change what you played i would make changes to what i play but i think that ruby amethyst
is in a really good spot right now in the meta steel songs becoming a big winner i think we're going to see a lot of that i think the aggressive decks need to really make sure that they can do what they need to do thoroughly and efficiently and with So I think a good answer is something like Chernodogs because they have the ability to survive easily against the steel decks and they have Chernobog to turn all of their characters that get banished over the course of the first
few turns into gas for Chernobog. Chernobog is very hard to answer. Draw your one of Dragonfire. Hope that you have your we don't talk about Bruno, which is probably the cleanest answer that's commonly seen in the meta for it. So it's like it's just asking a lot and Chernodogs gets to play Ursula. So it's like they can snipe songs. So it's definitely a concern if that deck can get going and doing its thing efficiently. So it's a nice aggressive deck. We're starting to
see an uptick in Diggy Diggy Hole. We're starting to see these decks start to come to the forefront that are aggressive and also ebbing way into the aggressively slanted midrange deck, something akin to what you played with the Amethyst Steel and also seeing Emerald Amethyst Oops All Diablo
style deck. Those both fall in that category of they can definitely be a mid -range deck that can play a little bit of a longer game but they can also just aggressively explode out of the gate get ahead and stay ahead very easily either through card advantage or through significant lure gain on well -statted characters so there's a lot of advancement in the meta on the whole you think amethyst steel still pretty well positioned in the meta overall yeah i think i think it's
pretty well -statted i don't know if it needs some more answers to evasives other than just the Helga Sinclair. Against you, I was using her in combination with Crabbe in order to take out Genies and other evasive characters, but I don't know if it needs something more. I think we need a little bit more testing before Sword Champs to see if a couple more elements need to be added. Right, do we need to move towards Genies to add extra evasives to the list? Does
it matter if they sing? Should we up our four count? Should it go into, and then along came Zeus as a consideration. A lot of things to think about as the meta starts to really find its feet post - innings for sure. So to close out the episode, I wanted to just talk over the list I shot out to everybody of various decks that you could try. And at least this is kind of where we see it, at least right now. One of the big elements to the controlling deck, obviously being
Maui Shark. So the control decks right now seem to be the Ruby Amethyst Shark decks or the Ruby Sapphire Shark decks. They either have the Rampy Shark deck or you have the Shark that's getting rush and gains a lot of card advantage versus a lot of ink advantage. Your aggressive decks, the Diablo -style deck, the Churn -a -Dog deck, and the Diggy -Diggy Hole, and your midrange deck, Steel Song, the Emerald Steel discard deck.
Blurt Bowl is seeing a pretty large uptick, being able to use Amethyst characters in the best way possible. And then, of course, you have the Amethyst Steel deck that Sam was talking about, either aggressively slanted or more mid -range in styling, so that, as well as the Diablo deck, can really
work either side of the room. You can be much more aggressive, you can be much more mid -range, and even with the build going one way or the other, you still have the ability to dance between, depending on what the role is, which is why these decks, I think, see a lot of success, is because of their flexibility in into various different decks. That's kind of where the meta is, at least from where we are. These are the things that are evolving as a result of the bans. At least
we're finding our footing. And one nice thing about getting thrown into the fire a little bit was it tested our merit as two podcasters who were forced to constantly look at the metagame and understand how the metagame works so we can try to help all of you get better at this game. And I think we kind of landed on our feet and we proved ourselves as at least able to, in a room of unknowns, given a certain amount of information, we'll be able to make the best possible choice
that we can. And I think we both did a pretty good job of exactly that. So until next time, keep questing.