Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Larkana podcast. My name is Max. And I'm Sam. And we are back at you episode 42 this time. 42 times we've been yakking at you. Appreciate you all being here. If it's your first time, welcome on in. If you've been here before, welcome on back. This episode, we are talking about brewing decks. It's a brand new meta. On its way now, right? Set champs are over. I don't think there's any more really big tournaments on the calendar
anywhere for set eight at this point. I think we're all going to take a little bit of a breather. Yeah, a couple weeks. We're all anticipating, bemoaning maybe, some of the reprints and the new cards from Fabled that have been coming our way. So we want to take this opportunity now that all eyes are going to be on this new meta to talk about where the heck do you start when...
though. brand new meta occurs. We had a small version of this sort of happen not too long ago around the time that Hyrum and Fortisphere got banned, and we touched on some of these things, but we never actually took an entire episode to talk about the concept of brewing. From set to set, I would say that there were some stalwarts in terms of deck archetypes and frameworks that survived and moved on. I'm looking at you, Amber
Steelsong. We kind of picked out some new cards that we thought would be good and tried them in the existing Right. There were always these pillars of the metagame, if you will. We knew these decks would be here. We know that they are good and we're acutely aware of their presence, whether they were good at the moment or lingering in the back waiting to pounce. I'm looking at you, Ruby Amethyst. Today, we'll touch on where
do we start now? There's so much of the metagame that has now eroded away with the rotation of sets one through four. So what the heck are we going to do? We're going to break it down into a few steps and then make some predictions about the specifics that we think are coming, or at least that you should probably be aware of. And then we're going to give you some other advice and some other words to round out the episode.
So first and foremost, step one, what is... going to be the default best, most, I don't want to say aggressive, but most efficient, most streamlined deck that is going to exist post -rotation. To my mind, there are two decks that I think of as the level one big bads that we need to be thinking about. And if you're building a deck, you should be considering... one of, if not both
of, these two decks. And if your deck cannot easily, I wouldn't say easily, but if it can't consistently, at least I'd say you want to be a little better than half the time, able to dispatch these decks, I would say you need to reevaluate some card choices in what you're playing. And those two decks are both Amber. Amber Steel, likely aggressive, could be a little bit more mid -rangey. And I also think that... Amber Emerald is going to be a serious contender. These are
two of the most streamlined decks. They are two of the decks that lose some of the least for the upcoming rotation. They still have a lot of the framework of the deck really left intact, right? We have the entire skeleton of the deck. We even have some muscle tissue on that skeleton in a lot of cases. We just need a little bit of filler to tie the room together. So we're
looking into that. So we have what was formerly the churn of dogs deck probably losing churn of bog at this point i think it's reasonable to guess we haven't gotten all the spoilers at time of recording yet but we're close i would say it's relatively safe that we're not going to get churn of bog back at this point but i don't know as though the deck loses a whole lot from the loss of churn of bog we still have lady miss park avenue and we still have Lilo, Escape
Artist. Is there any other cards that play out of the discard very well? I think those are two of the biggest heavy hitters, right? I believe so, yeah. Yeah, so I think that that deck is going to be a framework for a lot of Amber Emerald archetype. Yeah, I think we are already seeing a lot of people dropping Chernabog as well. So I think the deck is going to be able to work.
Yeah, a lot of people were playing like zero to hero or just in time in an attempt to put out Goofy with Ward very quickly to try to protect everything, which is a really interesting approach. I think that coming up with some good end game strategy is what the deck probably needs because that's what Chernobog represented. But I don't think that it needs it. so desperately that it wouldn't exist anymore. And then probably Rapunzel would be the other major thing we're losing from
that deck. Definitely. I think Rapunzel is likely not coming back, at least in this set. And I think that we're going to feel that pain a little bit. Julieta stepping in to try to do as much good work as she can. But I think that when you're one third of the card draw of a single card, it makes it a lot harder. And we could always see like invited to the ball coming into that deck just for a little bit of extra card draw.
Yeah, when we were first testing this out, before it became Churn of Dogs, when it was just kind of the Amber Emerald Dog deck, I was testing this with one or two copies of Invited to the Ball for a while. I was doing just the famous one of because it would never whiff. It was 59 characters, one Invited to the Ball. So we definitely could see that. The Amber Steel aggressive deck is going to be quite good as well. Still leaving
behind a lot of very strong cards. The Three Drop Lady obviously coming up in this deck as
well. We have Penny, Bolt. person being quite strong we have iterations of bolt if you want to go that direction we have goofy we have lilo escape artist still we have lawrence coming back to make a guest appearance in rotation so i think there are a lot of tools that amber steel can leverage we have a new lilo coming that i think will be really useful in the steel archetypes i don't know if this build will take as much advantage of it as something like maybe a ruby
steel would but i do think that this lilo just simply giving multiple character's challenger, a la like a Kriki effect, is going to be really, really good for steal no matter what side of the coin you're on, whether you're dedicated challenging or just looking to take advantage of an opponent who's a little overexerted on a key turn. I'm excited to try her in Amethyst steal. Yes. Picking her up and putting her back down, potentially if we get any good bounce.
Being able to leverage her with some of the larger bodied characters that have a benefit when they come into play, something a la a White Rose. Obviously there's insane synergy. with her and Calhoun. So obviously the steel stitch on four is the great Lilo stitch combo that everybody's looking at. So there's a lot of opportunity here for a card like that to be quite good. So I think that these two decks are going to be kind of
the baseline aggressive decks. They lose some of the least in rotation, which makes them pretty strong choices to start with. So I would say my message is not you have to play one of these decks if you want to win. It's You need to be aware these decks exist and you need to be able to have a game plan that can effectively beat these decks. So let's say if you're winning about half your games on the draw. and a little better than half on the play, you're in a good place.
I want to see the deck be able to not be completely reliant upon the dice roll in order to be the right choice when I'm testing. So that's a step one. There are times in a meta where we could see a singular card that's so powerful or a singular synergy that's so powerful it could define a format. I don't think we have that scenario happening
this time. I do think that there is a singular card that has my attention very specifically, do think that this kind of leads us into what is step two and that is try to find a deck that effectively beats the step one deck so if we think that the aggro decks are going to be the best decks out of the gate because they're not losing a lot and they're very streamlined they have a great card velocity they do a lot of effective things then we need a deck that beats that traditionally
in trading card games, I'm sure everybody is getting to know this at this point, if you have an aggro deck, you're going to want to counter that typically with a mid -range deck. And I think that the mid -range decks to beat are going to be Amethyst, which is not atypical of Lorkana
at all. But I think there's one card, and you'll have to give me the full... name of it because it's in front of you, but there's one specific card that I think is going to end up defining, at least in the very early part of the metagame, what a mid -range deck is. Sam, what's this card? It's Dumbo, Ninth Wonder of the Universe. Yeah, it is. And if you don't know what that card does, it's a... four cost inkable character. He's a 3 -3 evasive that has exert this character, pay
one, draw a card, and gain a lore. Also making history, your other characters with evasive gain also the same thing. So exert, pay one, draw a card, and gain a lore. Yeah. For the cost of a four cost 3 -3 -1, it's a fine stat line. It's got evasive. Okay. Now we're talking about something like a little worse than the rider, the common from, I think it was set eight or seven, one of the two. It's an Amethyst Common 3 -4 -1 evasive. So it's like, okay, Dumbo is just worse than
this card. Right. That is true. But the ability to turn all of your evasives into card advantage is crazy. Now, usually the tension is card advantage, or do you want to gain a tempo advantage and push yourself towards winning the game? That's what the usual tension is. We see this with songs. In order to sing a song with a character, you are giving up. lore that wins you the game, but you are saving ink resources that let you add to the board to further a long -term game plan.
I would have expected this Dumbo to exert, give all your evasives, pay one, exert, draw a card. That's still insane to me, but the fact that you also push towards winning the game when you do this is crazy. This card does a lot of heavy lifting, it generates a ton of card advantage, and it doesn't put you behind in the game on multiple resources by doing it. You're not taking time off from gaining lore to gain cards, you're
doing both at the same time. So any evasive character that natively quests for one, if you have one extra ink on your turn, you can turn that into a card, which is And I think that this evasive style deck, whatever color Amethyst is going to pair it with, there are some really good options across multiple different colors. Probably just not Amber. Honestly, it's the only one that doesn't have that evasive or evasive on your turn ability. So it's probably the only color it really doesn't
pair well with. So I think that that's a lot to like in any color, probably to pair it with minus Amber. I think you're going to see these Dumbo style evasive decks ruling the... mid -range turf because they could just draw so many cards. And there's such a pain in the neck for a lot of units to take down because of that evasive keyword. We're going to see a lot of air fights, which hasn't changed much, honestly, in Amethyst since the popularity of one Shadowfinder. I don't
think that will have changed too, too much. I think we're just going to honestly see more of it. So it needs to be a thought going forward that this is going to be a strong mid -range choice. So you want to be testing synergies, right? Like a lot of the testing that's going to happen in the step two for Sam and I is going to be pairing Amethyst cards in some package, right? We want to find like the best Amethyst
packet. So a line to me that stands out very clearly is Genie on four and then Dumbo on five. And then with the extra ink there, right? Because it's now the fifth turn, we're going to use that extra ink to exert our Genie and immediately convert into a card. Early in the game, I don't mind giving up that second lure from Genie. I think that that card is worth more than that lure at that point in the game. Obviously, as the game goes later, that equation changes drastically.
where I'll take lore above almost any amount of cards if it lets me close a game out sooner. But in the early part of the game, I don't mind that. And there are plenty of four -cost evasives that we can pair that same combo with. It's just the idea of being card neutral through the entirety of that two -card line is very, very strong. And in some colors, we have even cheaper evasives that you might not even be losing out on that lore. Right. Like, if you wanted to pair this
with Emerald, you could start on turn one. with your evasives, right? We can start off with a little gift for Hercules and we can roll right into everybody's favorite bird. Good old Diablo, the two cost Diablo with challenger two and evasive. We can roll right into our - I was thinking Go -Go. Ah, Go -Go is another great choice, right? If you don't mind playing Go -Go on two, that's
a totally fine choice there. A number of three drop options for you that have evasive, including the new Dumbo that can give something else evasive. If you're not lucky, maybe you're starting off on Cursed Merfolk. Let me just give my Cursed
Merfolk evasive. Little questy quest going. on that's great and then we can start exerting things once the four drop jumbo comes down on turn four or later and start drawing more cards the evasive strategy gives you a lot of really good bodies for challenging things and the fact that you can take those bodies and convert them into cards is great you can use something like if you were to pair it with ruby then moana great card to pair this with i'm either challenging with the
moana and giving something else a pump if i need to deal with my opponent's board or i can use them to convert into cards so for sam and i this is a very very promising and looks like it's a very powerful mid -range strategy to help overcome the level one or step one aggro decks that are going to come out with big heavy hitters. So I think that that's really effective things to be thinking about in that regard. Then obviously, step three is test, right? We're going to need
to test. And I really want to call out not being afraid to test things that you think might stink. There is definitely a part of me that wants to play some kind of a red -green deck that is using hypnotic deduction to put songs back on top of my deck so that I can sing with Powerline and
then sing that card I put back, right? I could put back the worst card in my hand in a pirate's life, then use Powerline's second ability to reveal that crappy card and that will go away, and then I'll sing that pirate's life, and whatever song I'm singing will give me the additional benefit of my opponent loses two. lore and i gained two lords fantastic yeah so will it be good i'm willing to wager it won't be Will I
test it? If there's time, I will. Because I do think that if we get a song that's worth singing, I mean, there is obviously Under the Sea coming back, which immediately strikes me as a very powerful thing to be doing with something like Powerline. If I can sing Under the Sea and then gain two lore and my opponent loses two lore, that seems like a really good deal to me. So we'll keep looking at things to test. Weird ways to go. Should we be testing Ruby Steel? It's
been long considered not a great deck. But is there enough cards? We get the Queen coming. back the shift queen we get the stitch lilo combo we were talking about earlier we have a lot of powerful tools out there we have mulans that can shift into various other mulans the ruby mulan just the actual like ruby one not the ruby steel one can take down multiple cards at once if that mulan shifts so it's a really powerful
option to take down a more wide board. It can also hit one thing on the ground and take things out that are evasive. So there's a lot of opportunity to test and we really need to find out what are the lines that are good and what are the other lines that can counter those very good lines. Test online. Test with your friends. Print things out. Jot it down on a piece of paper. Shove it in a sleeve and just practice. That is really
what you need to be doing at this point. I would say definitely build one of these or if not both of these aggro decks. Even if you don't want to play them, that's okay. You just need one of the two of you to take turns playing the deck that nobody wants to play or whatever and test against the other deck. Then once you're confident the deck's your test, like, you know, I'm having a pretty good matchup against aggro. Let's play both of our brews against each other and then
battle back and forth that way. Don't give up. immediately on the level one decks either. They could definitely be just the best decks out of the gate. It could just be several weeks until we find a strategy that breaks up something very, very good. These decks all have insanely strong play patterns in them. So being able to take advantage of those, really smart. Also, don't dismiss the two best decks thinking that, well, everybody's going to be doing it. We can't beat
it. You got to join it, right? It's got to be a consideration. You only have so much time to test, right? Some of these early pre -release tournaments take place the weekend the set comes out. So if you're going to play in a constructed event, and I got to stop now to give a shout out to our good friends at the Forbidden Mountain, who are holding a ridiculous event the Saturday after the set comes out. I think it's August
30th. And they are pairing up with one of our other favorite places to play, Encounter Comics and Games. And they are coming together, a bunch of vendors, all coming to one really big event that is happening the day after. It's core constructed, which obviously would be with the new rotation in place. Everybody's bringing their best ideas. and their most ambitious hopes to try to take down this multi -case tournament. It's going
to be huge. So if you're in the greater Philadelphia area, the tri -state area, if you're from around Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, if you're in that area, New York, anywhere around there, it's probably worth the pilgrimage down to check this tournament out. Big, big shout out to the Forbidden Mountain for putting on such a cool event. I'm happy to see something like that in our neck of the woods. Yeah, it's definitely
exciting. So we'll be testing for sure. So I think that our predictions are pretty straightforward. I think we've been pretty transparent about how we think the meta is going to go. But I know a lot of people are looking at testing some amber cards like the Circle of Life. It's a very exciting, our first legendary rarity song. Yeah, I'm excited for it. Not to play it, just I'm excited for it. It's a strong... potential card. So we'll
see what people can make of it. Being able to use the steal ability to draw a card and discard a card and then use the circle of life quickly with singers to get back something like the gigantic Mickey Mouse is a really cool idea. That big Mickey Mouse is scary. So you never know what will be really, really good. And one thing I want to caution, and then I'll get over to you, Sam, for any other advice that you might have
early into testing. But one big thing I'll warn about is I have a certain play style I really like, and I will tweak and fiddle with a deck. And if that deck ends up not being so good, or I think that it has a good game into something that doesn't, I tend to get very irked about it and irritated with it. And I will try to point my finger in different directions at first, but it's worth not getting married to any idea. We don't know what's going to work and what's not.
It's a brand new meta, right? We're in a world where we don't have to worry about putting damage on a daisy duck right now, because there's nothing that's going to just completely wreck us for doing it. We don't have to worry about a lot of these play patterns that have evolved around these very keystone cards. So I would say don't be precious with your ideas. Be willing to be
open to creativity. If you're testing with people and they give you suggestions or they mention like maybe this isn't a good idea, try not to be contentious or try not to be too offended. Be open to those things. If you're testing with people, they're there because they want you to do well and they want you to help them do well, right? High tide rises all ships. So we want
to help each other. other and that sometimes is letting somebody know like i think you're kind of off base here like i think you're you're just wandering off into the woods i need to kind of pull you back to the trail a little bit because you're just cooking way too much over there so i would highly recommend that you don't get married to any one idea or deck because it just might not be right could be that it is very early in testing and then somebody comes up with the better
mousetrap and now it's like i have to imagine we're not going to be the only people on the planet with a smaller card pool who have arranged some number of cards that look like this. So we have to entertain the notion that perhaps there's a better deck out there. So just don't think immediately or at any point in this process that you might have it solved because it's going to be hard to solve initially. So definitely don't be precious. Sam, what do you have for
advice? Anything? I agree with you. Like, I mean, you can be open to all possibilities. I think just cards that we, especially from sets five through eight cards that we haven't played, it doesn't necessarily mean we won't play them because
we have a whole new card pool. cards that weren't good could potentially be good we were just today building a deck and we looked at the card coda coda and we were just trying to look for the amber steel aggressive deck like what cards go in there and he's a 2 -1 that doesn't allow you to lose lore right and it's like maybe that'll be a good card because we're gonna see pirate's life back again being sung by power line so there's just i think you should just be open to looking
at cards that we've kind of just swept under the rug before Right, don't be afraid to open the binder, crack open, blow off the dust. on the bulk and go back and reevaluate the cards because ones that were underperforming now don't have those cards standing on top of them that made them unplayable before. It's definitely worth considering everything and anything. Be open, be excited, try different things. There might be a whole new way to play that you've
never experienced. So don't be dismissive. Don't just look to do one thing. Be open, try different things. You might be surprised what you find. No matter what you're doing, the best piece of advice I can give you early in a format is keep questing.