With the introduction of the Amethyst bounce p🅠ackage in Rise of the Floodborn, Ruby/Amethyst Control has become the undeniable top deck in the Disney Lorcana meta. Try as we might to overcome it, the deck is dominating in every online and in person event right now. In this weekend with more than 250 participants, Ruby/Amethyst represented seven of the top eight finishers. You’ll find the same thing at 1K events and local tournaments wherever they’re played: Ruby/Amethyst seems to be u🉐nstoppable - for now.
Card reveals for next month’s Into the Inklands expansion are trickling out, and the most recent reveal could be the answer to Ruby/Amethyst’s reign of terror we’ve been waiting for. The card, Ursula, Deceiver, is a two-cost Emerald 1/3 character that fဣorces an opponent to reveal their hand and discard a song you choose. As far as the current meta is concerned, this card might as well say “When you play this character, chosen opponent discards Be Prepared.”
Lorcana's Average Game Length Is An Accessibility Issue
Playing well and playing qu☂ickly 🎀are not the same skill, and one can be trained far easier than the other.
This card represents a direct answer to the Ruby/Amethyst deck, which relies specifically on playing Be Prepared to wipe the board and gain control of the match. This is not the deck’s only important tool, but not having access to it is the m⭕ain reason this deck loses oꦕn the rare occasions that it does.
You can see this in the decks꧙ that have the best match-ups against Ruby/Amethyst. Hyper Aggro decks like Amber/Amethyst are designed to win the game as quickly as possible, building so much lore that it isn’t possible to recover, even after Be Prepared is played on turn seven. The other deck that’s touted as a ‘Ruby Amethyst’ killer - though it remains to be seen at a major event - is Emerald/Steel Discard, and this card makes that deck even stronger.
Emerald/Steel Discard’s biggest issue is its slow start. Typically, you want to play Bucky on turn two and Prince John on turn three. If you follow up with Daisy on turn four, then you can’t start using your discard/draw engine until at least turn five, and that’s assuming your opponent hasn’t found a way to 🌞remove your characters from the board.
Ursula is a new, ch𝕴eap tool that can activate Bucky and Prince John sooner, or can be played on turn six to ensure the opponent loses their crucial Be Prepared at the right time. Paired with a four-cost high-value character like Daisy Duck; Hans, Scheming Prince; or Flynn Rider, His Own Biggest Fan, and you could potentially put enough pressure on Ruby/A𓆏methyst to collapse their entire game.
Ursula isn’t just a good answer to Be Prepared, she’s also a solution to Steel’s MVP song, A Whole New World. Th𝓡e Discard archetype is incredibly vulnerable to decks that use AWNW, particularly the already-powerful Amber/Steel Steelsong deck, and Ursula has the ability to remove that tool and ensure that the ♑opponent will run out of gas.
A single card that counters both of the top archetypes in the meta seems incredibly powerful, especially once you realize all the other ways she generates value. Even if your opponent doesn’t use those overpowered songs, or you whiff on finding one, you would still do well to discard your opponent's Friends on the Other Side, Let the Storm Rage On, Let It Go, Grab Your Sword, or Teeth and Ambitions. Anything that takes away your opponent’s resources, while also giving you information on your opponent’s hand, is going to be powerful, especially when it can be targeted to a specific card.
The discard archetype has a lot of potential right now, although it just can’t keep up with the top decks. But this card could be the tool it needs to become a real contender. Emerald/Steel is the most popular version of the Discard archetype thanks to its Floodborn synergy, but Amber/Emerald, which won an event at the start of the season, could put Hades, Lord of the Underworld to good use, allowing you to return Ursula to your hand to be usꩲed again. There’s a lot of potential for Ursula, and, like the rest of the Discard package, there’s no way to counter it right now.
We’ve only seen a few Into the Inklands cards, so it's way too early to say if this is the silver bullet we’ve been looking for. We also don’t know what other ink colors might get similar ‘anti-Be Prepared’ tools, so for all we know there will be multiple ways to deal with it soon. Two months from now, we might be scrambling to find a way to beat the Discard meta, and Ruby/Amethyst Control might be a distant memory. We can only hope.
