Lorcana Deck Guide - Emerald Sapphire Mufasa Combo!

Hello, everyone!

In today's article, we will honor the release of the newest film in The Lion King franchise, and present an Emerald/Sapphire deck based on Mufasa - Ruler of Pride Rock!

Our deck today is also something relatively unusual within the Lorcana metagame - it's a combo deck! It means that through synergy between some key cards in the deck, the game plan involves achieving 20 Lore in one turn!

So, do you want to know how it can be done? Let's go!

The Ruler of Pride Rock

Before having the kingdom passed on to Simba - or, technically, would it have been to Scar? -, Mufasa - Ruler of Pride Rock reigned supreme. Well, more or less... when it was spoiled, back in the 5th set, Shimmering Skies, Mufasa had a lot of hype around it, but although the card was considered a strong one, it didn't have a very clear slot in any meta decks.

In theory, it's a card that can be used just for value - for 8 ink, you get 2 new cards, a very resilient character and practically double your inkwell for every turn he remains on the board.

However, value plays are not what today’s deck is looking to do! The idea is, once we have a turn in which Mufasa - Ruler of Pride Rock can Quest, we abuse the ability to ready the entire inkwell and use cards that ready Mufasa again, allowing thus a new Quest, and by continuing this loop we can even reach 20 Lore in one huge turn!

This game plan is made possible thanks to an excellent card from the recent set, Azurite Sea:

This is an interaction we already mentioned in our Set review, that You Came Back opens up many possibilities because the card ready characters without removing the restriction of doing Quests, something that is currently very rare in the game. If we combine this effect with Mufasa - Ruler of Pride Rock's ability to ready the entire inkwell, it is possible to continuously ready Mufasa throughout a turn and each iteration will gain you 4 Lore!

Of course, you can only play 4 copies of You Came Back, which certainly raises a problem for the deck's consistency. But, fortunately, Emerald also gives us another essential card to obtain virtual extra copies of what we need!

Thanks to Do It Again!’s effect, as long as we already have a You Came Back in our discard, it's almost the same as having another copy in hand! Sure, it costs 6 ink in total - but if we're recovering your entire inkwell with Mufasa's ability, it probably won't make a difference!

And so, now that we've established the combo pieces, let's see the decklist and analyze the other cards!

Decklist and Card Analysis

Being a combo deck, we want it to be as focused as possible, which is why we use exactly 15 different cards, each with 4 copies! This assures consistency, especially since we want redundancy in order to find key cards, as we'll see.

The Combo Pieces

As explained, these are the cards necessary for the deck's combo-win. We will need 1 copy of Mufasa, and, to reach 20 Lore and win the game, we will need at least 1 You Came Back and three more options between other copies of this or Do It Again ! - that is, four of the other seven available in the deck.

Of course, counting only on our draw for the turn to naturally find all the necessary pieces is quite optimistic. Therefore, the deck uses a series of cards whose function is basically to draw or select more cards:

Compra e Seleção de Cards

No less than thirty-two of the deck's sixty cards - more than half! - will either help you by drawing or selecting an extra card, that is, give you back the card you used. This means that, given enough ink, you can quickly go through a lot of different cards in your deck, and thus obtain the necessary pieces of the combo.

Additionally, most of these cards are "inkable", so you can put safely send them to your inkwell because when Mufasa - Ruler of Pride Rock comes into play, you will recover two cards from there - potentially, more cards that help you search for copies of You Came Back so you can win the game next turn!

So now we already know that our deck aims to find certain combo pieces and has card selection that makes the plan viable. But we still need a lot of ink - Mufasa costs 8 to play! Therefore, the deck also has cards that accelerate our inkwell so that we can play the combo as soon as possible:

Ink Acceleration

Thanks to these cards, our game plan is possible to execute much sooner than expected - that is, without having to wait 8 turns to play Mufasa - Ruler of Pride Rock.

Some cards even combine both the acceleration and card draw effects, which is why they appeared in both sections - Sail the Azurite Sea and How Far I’ll Go.

If you can sequence it optimally, it is possible to play Mufasa on turn five, that is, three turns earlier than normal! Of course, we won't always be in the ideal game scenario, and that's why it's also necessary to have ways to protect our combo, as we'll see below:

Protecting the Combo

One of the main weaknesses of the deck is that Mufasa - Ruler of Pride Rock is somewhat vulnerable the turn you play it, making it necessary to wait for your opponent to play a turn before you have the turn back in order to win the game.

However, it is during this opponent's turn that there is a window for they to somehow take Mufasa off the board, and thus stop our deck on its tracks! Therefore, we have two cards whose role is to protect Mufasa and ensure that we can start the next turn with him safely on the board.

Alice - Savvy Sailor not only has self protection already, thanks to the Ward ability, but she can also grant Ward to another character when she Quests. Thus, Alice is the perfect play to thwart an opponent’s single target removal cards, such as Dragon Fire, Let It Go, among others. Additionally, Alice also generates 2 Lore and can eventually increase a character's Lore by 1, which helps reduce the number of times we’ll need to ready Mufasa on the combo turn.

However, our opponent may be using cards that can remove all characters from the board without targeting them, such as Be Prepared. For these cases, we have the powerful Ursula - Deceiver, another excellent pre-combo play, to check what means the opponent has to deal with Mufasa - and, ideally, discard it and thus preventively protect our combo.

Analysis and Turn Strategy

Let’s try to understand how to best sequence the deck and optimize our game plan:

Starting hand and turns 1-4: Although it may seem counterintuitive, Mufasa - Ruler of Pride Rock is NOT a priority in the starting hand! This is because, as it is an 8-cost “uninkable” card, it can be more of a hindrance to our initial development. The goal is to reach 8 ink with our accelerations, but between all our card draw and selection, it will be simple to find a copy of Mufasa after the initial turns, and our deck only needs one of it to achieve victory. Unlike You Came Back, which can be kept in the starting hand, as we will invariably need more copies.

The most important thing in the first few turns is to establish a constant ink acceleration, so look for cards like Sail the Azurite Sea, Fishbone Quill or draws like Develop Your Brain and Gramma Tala - Keeper of Ancient Stories.

Middle game, turns 4-8: Ideally, you should have 6-8 ink on turn 5, and with that you can focus more on finding Mufasa - Ruler of Pride Rock to set up the combo and win the game. Of course, it is necessary to pay attention to the opponent's deck and identify whether it is necessary to first protect Mufasa with either Alice - Savvy Sailor or Ursula - Deceiver. A Nothing to Hide can reveal some important information so you know whether it's safe to go for the combo or not.

The important thing is not to play impatiently - keep in mind that, if well prepared, your deck can achieve victory in one turn, so it doesn't matter how much your opponent is ahead in terms of Lore.

Long game, turns 9+: If the game goes on too long, either your opponent has managed to deal with Mufasa or you haven't found enough pieces for the combo yet - after all, it's a card game, and sometimes we don't find what we need, even with all the redundancy in the deck. It is possible to force some plays from your opponent using Alice - Savvy Sailor, and if you find more than one Mufasa - Ruler of Pride Rock, you can also use the first one just to gain two cards from your inkwell, and thus refuel in order to prepare future plays.

Like any combo deck, the key is to always have patience. Your deck has a safe victory condition, so try to guarantee this condition and your opponent won't have much to do.

Conclusion

E assim terminamos mais uma análise de deck!

Emerald/Sapphire Mufasa seems to be a deck with a lot of potential, but at the same time it can also rely on a metagame of slower decks to reach its full potential.

The point is that fast decks, especially ultra-aggros like Amber/Emerald with Lilo - Making a Wish and the like, will take advantage of our few ways to interact and control the board, and thus reach 20 Lore before we can establish our pieces. Discard decks, such as those based on Diablo - Devoted Herald, can also be problematic, as they do not allow the accumulation of cards necessary to make our combo turn viable. It is important to be adaptable against these kind of decks and play more actively, using the combo more as a way to close out a tight game.

So, what did you think of the deck? What changes would you make to the list? Have you ever built and played with a similar deck? Share with us!

Hugs and see you next time!