Deck Guide - Emerald Sapphire - Ramp to My Will!

Hello, everyone!

In today's article, let's check out a very interesting idea, focused on an ink pair that combines acceleration - in Sapphire - with disruption and discards - in Emerald. The idea is to abuse the cards that provide ink advantage in the first turns in order to be able to play ahead of curve other cards that will define the game in our favor!

And the best part: if you're looking for a relatively cheap list to put together, our deck today contains only 8 rares, 8 super-rares and ZERO legendaries! Its base consists of common/uncommon cards, which certainly helps keeping its price on a somewhat lower side.

Let's present the decklist, understand the game plan and work out how it all comes together!

Decklist and General Gameplan

If you're not very familiar with the term, Ramp means using some way to increase the amount of resources you have access to, and thereby break the parity with which you and your opponent develop the game.

In other words, it means investing cards that don't directly affect the board in the first few turns, with the idea that you will compensate for this with some impactful and strong play a few turns ahead of schedule, plays that you would normally only do at a much later point in the game.

The strategy is quite linear, but extremely effective. With the redundancy of acceleration effects, it can't be denied how consistent the overall plan is. The goal is to have access to seven ink from turn 4 or 5, and from this point onwards dump haymaker after *haymaker for your opponent to deal with.

Now that we know the strategy and general game plan, let's take a closer look at the parts of the deck:

The Ramp

This Sapphire package contains eighteen copies of cards that will allow us to increase our inkwell beyond +1 every turn. These cards are the basis of the strategy, and that's why you should try to have at least two of them, ideally three in your starting hand.

Sail the Azurite Sea, Tipo - Growing Son and One Jump Ahead are the fundamental second turn plays, since they allow you to have 4 ink available on your third turn and continue developing/accelerating your plays.

Mickey Mouse - Detective and How Far I’ll Go are good follow ups, and also leave you either with a body on the table - relevant for challenging early characters from the opponent - or an extra card in hand - important for making sure we find a pay-off for all our ramp.

The Big Pay-off - Bend to My Will!

The powerful Bend to my Will is the card our deck is built for, with the goal of giving the opponent such a huge blow to their game that they won't be able to come back from it.

The action card, which costs 7 ink, would not bring much advantage in a game that follows a normal pace. However, if we think about the potential damage to the opponent's plans if we use it a few turns in advance, it becomes clear how Bend to my Will can define a game.

In an ideal scenario, if we start the game and play a ramp effect on turn 2 and two ramps on turn 3, it would already be possible to play Bend to my Will on our turn 4! In other words, our opponent would have played only 3 turns of the game before losing their entire hand! No wonder, the card has the image of the nefarious Jafar - the act of destroying the opponent's entire strategy with just one card clearly demonstrates the type of power a villain would have!

Other Pay-offs

These cards are excellent options as follow-ups after destroying the opponent's hand with your Bend to my Will, but they are also good plays even if you haven't encountered Jafar's powerful action.

We Don’t Talk About Bruno combines removal and discard, and if used after a Bend to my Will, in practice, you will eliminate any opponent's character from the table.

Mother Gothel - Selfish Manipulator is the way to combat opponents with very fast decks, who can play three or more characters in the first turns and thus threaten a considerable Lore advantage. Mother Gothel will completely stop these decks, as their characters rarely have enough strength to one-shot a six-willpower character.

Cri-Kee is an option that synergizes with our cheap characters, normally used when we need to develop the board and respond to an opponent's threat before establishing our acceleration plan. Normally it should allow our characters, initially weak, to gain enough strength to take down the opponent's larger characters, and thus regain control of the game in our favor. On top of that, it generates 3 Lore, which is nothing to scoff at.

Other Interactions

Even if we have run our opponent's hand out of cards, we still need to deal with whatever may have already been played, so we have some cards to help with this task.

Merryweather and Olaf allow our smaller characters, like Tipo, Mickey, Clarabelle or Kit, to challenge other characters and come out on top. In this sense, they have a similar function to Cri-Kee, but at a lower ink cost, which helps more in the first few turns.

Our character removal options may seem temporary, but remember that characters that return to the hand are eventually discarded by Bend to my Will! So, when we use Mother Knows Best or Kit Cloudkicker - Tough Guy in the first turns, are we delaying the opponent's development and giving them a hard choice - waste time remaking the play or continue developing the game, and lose the cards to our discards?

Card Draw

Finishing off the deck we have a little card draw, which helps withit that extra consistency we all love.

Develop Your Brain is pretty straightforward, and a good play for your first turn, or any turn where you eventually have some ink left.

Hidden Inkcaster helps with extra copies of cards that aren't as good in multiples - for example, Bend to my Will or even other Hidden Inkcaster. Additionally, the deck totals 22 uninkables, which is a bit high, so Inkcaster also helps keep our game flowing.

Finally, Clarabelle may seem contradictory, since our main objective is to discard the opponent's entire hand - which negates Clarabelle's draw. However, we need to think that in the initial turns, before we use the first Bend to my Will, our resources are decreasing due to the use of ink accelerators, and Clarabelle helps with this by combining presence on the board with an extra card in hand.

And that wrap-ups our deck guide for today!

The idea, as mentioned at the beginning, was to bring you a cheap and efficient list, which also has a lot of potential for more competitive events, such as the Set Championships.

The metagame has increasingly turned to attrition decks, with impact plays when reaching 5 or more ink, and our deck is capable of combating these strategies very effectively.

You need to be careful against faster decks, focused on populating the board in the first turns and going for the Lore race - shape your starting hand accordingly, looking for more interactions and a little less acceleration, as you will probably prefer Mother Gothel - Selfish Manipulator to Bend to my Will in this type of match.

Finally, it's worth highlighting that if you have the habit of playing in groups - that is, beyond the traditional 1x1 -, our deck today is also a good option! Bend to my Will affects all opponents, meaning the game plan remains largely the same. Of course, take into account that you will probably be the center of attention after discarding the entire board's hand!

So, what did you think of our list today? Have you ever played with something similar? Share with us!

Hugs and see you next time!