Lorcana: Deck Guide - Emerald Sapphire Control

Hello everyone!

Last week, we talked about Amber Steel Aggro, the winning deck from the 300+ players tournament in Denver.

This week, we'll talk about another deck that was also very successful in this tournament, even if it didn't win. It's an archetype that emerged to answer the flood of aggressive decks that basically rush to 20 Lore and ignore the opponent's actions.

Today, we'll talk about Emerald Sapphire Control!

A few months back, we published an article with an Emerald Sapphire combination that used ink-accelerating cards with powerful 7+ cost threats: Ramp to My Will.

The deck we'll be analyzing today uses some elements and ideas from that list, but also adapts to the current metagame, where strategies based on Amethyst and Steel inks remain dominant. These two inks combine card draw with board control, allowing the player to have initiative and more lore generation possibilities.

The Emerald Sapphire list is certainly not focused on winning the game quickly—although it uses some ramps, their purpose is more to enable important disruptive plays and thus throw a wrench on the opponent's strategy. Once the game is firmly under your control, the deck is able to quickly generate Lore and achieve victory before the opponent can reestablish their resources.

In general, that's the deck's game plan! Let's see the list and then analyze each card to understand its role.

The Decklist

Although it certainly isn't the archetype's definitive list - after all, good control decks must adapt to the expected metagame, and thus have flex slots in their builds -, we will highlight the list that Gary Nicholson took to the Top 8 of the ProPlay Denver 15K, in the USA, a tournament with 303 players.

First of all, thanks to InkDecks for providing the tourney's decklists!

The list may seem strange at first, as the ink curve is quite heavy and has obvious holes—for example, no 5-cost cards, and numerous 6+ cost cards. But as we'll see below, the deck has several tools that mitigate this speed issue.

Early turns - Card selection and Ramps

The deck has several high-cost cards, so it's only natural to offset this with a good number of low-cost cards, so you don't fall behind in the early turns.

Furthermore, the low-cost cards in the list aim to do one of two things: either speed up your next turns, through extra ink-drops on a same turn; or manipulate your deck and go for the perfect cards to setup your following turns.

Sail the Azurite Sea and Tipo are the ramps of choice, and starting on turn 2, they basically allow the deck to skip one on the ink curve. This means that very efficient plays, even if high-costes, are possible a few turns earlier—crucial to maintaining the tempo of the game.

Improvise, Vision, Bobby, and Clarabelle provide either card draw or card selection, allowing for your early turns to develop more fluidly, and to transition into midgame, when you're already using your high-cost cards.

It's important to note that none of these early cards are non-inkable, meaning they retain their usefulness even in longer games, developing your ink or providing more cards in later turns.

The 4-Inks: The turning spot

Starting from the turn you make your fourth ink, the deck begins to focus more on resilient characters and board control.

Scrooge and Donald are high-Willpower characters who can survive a Challenge or two. Donald also has the advantage of recovering cards for you over time, but be careful, as he also benefits your opponent.

Baymax may seem strange to include in the 4 curve at first, but don't forget that it can be played with Shift, and since it's the only character in the game with Universal Shift, you can turn any of your cards into a powerful 5/5, heal it from any damage, and have a 6-cost on the board—very relevant for songs, as we'll see later.

Finally, You’re Welcome is an almost universal answer available in Emerald, and besides the flexibility to deal with basically any threat in the game, it’s also inkable. These all add up to justify having 4 copies in the deck.

Be Prepared for songs that wipe the board!

We've reached one of the deck's key points, and a combination that shows why this deck can handle any threat from opponents.

Under the Sea is one of the few tools available in Core Constructed to deal with multiple threats on the board, since the powerful Be Prepared was rotated out of the format.

However, Under the Sea is limited to only handling characters with 2 or less power of 2—and that's where the other song, Heads Held High, comes in. It grants -3 power to opponent's characters. In other words, when played in the same turn, the combination will send all opponent's characters with a power of 5 or less to the bottom of their deck!

Any exceptions, i.e. characters bigger than the Heads Held High-Under the Sea combination, can be dealt with by using You're Welcome, which we mentioned in the previous section.

It may seem like a difficult play, since it involves a 6-cost card and an 8-cost card, but the secret here is that both are Songs, and both have Sing Together! So, with a few characters available on the board, it becomes much easier to sing one of them and use ink to play the other. You can do this as early as turn 5, for example—a crucial turn, as this is when aggro decks want to be in a position to win the game!

The Top of the Curve

Finally, let's talk about the deck's larger characters, whose role is to both help control the board and act as late-game win conditions.

John Silver, Basil, and Hades, will all deal with an opponent's threat as soon as they are played, albeit in different ways.

John Silver continually prevents an opposing character from Questing, and if it's a smaller character, well, it'll probably end up forced to charge into one of your larger characters.

Basil returns a chosen character to hand, making it an excellent tempo play. Furthermore, if for any reason the opponent doesn't replay the card, they risk losing it anyway, since Basil can also force a discard when it Quests.

Hades follows the same logic, but you must be a little more careful with it, as it's a non-inkable card, therefore not very flexible, and it also increases the opponent's inkwell. For these reasons, it's only played as two copies.

Rounding out the top of the curve is Clarabelle. It's important to remember that she can be played with Shift, since the deck uses seven other smaller Clarabelles. Furthermore, her ability is essential to keep up with decks that draw a lot of cards—especially the Amethyst lists we mentioned at the beginning of the article.

In recent articles, we've analyzed a Midrange list, an Aggro list, and now a Control list, all finding success within the competitive Lorcana metagame in post-rotation Core Constructed.

This undoubtedly demonstrates the current richness and depth of the game's card pool, even after a rotation that cut-off four sets—the decks continue to evolve and demonstrate both variety and interesting strategies.

I hope you enjoyed it! As usual, leave your feedback, suggestions, etc., in the comments below.

Cheers, and see you next time!