It’s Wednesday which means we’re back at it with another edition of #BadNewsBrews for Disney Lorcana! I’m kinda stoked to tell you about the deck I built after last week’s article, but first, let me tell you the rules of this Disney Lorcana deck-building exercise:
- The poll will remain active through Monday, October 16th at 5:00pm
- Dave will brew a deck containing exactly 4 of the winning card.
- The deck will focus on or synergize with one or more of the winning card’s abilities.
- Dave will play no fewer than 5 games with the deck on Pixelborn, and report the results.
- NEW RULE (10/25/23): If I have the winning card in my opening hand, I will keep at least one copy of it (even if it would be more optimal to mulligan it away).
Quick aside about the new rule – it came up at least once during my games, and it seemed against the spirit of this exercise to just shuffle away the keystone card, even if it is a five cost uninkable, unsingable action.
To wit, the winner from last week’s poll was Steal from the Rich, a rare Disney Lorcana Action from The First Chapter that costs 5, and, as mentioned, cannot be inked or sung. It’s a neat card, but, curiously, it has antisynergy with a lot of the cards you’d want to play alongside it.
For example, Do it Again! is not inkable, and rebuying Steal is too slow. Genie – Powers Unleashed is better, but again, isn’t inkable, and doesn’t get to leech your opponent’s lore if you use his Phenomenal Cosmic Power ability.
When I first conceived of what to brew with Steal, I thought of an Emerald Sapphire Ramp deck that had a lot of little dorks and looked something like this:
This tried to use the Item Storm style of build that we often see in Sapphire Steel to win with Ariel – Whoseit Collector, and, in the same turn, nibbling away at their lore by questing with her multiple times. Unfortunately, drawing a couple test hands with it revealed that it was too gimmicky, and that most of the cards just wouldn’t sync up.
So we scrapped that build for this one, a riff on my Emerald Ruby Christmas Eve(asive) deck which was the #DumbDeckoftheDay back on October 18th.
Since we’re trying to focus on stealing lore with this deck, I call it The Grinch. Peep the strategy:
So I got off to a bit of a rough start. I was on the draw against an Amethyst Emerald deck, and I ended up keeping a Sword of Truth in my opener, which was bizarre, because I didn’t have Swords in my deck, I had Shield of Virtue, or so I thought until I tried to figure out what the h*ck was happening when Pixelborn wouldn’t let me ink the sword. I also had four of Mulan – Imperial Soldier which was both incorrect and dumb. SOMEHOW, I managed to pull it out, but the ADHD that is probably all-too-evident means that I can’t decipher my notes as to how. Moving on…
In game 2, I made the correct adjustments into the version of the deck pictured above. This time, I was matched up against an Amethyst Sapphire deck and I was going first. I won this one pretty easily when his 3rd Hades – Infernal Schemer came down and still couldn’t target my Kuzco – Tempermental Emperor. I still hadn’t had the chance to Steal from the Rich, though.
In game 3, I faced off with Amber Sapphire Princesses and lost pretty handily, unable to recover from the protective blanket of a Jasmine – Queen of Agrabah and two Eye of the Fates buffing the opponent’s Moana – of Montunui.
Game 4 was another blowout against a very aggressive Amber Steel Songs deck, which managed to play two Lilo – Making a Wish and a Simba – Protective Cub before I could play my first character.
It was game 5, the moment of truth, where we see if we could actually play the Steal from the Rich and, importantly, put #BadNewsBrews in the win column. I was on the draw against another Amber Steel Songs deck, and my opponent had just played a turn one Lilo – Making a Wish. I didn’t feel too optimistic, especially holding a clunky, uninkable Steal because of the New Rule (see above). Fortunately, my opponent went a little too hard, too early, playing out 2 Grab Your Sword on turns 4 and 5 to banish a Flynn Rider – Charming Rogue, and to put away my turn 5 Kuzco. I managed to battle back with a slew of Evasive characters, eventually shifting into an Aladdin – Heroic Outlaw and keeping them off their game plan with later-turn back-to-back Aladdin – Street Rats followed by back-to-back Steal from the Rich.
All in all, we ended up 3-2, which is better than I’d anticipate for a deck like this. Which is to say nothing of how fun the deck was to play. There was a real dearth of Amethyst/Ruby in my games today, and it was nice to just put a body on the board and not have to worry about it getting Be Prepared into the great beyond.
As far as Steal from the Rich is concerned, I do think that’s a card that could have some legs…eventually. Another effect or two that lets you plink away at your opponent’s lore, or better, something like Aladdin – Heroic Outlaw which lets you drain their lore, and Steal could be a threat. Especially if coupled with a card like Rise’s Beast – Relentless, which is not just in-color, but which also has the distinction of being able to quest more than once per turn, and you could see this threat graduate to a problem.
Anyway, that’s it for this week’s edition of #BadNewsBrews. The next poll is below, don’t forget to cast your vote, and let me know on twitter (@02drop) if you try out The Grinch!
This week’s poll is a little different. Instead of a card, I’ll be brewing around a Franchise. The additional rules are:
- I must at least choose the color with the most cards from the Franchise within it (e.g. If you choose The Little Mermaid – I know that’s not an option – I would be required to choose Amber as a color, because there are more TLM characters in that color than any other).
- Neither color I choose can have zero cards from the chosen Franchise.
- There must be at least one song from the Franchise.
- I must play all of the characters in a given color from the Franchise.
Voting is open until Monday, October 30th @ 5:30pm (Eastern), get to it!