1st Place Emerald/Amethyst Bounce Tempo Deck List and Guide

What’s the best Lorcana deck right now? Well, fans of Lorcana will be glad or devastated to hear that it might very well no longer be the super popular Ruby/Amethyst Control deck. After the first major tournament for Into the Inklands, it’s clear that Emerald/Amethyst is back in a big way: this time as a tempo deck focused on offsetting your opponent via a series of cards that either challenge or bounce cards back into the hand.

Emerald/Amethyst Tempo Deck List

Emerald/Amethyst strategy guide

One thing that’s an apparent advantage about this deck right off the bat is how many fantastic turn one character options you have to play. Let’s take a look at them in a little more detail and go over their pros and cons.

The strongest of these three cost one characters is inarguably Cursed Merfolk. It can quest for two lore but also forces your opponent to reduce their card resources when attacking it. However, sometimes it’s going to be important to challenge opponents and keep them from building momentum. In those circumstances (like against aggro decks), your best bet is actually going to be Rafiki. He gets +3 strength when challenging.

Last but not least, don’t underestimate Chernabog’s Followers. They can be handy in a tight spot, letting you draw an extra card or challenging opponent’s characters with its two strength.

Two-cost characters are pretty star studded as well

If you were impressed with the line-up of one-cost characters in this deck, you should be pretty excited to see its two-cost goodies. While two of them are pretty standard, (good ol’ Flynn Rider – Charming Rogue and Madam Mim – Snake) its most notable inclusion has to be Ursula – Deceiver.

Song cards are some of the strongest and most impactful in the game, so a card that lets you discard them at will is a huge advantage to have. This is especially powerful against the former champion, Ruby/Amethyst as you can pretty reliably disarm your opponent of their Be Prepared and seriously hamper their aspirations at victory.

Meanwhile, Madam Mim – Snake can be an effective option to bounce your high-powered quester Cursed Merfolk back into your hand, and Flyn Rider can provide additional questing to start building up your lore while you slow your opponent down.

Three-cost cards focus on offsetting your opponent

The bulk of your questing power is going to be provided by early game characters like Cursed Merfolk and Flynn Rider. Once you get to you three cost characters, however, you have a lot of options to quickly dismantle your opponent. The strongest of these is Ursula – Deceiver of All. She can easily be paired with powerful song cards to either bounce multiple cards into their opponent’s hand or to draw extra cards when paired with Friends on the Other Side.

If you aren’t familiar with Ursula – Deceiver of All yet, you probably will be soon. She’s one of the best Into the Inklands cards of them all, and her “What a Deal” ability lets you sing any three cost song twice, and then recycle that song into your deck. It’s a pretty broken ability that is already shaking up the Lorcana meta.

As if that trio of cards wasn’t scary enough, there’s more!

You also have the formidable Madam Mim – Fox at your disposal, Merlin – Crab for granting additional strength, and the new and powerful Kit – Cloudkicker for bouncing lower strength characters back into the hand.

Phew…that’s a tough lineup to beat! And we’re only on the three-cost characters so far!

Emerald/Amethyst Tempo runs The Queen’s Castle

Now that we are passed the three-cost characters, it’s worth mentioning the single location card that this deck runs: The Queen’s Castle.

The Queen’s Castle is arguably the strongest location card of them all. It’s inkable, costs only four Ink to play, grants you two lore each turn passively and has a phenomenal draw ability.

To really take advantage of this card, you’re going to want to move as many characters to it as possible, as you draw an extra card each turn for each character that happens to be there.

Leverage the popular Merlin bounce mechanic to get ahead

By this point in your deck’s cost infrastructure, you have the basis for the majority of your firepower and ability to win. However, there are still formidable characters and strategies to mention. The core pieces beyond the three-cost characters center on Merlin – Rabbit and Goat.

This is a pretty well known strategy by now, but in case you aren’t familiar, Merlin cards benefit you when they are played and when they are removed from play. This can be via being banished, sent to the Inkwell, the deck, or (most importantly) the hand. You have plenty of options to bounce both the Goat and Rabbit into your hand, and you’ll have to leverage the means at your disposal most strategically to gain either the lore or cards you need to ensure victory over your opponent.

Your best bets here are to bounce them with Madam Mim – Fox or Snake as this doesn’t use up any resources that could be used to bounce your opponent’s cards. However, there may be scenarios where it’s more beneficial to use resources like Kit Cloudkicker or Mother Knows Best to bounce your own cards back into the hand. This especially the case if you are close to winning and an pull off a strong bounce combo with Ursula – Deceiver of All and Mother Knows Best into Merlin Goat.

Leverage six-cost characters for added card removal

Last but not least, this deck does include a few six-cost characters to help you close the deal. While you won’t be playing these cards in every game as you will hopefully have shut your opponent down before you have to play them, they can certainly come in handy in certain scenarios. Both The Genie – On the Job and Yzma – Scary Beyond All Reason have abilities that activate when they are played. This means you can quickly remove characters from your opponent’s board or even your own, then bounce them back into your hand via one of the Madam Mims and play them again.

One important note on Yzma – don’t forget she has an impactful errata that makes her even more versatile.

Last but not least, this deck runs three copies of Tinker Bell – Most Helpful, helping your characters to take out opposing Evasive characters as need arrises.

How much does it cost to build the Emerald/Amethyst deck?

Currently, it’s around $250 to build this deck, which is about standard for competitive Lorcana decks right now – neither cheap nor particularly expensive. That being said, the bulk of that expense is coming from the fact that Ursula – Deceiver of all is incredibly expensive right now (as far as Lorcana cards go).

Removing her from your deck would make this deck quite affordable, however you would sacrifice an incredible amount of power. In many ways, she is the backbone of this super powerful, super viable deck strategy.

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