Top Tier Disney Lorcana Ruby/Amethyst Deck (April 2024)

There are many combinations and deck variations that can win you a Disney Lorcana match. Of these, one of the most popular (and among the top tier Lorcana decks in the current format) is the Ruby/Amethyst Bounce Control.

This deck has been in the spotlight since the very beginning. Likewise, it has evolved overtime. In this guide, we’re going to be looking at the most recent, competitive rendition of the deck that focuses primarily on the bounce/control mechanic while bolstering effectiveness with Queen’s Castle.

*Updated April 17, 2024 to a top placing deck at a major Lorcana tournament.

Ruby/Amethyst Locations Deck List

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4 Be Prepared
4 The Queen's Castle - Mirror Chamber
4 Rafiki - Mystical Fighter
4 Maleficent - Sorceress
4 Maui - Hero to All
4 Friends on the Other Side
4 Olaf - Friendly Snowman
2 Madame Medusa - The Boss
2 Pinocchio - Talkative Puppet
3 Minnie Mouse - Stylish Surfer
4 Madam Mim - Snake
4 Merlin - Goat
3 Merlin - Crab
4 Merlin - Rabbit
2 Lady Tremaine - Imperious Queen
4 Madam Mim - Fox
4 Kuzco - Wanted Llama

Ruby/Amethyst Deck – Strategy Guide

The bounce strategy – removing cards from play into your hand – adds a significant level of difficulty to the Ruby/Amethyst deck compared to what this deck looked like way back in The First Chapter format. While it was strong before in its more basic control form, the added bounce mechanics add a lot of possibilities to outflank your competition, and beat them flat out in the race to twenty lore.

Additionally, this deck runs plenty of characters capable of dishing out damage via challenges, making it a worthy adversary against the many decks running location cards right now.

Notable changes since Into the Inklands

While many changes have come to this top tier deck since the release of Into the Inklands, the fundamental strategy remains the same, with new cards adding additional utility as opposed to significantly altering the bounce/control strategy this deck is known for.

While we will be getting into these changes in more depth in the article below, here are the main highlights:

Queen’s Castle added
Rafiki added
Goodbye, Maleficent Monstrous Dragon
No more Teeth and Ambitions
Madam Medusa compliments Lady Tremaine

Play Olaf and Minnie Mouse to avoid easy banishment

Really strong steel decks like the ever popular Steelsong love to play song cards like Let the Storm Rage on among others that make it all-too-easy to wipe out low cost characters early on. Instead of the evasive Pascal which is easy pickings for Steel, this Ruby/Amethyst Lorcana deck instead runs one-cost characters like Minnie Mouse and Olaf. This helps keep them from being taken out too early in the game.

Rafiki and Pinocchio keep your opponent at bay

One of the best things about Ruby/Amethyst, however, is the fact that it fairs well against just about every other kind of deck in the format without any severe weakness (besides discard). To help improve early game advantages to keep your opponent from blitzing you while you wait to hit your high powered/high cost cards, this deck runs four copies of Rafiki – Mystical Fighter.

Rafiki gives you a huge early game advantage that is unmatched by control decks unable to run Amethyst (like Ruby/Sapphire). Easily challenging and taking out most if not all early game characters is a huge plus, and it’s made even more effective thanks to Pinocchio. Pinocchio pairs well with Rafiki and any other challenge focused character, eliminating the otherwise foolproof readied stance that otherwise renders characters unchallengeable.

Leverage Amethyst’s strong bounce mechanic to confuse your opponent

Madam Mim (both Fox and Snake) can be used quite effectively for a plethora of a strategies. In this deck, they are used for just about everything from gaining resources, to challenging foes, to recycling powerful banishment cards like Lady Tremaine. Both boast powerful strength stats relative to their costs making them ideal to keep your opponent from building up a strong board early on.

Merlin Crab is deceptively strong

Merlin Crab is another powerful character that works well with Madam Mim, granting your characters extra strength that comes in handy when taking out tough characters like five-cost Robin Hood or Locations.

Late Game is Where Ruby/Amethyst Bounce Really Shines

While it’s easy enough to focus on all the good things this deck has going for it early game, it is in the late game that it really shines. If you can get to this point of the game and effectively inhibit your opponent from outpacing you on the race to twenty lore, most other decks just simply cannot keep up.

The turning point in the game starts typically around turn five when you can play Maui.

Maui has to be the most effective Rush character in the game right now. He’s remarkably well-rounded: he’s Inkable, only costs five Ink to play, has six strength, five will power, and has Rush!

That’s pretty insane and makes him a staple in virtually any Ruby Lorcana deck.

Turn six play Madam Medusa or Lady Tremaine

Turn six you also gain access to two more powerful cards – although they are effective in their own, different ways. These are Madam Medus and Lady Tremaine.

On the one hand, Lady Medusa is remarkable for her ability to instantly banish just about any character that’s relevant in the meta right now. Meanwhile, Lady Tremaine remains effective for her workaround to the War ability that prevents you from “choosing” characters. Use her to banish powerful characters after clearing the board with Be Prepared for double effectiveness.

“Be Prepared” for turn seven

Assuming your opponent hasn’t been silly enough to give you any extra Ink in your Inkwell, turn seven is when you can really start shaking things up. Be Prepared remains today one of the most broken cards in the game, letting you reset the game. This deck really leans into that particular card by letting you load up on cards that benefit you from being banished before slapping down a Be Prepared: cards like Cuzco and the Merlins that grant added resources when banished.

Ironically, Locations further bolster this strategy, letting you gain lore while your opponent scrambles to rebuild after a successful Be Prepared is played.

Use Locations to gain Lore quickly

While many thought Locations might be an effective defense against Be Prepared, turns out Locations actually just make Ruby/Amethyst stronger. Most competitive Ruby/Amethyst decks are running just one location now: The Queen’s Castle. And that makes sense. After all, The Queen’s Castle is the single strongest and most versatile locations right now. It has an impressive will power stat, gains you two lore passively, and even lets you draw additional cards.

The Queen’s Castle – Mirror Chamber

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Use Locations to gain lore and resources passively throughout the game but especially after resetting the board with Be Prepared to gain a decisive advantage over your opponents.

Ruby/Amethyst’s Weaknesses

Ruby/Amethyst Bounce Control is arguably the most well rounded deck in the current meta. It has the early game capacity to keep aggro decks at bay, and the late game power to control and close out a game.

With some of this versatility, however, the current version of Ruby/Amethyst does lose out on some advantages. For example, early game, it is not as strong as other powerful early game decks like Steelsong. It’s not got a ton to threaten opponent’s with for several turns, and doesn’t turn deadly until after turn six.

At the same time, by focusing more on the middle ground, Ruby/Amethyst doesn’t fair quite as well in the late game as, for example, Ruby/Sapphire that has access to tons of powerful card removal characters.

How to counter Ruby/Amethyst Bounce Deck

If you are trying to beat the Ruby/Amethyst deck, discarding cards can really slow this deck down, so playing a discard deck is definitely a favorable matchup if you are trying to beat it (and probably the only true favorable matchup against it right now). Additionally, if you can get a lot of characters out fast, and a lot more once Be Prepared is played, you could very likely beat Ruby/Amethyst to the punch. Hyper Aggro decks are good at this. However, given the prevalence of Steelsong and other midrange decks, Hyper Aggro isn’t seen much at the competitive level.

Use Merlin – Crab in the mirror match

One card that might otherwise look out of place in this deck list is the Merlin – Crab card. You won’t always need this card, but it can be very helpful to use it in the mirror match. Simply play the Crab and use its ability to give extra strength to Minnie – Stylish Surfer so she can take out your opponent’s Stylish Surfer and keep you ahead of the lore race!

How to counter Be Prepared

While this deck boasts many powerful character cards, its strongest card is probably Be Prepared. It’s a really tough card to deal with because it can quickly clear all the hard work you put in to building up your board of characters.

While in the past very few decks had a good answer to Be Prepared, thanks to cards released in Into the Inklands, many, many cards make it possible to discard the powerhouse song before it can be played.

Here are a few strategies you can use to deal with this distractingly powerful song card.

Manage your resources

The first thing you can do to help against Be Prepared is to really pay attention to your own resources. How many cards do you have in your hand? How many cards are on the board? This is probably the hardest thing to do because everything in you wants to load up your board with every character you can and race to the win. However, once Be Prepared is played, if you have all your characters in play, they are just going to get banished.

Keeping a few characters in your hand as reserves can help you recover from Be Prepared.

The worst position you can be in after Be Prepared is played is to have zero cards in your hand. It’s quite unlikely to recover if you are relying on what’s on top of your deck to come back after your characters being cleared. Find ways to refresh your hand before your opponent plays it.

The Sorcerer’s Spellbook can’t be cleared with Be Prepared

Having a Sorcerer's Spellbook in play can help you continue gaining lore while you’re working to recover your board after a Be Prepared. If you did a good enough job gaining lore, you could even pull of a win this way.

The Sorcerer’s Spellbook

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In many ways, the Spellbook is a better recovery option than Locations because Ruby/Amethyst has not answer for it, while it can pretty reliably take out locations via Maui.

Double down on locations

Be Prepared doesn’t eliminate locations, so you can bet running a deck that focuses on location cards will have a better chance than one totally reliant on characters. That being said, locations alone aren’t a foolproof answer, as you’ll still have to contend with Maui.

Try discarding Be Prepared

In general, you need to be careful if you are going up a Ruby/Amethyst deck with Whole New World. Often the best thing that can happen to you is that your opponent just fails to draw Be Prepared, and Whole New World can help them draw it. However, you could also get lucky and discard their Be Prepared or even two (or three).

However, if you are running a discard deck, you can get away with discarding it without opening up the option for them to draw it. This is partly why discard decks are so strong against Ruby/Amethyst right now.

Beyond running a distinctly discard focused deck, many decks run discard cards now thanks to many of them there are that are easy to play. Cards like The Bare Necessities, for example, or Ursula Deceiver can be effective cards to tech into your deck, making Be Prepared less all powerful.

Mufasa is a strong counter to Be Prepared

Mufasa – Betrayed Leader

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Mufasa – Betrayed Leader is a pretty good defensive card to use against Be Prepared. This card replaces itself with cards from the top of your deck. If you have three Mufasas in play when Be Prepared is played, you could end up with three more characters ready to use next turn.

Don’t overthink it

One of the worst things you can do when going up against the Ruby/Amethyst bounce deck combo is to overplay against Be Prepared. While it’s good to be smart and not empty your hand when your opponent is likely to slam you with it, it’s better to just play your game with your end goal in mind than to fiddle around endlessly in fear of the card being played.

Play your game, and let your opponent play theirs.

Is Ruby/Amethyst bounce control still a good deck after Into the Inklands?

Ruby/Amethyst control is still clearly a powerful deck, and in some ways cards released in Into the Inklands have only helped make it stronger. Location cards only help this deck get access to more lore faster and make it less reliant on hitting the late game to start controlling the board.

However, the game has also gotten more varied, meaning it’s not enough any more to simply rely on Be Prepared to win every game. Your opponent could easily discard Be Prepared, or work around it with locations.

It’s not so much that Ruby/Amethyst isn’t good anymore as it is the game in general is evolving, forcing Ruby/Amethyst players to evolve with it in order to stay relevant in an exciting new era of Disney Lorcana.

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