Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Larkana podcast.
My name is Max and I'm Sam and we are here on the precipice of set championships for
Ursula's return this time and we are talking over what to do if you're on a budget.
I was trying to figure out a way to rhyme what to do if you're on a shoe and then like
string budget, but I thought that was going a little far this quick into the podcast and
I didn't want to sacrifice any potential listeners who are first timers.
Welcome on in all of you new and old happy set championships.
Hopefully you all do well slash have done well slash maybe we can help you if that doesn't
actually fit your use case.
We get a whole month this time.
A whole month of weekends to do this.
I think they really wanted to offset the stores that were having it on Fridays because that
was just kind of like, whoa, they're doing them on Fridays.
They said Saturday, Sunday.
Now they're doing them on Fridays.
So that was happening during into the Inklans.
I wasn't even aware of it or else I would have looked for it.
So we just got to miss out on a couple of opportunities, unfortunately, but not this
time because it's all month long and we wanted to talk over what to do if you don't have
the most money.
Like I'm talking green steel up to like almost like 900 bucks.
So we're talking like just under a thousand dollars for some builds of green steel, which
is crazy and I'm talking like no enchanted in there, not like foiled out.
I'm talking about just basic green and steel cards costing bunches and bunches of money
these days.
We wanted to talk over a potential option for a budget build and we went through and
priced out some averages on dream born dot Inc.
If you haven't used it, a fantastic tool.
They don't sponsor the podcast, but this is your chance dream born dot Inc.
We put together a little layout of different budgets and we wanted to pick a deck that
fit the mold for budget, which is one of the cheaper decks you can build.
Right.
One 50 to $200 is about the right budget price range.
If that number frightened you or it concerns you, unfortunately the cheapest deck I could
find that even was on the playable roster came in around $125 on average.
Not to say that you can't go out there and club somebody with a sock full of nickels.
It is totally possible, but it's unlikely that you're going to be able to punch in the
same way class as people who are rocking a nearly thousand dollar deck.
We wanted to make sure that we came up with something in a realm of a realistic budget
we, which we put in around 150 to $200 and we wanted to make sure we came up with a deck
that has a good track record, not like some super secret tech.
One of the cheaper decks on the list was Amethyst steel.
And I just don't know as though that deck is quite there, at least enough to want to
push people or encourage people to play it in a number and go, Hey, there's stupid idiots
over illumination told me to play this deck and it stinks.
I don't have any real games into Amethyst steel.
A good testing partner of ours does, and they do pretty well with it, but it is a hard deck
to pilot.
And I know they get very frustrated, especially in the green steel matchup.
So I didn't want to push people in a direction that was unknown or potentially not the clearest
of waters.
So we landed on a deck and I'm sure it's going to be no surprise to those of you who
play a lot of Lurkana that the deck we're choosing to highlight for this episode and
recommend as our budget deck choice, if you want to do well into the Ursula's return meta
is good old tried and true Ruby Amethyst looks a little different now in Ursula's return.
There's always been a sliding scale and Ruby Amethyst is one that has been going back to
the first chapter meta, the most like hardcore control deck to the point of mirrors where
who could draw more cards with magic mirror.
And they've shifted now to Ursula's return to probably the most aggressive in build and
play style that they've ever been, at least since the game has existed to this point.
We want to talk over everything Ruby Amethyst, and I know this is a very well known deck.
So the good news is that there's a lot of data.
There's a lot of ways you can tweak the deck and season to taste.
And there is a lot of games you can go back and review to help you prepare for set championships.
So not only are we trying to arm you with something that's affordable.
We're trying to arm you with something that you can do some diligence on in the days leading
up to your set champ or champs, depending on how many you're going to play in.
And something that stands a chance to win.
Exactly.
This deck is a winning deck.
It's placed probably more players in Lurkana top eights than any other archetype.
It was the second place deck in both of the Challenger events.
Granted, that was the England's meta, but that was still well represented into Chicago.
So there is a lot of oomph in this deck.
It's well positioned right now.
We'll get into all of those things.
So we wanted to give you the rundown and luckily Sam has been playing this particular deck,
not only this build, but just this archetype for quite a while.
I tried it.
I don't like it.
I think personally, I would like this build better than the previous builds.
I liked it in the first chapter, but I liked Steel Song better, but I like it a lot now.
And it is on the far end of more tempo and passive lore generation to win quickly than
it used to be in activating magic mirror dozens of times and just using brooms and befuddles
to not mill out.
So times have changed for this deck.
Sam, you want to run us through the deck's kind of plan?
Yeah.
I think as you alluded to, the deck is definitely has the capacity to be more aggressive now,
but you can also jump into that control deck later in the game if you need to.
And I think it does a really good job of doing both things, being able to have that balance,
especially depending on what deck you're playing.
But the overall goal of this deck is to draw as many cards as you can, get as much passive
lore as you can.
The Mim package with Snake and Madam Mim Fox, you want to bounce your goats, bounce your
rabbits to either gain lore or more cards.
There's other cards like Maleficent Sorceress, where you draw a card when it enters.
Cards that draw when they leave.
Now all your one drops draw when they leave.
Yep.
Your one drops, which my build, I go with Turnerbox followers and Magic Broom, and I
think a lot of people are on that, but there are still different one drops that the deck
can play.
Were long since the days of like a one, three for one in most cases.
Right.
Some builds run one or two still because they might include the teeth and ambitions to do
it on them.
With Turnerbox followers, you draw cards when it quests.
You can choose to banish it to draw a card with Magic Broom, the new Magic Broom.
Whenever you play a character, you can banish it so you can quest with it, play a character,
blow it up, draw a card.
Or in the late game, pay one, draw a card.
Yeah.
Which is pretty, pretty cool.
Yeah.
The deck's plan is very simple, right?
From a very macro high level perspective, we're trying to game passive lore through
the use of card advantage and using our card advantage to help leverage tempo control early
by way of Madam Mims being overstatted and being able to pick up key cards to grant us
more card advantage and then turn that into just hard board control by way of ladies in
chairs and be prepared.
So it is a pretty sound game plan.
They have the new version of Lady Tremaine, if you will, with the new song, Be King Undisputed.
I love this card.
I was going to say Be King Unprepared, which is not correct.
That's not correct.
Be unprepared.
That's return all characters from your discard pile to play.
Okay.
That's not true.
That's a card I made up.
So that is what the deck's trying to do.
And of course, the first thing you need to do in a game of Lurkana is you need to decide
on how you're going to mulligan.
And that's kind of step one.
That's the first thing we're going to walk through here.
Now that we've gone over the high level overview of what the deck is trying to do and how it's
trying to do it.
So we're talking mulligans here.
And Sam, I want to talk kind of through three strategies essentially.
And then we'll talk about an ideal hand.
I want to talk about cards we always want to mulligan, situational cards to mulligan
depending.
And then finally, I want to talk about the things that are the most important to hang
on to, to help us transition into that ideal hand.
You've just flipped over seven fresh cards, right?
What are the cards that are insta flipping down?
Are going back into the deck.
Be prepared.
Medusa slash ladies in chairs and be king undisputed are just going away.
And you also tend to mulligan your songs relatively aggressively in the blind, right?
In the blind, yeah.
Even friends on the other side, just because green decks are so prevalent, correct?
I don't want a green deck taking my friends on the other side on turn two.
If Ursula, two drop Ursula deceiver out of Emerald gets to snag your friends on the other
side, it is a disaster.
It's a complete disaster for you.
Like that card, if you see a green card to get inked or played on one, your second turn
ink is most likely going to be friends on the other side.
If you haven't already mulligan, we're talking if you get it as the next set of cards that
you've gotten to in my opening hand after mulligan away and then it just one gets sniped
and there's nothing you can do about it.
You want to control it as much as you can.
Obviously there are things and this is a good little mini lesson to pack in here.
There are things inside of your control and things outside of your control.
It's important.
And I talk about this a lot on the podcast.
Making sure you're separating them.
I can't help that I drew two friends on the other side.
I cannot help that my opponent elected to play Ursula deceiver on two as opposed to
Bucky, but it resulted in me discarding a friend.
There's nothing I could do about it.
I couldn't ink quicker.
I couldn't just hide it under my chair.
That's against the rules.
So there's no choice there, but to just suck it up and let them take the card.
It's hard to want to mulligan a fringe.
Just if you were as your very first ink, not knowing, like if you're on the play and you
don't know what your opponent's on, just inking a friends, especially over something that
isn't maybe terribly useful.
A lot of the time where maybe a duplicate is difficult, but as soon as you see that
sign you have to know, okay, it's time to start inking the songs because otherwise they're
going to get stripped out of my hand.
And like we talked about, that's a game losing proposition.
So what are the cards you're going to keep sometimes cards you're not going to keep other
times depending on the texture of your other cards in hand.
These are kind of like, I'm mulligan them about half the time.
Situationally I mulligan these.
Merlin rabbit just because it's uninkable.
So it's sometimes a little difficult, especially depending on the rest of your hand and how
many inkables you have.
Goat I would say most of the time I throw back goat, but if I'm light on inkables, I
might keep one.
That's fair.
Snake.
I think that's just better late game anymore.
Yeah.
A lot of decks are trimming on their snakes.
So we're seeing like two to three as opposed to the usual full four.
And castle.
I'm not saying most of the time I'm going to send back castle, but there are definitely
matchups where it's useful.
Also I don't mind inking one early on.
No, no, it's one of those cards.
It's phenomenal late and you want to see as close to as an end game proposition as possible.
Sometimes you're like, Oh crap, I'm on three castles because I'm just going to castle rush
and see if my opponent can deal with it, which is good unless it's the mirror really.
And then we have the, I never want to mulligan these except under very specific circumstances
or as close to never as possible.
That would be the one drops either one of them.
Flynn rider brawl.
I like to have a Fox in my opening hand.
I think you really want that one, two, three, plus having an option for removal is great.
And brawl I think is the best one because it can't be sniped from your hand by Ursula.
Right.
So I really like having those, but I think one drop, two drop, and then one of the three
drops is just ideal.
Makes sense.
So your ideal hand looks something like one to two, one drops Flynn rider for enemy, Sisu
and Bolden warrior or Maleficent sorceress brawl Fox, and then like one to two other
cards depending on how many of those aforementioned cards are in your opening hand.
Right.
I would be very happy with that.
Cool.
Well, that makes sense for mulliganning.
Now that we've got our seven cards though, we're going to have to start inking them.
What is your general plan for the most part?
How are you inking in this deck on the whole?
This is obviously going to change very drastically in game two, or if you know what your opponent's
on in a top eight situation where you've been playing in the same little shop all day and
now everybody's like, Oh no, he's on this.
Now you're going to know, and you're going to be able to do this.
But if you have advanced knowledge or you're on game two slash three, if you're playing
best of three, you're going to need to have a general more specific plan than what this
is.
But I'd say just on the whole, how are you going to be inking?
What informs your ink choices?
How do you handle the process when you're looking at a hand early on?
I would say what informs it is usually the cost.
I'll ink higher cost characters slash Queens castle.
I'll ink multiples.
If I have three Foxes in my opening hand, maybe I'll mulligan one.
I hate to do it.
Same with multiple Maui's or multiple of anything I might ink.
So if you start to see duplicate situational card, Joe Mulligan for sure.
Yes.
And the ideal prospect, the thing that guides your inking decisions is making sure you have
a curve of playables.
You want to play a one, you want to play a two, you want to play a three.
I think that's the most important thing in this deck against most decks you're going
to play is having that curve.
I think that's fair to say.
Situationally, is there anything that has a high threshold?
Like this card's the best card against certain decks and or this card is unplayable against
other decks.
And so they're like the keep or mall just, it shifts from like, this is a hardcore keep
to, no, you can get rid of this one depending on the matchup.
I think brawl's one.
I think it's probably the most obvious choice here for sure.
Especially later in the game.
If you have a Medusa in your hand, you don't necessarily need that brawl because it's going
to do the same thing she can do.
Sisu I think is situational.
If I'm playing against a deck that doesn't have very many cards in their hand, that's
not going to do much for me.
Two lore is nice.
I'm not running the big Sisu.
I don't need it as a shift line.
Right.
So she's just really good in early game against a deck that draws a lot of cards to keep my
Flynn getting that three lore.
So I think she can go depending.
And what are the things you want to ink the least for the most part?
Goat and Fox, I'd say.
And goat's rough because you sometimes will ink it, especially if it's in your opening
hand because it's just like, oh man, this isn't going to be good till like turn nine.
Right.
I don't want to ink friends if I can help it, but as we said earlier, I will if I'm
playing a green player.
Right.
Totally makes sense.
So I think when it comes to the ink plan, obviously the opponent's deck choice informs
a lot of your play pattern on how you're inking cards.
On the whole, you're trying to play to a curve.
Green steel, obviously upending that a little bit because you want to retain things like
brawl that don't add to the board.
And you also aren't as interested in slapping down units on the board because you don't
want to reduce your hand to willy nilly.
Right against green steel, if I'm going to play a card on the board, most likely it's
going to replace itself.
And that makes a lot of sense.
Like brawl against the mirror where you have a lot of overstatted characters loses its
taste pretty quickly.
Same with blue steel where they go Mr. Smee into Cogsworth.
It's like, okay, I can't brawl any of this.
So it loses its merits.
But against green steel, it's like, I have to have this immediately to answer that first
Diablo or I am in big trouble because when they Diablo, you play a rabbit, you feel like
the worst Lor'Khan a player ever because you're letting them draw extra cards, but you have
to find an answer.
So it feels really bad.
And it makes sense that the green steel matchup is the one that changes the game plan so drastically.
Because I would say that is probably the toughest matchup for this deck.
I think so.
100% on the other side of the coin talking about another very common matchup.
A lot of people are going to see set chances.
The Ruby Sapphire control decks.
So we're talking about the ramp style decks that play Hyrum on four, play one jump ahead
on two or playing fishbone quill or now the dragon statues.
This deck plays a little differently in your play style tends to have to adapt to that
because now you're really good with your Flynn lines and like playing to the board, questing
hard in the beginning of the game before they can assert control becomes much, much more
important where you can't just put down brooms and Chernobog's followers as Willy nilly against
the green steel decks.
Yeah, I think against the Ruby Sapphire deck, your game plan is just get as much lore as
you can before they get to the ink where they're throwing down their Tamatoas and their lucky
dimes.
Right.
And I think the green steel matchup you play at your most conservative where you're playing
the most like a control deck.
I don't want to play anything until I start to answer, be king undisputed into Medusa's.
That's when you want to start to play the game where against red blue, it's the opposite
where you're unleashing the aggressive bent of the deck.
I just want to slap down as much lore as I can as fast as I can and try to clean up the
game with Queens castles.
And I think for the most part, a lot of the other decks, whether it's the mirror, whether
it's blue steel or steel song, any of these other decks that are common in the meta, I
think you just tend to stick to your basic game plan, play on a good curve, play tightly,
utilize removal, utilize card advantage.
That's your character.
Yeah.
Like that's your game plan is the same for such a wide variety of decks that this also
makes an attractive choice for a set champs, especially for somebody who's not grinding
games and none of us are grinding games as aggressively now with pixel born no longer
operating.
We just don't have as many games under our belt.
So being able to use a deck that largely enacts a proactive game plan and the same style of
game plan in the bulk of its games is really attractive because you get the play patterns
and the repetitions and everything under your belt.
And then you start to be able to play a variety of ways against the decks that require a dramatic
shift in direction and play style, like the Ruby Sapphire decks and the Emerald steel
decks.
So it's really neat that this deck can offer up a lot of consistency in addition to a more
attractive price tag.
But whatever you end up playing at your set champs, remember you're there to have fun
and to meet people and to grow the community.
Communities never been more important than it is now.
You don't have the option to just go, Oh, forget these people.
I'm going to go play on the internet.
It's a lot harder to do now.
It's still very doable, but it's just become more difficult.
It still requires a digital community.
So it's really important to enjoy yourself, have fun, try not to gatekeep, try not to
be that person who comes in and upsets a local meta.
Just be fun, be excellent to each other as Bill and Ted would so often teach us.
And remember the most obvious and most direct way to win a game of Lurkana is keep questing.