Hello and welcome back to the Illumination Podcast, the Disney Lorcanah Podcast.
My name is Max.
And I'm Sam.
And we are here, Episode 23, talking to you about Azurite Sea.
I did that because it rhymed exclusively.
We're talking about specifically one deck.
It is Emerald Amethyst.
It was a deck Sam and I selected for a release day core constructed tournament held by Encounter
Comics and Games on Allentown PA.
Shout out to them.
They ran a great event.
49 players.
And I'd say probably at least 25 or so of which have like a good deal of clout, if not
a little more, like playing multiple DLCs, winning multiple store championships, multiple
large scale tournaments, not to mention a good chunk of the Forbidden Mountain being
there who also did coverage for the event as well.
Sam you were on the feature match.
I was the first match of the day.
And that was your very first time ever being on camera playing outside of our content.
Yes.
And you were playing against somebody who had a gold Mickey.
Yes.
He had a gold Mickey, one second place in Toronto.
That's pretty awesome.
We'll get into a little bit more of that as we go.
But we selected this deck for a plethora of reasons and we want to run you through it.
Not so much a deck tech, but just our thoughts about what Azurite Sea brought into the mix
and why we chose this deck out of the many choices we could have made for Core Constructed.
So Sam, what made you lean towards Green Purple?
Because of the two of us, you were stagnating the most on a deck, I think, for this.
You tried Ruby Sapphire to start off with.
You weren't too thrilled with it.
Then you moved into your go-to deck, Ruby Amethyst.
I mean, we've talked about it multiple times on the podcast.
It's Sam's weapon of choice, I'd say most of the time.
And you tried like two or three different versions of that deck.
Yeah.
I tried wanting, like you said, Ruby Sapphire because of sale.
Sailing the Azurite Sea.
Yes.
It was one of the cards that I thought seemed like it was going to be an awesome upgrade
to the deck.
So that's why I wanted to try it first.
That was the only card in the set review I gave a five.
Yeah.
I wasn't playing it well enough.
So then I moved on to Ruby Amethyst because that is what I usually play.
I added a lot of new cards.
I tried different versions of the deck.
I tried to make it a little bit more aggro to see if I liked it that way.
I tried it a little more traditional.
And I just think that at the beginning of the new meta, it wasn't the right choice because
it's more of a control deck.
And I think that it just wouldn't have done as well.
So then I went back to what Max was playing and what I played for a good first portion
of Shimmering Skies meta.
Probably six weeks or so.
Yeah.
I played it for a while and I really enjoyed it.
So I went back to that deck and what, like two days before the tournament.
Despite me constantly telling you to just go back to play it.
And I really enjoyed the deck.
I knew as we were talking throughout the week that I could easily pivot to this deck though
because I played it so much last set.
So I just was trying to give myself all the options I could.
That's well said.
A couple of things I want to call out.
I came to this deck because of certain card upgrades that I think made the deck a significant
chunk better.
I am no Artebax and I think the deck previous to Azure 8c was an extremely skill taxing
deck to play.
Being one of the very few tempo oriented styles of deck that you can play in Disney Lurkana.
I think it's very skill intensive requiring you not only to know the deck very well, but
to know many other decks very well.
I think that now with the power level of some of these cards, I think this deck got a significant
power boost early in a meta.
And we've gone over this.
Go back to episode five.
If you want a good fundamental episode on meta games, when a set first comes out and
the meta game changes, the first decks that come to surface are traditionally more aggressive
or proactive strategies.
Then the next set of decks that come out are more mid range that are easily answering the
aggressive decks.
And then the third deck to kind of take hold of the format or the more slow methodical
controlling decks, because the mid range decks being a little slower, give them time to implement
a slower, more controlling strategy.
So the rock paper scissors historically for a lot of trading card games is aggro beats
control, control beats mid range and mid range beats aggro.
So I wanted a proactive strategy because if my opponents were playing crazy powerful cards
like Maui half shark, for example, I just wanted to beat them before they had a chance
to do anything scary with those cards.
And I also have a good deal of experience piloting these colors, though I've never liked
them so much together, though I have played this deck multiple times, usually for a few
days before giving up on it early in a format.
Tim definitely has more experience piloting this deck than I do, but I have been playing
this since I saw the first significant upgrade that was released for the deck and I was like,
okay, I know what the list is going to look like.
I put it together and started playing it right away.
So I probably had about two and a half weeks lead time testing with this deck of our testing
group.
I was the most consistent with playing one deck and sticking to one deck, which is surprising
giving that we have one player in our group who has played the same deck for like four
sets.
So jumping into that, what are these upgrades you keep talking about?
So those are the three reasons, right?
Upgrades, proactive strategy early in a meta and experience playing the deck.
Those are the reasons we selected this deck.
What were the upgrades?
The card that won me over first, and we're going to walk through the major five cards
here that were selected.
I think we're upgrades, the big one, the bad one, the one you probably know what I'm going
to say is go go Tamago, darting dynamo.
This is a two to one for two inkable with evasive and has the ability stop whining woman
up.
And when you play this character, you can pay two additional ink at that time to gain
lore equal to the damage on chosen opposing character.
So you can just like Madam Min Fox, something with five willpower and then put four damage
on it and then play go go Tamago the next turn and gain four lore.
It's as easy as that.
This card is significant.
The other reason this card is so good is because of the stat line being a two to with evasive
for two, which means that it is a reasonable answer against a very specific bird that not
many people in Disney lore kind of like the remainder of them like it a lot.
So you're usually fall on one side of the Diablo debate or the other.
I'm not going to get into it here, but at her worst go go Tamago is an answer to Diablo
in the early game or something that can start questing for you right away.
She's able to be picked up on curve with a Madam Min Fox or she's something that can
just outright win you the game.
So what did you think of Tamago from your experience playing in this event?
I thought she was great.
I definitely caught some people off guard with go go.
They weren't expecting her just, you know, new meta problems.
I think we heard it in Artabax's podcast that just once they see her, they're afraid of
her.
So you get people doing weird things and like taking off their own characters so they don't
have something sitting around with damage.
Something cool that I didn't even think about with her that I noticed if you're going to
take out something, you can hit it, play your go go and then finish taking it out.
Right.
So you gain lore and take out their character.
Part of the elegance of Disney Larkana is you can do each thing in its own.
There's no combat phase or main phase.
There's ready set draw and then your main phase and you can do anything you want in
that phase.
That being said, I wouldn't say she won me most of my games like on her own, but I think
she's a very good card.
I think she really helped the deck come together.
My evaluation is she underperformed from what I thought she could do.
However, she did do something that was really cool that I didn't really take any stock in
is that she dealt severe amounts of psychological damage to my opponents.
They would watch me gain three plus lore off a go go and then go, I cannot let this happen
again.
I think they would be so absolutely calculating, careful and conservative, which gave me more
time to quest with characters because they were being so conservative.
It let me get away with quests I should have never been able to make because they were
concerned about the repercussions of go go time ago coming down on the board with a damaged
character on their side.
And if you play her and then pick her up, it really deals the psychological damage.
Yes, is very, very difficult for the opponent, kind of like a Maui half shark in a way where
it's like you don't quest, you don't want to challenge, you don't want to turn things
sideways for fear of damage counters.
So it's a really cool card.
I liked her quite a bit, though I will say she didn't quite live up to the ridiculous
amount of hype that she had coming into the set.
I think she is a very real threat and just her existing.
And if you're playing Emerald, you have to respect this card now.
Next up, another card we got here that I do feel like is an upgrade.
I would understand if you said it's a side grade to me.
It is an upgrade and this is Jeannie wish fulfilled.
Jeannie wish fulfilled is a two four two four four uninkable with evasive and the ability
what comes next, which is when you play this character, draw a card.
So this card is like a Merlin rabbit.
However, it does not draw you a card when you pick it up with your madam, ma'am.
That is a downgrade.
I agree with you, though.
Overall, I think this card was an upgrade.
There's certain situations where you definitely want the rabbit because you want to be able
to get that card when the rabbit leaves.
So when you bounce it or when it's removed from the board.
Yeah, I think the question comes down to what does your deck value?
I think Ruby Amethyst likes the rabbit more mostly.
I'm not counting the new burn variant, but the traditional style of Ruby Amethyst wants
the rabbit more because the deck is so powerful into the late game.
What you're looking for is card advantage specifically with the rabbit.
Genie in the Emerald Amethyst deck fills a different role.
It does a couple of things you might not realize.
It has the very real ability to take down a Diablo.
It is twice as quick at closing a game.
It has one more willpower than rabbit, which means it is not susceptible to the very cheap
removal.
We're talking about the only removal and steal that really deals with it is the equivalent
costed along came Zeus.
At least it's commonly played.
Otherwise it takes a combination of cards to take out.
Genie does have problems.
If Genie gets bounced back to your hand by an opposing character, it can be very annoying
because you really don't want to spend the time putting Genie back down.
You mitigate the speed of Genie closing a game by simply using a cloud kicker ability
to bounce it back to the player's hand.
Then you go, oh great, now I have to redeploy this Genie.
It's going to sit there for a turn.
It might be susceptible to this again.
It definitely has its weaknesses.
However, the other hidden mode is the games.
They play Diablo.
You can cloud kicker it back.
If they replay Diablo and you play Genie, what are they going to do?
Quest with the Diablo and let you just eat it with the Genie?
It does a lot of heavy lifting, being able to answer Diablo.
The reason I keep bringing up Diablo specifically is not because I think there's any particular
issue one way or the other.
I'm not going to get into the should Diablo be banned debate here on the podcast, but
I do think that this deck in particular, not having much interaction, really needs to have
a plan to deal with Diablo.
You need to have a thought out actual idea of what you're going to do.
It's very, very important when it comes to a card like Genie.
So I think in this deck specifically, Genie is the weapon of choice over rabbit.
So I definitely could see the argument for rabbit being the better pick.
The deck we played did have one copy of rabbit as well.
I wouldn't bemoan anybody trying.
Artabax at the Battle Bear Tournament had three rabbit and four Genie in his deck.
So I missed seven pieces of four drop uninkable card advantage built onto a character, which
is pretty wild stuff.
So who knows what's going to end up being correct in the abstract, but I beg that you
think about what are you doing?
What is your plans against certain things and how quickly are you looking to close the
game when it comes to the Genie?
Anything else you'd like to say about Genie?
I think overall he was an upgrade in our deck.
Specifically, I was definitely a lot happier to see Genie than I was rabbit.
Next up is Yzma, conniving chemist.
She is a three, three, two for four, inkable with the ability to feel the power.
You may exert this character.
And if you have fewer than three cards in your hand, draw until you have three cards
in your hand.
Yzma kind of took the place.
I guess Yzma and the additional rabbit took the place of friends on the other side in
the list Sam and I played.
I think that Yzma for the most part is where you want to be, at least from an early perspective
in the Azure 8C meta.
She's a little harder to answer, especially on rate.
You need to have like an ice block in order to brawl it, or you need to have smash or
higher in terms of steel removal to answer her.
So I think that she is quite good.
And I think her ability to put the cards back into your hand is very powerful.
If you can activate her two times, it's very hard to lose a game.
I guess if you can get five cards out of Yzma between two activations, I can't imagine you
losing this game.
We were testing a lot in the mirror and she was kind of the mirror breaker where almost
as long as you weren't ridiculously far behind, she was able to get you back into the game
super quick because back and forth, it's kind of like contest.
You're just jockeying for position and questing here and there.
So it's very nickel and dimey in the mirror and her adding just a full three cards when
the opponent doesn't have that is a complete and total change.
Yeah, I thought she was really good.
My opponents did not like when I played Yzma.
No, she was a concern.
Yeah.
Something I noticed while playing is even against like an opposing Daisy Duck with having
Yzma instead of friend on the other side, you're never getting to putting anything on
the bottom.
Right.
You're never getting Ursula.
Everything in this deck is a character.
And I think it was nice going into opposing decks where you normally have to worry about
that and not having to worry about it at all.
Absolutely.
She's well-statted.
She quests when you need her to.
She draws you cards when you need her to.
She kind of does it all.
The worst case disaster scenario for you as you play her and she gets dealt with before
you get to do anything.
If you've put your early game, like your first three turns, if you're building to the fourth
turn Yzma, they can kind of knock you on your butt if they deal with the Yzma on time.
Yeah, definitely.
And if you feel like she's going to get immediately removed, she's inkable, which is really nice.
Yes.
And in matches you do not want to play her and you just anchor for sure.
Speaking of that, next up is the one drop.
It's Diablo, obedient raven.
This is 0 1 1 for one inkable with the ability of fly my pet.
When this character's banished, you may draw a card.
So this ended up kind of filling in some of the one drop slot.
We played four Turner Boggs followers.
We played four cursed merfolk and we played four Diablo in this deck as the one drop package.
Diablo was good in some matches and not so good in other matches.
Things Diablo does really well, works well with crabs to smash into things much larger
than the bird, knock them out and be able to draw you a card and replace itself.
Huge get for the deck.
Being able to play it against the first turn Cinderella and shrug at them and go, if you
want to use your let storm rage on, you're going to be vulnerable to my next turn.
Banzai is a nice get for this deck areas.
It is not so good is when you need to be able to answer something on your opponent side
of the board quickly.
So like the hyper aggro decks, Diablo is absolutely one of your worst one drops.
It doesn't quest and race like curse merfolk does at least against Lelos and Maleficent
and Daisy ducks.
Cursed merfolk at least can quest as hard as them so you can try to do a race.
Diablo doesn't do that.
It is very slow to remove a character.
It's just not what you want in the matchup.
So if you're trying to be proactive on board and not just trying to gain some lore and
replace itself, I think Diablo can look very shabby.
I do think there was some games where my Diablo got me probably four to five lore though,
because people just were like, okay, just keep questing with it.
I don't want you to draw a card.
Right.
In that way, it's pretty good too.
Yeah, definitely.
Our last card is the white rose jewel of the garden.
This is a three, three, one, four, three, inkable that when you play this character,
you gain one Laura.
That's its ability, a wealth of happiness.
This is just goats, five and six.
They're significantly worse than goat.
They come down a little bit quicker.
So it's not the worst because it lets you curve out nicely.
So you can keep pressure on your opponent.
It's a win when you need it.
It can get picked up and put back down again.
It does all of the things you want and just adds some more consistency to the emerald
amethyst deck.
I don't have a lot to say about white rose, but I think having a couple of copies in the
deck felt quite good.
Yeah.
I did like having the three, three on board on three when I needed it.
For sure.
And it's kind of a throwaway threat.
Once it's down to it's like, you don't mind smacking into something with it.
You don't mind just questing with it and throwing it away.
It's like, it gave me two Laura, whatever.
The consistency it adds is awesome.
Now that you know that, tell me a little bit about the event, Sam, how did you do?
I think I did pretty well.
I got 10th place.
I was very happy with that.
The feature match we were talking about, I did win.
So that was a good start of the day.
It got me pretty happy.
I think I did pretty well overall.
The only thing I lost two matches and they were both steel matches, which this deck is
going to struggle against.
Yes.
The aggressive decks don't want to see a lot of one for one removal if they can help it.
Again, upgrades like Diablo and things help in the matchup, but it's still a very difficult
matchup when you're facing a steel deck, especially an interactive steel deck.
The threats just get a little bigger, a little faster.
And then they have the removal to be able to take care of all the small characters like
Curse Murfolk for no drawback to them.
When they let the Stormrage on a Curse Murfolk, it's about the worst thing.
Because not only did they not discard a card, they drew a card.
I ended up having a little bit better of a day than Sam because I dodged more steel decks
than you, I think largely.
And I ended up in top four of the event and all of us split the prize.
So we didn't find out who was the quote unquote winner of the tournament.
There were three other decks in the top four that were all rock and steel.
So I am pretty confident I would have stayed somewhere in three or four.
I would probably not have finished one or two.
It's possible, but unlikely.
So I felt pretty happy that everybody else wanted to split, but it was an overall good
day.
I just dropped one match and I did an intentional draw.
I lost to Ruby Amber Mufasa, which is a tough matchup because again, the characters are
all pretty well-statted and I have to turn characters sideways in order to interact.
And theirs are better than mine in terms of size.
Real quick overhaul in terms of the deck list, Sam, is there anything you'd want to do differently
now that you've had some reps under your belt with this in a tournament setting?
I could potentially see just like changing up some numbers on one jobs, maybe bringing
in a couple brooms just for later in the game.
When you want to draw a card, you can just cycle them and you can hit things early with
them.
They do great against Maleficent's and Lilo one drops.
I would possibly consider dropping snakes though.
They looked good in certain matchups for might be a little heavy just because you're not
as invested in picking things up and putting them down as you used to be because the individual
threat quality itself has gone up.
So the threat each card brings is denser.
So I don't think that you are necessarily needing to be on for snakes right now is about
the only change I would make.
I could see going to the two snakes, two brooms like we had talked about and just keeping
the rest the same.
Definitely.
And I think that right now the list we played has no locations.
As Sam mentioned, it's only characters and I don't necessarily think that you want to
move into locations right now because I think it's on a lot of people's minds to answer
it.
And I don't think they do exactly what you need them to do.
I think Yzma does a better job of drawing you cards and or gaining the lure than a castle
does right now.
Yeah, I agree.
And my opponents like all weekend were inking their locations.
And I think it's just because they know everybody's ready for them.
There's a lot of crabs out there.
So it's not as good right now.
That is our episode overview of the Emerald Amethyst deck for Azureite sea meta.
So minimally, if you see somebody using green and purple, this is might be what they're
doing.
Be aware of the threats and the ways to play around it.
Really consider it in your testing as you're starting to really dive in deep to the new
cards and their impact.
Thank you so much again for listening.
We are here every other Wednesday.
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So do us a favor.
Stop by, say hi.
We love hearing from everybody.
I want to thank everybody for the continued support.
And when it comes to Emerald Amethyst, there's a couple ways to win the game, but largely
you need to be able to do it by keep questing.