Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney
Lorcana podcast. My name is Max. And I'm Sam.
And we are back at you. Episode 37. 37 podcast
episodes in a row. And this time we are talking
about a deck that will most likely be the deck
we've talked about the most in the history of
the podcast up to this point now, I think. Yeah.
What deck are we talking about? Emerald Steel.
Emerald Steel, you say? Why are we talking about
Emerald Steel again, Sam? Because it's super
powerful again and still. Again and still. It
did get a new toy for sure. I think a few things
kind of aligned that made this deck come more
into prevalence once again. We were already talking
about this deck as a possible concern right after
the Bands last set. Right. We were worried about
Diablo decks being the blight of the format once
something like Hiram went away, which knocked
down the power of the more controlling decks
in the format. Now we're seeing a bit of a different
set of reasons as to what's happened. So we're
going to break down each one of them, but first
let me give you a high level of what we're going
to talk about. First and foremost, Beyond the
Horizon. That is point number one. That's the
new toy that the deck has received from the reign
of Jafar. The next thing we're going to talk
about after that is the fact that this is, in
fact, a very proactive deck. I want to take note
that I said proactive and not aggressive because
it is certainly not an aggressive deck. This
deck is glacially slow, but it has a very proactive
game plan. And that is what makes this deck so
much a good weapon early in a format. It's trying
to do a very proactive thing. And finally, it's
a deck that, oddly enough, provides fantastic
counterplay for Emerald Steel. That's right.
This deck is one of the best choices in the meta
when this deck is popular, which... breeds all
kinds of problems because that's more reason
to consider playing it. So we're going to then
finish off the episode with some best practices,
things to think about, takeaways to maybe overcome
this deck if you are not a fan. So let's kick
it off. First and foremost, we're talking Beyond
the Horizon. Sam, this was a card that we didn't
really put on our top list for the set. Yeah,
we kind of overlooked it and then we were starting
to hear about other podcasters and other content
creators. talking about it. Right. This deck
is A recipient of a strong card, it could have
avoided it. This card definitely could have been
a win more style card. This card could have been
a less good version of some other effects that
we've seen both in this set and cards like it
that existed already in the game. So a hard card
to identify just how impactful it's going to
be. I do think that this card ended up being
a little bit of a flash in the pan in the Ambersteel
decks. Yes. Where we tested a lot of this in
Ambersteel trying to just turbo beyond the horizon.
to take the opponent off of any semblage of a
good starting hand and just knock them so far
off of their game plan that they can't keep up
with what we were doing. And I would say that
that worked when it worked. Yeah. The old, like,
what's the Anchorman quote? 60 % of the time
it works every time. It just was very inconsistent.
Yeah, it definitely wasn't something that I was
worried about every game because it just wasn't
happening enough. No, not even close to enough.
Even with more copies of the Two Call Singer
4s, things like that, it just wasn't. offering
enough consistency out of the gate with all the
tools coming together, even without the elements
of disruption in a lot of cases. There was that
one sweet game when I Ursuled you and then you
top decked the Beyond the Horizon and just went
off on turn three anyway. But outside of that,
it just didn't fire enough. But I do think that
this as like a two of in the green steel decks
is very, very strong. I think that it's a little
bit of a better home. It doesn't really provide
a win more effect. It in fact does something
a little bit different. It actually kind of does
more. The first thing it does is it gives you
something to do with all of your small potato
characters. Emerald Steel is a deck that is full
of small potato characters. One drop Diablos,
two drop Ursulas, Peets. Things that they come
down and do something very impactful and then
don't do a whole lot after that. Which means
that we have a lot of opportunity here to get
a little bit more value out of some of these
characters. And we use them to sing. So you can
do this very quickly. with a Shift Diablo, obviously.
We don't have to wait a terrible amount of time
to do it. So as soon as turn five, maybe, we
can play our Prince John turn five, and then
we can end up singing this card potentially.
Our opponent's going to discard cards. We're
going to draw cards. The Prince John effect will
go into the bag, and then if your opponent discarded
cards before they drew the three, you'll draw
your three from... beyond the horizon, and then
X more, where X is the number of cards your opponent
discarded. So even one or two cards means that
they have three cards in their hand, and you
have five, or four, depending if they have one
or two, but you have card advantage, which is
something that this deck is very good at utilizing,
something this deck needs to utilize in order
to win. Playing against the Emerald Steel deck,
the early part of the game is defined by one
card. What's that card? Diablo. Yeah, definitely.
Early game, the fight and the Attention is over.
diablo and you'll see this across various trading
card games one card or one type of card put down
early the game becomes centered completely around
that card it's the tension of keeping it on the
board versus removing it from the board depending
on if you played it or if you're playing against
it diablo is definitely one of those kinds of
cards it's very much the tension builder in the
early game because if it's not dealt with it
will generate a whole lot of card advantage if
it's dealt with efficiently it looks looks like
kind of a worse version of the three -drop Maleficent
from first chapter. So it's somewhere in between
there, you're okay. But if it's just running
away with the game, you'll never catch up. If
it's done too little, you might actually be able
to catch your opponent to where you can leverage
an advantage. However, Beyond the Horizon stepped
in now and goes, oh, well, are you at a point
where you're low on cards? Do you have a Prince
John? Okay, excellent. Then I will provide you
with this burst of cards out of nowhere in the
mid to late game. So even if you lost your D,
Diablo, you still are able to then draw up effectively
and put yourself in a much more advantageous
position than your opponent even if you're just
low on cards and they are low on cards you can
still just make this a draw three and that's
totally fine yeah and i think the beyond the
horizon matched with the prince john is what's
making decks that were able to beat diablo decks
so punishing to play now because you wanted to
keep cards in your hand you wanted to be able
to draw as many cards you could without triggering
a bunch of diabolos but i think that's how you
beat the deck and now it just kind of makes it
Ten times worse. This sounds like somebody is
an upset Ruby Amethyst player. Yeah. Yeah, so
the strength in this deck used to be that you
would always have more cards. Like, they could
run your hand out, you'd refill your hand. You
would answer the Diablo, you'd refill your hand.
You just always had more cards than your opponent
did at one point or another in the game. And
your cards, pound for pound, are way more powerful
than theirs are. They're playing bad cards in
a vacuum, but together create an amazing synergy
engine where the Ruby Amethyst decks just play
singularly. very very powerful cards in a vacuum
card for card so the tension when you're playing
the emerald steel deck in turns seven and above
was how much can i commit to the board before
my opponent presses the be prepared button and
that is what has changed so significantly with
beyond the horizon especially with regard to
be prepared decks is now we can go well i'm not
going to add to the board instead i'm going to
discard one card i'm going to have you do discard
some number of cards, and I'm going to increase
the number of cards in my hand by a bunch. If
you had three cards and I have one card and I
have two Prince Johns out, you're not going to
like the way this exchange happens of you going
down to three cards, me going up to 11 cards,
which is just crazy, right? They had four cards
in hand, they discard four cards, you get two
Johns in the bag for eight cards, and then the
three from beyond the horizon giving you 11,
your opponent three. So they effectively discarded
one card and you drew like 10. Yeah, and we saw
this happen on Southside Game Stream. Like we
saw... This was in the finals. Yeah, in the finals,
the Emerald Steel opponent drew 18 cards because
he had three Prince Johns in play and the opponent
had five cards in hand. Right, five per John
and then the three from beyond. How do you beat
that? You're not beating that? No, when you go
to three cards and your opponent is at 18 cards,
six times more cards than you have. Six times
more cards. Doesn't matter how good that B prep
is. I really think that Prince John is what makes
this deck so powerful. It's not necessarily the...
be on the horizon i just think the two in combination
is just right prince john is this very and we've
talked about prince john a lot on this podcast
and how powerful of an engine it is sitting behind
its reasonable stats its strong questing ability
and its ward keyword that makes it so powerful
usually discard decks weaknesses they don't draw
a lot of cards or they don't benefit any way
other than you lose the cards prince john says
i don't know their loss is your gain and that
is so much more impactful that way than if you
just simply discarded the cards, which sometimes
is just painful enough. In most colors, you're
not doing anything about it because he has Ward.
Emerald Amethyst, the Diablo -style version of
that deck, doesn't really use Prince John in
the same way that this deck does, but the discard
is still sometimes pretty good. But it just is
so significantly different when Prince John is
out. And that's really the difference maker here,
is being able to use that card to be able to
put you in such a distinct... advantage with
cards that you will be able to handle grinding
out the rest of the game. It's just this ridiculous
inevitability that the deck generates now where
if your plan A of Diablo fails you're not too
super worried because if you have to grind out
a longer game there will be a point where you
draw Beyond the Horizon and it'll get you back
into the game pretty effectively on the whole.
So a very strong gift with Beyond the Horizon
even in just a small set of something like two
copies. is enough to push this deck over the
top. Even being able to play a couple little
silver bullets like we saw in the finals. The
Emerald Steel deck that won was playing a singleton
grab your sword and a singleton I find them,
I flatten them. Able to pull that off because
of the sheer card advantage that the deck can
now generate. In addition to that, there's the
other points that we all kind of know a little
bit more intimately in the deck's lifespan at
this point is it's a proactive deck. It's got
a very quick draw engine out of the gate with
Diablo. It's got great disruptive elements by
way of Steel and Emerald songs that are discarding
cards or impacting the board. And it has a really,
really strong endgame now that's gotten even
more strength on the back of this new card. The
deck can put down these gigantic characters now
with the addition of the Space Pirate Pete's
and the Beast. It's questing effectively. It's
singing songs at the end. Things like We Don't
Talk About Bruno, which is unconditional removal
and all. lot of cases especially when they have
no hand it's really good also one thing it can
do oh you drew three cards awesome now i'm gonna
have you discard all three cards and that's not
hard for this deck to do you sing the beyond
the horizon leave a singer up and then just play
hypnotize hypnotize sing sudden show you have
no card double sing it with her deck is so well
designed to discard cards that it can very easily
give you three and take them away in the same
turn. Very strong stuff. Very proactive. Again,
not aggressive, because this deck is glacially
slow to build a board through all of this card
advantage, but it is very proactive in the way
it's doing it. Then, of course, if this deck's
very good, some of the very best cards against
it are Ursula, Deceiver, and Pete, Games Referee,
and the Space Pirate Pete. Some of the best choices
you can make to play against this deck. What
if I told you, Sam, that there's a deck that
already plays all three of these cards? Why wouldn't
you play that deck, right? Right. I got bad news.
It's this deck. Yeah. You're still playing this
deck. I think the only other cards that counter
it really effectively is what the new Ludwig
von Drake and Bear Necessities. Yeah. You have
the Gone to the Taxes that's also available in
steel that can do a little bit of heavy lifting
there. But there's very few cards that tax the
deck and are easily played. Ludwig and Bear Necessities
is definitely strong, but that has to develop
an entire new deck. basically from scratch, right?
We don't have an amber sapphire deck that's on
tap, ready to go. I think that there are pieces
of one, but I don't know as though somebody's
been like, nope, this is the 60 for sure. You
have that small caveat. If you can work that
part out, then you're golden. But otherwise,
there's not a whole lot of counterplay. And that
kind of segues us into the final part of the
talk going over this, yet again, deep dive into
Emerald Steel. But how the heck do you actually
beat this deck? outside of just playing it. Say
I don't want to play it. This is also not a cheap
deck to build, I will point out. Beast, Tragic
Hero is definitely at a lower price point than
it has been. It was still like 17 bucks or something.
Diablo, Devoted Herald, same story. Like these
are not negligible cards. And of course, I'm
sure they've seen a little bit of a tick up in
price having this deck become the successful
meta -defining deck that it is currently here
in the early stages of set eight. Yeah, Ursula,
Deceiver, all. We know she went, she's come down
a bit. but she's also in it. There's a lot of
legendary cards in this deck. Right. There's
a lot of very powerful cards. Strength of a Raging
Fire at a point was a ghastly amount of money.
I still think it's pretty expensive. Right. It's
the premier removal in the game right now, I
would say. I think Brawl was that card for a
while, but I think that Strength has stepped
in and go, by the way, you can sing this card.
So it's very strong stuff and very expensive
and not everybody can afford it, especially with
rotation looming, right? If I'm a newer player,
there's no way I'm dropping like $700 on a deck
that is pretty much going to be rotated. How
many of these cards are actually going to be
reprinted? Not Prince John, I can tell you that
much. Negative percentage chance that card's
reprinted. Diablo, no way that card's reprinted.
Maybe an Ursula. Maybe. You get like Pete, Space
Pete, and Beyond the Horizon that survive after
rotation for this deck. So this deck has got
a time limit on it. And that means that I don't
want to outlay that kind of money on this deck
if I don't already have the cards. Yeah, definitely
not a deck for new players. No, it is not a come
into the game and pick this one up. I think you
can do better in terms of using your money to
continue to play the game post -rotation. So
that is, I mean, I guess a silver lining to an
extent. We only have to suffer for a little while
longer if you're not a Prince John appreciator.
I think other ways you can beat this deck, kind
of one that is pretty resistant, and that's something
like an Ambersteel aggro deck. Doc sticking around,
I'll have everybody know. I got my foils. And
the quote unquote Doc piles, the decks that just
rely on curving out very fast and then playing
Doc to refill our hands. So we see this in purple
steel. We see this in amber steel. We see this
in the Kiwi Bird style sapphire steel decks.
Their game plan, their plan A is to play a lot
of things down quickly and then use Doc as a
way to go just draw two cards, simply draw two
cards. One, three on the board for just two ink,
draw two. cards. It's an insanely good card.
And I think that those decks offer something
that the Emerald Steel decks don't have a great
answer to. Like this particular deck that won
at Southside has one grab your sword to answer
a deck like this. And all the threats now have
resistance stuff. So it's like you have Cogsworth's
out, you have the new Rhino. which is absurd.
You have people playing Penny. You have people
playing Calhoun. These cards are everywhere.
They all have resist or they all have big butts.
Kiwi's deck is just full of big butts. Got Alice's
in there. We got all kinds of goodies that are
enormous and hard to remove. You got big boy
Champo in there. That kind of a deck is a really
good option. Obviously, we discussed all the
disruptive elements. Ludwig, Bear Necessities,
Ursula, Deceiver, Pete, all these things that
really stop the deck. from humming as much as
it wants to be humming. Last set gone to that
taxes actions, all of which are good choices
to disrupt. Not all of them, unfortunately, outside
of the sphere of Emerald Steel. Sticky threats.
are great. Cards that are just hard to remove
with Let the Storm Rage On. Cards that are hard
to remove if they have a small board. Locations
are a good card that generally can give this
deck a little bit of trouble because their stats
are so anemic for the most part till towards
the end if you get a beast with damage on it
or a Space Pete. Do you think we're going to
see an uptick in any steel deck playing Grab
Your Swords just to combat this deck? Well, I
do know that generally one of the decks that's
popular in this kind of a meta is is in fact
sapphire steel, but more towards the old school
style. Good old, a whole new world style where
we can go Cogsworth on five, big tank on six,
sing, grab your sword. Yeah. To deal three damage
to everything and just wipe the board. Those
kinds of board states are definitely good. Other
board wipes are good if you can deploy them.
In addition, I mean, B prep's great. What do
you have, seven or eight things out and finally
be on the horizon? Guess you don't win now. Take
out two of your Prince Johns plus five other
characters is great. I think that those kinds
of elements, you need to think about how good
are they? How hard is it for them to answer if
you're being proactive? Or how much does this
impact their game plan on the whole? We see like
the Diablo decks attack their hand and go wide.
We see some of the other style, the Sapphire
Steel decks playing very impactful cards that
wipe their board. So there's a lot of ways you
can attack this in the mirror, learning how to
play and advantage yourself in the mirror. mirror.
You have about three or four flex slots in this
Emerald Steel build to tech into what you think
is going to be popular. If you think the answer
is the mirror, then you need to make sure you're
tooled up and ready for the mirror. If you think
the answer is blue -red items, maybe you want
that copy of I Find on My Flat. So it's a lot
to think about, but the fact that with the way
the meta has started out of the gates for Reina
Jafar, this is a good choice right now. It is
a hard deck to deal with and is a deck that takes
a lot of patience to learn, a lot of deep pockets
to pay for, but if you can pay it off, no one
will stop you from your ability to keep questing.