Christopher: Holy smokes, Roy! Welcome to another Lorcana League Knight. We have so much to talk about the attack of the Vine! Roy: So many things and so many shake ups though. I just k I could hardly wait. Christopher: I know exactly where I want to start. My first place I'm going to jump on to is all the CCQs which have been occurring. We've had two at least that's worth talking about. And dare I say, I think the CCQ shows us the meta hasn't even started shaping up. Roy: Love this part of post-rotation because it's the first slice of the cake. You basically sink your teeth into something 100% completely new and like unsearched, unmetified, and on top of everything else, you get to see all the surprises come up, though. You'll see a lot of predictions come true, and you'll see a lot of other things there actually come untrue, though. So, this to me is probably the most exciting time of any sort of TCP is when post-rotation. First major tournaments out. Christopher: Well, we can start chronologically in an interesting note too, because these were like one day, then the other day, no one had to chance to react to the results of the first day. Before they had their decks were in, they were ready to play. So these are all native decks which are kind of brought up to kind of see if this meta worthy. And I think it we're s after a post dog's world, we would expect maybe some heavier aggro as people are afraid to be particularly spicy or particularly unique with some decks. And I don't I don't think that happened this time around. I think that the we we got it pretty much what you're expecting. first off, let's go with the first tournament, which was in Palm Beach. This was a at Where was this? This was at a in Florida and what happened was we saw the winning of a the beginning of the dominance in my opinion of Ruby Amber. Tell me about that. Roy: I've been playing this deck constantly throughout this week and I understand its total dominance. It's got card advantage, it's got board control, and on top of everything else, there's a lot of neat little toys that just click and click and click though. But the key point here is though, it it is a control deck in essence. You want to keep the board clear as much as possible, but if things get overwhelming, then once it c turns to turn eight, everything becomes great. You clear the board, reset everything. And then afterwards you start playing. boost triggers and if you're lucky enough to have one or two Web Webby's diaries out, boom, you start refilling your hand. You start refilling your hand. Like after turn nine or ten, I see myself on average putting about five or six cards into my hand and having endless options. Christopher: Wow, that really wants makes me want to tech in some item removal with with just that thread of that refill from Webby's. Well, I guess the next thing to talk about, second place was Ember Amber. How much do you know about the circle of life? Roy: I know plenty about it. But what do you what is your knowledge on it? Christopher: My knowledge was when it first came out, everyone said, just one more card we can't play. There was a card, the Hercules card that was kind of meme similarly where, you know, you play this card and it was significantly less expensive. And each person can play a character for free. which gives a huge advantage for the player who's who's on turn and stuff like that to to play something that's gonna be board changing. But is Eight sing eight that's uninkable to bring something back from the grave from banishment and it it's really surprised me that is such a strong contender for wow the this this is a s the second place deck and I know that amber is kind of what we're seeing is the strongest deck right now I would not be surprised if we go, well, you know what? more decks. Well who anyone who wants to play Amber is going to probably have Circle of Life. Maybe a deck that I'm thinking of, I'm I'm cooking in the background, may end up having Circle of Life just to return a power line or return a red character from my from banishment. Roy: Speaking of power line, explain to us it's the the shift the shifting of basically lower power line, higher power line and how the the lines of play that gets you a a very advantageous board state. Christopher: So there's a couple of ways, and and this is an interesting nature of singing. You play cards for s with singing from your hand for free. So on turn two, you play your your cheap power line. Some people run the the c 3 cost power line, which has a better shift tempo, but I like the singer five element of the two-cost power line. And then to shift for four, you get the six-four power line, which sings nine, which can play circle of life. It can do Under the Sea. It can play sing a lot of songs. Pirate's Life, if you're behind, you can, you know, do a four ink four lore swap. You sing him, and what will end up happening is suppose that I have a song in my hand that will remove an annoying character that's really threatening me. You can sing Red Moon ritual. That character goes. by itself, turn four, singing a sev seven eight cost song. That's not bad. You know what? That's that's a huge tempo swing. But there's more. So then you get to look at the top four cards of your deck. Find another nine or less songs. Maybe it's an aggro deck. You just removed an Eleanor with that, but they still have, you know, two fast you know, two woodies out there that you need to take care of. Well, choose grab your swords. You can remove two more characters. The other cards go to the bottom of your deck. That card goes into your discard for one song. you get to choose and remove three characters, which is a massive tempo swing. There's some draw opportunities. if it's a emerald with power line, you can do evolution or elimination, give them evasive, make it really hard to swing into that four cost because all those genies and all those other evasive characters have rotated out. So there's not as many anti-evasive tar tools that they have. You could do other defensive things. You can, if you have a lot of lore, if it's near the end of the game, you know, usually you think, well, this power line's a early game tempo. You can use this to fish for malicious mean and scary. So it's a 13 ink combo to do it, or if your power line's still alive somehow at that point, you could sing malicious mean you could sing one song, search for malicious, meaning and scary, and then drop down at Prince Philip. if you can do if you have the shift Prince Philip, then it's only a tinny combo, but you know, that that's with how slow games are right now, that's a doable thing, and you wipe someone's entire board and you have this great tempo advantage and you those two songs that you sung, you only spit one out of your hand. The other one came from your deck. So it's basically drawing a card and playing it for free. Roy: There's always something that fascinates me about Singer decks. It's the more I look into it, I feel like it's another resource. You're you're sacrificing a creature in order creatures turn to cast spells out of your hand without using any of your ink. So in essence, would you actually count this as card advantage or would you count this as basically board control at the Christopher: Because you're not holding on to them, you have to use the resources in that moment. I consider this more of board control. it if you were able to ink one of those well, if you if you're able to sing a song that provides you ink, and there are songs red blue, like down in New Orleans, which could give you a bunch of cards to to play, and that would be card advantage. so it really comes down to what songs there are. That that's another great thing about it. That you whether you get card advantage or board control or just really good tempo or efficient card play, it just depends on what cards are in your songs. So you could get you could all of it at the same time. Roy: Bard is OP in this in this meta right now. Bard is OP. That's insane. Christopher: Absolutely. Absolutely. and you know what, looking at my notes, we're we're talking about not the Palm Beach CCQ, we're talking about the Ridgeline one, Vans Comics. So the next deck down is a detective's deck, which I was very excited to see. I love detectives when they first came out with the the duck and also with Mickey I mean, I remember the old Mickey Mouse detective, Unekable That lets you put the top card of your deck into your inkwell. It's just a you know simple one three for uninkable three. Absolutely thought that was a a really fun card. It was a you know core element of a lot of my blurple decks, but yeah, this is mostly a Darkwing duck deck, and it's kind of the angel style of detectives where you're playing stuff and you're plinking things off and your detectives are able to challenge for an advantage. And as a challenger advantage, you get to draw more cards. And if you you the tech the enemy player is just going to sit there and say, Okay, well I only turn sideways where I can win. They have Angel, they have Darkwing, they have the it comes from the knight, whatever the the Duckwing Duck card is, and be able just to tear the Yes, that's a great name for a card. And just all that all that hard removal coming out of steel and then you know, blue giving a little bit of ramp and good shift opportunities and fun detective synergies for them to quest for plus one or do a little do card draw with Judy Hops. So really, really, really interesting deck. I I I like the fact that it's back and it it's kind of a budget deck. It's under a hundred dollars to build. Roy: This has gotta be one of the most fascinating mashups in the world. I mean, maybe they could be s there could be a world to where they start mashing up all these movies in real life and Disney movies. I would love to see Darkwing Duck solve crimes in Zootopia. I mean Christopher: Chibiverse. Watch that sometime. It that it's literally the whole point of that is a a a matchup, but then all the characters are GB, so but they they don't have Darkwing Duck. That's a good point. We need Darkwing Duck to retard. New new version of it, just like X Men nineteen ninety nine or nineties or whatever. Roy: Yeah, so that's probably the first example I've I've seen one of these dual shift cards working out in a in a perfect theme though. I'm always reading for theme decks. I always love tribes, I always love having same character types, getting other character types and stacking on top of it and and creating like a perfect combo and a perfect storm of just boom, boom, boom, quest, quest, quest, and then it's over. I remove that, I get I get, you know, I I get a couple lore for my trouble, and then it just keeps plinking away. Christopher: Now and something you expected to be a lot more prevalent, but probably not in the way that you expected. Toys fourth place. But not the woody amber emerald toys. It is the the Ruby Amber toys and and this one was w going to be my list that I I think was going to be very, very powerful, having tried it out a couple of times. I have not been able to pilot it to the level that it needs to be piloted for an aggro deck. You'd think that'd be it's it's so easy with I like to call it Cherna Duck, because the old ChernoBox synergy of you know being able to play this high power creature for free as long as you've got a bunch of other cards banished, but it's it's it's a it's a very, very clever deck. that is aggressive, tempo oriented, but in this current meta, I guess This deck works really, really well if other people are trying to out aggro you. If you don't have a lot of control. But the second it runs into a little bit of control, man, this deck struggles super hard. It's it's it's feast or famine, without question. Roy: Yeah, this is the red deck wins of the format right now. If if you're running this, it's gonna have two characteristics. Just basically spit out a whole bunch of creatures, turn them sideways, and try to jam it in before turn eight, though, before my raging store starts click clearing out the board. But it's great. Christopher: Or start challenging. Yeah. Roy: Yeah, it's like and Sid is still a a menace, you know, literally, both in in the movie and card form though, and then it's got Excellent like tempo games, come into play abilities and ship lines. Christopher: I see people running and and this is where I guess I diverge a bit and and maybe this is explains my win rate. Sid in that deck. And I I just can't get Sid to work. I think more baby dolls just for, you know, being able to draw and and you know trade up, but I I don't see the advantage of Cid in that deck at all yet. I don't know, maybe later, but currently I'm having having tried to play it out a couple of ways. I love the concept. And it was something I talked about and it was one of my decks to that I was like I'm gonna be watching, we're gonna be really interested in playing. Just the Cid. I don't I don't understand it. What is the point of the Sid? What is he supposed to be doing for me? One thing that we thought we'd expect to see more, actually go ahead, Roy. Roy: I was gonna explain basically the philosophy behind Sid. Sid is supposed to be your top end. He's supposed to be the one that turns you from fifteen to twenty to get you over there in the red zone. Because you play you play you banish one of your characters, and then they they choose and banish one of their characters though. That's basically a one for one, right? But the second part is during your turn, whenever a toy character is banished, you gain two lore. So You banish one of your toys, you already got a two lore swing coming up on ETV. It's a five five body. Yes, it could be eliminated, you know, with your typical Gaston and the world's greatest criminal mind. But on top of everything else, though, if they wasted a removal card on it, then chances are they're not gonna waste any other removal on your other cards, which you pa at this point should have three or four toys out. Christopher: All of them should be sideways, though, because at this point, I mean, by the time you get to Sid, you've you've been racing. Maybe maybe that's Roy: That's Christopher: my problem. Too aggressive with my aggro deck. Roy: Yeah, no, but also you have to understand when you have Sid on on play, having your toys sideways is no longer a liability anymore though, because if they kill it, then it's like, okay. Then if you start challenging with your toys into their into their characters, then you still gain two lore every single time. So it's not the E to P effect that that'll finish them on, it's the self inflicted I call it backwards burn stuff. Christopher: get my said targeted by some removal. well Roy: Yeah. Let's kill on site. Christopher: the the big thing that we s expected was red emerald amber toys really really showing off and in fact though while we do that tribal synergy has has shown some things the thing that made that deck work is actually not the Woody and and Buzz. It seems to be the Eleanor. Roy: Yes. Christopher: most of the people who've been playing this have been getting the lower ranks, top eights, you know, mostly top sixteens. None of been getting in the top fours. Eleanor is a great card. I I gotta say it. What do you think? Roy: yeah, hands down, Eleanor is a great card. Three four body for four. Not inkable, but that's okay though, because she makes up for the fact that if you have three or more exerted characters in play, which you should be in an aggro deck, deal one damage, gain one lore, and draw a card. I mean what what other card right now in Lorecana has that has that end of turn effect that basically gives you an advantage, card advantage, lore advantage, and on top of everything else, you're basically eliminated the characters bit by bit. Christopher: If you get multiple Eleanors down, you just win the game. That that that's the end of the game, right there. That's that's it. Roy: Yeah, one is good, two is devastating, three, you might as well pack it up at that point if they leave it on the board. Christopher: Yeah. Well, back to the tournament that I was meant to talk about originally, Palm Beach. So yes, red red yellow boosties, which we've already talked about a little bit. second place was a mid-range amber amethyst deck, which was really, really, really fun. it has it's just a good tempo. It has circle of life as well. Kind of the the top two of both sides. There's circle of life. It's a good good second place deck. Crazy expensive deck. $500. which kind of boggles my mind. did you have you seen this deck list at all? Do you know anything about it? Roy: R for this. Okay, that's the songs, right? Christopher: Yes, yes. Roy: Think I've seen it. Christopher: the so the purples for draw. there is a I think there's a Dumbo in there. And I'm sure I mean Amber Amber is is the it was a bit aggressive. Again, mid range, so not quite as fast paced and just generally like you have the stitch. you it's a bit of a dale deck because Dale's in there as well. You know, some some pretty exciting cards, all in all. Roy: Yeah. I'm starting to see it right now. Okay, so it is actually a remnant of the old Am Amesis Sapphire Temple decks that basically take advantage of evasives and all that, but they switched the power color, which is now and I'm gonna say this universally throughout this entire cast. Amber is going to dominate the meta for the next three months though, guaranteed. There's you there's gonna be a splash or if not a foundation of amber. It's just that there's too many powerful cards right now. Christopher: Yeah. In fact, interestingly enough, they actually took out the Dale in this list that was run and they put it a Dumbo instead for for more card draw. So yeah, there's no weaknesses in this deck. It it's the purple with the Louisas and Cheshire cats, all the stuff you would ex expect. Demona is going to help you draw too, and then Roy: yeah. Christopher: all that hard removal that's coming out of Amber right now. Roy: it's still it's a silly list, but I I like it. It's it's it's gonna be quite a challenge to go up against. I haven't faced it yet though, but I look forward to. Christopher: Now a not silly list and one that I'm expecting you to run at one point, the 4.0 bots. they have the amethyst in order for you to get some you know exertion draw and then all the steel bots, just steel bots everywhere, every single iteration, and multiple copies each. So you you hope to turn things sideways with the amber, and then the bots come out swinging. That's a fun time. Roy: I've been playing with this deck a couple times, and I have to say, I think it's about 95% done this deck, though. I'm so glad it finally found a home. I was messing around with the blue the blue steel version of it because you know I wanted to play Syndrome. But this list is just too good. I mean, you got you got the Omni droid line though, but the the one the the MVP in which I found out what the MVP was actually during Sealed when I was playing playing with you was Morph. I mean, the fact that Christopher: Yeah. Roy: Yeah, the fact that you have a low cost alternate body to shift onto is incredible. And then it's got elements of Cheshire CAD, and of course, you know, it's it's it's got Violet Par and on top of everything, it's got the top end with the ultimate itineration and syndrome alpha revenge, which is the constant slow ticking of the graveyard recursion from the discard pile. Key point about syndrome, you have to also understand. When you're making these decks and when you're having a top end, if you have an engine that's going not possibly infinite infinite but just relentless, you gotta make sure that their power is at at four or lower because a lot of these car a lot of these decks are packing cars that are destroying five or higher right now. Christopher: Yeah. You know, and when you still have three or lower with fireflies. Four seems to be like the sweet spot of all right, my character I'm not sure if you've ever played Hearthstone, but that that is kind of the the meme of Hearthstone was the bane of anyone who plays Priest is a four attack minion because you know, five you Shadow Ward Death, you know, three unless you can you Shadow Word Pain. So what do you do against something with who attacks you with strength five? strength four and This is the exact same thing we're seeing as the power of all right, you have Gaston, you have world's greatest criminal mind, Roy: World's career. Kind of mine. Christopher: yeah. both of those to to knock out those higher and then like for the smaller stuff, you know, I've got fireflies, you have little Cisu just to kind of mess around with you, so yeah. Roy: I like big I like the fact that the Hearthstone equivalent big game hunter is the regulator right now in this meta. It's like it's touch it's touching a lot of touchstones of of what you've experienced in Hearthstone. Christopher: absolutely i i i wonder i mean being in sea being on the west coast how much the inspiration they've they've taken from up and down the the coast there finally fourth place again detectives virtually the same f similar list i think the the big card that's coming out of there of course is angel six two four that's that that it's just a powerful card and anyone who wants to have a good control but still have you're not gonna have the big hands that you would expect out of control. that that that deck does really, really well. Roy: That's insane. Christopher: Any any particular things that you were surprised did not show up in these C CQs that you're really, really expecting? Roy: I was expecting a lot more aggro decks to be perfectly honest. there's there's a lot of control lists that are popping up like like crazy or there is actually a lot of mid range lists that are are playing the control role as far as it goes. Christopher: After rotation, you think that people were like, okay, I'm going to get some aggro, get some easy wins as you know, other people kind of show up in the meta and people realize that, some cards aren't quite as good as they would expect. But no, we're we're not saying that people are falling back on particularly their their old habits and stuff. They're they're going on some, you know, really trying to to do something innovative with the meta. Roy: like it. I love seeing the variety. what what I previously mentioned, you don't want a rock, paper, scissors, meta, you want rock, paper, scissors, li lizard, spot. You want you want that five points of power beyond. Christopher: Yeah, nope. Completely, completely agree. Well, Roy: Yeah. Christopher: I guess another thing that's worth talking about, these decks were not that expensive. Two Roy: Mm-hmm. Christopher: hundred for the max, and considering right now it is so hard to get booster boxes and stuff like that. it there's still price stability. We're not just seeing price drop free fall. for example, we did see Cinderella. dreams come true. I mean a Core and a lot of Sapphire decks, that price went from $40 down to $20. you're there there's a good right now in the in a short term, 30% drop in the the price overall. but for things like Dale, which is dropped off a little bit, I thought he was going to have a bit more impact in the the meta, and things like Merida. Which people inst in steel gets good for for for kind of reaching out and and and doing a bit more damage with your your action cards. their prices have dropped significantly, sure, but like they they stabilized very possibly because of, you know, the amount of singles being sold from scalpers, but also possibly because of there's a lot of opportunity to build you know, they're not currently hot meta and people are kind of just like pausing on what they're buying and waiting to kinda see meta shape out. And where my assumption comes from that is you see things like Eleanor, Eleanor has dropped up. Crazy, crazy high. This card was ten cents. You could get this three months ago. Ten cents for an Eleanor. Could you imagine that? Ten dollars now. And Roy: Yeah. X one hundred. Christopher: The the next one I think we're going to see more, and we just need to see her in her terminant presence as we see more emerald aggroes the queen. People people are sleeping on the queen right now. I picked up a full set when she was about a buck, a little under a dollar. Right now she's just writing at two dollars, almost three three dollars now. I think so obviously there's demand. The people people are buying cards. So it's not like people are just getting out of the hobby because they can't get their product. There are a bunch of cards swarming the marketplace. What do you think? Do you think that it's this is just hey, you know, so many so many more products coming out there, the price is just naturally going to drop, or is this a s possible s you know, nice, beautiful cross-section of there's a supply in a different way than people expect, and there's the people who want to buy up for these massive for very specific decks? They're buying up all the cards. And there's just, you know, people aren't at this moment buying other cards just to fill out the collection because it's just the end of rotation. and prices would be down will start to go back up once people start, you know, it buying those cards. Roy: One thing I wanna actually approach this is on two fronts though. So like I mentioned before, there's a collector's market and there's a players market. right now everything's a wax and wane. Players market, I I believe the card prices are going to be dropping probably ten to twenty percent in the next few weeks though, as these boxes are being opened. Because I guarantee you, the people that bought from the scalpers and you know who are, what are you gonna do with all that chaff? What what are you gonna do if you don't pull any iconics or enchantants? There's not really any chase cards right now that are premiering like this set or the previous set from it though. But like all the high priced cards they came from up to set nine and set ten. wait, nine rotated out, so it's ten, eleven, twelve, okay. Babe okay. Christopher: Nope, set nine, feeble. Feebles still in. That's where I'm getting my power lines from. God I wish there was Roy: So I yeah, I would I would actually take a look at Fabled is if you wanted to speculate on any of those 'cause those cards majorly are are taking up the meta like crazy. Christopher: Yeah. and the the values of the boxes packs still g still very high. if Raven Burgers would do the community a solid and re re re-release like one more little run of Fable as like hey, here's a Christmas thing. We're going we're going to maybe not sell booster boxes, but sell bundles with Fable in there. Holy smokes, that would yeah. Roy: I'll take a trofe. Yeah, I would take a trove. You know what you know what the product they should actually come out with though, like a best of. Like my suggestion is basically have two packs from each of the sets and just put it into like a a holiday package and that'd like the perfect Christmas gift. Christopher: The gift boxes have been random packs and a special card. I love that. And if they especially if they say like, hey, you let's print a bunch of fable, put them in the gift boxes, I Roy: Yeah. Yeah. Christopher: think I think that'd be great. That'd be amazing. Roy: Yeah, I'm I'm assuming they're probably mulling over right now or checking the numbers as far as like print runs though. So the right now there's probably a big debate going on over there about print runs and seeing if they're gonna reprint any of the older sets in order to like boost the the game's productivity and boost the sales. They they're in yeah. Christopher: Wild's it known Okay. Roy: Wild Unknown needs to be reprinted and Attack of the V Vine needs to be reprinted, but especially Fabled needs to needs to get that extra reprint in. Christopher: Absolutely. We're seeing Wild's Unknowns prices kind of stabilized at $200 a box, $170, between Roy: Yeah. Christopher: $170 and $1200. I don't think we're going just because of the chance of getting an iconic in there, a thousand dollar card, we're we're we're not gonna we're never gonna see MSRP for boxes. I'm weird thing to say as someone who who's not a collector, who's a player, Roy: Mm-hmm. Christopher: I am happy that we're not gonna see boxes fall under MSRP. and it maybe maybe if we they release some more reprints, even with the iconics, iconics will have a heavy reprint set. That could help the game players to say, like, okay, I don't have to worry about as many cards in the set because I can pull it out from my older collections, or maybe they go into like, man, these are mostly Inkland sets and I can buy some of the older boxes of Inklands to be able to to play for this rotation. That that might be useful, but I think Attack of the Vine. It would be wonderful if they didn't have to release, kick the scalpers in the face with that, but Roy: Yeah. Christopher: I'm not sure if we're gonna ever see like under two hundred dollars anytime soon, if especially with how how short it how short there are of boxes available. Roy: I'm telling you this though, the clock is ticking on Attack of the Vine as far as like the prices though. It will go back to MSRP within two months though. Mark my words. Christopher: I'll love that. I'll love that. That'd be great. So, what also is great is what we're going to be playing this week at League Night. I've heard you've been kind of cooking up something. I'll love to hear it. Roy: it's it's just an ongoing project. I'm trying to create sap sapphire amber again. So this is this is what this is the philosophy I'm coming into it though. I'll use a standard package for for for ramp. I'll use Aurora, I'm gonna use Willow Mother, and I'm going to use e I'm gonna s I'm gonna try it out with the piggy bank. But my My mentality with that deck is to run it like a regular control deck though, but I want to get to four as quickly as possible. The number the magic number is four. I want it I want to cast my Cinderella and start cycling cards in order to basically get all the right cards in in focus and just push through with more damage though. The new Hades that came out though actually looks very interesting to me. Christopher: put in the scuttle, the Hades and the Merriweather. You have the ward team, four, five, six, you know, can't can't target me, though I think the the scuttle actually has probably worse stat distribution of the of the three of Roy: Yeah, four or five. I don't think I'll be running him. Christopher: What do you think of the of Pluto in this deck? You know, it it does something similar to Ham and it does something similar to Mother Willow. You do have to exhaust exhort him and he is unequable, but you know, he gives you some ramp for for characters. Roy: I'm not liking Pluto in this deck. I did try it once or twice, but the magic numbers that you need to draw into your your two drops. That's that's where your sweet spot is, though. Two drops will make everything ramp a lot quicker to get your Cinderella out. 'Cause I know people are gonna just kill Cinderella on site. Christopher: absolutely. Yeah. Well, how has that have you been able to find some new s new sides to kind of bring back this deck or you think that maybe you need a couple more cards in order for this deck to be solid? Roy: I wanna bring I wanna to bring up the concept that I call the soft sideboard. So let me explain this to ya. as you know Lore kinda does doesn't have a sideboard whatsoever though. The it doesn't give you the ability though. But Christopher: And for viewers who are not familiar with magic, sideboards are where in between rounds you can have a set of cards so you can put into your deck to to play with the following round against an opponent. Roy: Correct. I'm going to use a couple cards to eliminate Ruby Amber. That's my target. That's the only deck that I've seen that actually has given me any issues. So the card that just got printed in Attack of Divine, we've got a lot to do. So that's the three CMC remove any item or location and it's inkable. So the key part of a soft sideboard is that you a card that you know that is probably gonna take care of something that's that's annoying to you. But in the in the event that you don't need to eliminate that item or that location that's annoying you, then you could always ink it. The concept of s the soft sideboard I've been trying to implement in my other decks as well as the meta just and you could use the same philosophy when you're when you're playing in your local local game stores and seeing the meta say, okay, this is a control meta, then I might have to put in Mowgli or something at the man cup in order to remove anything or have them put put put them in a situation where they're gonna wipe your board because I always think on both sides of it. yeah, this side this time I'm gonna be the board wiper. So I'm going I'm going to anticipate a lot of people starting to play hand hate or any sort of resilient combo which is so nasty. So I'm gonna talk about Ruby Amber one more time because this is the control deck that that completely popped up on my radar and and it dumbstruck me. I'm like, okay So we got we got Ruby Amber, and then I started looking at Sully and Boo and Soli. I'm like, I see the combo now. So you put you put Soli out, you get your card from the discarded pile. Then you put Suly Soli and Boo on there. And then by the time that'll be like turn six or seven, you drop your inkable, board wipe, grab your cards, and you recast Sully for free, and then you grab your other card, and that rotation starts over and over again. And and it doesn't stop. I've yet to see anybody eliminated. And if I happen to have like a Web East jour journal or anything like that, I could restart the boost to card draw and then fill up my hand once again. Christopher: Well, yeah, that's it's gonna be the deck to beat. I wonder probably everyone's just gonna be teching for items. That might be the the weak point for it but between the medallion weights and the Webby's diaries. Raging Storm's gonna be a problem though, for people who are going to just try and out aggro it and then you have all those reckless characters to to try and tip it down and Ares then l lets you quest with your reckless characters just I don't I don't I don't see a silver bullet yet for this deck. And ha at the top end you have Maleficent, you know, to just for like, hey, I want to do Dragonfire with a body on it, that quest for two. So yeah, it's going to be a really, really, really good deck. I'm very curious to see how it's going to how people are going to be able to react to do something against it. I've Good. Roy: My Melissa my Melissa Mal Melissa has been killed more times than that I could count whatsoever with the Gastons and the Colonel Noyne and I just kept bringing 'back with with Sully.' Christopher: Yeah. And she comes out, removes something. So it's like, yeah, cool. You just removed her. Well, here she comes again. Roy: Yep. Christopher: Yeah, no, it's terrifying. Roy: It is. Christopher: I n nothing safe on a board. Well, I've gone a different direction. because aggro has not figured out what it needs to do yet, I'm trying to bring in what I call my MM deck, Mickey Mini. And we Roy: Yeah. Christopher: everyone knows that the blue and green MMs taste the best. So it's it's obviously Roy: I agree. Christopher: the best deck. the idea is, you know, there's there's multiple iterations of this deck out there. very cheap Mickey and Minis to put out. I have the ramp Mickey and for an aggro deck, I was like, why why would you want ramp? rampant and aggro deck. What's the point of this? the top end actually has some some big bodies to it. You got some you know Hades that that warded Hades that's able to quest and for for two and of course you have the Mickey Mini Duo. Now when things get you know targeted, removed, you're able to use that Mickey Mini duo in order to you know fill up your ink so that way you can just keep playing you know threat after threat. I have Pete, Ghost of Christmas Future, in order to let me too you know search for things to to find what to play. Education or elimination, because nothing's better than having to watch someone get rid of a evasive Mickey Mini duo. Sure, they're only five fives, it costs seven, but they're questing for five. And you know, they're evasive, so you better find that that you know world's greatest criminal mind in order to remove it. there's a couple of things like for more aggro, Joshua Suite. it's a great tempo. Makes someone have to discard something from their hand whenever to challenge them and remove them. So they'll have to usually waste removal cards for them, which is a puts them in a bad situation with with Mickey Mouse's running around in the field. Another element too is Eleanor, because you know it's going to get kind of a wide board with all these Mickeys and Minis. really put someone in the position of what are you going to invest and remove in? I put Merlin in there. I like he's he has a draw too. You know, you play him, he gets a draw, remove him and gets to draw. it's it it quests for two as well. So it's it's a nice tempo well, nice speed with him. Like a very aggressive one four stat line for unequable four is not particularly great. I have Roy: Mm-hmm. Christopher: twelve unequables in this deck, but it it puts people in their back foot. Like all aggro decks, you run into someone who has some good control and is like, well, just can't win this one. You know, that that's how it is. And unless if they draw all their control, but if they don't draw that control, you're in a good situation. At the top end, the hot most expensive card in the deck is Milo Thatch. Seven ink, quest for three seven five. Why on earth would that? It lets you return Mickey Mouse doing adventure. If it gets put into your graveyard back into your hand. So gives you one more time. It's like, man, I'm only five inks short. They'll have to if you're at five ink short, they'll have to remove Milo. I mean you t turn him sideways here, two ink there. That's so easy. And then you follow up with a Mickey Mouse, you have so many heavy h hitters. and also Milo has ward, too. So it's not like you can target him with with you know anything else with Gaston, big Big Gaston Hunter. We'll think think of a good name for him at one point. or World's Greatest Criminal Mind. you you have to p put the effort in to remove him with all those other characters that you have, or Raging Storm. I'll get into that rant another day about why Raging Storm's Amber. But anyways, really fun deck. and I get to play with Mickey and Minnie, and I don't think Mickey and Minnie has been a core part of the meta in in in a hot second, so and this is a not just there's a Mickey or a Mini in the deck, there's a lot of Mickeys and Minis in that deck. Roy: Interesting. When I was looking through his deck list, there's one thing that stuck out to me though. The two Dr. Bush roots. That's a pretty interesting piece of tech though. Do you mind explaining the the card itself and the mentality that you would be in when you put it in the list? Christopher: Yeah, and one of the big ideas of Joshua Sweet is the fact that I put him down there. You have to if you use if you challenge him to remove him, you can't. Absolutely. He's a two-one. Really easy challenge to remove. You're discarding a card. I'm still gaining that two lore. And you are now losing card advantage. The thing same thing with Dr. Bushroot. You challenge Dr. Bushroot, you have to remove it. He quests for three. He's a big boy that's able to do a lot. so the and with Ward, you really have to invest, okay, I need to pull this raging storm early. If I don't pull this raging storm early, Dr. Bushroot could run away with it. Especially now that you're seeing the you know, a Hades come out. You know, maybe I get another Hade out, Hades out, you're not gonna have a lot. Or again, I run into the control deck because those are those are gonna be the ones. since I don't have cards like Ursula in there or cards like mogley I need something in order to get rid of those removal spell songs or actions to to help keep my board going. So they're there in order to make control character decks really have to lose even more resources. Because that's the whole point the how control wins against it is being able to choose very specifically all right, I am going to use this raging storm now in order to win. Nope. Can't You can't y ha you have to use it now because otherwise I'm going to make you discard that raging storm because I'm going to keep questing with this Dr. Bush route just yellow the game away. Roy: It's hilarious though. Very good strategy. The the counter to that, I would actually start putting cards in my hand. But at that point, if I keep cards in my hand just to keep so that you could do it or not remove it, then that becomes an issue. Christopher: Yeah, I'm an aggro deck still. Yeah, you have to use those resources. Roy: Yeah. Exactly. And you're applying that and you gotta apply that pressure. That's that's the key element to that. Christopher: Yep, absolutely. decks the deck actually f has very quick game time. Like it you you can win or gate lose the game in ten minutes and have a very silly amount of gameplay in it. And I also had to figure out because Mickey and Mini, the whole thing about them, I mean they're an aggro card, you can get that Mickey and Mini out on two. I would never do that because then the Mickey and Mini would be drawing and you can't quest with them on turn two. I'd wait to turn three to actually shift the Mickey Mini on there so that way you can immediately quest. But once you do that, well all the ink that's all the all the cards instead going to the being destroyed, they go into your inkwell. So you go from three ink to six ink. And for aggro decks, what do you do with six ink? Why you why do you need six ink? Well, you know, put some Dr. Bush roots in. You put some things to recycle, education elimination, that's your draw cards. You you get some fun things to to play. And I still have a decent amount of the most aggressive questers and drawlers I could find in there. Roy: Well, another name I another name I'd actually bank for the deck is basically I would call it Mickey and Minnie's compost heap 'cause that's what it feels like. No, because you're not wasting any any re resources whatsoever. Everything's goes back into the cycle. It's like, all right, this is gone. No, it's it's ink now. I'm like, it's more power for me on the back end. Christopher: I do circle of life better than Amber decks. Take that! Roy: There you go. There you go. Christopher: Well, I think that we really nailed this League Knight this week. And I cannot wait to talk about maybe some of those things coming out of Asia might point us in a new direction of ways to play decks. We'll see. Wait for some some postings on CCQ, get some more deck analysis going, and see how the the meta goes from there. We have got a little something here. One of my last Wilds Unknown packs. if you wanna go ahead and open the Attack of the Vine Roy, I'll love to see what you get. Roy: Alright, let me do the honors. Also as a reminder, as we're opening these packs though, in the comments below, let us know what decks you're building or what strategy you're you're plotting against though. We'd like to know. Okay, let's go. Here we go. opening Christopher: Open up a cold one. Roy: up a cold one. Okay. Starting from the top. Christopher: That is a I love that artwork for Startle. It Roy: Yeah. Christopher: is you know, jumping on a vine creature, you know, just really spooked. It's a fun card. Not good, but fun. yep. I just put the last of those, finished up my plague set of him. you maybe you want to do some detectives. You got that pinging du duckwing duck. Darkwing duck. King Roy: Yeah. King Louis. Christopher: Louie. Roy: Yeah. It's my Christopher: Whoopoo. Roy: boy, Winnie. Christopher: Rapunzel? Roy: Lumpy? Christopher: Lumpy. Really good card. Roy: Yeah, Lumpy's great. Christopher: Evil Rabbit, doctor Hamps or I guess he's a ham I don't know. Darkwing character. Hey Sun ye turning red Roy: Yeah. Christopher: Cod and copper. Great. Roy: Yeah. We got the alpha. Christopher: Alpha Park park park park park. Roy: And we got Christopher: Ooh, shiny buzz and Woody. Nice. That is a Roy: Holy jeez. Christopher: great shiny. Awesome. Well, Roy: Please. Christopher: I guess you have to play Amber Emerald now because that is a beautiful, beautiful card. Roy: I'm putting that to sleeve though. Christopher: yeah, yeah. I mean it nice shiny like that. that is absolutely great and exciting to see played as well. Roy: See, I'm bushy. I dragons heel perfect bits though for my for my penny to leave. Christopher: that is nice. Alright now Roy: Right. Christopher: for my wilds unknown I have Preston Hoth Withorn Roy: With more. Christopher: Whitmore. Young Mac Macintosh. Roy: Quinn. Alma magical. Yeah it's. Juliette Magical? Salvage operation roller bob Isabella, magical. Has a lot of I know. Metamorphosis? Christopher: Isabella Yeah a lot of magicals this deck speaking of magicals this deck Ooh robot card Roy: Yep, the island of Namas. Christopher: And my shiny of the day is Audrey. Roy: Foyle Audrey Ramirez. Nice. Boil Woody and Buzz though. Look Christopher: Thank you everyone. Roy: at that. Christopher: Nah, look at that foil. You can see your reflection. I can see my reflection from that. Roy: Right. Christopher: Through the camera. Roy: Love it. It's not iconic though, but I'll take it. Christopher: Hey, so great for your collection. It's not not too too exciting to have to to worry about selling it. It's like nope, this is just good enough for me to to keep and hold around. Roy: Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Christopher: Well thank you very much, Roy, for helping me this week with League Knight. Roy: Thank you Chris for hosting though. And to all of our viewers and listeners, please like and subscribe and let us know once again, what decks are you looking to build into into what meta? Christopher: Thank you and good night. Roy: Good night.