Emerald Steel Discard Deck Guide

After building its reputation during the second half of the Into the Inklands metagame, Emerald Steel gained some new cards to play with.

First, 004-070 has become one of the most played cards in the game. Even if the entire environment has adapted to it, and its relatively weak body allows the opponent to remove it quite often, the pressure this card puts at the moment it hits the board is unmatched.
Then, we have the new song 004-097, providing the deck with a removal for larger threats, something the deck struggled with in the past. It could already send those cards back in hand with 001-095, but adding a discard effect, and making the card inkable was well worth the extra 2-cost.
Last, we have the Pegasus synergy, likely the least impactful of the new additions. However, gaining lore was something the deck could struggles with, so 004-083 giving you a full board of elusive characters is a big help in that regard.

Overall, the recipe is still the same for Emerald Steel, but the ingredients are now top quality.

Decklist & Card Breakdown

Key Synergies

Emerald Steel is more based around disrupting the opponent's synergies with the discard mechanic, rather than pushing for its own agenda. However, we have a few cards we want to maximize in order to control the flow of cards in both player's hand:

• 003-091 plus any of your cheap songs will give you a great discard (001-098), draw potential (002-199) or a solid removal (002-201) as you get the effect twice.

• 002-089 is the main draw engine for this deck, meaning you might want to keep your discards for once it is in play. 004-070 is another draw engine, but it is heavily targeted in the current metagame, so we tend to try to play it once we have 001-015 in play, to guarantee a discard at the very least.

• Shifting either 004-083 or 003-190 can be for tempo, but also to sing 004-097. Then, you sometimes might want to hold the shift, let your opponent play their big card, and only then pull the trigger instead of getting minimal value from your 5-cost.

What to Ink?

Because our curve with this deck is very low, every card can feel playable soon, which sometimes makes it difficult to know what to ink. The key to choose is to know which phase of the game you are in, either the disruptive phase, meaning your discard and songs are the key, or looking to gain some lore, which then emphasizes on characters more.

You probably want to ink 002-073 early in the match, as we can't shift into this one.001-098 isn't very useful once you emptied your opponent's hand already, and 003-196 is mostly included for extra help at removing an opposing 004-070, so can be inked if you don't foresee any valuable target. The same logic applies to 002-201, especially if you can't get multiple characters in play to bolster the ability.

Outside this consideration, the other cards to ink will be very situation based. 003-090 is good to know the opponent's hand but you don't need multiple copies once you saw your opponent didn't have songs in hand. 001-015 requires you to have Floodborn characters to play, as it is otherwise a fairly weak card. 003-091 can be inked if your foresee your opponent easily removing it before you can use it to sing, or have no songs in hand nor would benefit a ton from top decking one.

Last, 004-084 and 003-189 are great early in the match to setup for our shifts, but can be inked later on as they will have very little impact.

Alternate Cards to Consider

The most flexible part of the deck so far are the draw cards, which happen to also be uninkables. We have twelve of those and there is certainly room to adapt and find a couple of slots if we wanted to include other cards.
001-015 as well, could be enough with only three copies, but being inkable, there is no downside to running four. Last, if you were playing in a very control oriented metagame, you could remove some copies of 002-201 or 003-196, but removing the opposing 004-070 is absolutely key against other Emerald decks.

Robin Hood - Capable Fighter

Another shift target for 003-190, but a worse one due to being uninkable. It can also help if you expect certain cards with 1 willpower to be popular, such as 001-015.

Flynn Rider - Charming Rogue

This one is cut to include 001-015 instead. Yet, if you felt like the floodborn synergy wouldn't be efficient enough, you can go back to a less synergistic build.

Donald Duck - Perfect Gentleman

A Floodborn character which also synergises with 004-070 as we get a card when our opponent draws, there is a lot to like about this one. I could see it replace 002-173 to get a 4-cost in the mix.

Grab Your Sword

Another 5-cost song we could sing with our bigger cards, and a nice effect against tempo oriented decks. It is not inkable, but that's about the only downside if you face a lot of cheap characters based decks.

I Find'Em - I Flatten'Em

Just a solid tech card against items heavy decks such as Sapphire, and you can ink it against other decks.

How to Play

Your primary goal with this deck is to disrupt your opponent's play pattern as much as possible, ultimately limiting them to their card drawn every turn. In this scenario, ramp-oriented decks can't ink as they would like to, while fast-paced decks cannot develop the required tempo to pressure you.

There are two areas we need to control to create the perfect situation: their hand and their board.

Most of the time, especially against a slower build, we will start with their hand, as we have plenty of characters we can summon to force our opponent into discarding something. 003-070, 001-015, and 003-090 are our go-to trio for early discards. They will get you behind on the board as they are very weak in challenges, but this isn't our goal yet. As for 003-090, she reveals their whole hand to us in addition to removing a song, plus, we can use it to sing 001-098 if they are already running low on cards.

Limiting their hand early will make our future plays much safer, particularly 003-091 or 004-070, which we want to keep on board at least until the next turn. Sing 002-201 or 002-199 to remove opposing characters, and catch up on tempo once you limited the resources in their hand.

Also, aggressively emptying our opponent's hand will stop them from inking their cards, which can completely block certain decks, such as Ruby control builds, which often require six ink to play most cards.

Alongside those discard elements, we also have a couple of cards to take care of the board. 003-190 is our best character in that regard, especially if we can shift it as early as turn three. We can also shift into 004-083 but it is much weaker to challenge opposing characters. Then, you would use this shift to sing 004-097 early, or 001-198 if you play it.

No matter which route you take, you often will be fairly weak on turn one and two, as we don't have anything strong to challenge apart for

. However, we have plenty of possibilities from turn three and on, so we need to keep this important timing in mind, as this is when we focus on the board, and limit what our opponent built.
It is this mix of attacking their hand and their board which allows you to suffocate your opponent, and get them in a difficult position, as they barely have a choice what to play every turn.

Mulligan

Both 003-090 and 003-091 are cards I would always keep, as you can ink them if you get multiple copies. Even against a color combination typically not running any song, seeing all their hand early on is insane value.

003-070 is good against slow opponents, as we force them to either let us gain lore early, or lose some cards to remove our characters. On the other hand, 003-189 and 003-190 will serve to keep an aggressive opponent in check, limiting their lore gain or ability to sing multiple times in the early stages of the match. Both are inkable so you don't risk much keeping them.

, and are cards we want, but not necessarily early in the match. The 2-cost can be kept as you can ink it if needed. As for the other two, I would probably only keep them with a great hand already, or against a slow opponent.

, and are all keeps if you expect important targets to be around early. Otherwise, you could keep one of the inkable just in case, but is likely only kept with 003-091 already in hand. Plus, you don't want to keep songs against another Emerald deck, able to discard them, meaning is more valuable in this match-up.

is a fine keep as it can be inked, but considering I'm rarely looking to shift early, I tend to favor the other 1-cost cards.

Weaknesses to Be Aware Of

The worst thing that can happen to Emerald Steel is to fall behind on the board and being forced to play control early on. Indeed, we have very limited control tools. Unless 003-091 is already on the board, ready to sing 002-201 or

, we can't deal with much. In that scenario, the best route might be to aggressively discard our opponent's cards and hope they run out of steam before they can win the game.
is the card which can get us out of trouble in this scenario, challenging opposing characters while gaining us a bit of lore. With this in mind, I will rarely put at risk if I know I need to shift soon.

Against decks with a lot of draw potential, certain draws can refurnish their hand (001-195 is a prime example) so we need to build the lead as soon as their hand doesn't allow them to keep up with our development.

The other weakness of this deck is the relatively weak body of our units, which are clearly in the deck because of their ability. As such, against an opponent you know runs Rush characters, be careful when singing or questing with your cards. The Amethyst Bounce package is the big one to have in mind, but Ruby decks in general will play 001-114 at the very least.

is a great workaround to this problem, giving a turn to lore without worrying about being challenged. However, it only functions if we built a lead already, and planned on focusing on the lore gain.

Closing Words

Compared to disruptive, discard based archetypes I have played in other card games, Emerald/Steel has scary potential. Indeed, in a game where you basically use two cards per turn through inking and the one you play, there already is a need for a lot of card draw. If you start discarding your hand in addition to the game requirements, running out of cards by turn four or five isn't so difficult to imagine.

This is exactly what Emerald/Steel discard tries to do, and the consistency it showed so far is nothing short of impressive. After becoming a powerhouse in Set 3, we can clearly see the impact of the discard package on the current metagame, where the best performing decks use a low curve, tempo oriented strategy to quickly get started, instead of expensive cards we could see in the past.

I hope this guide was helpful in mastering Emerald Steel. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out through my Twitter page.

Good Game Everyone!