Table of Contents
If you watch various contents around Ruby Sapphire, you can see a lot of different opinions about the deck. Some think the build is just too good not to be a constant consideration for the next tournament, while others will tell you the metagame is too agressive for the deck to perform.
Recently, Ruby Sapphire won the biggest Lorcana tournament to date, bringing home the title from the $10,000 charity event hosted by TheaBeasty under the piloting of Christoffer Andersen. With that huge win, it is hard to bet against the deck, no matter what the metagame looks like. Indeed, if you expect a lot of tempo oriented deck, you can build more around the Ruby cards, while the Sapphire tools will edge your control, value-oriented match-ups.
Decklist & Card Breakdown
Key Synergies
The heart of this deck is the synergy between 001-159 and 003-165, representing the lore engine for the Ruby Sapphire deck. Together, and with some items in play, you can win the game in a couple of turns, gaining eight to ten lore per turn.
Ideally, the way to do it is to play 001-159 with eight ink, which can happen quite fast with the ramp ability of this deck. Then, you can play 003-165 on nine ink, and gain lore with both cards based on how many items you have in play.
With this goal in mind, most of the match will be built around finding the perfect opportunity to develop both cards, or reach enough ink in order to play both in the same turn. In order to get there, you will ramp with 001-164 or 001-168 and search through your deck to find your key cards (003-142, 002-149, 002-147).
The hardest part of this deck's game plan is controlling the opposing development, as drawing, ramping or playing our key cards will require most, if not all, of our ink. Then, always ponder whether you just focus on yourself, or limit how much room you are giving your opponent to progress their synergies.
What to Ink?
Red cards represent our control tools, while the blue part of the deck helps us ramp, draw and gain lore. As such, you will typically ink one or the other color based on your opponent.
If you are against another slow, late-game based deck, you will prioritize the red cards in your ink, as the game will very likely turn into a race to the finish line. On the other hand, if your opponent is an aggressive build, you want to ink your blue cards, which you probably won't have time to play anyway.
Keep in mind, 001-168 allows to ink any card, so you can apply that logic to your uninkable cards as well.
Alternate Builds
If you see little aggressive decks, this variant of Ruby Sapphire from Hal Brady is tailored to dominate the control match-ups. In there, we can see extra ways to gain some lore with Belle - Strange but Special or more ramp (001-146, 003-164).
I feel like this is a bit too much for my preferred play style with Ruby Sapphire, but there are some nice ideas in there if you anticipate a control based metagame in your next tournament.
Alternate Cards to Consider
Belle - Strange but Special
A fairly easy card to get to five lore in this deck, as 10 ink can come fairly fast, Belle represents extra copies of 001-159 in the deck. It will typically replace 003-142 for more lore potential, but a little less draw.
Lady Tremaine - Imperious Queen
Another removal option, particularly effective against other control decks with little characters on their board. It is the removal card I tend to cut whenever I need space for something else. However, you could also consider removing 001-147 instead, or run fewer copies of 001-128 to include this one.
Mickey Mouse - Detective
Another ramp tool, which often gets cuts because of its weak body. Consider it a mix of a 1-cost and 001-164 in one card, except you can't ink it.
McDuck Manor - Scrooge's Mansion
Nine damage can be a lot for the opponent to deal, which makes the location great against another slow opponent to get ahead in the lore count. However, with location removal or 001-212 in most lists, plus the fact we tend to have no way of protecting it, we typically would rather advance our ink or draw rather than spend four to gain two to four lore.
Gramma Tala - Storyteller
If you believe ramp is the way to go, and 002-119 isn't that important against agressive match-ups, you could run this card instead. I like to run it when I want to include one more card in my deck, as three of those can justify running only three copies of 001-164. Against other deck based on 003-165 for example, I would make that switch so I could get another copy of 002-152 in the mix.
How to Play
Except if you are against an aggressive opponent, which will force you to take care of their characters, this deck is all about ramping and drawing cards to find its key cards. Early on, gaining ink will be clutch, while drawing is always a good use of our ink as well, as we ideally aim to get to nine as fast as possible, but six is our first important checkpoint. There, we have our first big cards available, with 003-112 to control or 002-147 for some targeted draw.
With seven ink, we can get a 4-cost plus 001-168 in play for value, set our 003-165 or use 001-128 to reset the board. Once we reach eight inks, we can develop 001-159 and need to assess how likely it is for it to be removed before we can quest with it.
In a perfect world, we aim to get five items on the board, one of them being 003-165 in order to gain 20 lore over two turns. If we managed to get some lore during the course of the match with 002-147 or 001-147, you could aim to finish in one turn, either with two 003-165 or getting to seven items. While items are a key part of your win condition, 001-159 will pick them back up from your discard. As such, don't refrain from using them to draw with 002-149 or even banish a 002-169 to heal an important character during the course of the match.
If your opponent is a fast-paced deck, you likely won't be able to ramp as you'd like. Spending turn three to develop 001-168 isn't bad, as getting to 001-128 quickly is a great way to handle their development. However, you might want to prioritize characters in order to challenge theirs rather than ramping with 001-164 in those match-ups. 002-119 and 003-142 are great to limit their development until 001-114 and the bigger cards can come in to stabilize the situation.
Key Turns
While it might not seem so, the most critical turns are the early ones, from two to five approximately, when you need to ramp as much as possible while keeping your opponent at bay. Indeed, you have every required tool to dominate a late game battle, so it is key to not fall too far behind early on while still advancing your win condition.
The biggest decision during this period of time is whether to use 001-164 or develop tempo instead. Most of the time, I like to use it, especially if I have two 002-119 to catch back up on the board. Otherwise, considering we don't have a strong three cost in the deck, the scenarios to play 002-119 instead of 001-164 are very specific, even against aggressive opponents :
- Against Steel decks, you would rather skip turn three and play 001-168 to ink your big cards, as they will discard your hand before you can play those anyway. Then, it is more beneficial to lose tempo for your item rather than 001-164.
- You have 002-152 and 003-142 or 002-149 with 002-169 played on turn one to follow up.
- You have 003-132 and 001-114 to use it for free afterward, alongside a 4-cost to fill your curve.
Once you reach seven ink, you have plenty of possibilities to handle the board, so getting there safely is the most important part of the deck.
Mulligan
I would always keep these three, as they are cheap, inkable and advance either our ramp or draw early on. 002-149 is probably a keep too, but you might not want it if you had no 002-169 in hand already. Without 002-169, you can keep 001-161 as turn one option, while you can always ink it if you need to.
Against aggressive match-ups, you want to keep 002-119 and 001-114 as well. I tend to keep 001-128 against fast opponent such as Emerald or Amber decks. However, as you expect Steel to play 001-195, you might not want to keep cards you won't have time to play before they change your hand.
Long Term Planning
We discussed how staying afloat is very important to be able to focus on setting up our huge lore gain a lot already, so let's talk about that 001-159 plus 003-165 win condition.
There are three big elements we need to anticipate going into our big lore turns:
Can our opponent banish 001-159 before we can quest with it ? Can they remove 003-165 if we set it early ?
Typically, we would summon our character with eight ink and then play 003-165 and use it with nine. Yet, if you anticipate 001-159 won't have time to quest, you might as well just set 003-165 on the board before, so you at least gain that lore.
The opposite is also true if you know your opponent has access to item removal, such as 002-152 we play in the deck. Then, you don't want to pay seven to just get it removed, and would rather develop characters to quest with.
In the mirror match, the opponent could be able to remove both, so the plan might be to wait until you get to 15 ink and play both at the same time if you can't find other copies of your key cards. Maybe even 17 to get use 003-165.
How many items do we have in play compared to how many we need ?
If you have no lore, you would need nine items for the one turn win, or seven if you had two 003-165. You could also aim to gain ten lore twice, meaning you need four items, but two copies of 001-159.
For every two lore you gained during the match, you need one less items in play (9 items to gain 18, 8 for 16…)
Can we gain lore another way to ease up our combo ?
002-147 gains three lore while 001-147 and 001-113 gain two. It isn't a ton, and this list only runs three of 002-147 but it can alleviate the need to get eight or nine items on the board at once.
I tend to aim to gain six lore during the course of the match, as 14 is a reasonable number to gain over a single turn, representing six items on the board. Plus, gaining lore through the course of the match alleviate the risk of 002-149 costing us some lore when we banish an item to draw.
If the meta was mostly control decks, I would definitely run four copies of Gaston, or even maybe get 001-214 instead of 002-152 to gain lore more reliably.
Weaknesses to Be Aware Of
Greed is your biggest enemy with this deck, especially against a Steel deck with 001-147 available. No matter if it is to ramp against another control oriented opponent, or to limit your opponent's development, you want to use your cards. Not only it will make it much easier to control your opponent's actions, the deck has enough draw to stay afloat, while it makes Steel deck good match-ups in the process.
Emerald is the color you probably want to dodge the most, as the discard can quickly be very annoying with this deck. This makes the Emerald Steel deck, which doesn't run 001-147, or Amethyst Emerald Tempo problematic opponents. In these match-ups, our hand can melt quickly, and using 001-168 becomes almost impossible for lack of cards. Then, we want to ramp and get to our 001-114 or 001-128 as fast as possible to get the board under control.
Closing Words
This kind of ramp play style isn't exactly my jam to be honest, but I had some fun playing the deck to write this guide. I expected the gameplay to be a little dull, just drawing and ramping until I could get my big lore combo online. However, even if it is a bit like this against against control decks, the midrange match-ups are very interesting to play, and the play style needs to be adapted to each other color.
Indeed, instead of the highway to a huge lore gain I anticipated, Ruby Sapphire is more of a bumpy road with a clear finish line, and it is up to the pilot to find the safest way to make your combo happen.
I hope this guide was helpful in mastering Ruby Sapphire. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out through my Twitter page.
Good Game Everyone!
