Amethyst/Emerald discard was one of my favorite decks to play during the Rise of the Floodborn season, especially early on before people really knew how to handle them. One of the reasons why discard decks were so strong, however, was due to the dominance of the control deck. However, with a more varied group of decks to choose from, discard decks have a different place in the current Disney Lorcana meta. Still, the cards that came out in Into the Inklands have only made this deck stronger in its own rite.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use this discard deck to shut down your opponent’s hand and win the race to 20 lore.

*Updated February 29, 2024 with new cards from Into the Inklands.

Disney Lorcana Emerald/Amethyst Discard Deck List

Get the deck via TCGplayer

4 De Vil Manor - Cruella's Estate
4 Kit Cloudkicker - Tough Guy
3 Friar Tuck - Priest Of Nottingham
4 Flynn Rider - His Own Biggest Fan
4 Sudden Chill
4 Flynn Rider - Charming Rogue
4 Madam Mim - Snake
4 Merlin - Goat
4 Cursed Merfolk - Ursula's Handiwork
4 Ursula - Deceiver
3 Lucifer - Cunning Cat
4 Daisy Duck - Secret Agent
4 Hypnotize
4 Madam Mim - Fox
2 Arthur - Wizard's Apprentice
4 Prince John - Greediest of All

Emerald/Amethyst Deck – Basic Strategy

Luckily, Into the Inklands has brought a powerful new card into the Emerald Ink fold, and that is Cursed Merfolk. Cursed Merfolk should be a staple in any discard deck. It’s two lore value and ability that forces your opponent to discard a card make it a discard deck’s dream. And in this Ink combination, you can easily bounce Cursed Merfolk back into the hand and start questing again soon thanks to both Madam Mim – Snake and Fox.

This deck has a ton of bounce-able cards

What kinds of cards are the best to use in a bounce deck? Well, cards that have abilities that activate when they come into play. Thanks to Into the Inklands, this deck is incredibly bounce-able. Sure, you can bounce your Cursed Merfolk to protect it and continue questing for lore, but that’s hardly the only strategy your Madam Mim cards are useful for. You can also gain benefits from bouncing:

Kit Cloudkicker to easily deal with low strength characters and counter aggro decks.
Ursula Deceiver to quickly remove song cards from your opponent’s hand.
Merlin – Goat to gain lore.
Friar Tuck to discard more cards when your opponent has card advantage.
Lucifer to decimate your opponent’s hand.

Additionally, this deck runs two copies of the handy Arthur – Wizard’s Apprentice card. Not only does this help you bounce cards into your hand that you can then use again, it also helps you gain incremental lore and help you race to the finish line.

Prince John remains your core card

While plenty of effective new cards have come through to bolster Emerald’s discard capabilities, Prince John – Greediest of All remains the core card for this deck, enabling you to gain a massive card advantage by allowing you to draw cards every time your opponent discards them.

Because Prince John is so vital to your strategy, you of course won’t want to use him to quest for lore willy nilly. His ward ability keeps him in play and prevents him from being chosen. Combine that with this deck’s excellent song discarding capabilities and it’s likely he will stay in the game as long as he remains readied.

As soon as you can get Prince John into play the better, so look to start the game with him in your hand during your Mulligen and play him on turn three if possible.

Emerald/Amethyst Deck – Key Card

Flynn Rider – Charming Rogue

Shop on TCGplayer

Flynn Rider – His Own Biggest Fan is the star of this Floodborn deck. His strength largely rests in his absurd lore value for a shift 2 character. Of course, you’ll need to make sure your opponent doesn’t have any cards in hand before you can start racking up your questing points. But Flynn Rider is this deck’s main end game, and the ideal card to play to go for the win once you have gained that valuable card advantage.

Actions and Songs support your discard strategy

When playing this deck, it’s improtant to remember that you aren’t battling so much against your opponent’s characters or locations – you’re battling with their hand. And you realistically need to clear their hand out as early as possible to ensure a win.

The reason for this is that if your opponent has enough time to build up their board with strong characters or locations, you will start to lose the advantage and it will be hard to win. After all, your deck is limited in the card removal sphere, instead going hard into the discard strategy.

While the majority of your most powerful discard abilities come from your characters, this deck also runs two powerful song/action cards that also help. These are Sudden Chill and Hypnotize. Each has different strengths. While Sudden Chill simply discards a card, the fact that it can be sung is a strong advantage. Meanwhile, Hypnotize lets you draw two extra cards when combined with Prince John while discarding one of your opponent’s cards. This can quickly bolster your hand while diminishing your opponent’s.

Emerald/Amethyst Discard Deck Weaknesses

As cool and fun as this deck inarguably is to play, it’s got some downsides to it. The biggest weakness you’ll come across is the fact that neither Emerald nor Amethyst have body guard characters available to them. So while this ink combination might give you absurd questing ability, your questers will be considerably vulnerable early on in the game, causing you to think twice about when to quest, and when not to.

The other glaring weakness is that this deck has limited board clearing so it can fair poorly against decks that play a lot of low level characters in hopes of just overwhelming you.

That being said, this deck has a lot going for it, with the capability of reducing your opponent’s most vital resource – the cards in their hands – to a pile of rubble while questing for an incredible amount of lore each turn.

How much does it cost to build the Emerald/Amethyst discard deck?

This deck is very powerful especially when you consider its low cost. Unlike most competitive Lorcana decks that can be quite expensive to build, right now this deck costs you less than $50, making it an idea deck for Lorcana players looking to have fun and win matches on a budget.

Featured