I’ve been playing different variations of the Emerald/Steel damage decks since Rise of the Floodborn when The Beast – Relentless came out. That being said, and thanks largely to Shimmering Skies, the deck is now better than ever.

This is probably one of the most detailed deck guides I've put together for Lorcana to date. It highlights today's ride to victory on the shoulders of my homebrewed Robin Hood Shift deck.

Read this article and join me on this quest to 20 lore (and first place, undefeated) as I cover some of the matchups I faced in that tournament, and take a deeper look at why consistency sometimes is key in Lorcana deck building.

2 Simba - Son of Mufasa
3 Pete - Games Referee
3 Beast - Relentless
4 A Whole New World
4 Robin Hood - Archery Contestant
4 Robin Hood - Sneaky Sleuth
4 Grab Your Sword
4 Robin Hood - Beloved Outlaw
4 Strength of a Raging Fire
4 Tinker Bell - Giant Fairy
3 Cursed Merfolk - Ursula's Handiwork
4 Morph - Space Goo
4 Robin Hood - Champion of Sherwood
4 Ursula - Deceiver
3 Donald Duck - Perfect Gentleman
2 Chief Bogo - Respected Officer
4 Let the Storm Rage On

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The Robin Hood Shift Deck is aptly name as it primarily focuses on using your two Robin Hood Floodborn characters to Shift early in the game and start dominating the board and the hand via a range of powerful songs.

This deck is aimed to be as consistent as possible, running 12 total shift targets and eight total shifting Characters that work for those targets, making it more likely than not you will get the cards you need to get this deck up and running when you play.

Emerald/Steel Robin Hood deck Mulligan Guide

This deck’s core strategy is pretty straightforward and the mulligan is usually relatively easy. Really, you just need two key cards to get the machine rolling, and those are a one or two cost Robin Hood and a five cost Robin Hood Floodborn character.

You’re looking to shift your Robin Hood on turn three every time. Doing this won’t guarantee victory by any means, but it will certainly help you on your way to greatness.

Let’s look at an example of an ideal curve for this deck below.

Turn one: Robin Hood
Turn two: Morph
Turn three: Shift Robin Hood and sing Whole New World

Beyond that, let’s talk about some specific matchups and how you can tailor your mulligan to match it perfectly.

Against aggro

If you are playing against aggro, it’s paramount that you have a powerful song to wipe low will power characters. Usually the best one here is Grab Your Sword. Assuming your opponent isn’t running an Emerald deck with Ursula, you can include this song in your hand from the mulligan.

Against Steel decks

If you are playing against another Steel deck, the most important thing here is to have two shift targets in play. You have a lot of options here in this deck thanks to the Robin Hoods and Morphs but in the mulligan look to have two shift targets straightaway. This way if your opponent takes one of them out with a song, you won’t be dead in the water. This deck’s primary weakness is the off-chance you don’t hit the Shift turn three.

Against Ruby/Sapphire and Amethyst

In this matchup, I would strongly recommend holding onto a Whole New World if you can. The only downside of this is if you happen to draw another one you will have to discard it when you sing it. Still, it’s a vital card to win this matchup against both of these decks. In an ideal scenario, you will be using A Whole New World throughout in order to deplete your opponent of their resources and, in some cases, even managing to deck them out.

Mulligan example

I ran an example mulligan simulation on Dreamborn to help you get an idea of what a typical Mulligan will look like and how to think your way through it.

Opening hand

In this hand, I clearly have a lot of the pieces I need to get things moving in the right direction. I have a one-cost Robin Hood. However, depending on what deck you are playing against, that might not be enough to ensure a successful Shift. Luckly, I also have a two-cost Robin Hood. This means I can play a one cost Robin-Hood and a two-cost and almost ensure I shift into a five-cost Robin Hood.

Additionally I have several powerful songs in this hand. Because I already have the majority of what I need, I’ll keep one of the songs so that when I shift, I can use it right away. I’ll choose Whole New World for this example, as most matchups that will be the best play.

Starting Hand

After mulliganing three cards and keeping four, you can see my hand is ideally set up with plenty of cards to Ink, as well as the core cards to my deck’s strategy.

Robin Hood Damage Deck – Key Characters

After reading the Mulligan guide, you probably have something of an idea for what cards are going to be the strongest in this deck. Let’s look at what some of your strongest card interactions are and how you can use them to dominate the board.

One of the best reasons to play this deck rests in the synergy between key cards and the art of dealing damage. Damage is beneficial to you of course because it keeps your opponent’s board softened up or even cleared. But why not also gain a little bit of lore while you’re going to the trouble of doing all that damage?

Floodborn Robin Hoods

Luckily Shimmering Skies gave us another three-Shift Robin Hood in the form of Robin Hood – Sneaky Sleuth. When I first thought this card, although I thought it was cool I didn’t think it would be all that great. While it’s not nearly as strong as Champion of Sherwood (that card has a range of handy abilities and powerful stats that make it superior), it can work really well in this deck when you can’t find the Champion.

For example, one combo that can be really cool to pull off is shifting Sneaky Sleuth when you have Bogo in play. This quickly pings damage onto foes, rapidly increasing the lore value for this card.

While the main reason you have Sneaky Sleuth in this deck is because he’s a Robin Hood you can shift for three, his Clever Plan ability is also quite helpful in the right circumstances.

Beast – Relentless

Although Beast has largely fallen out of the meta at this point, I’ve always included him in my Emerald/Steel damage deck because of how deadly that Second Wind ability is. Sure, it’s not reliable enough of a combo to build an entire deck strategy around, but it certainly makes Beast Relentless a terrifying addition to this deck’s strategy.

As you dish out plenty of damage via Bogo and Tinker Bell, challenges, and your bevy of Songs, you can easily use Beast to strategically take out foes via singing songs that dish out damage and then readying to do it all over again, or run away with the game sometimes even in a single turn via questing, damaging, readying, and questing again.

Tinker Belle – Giant Fairy

Last but not least, and hailing from all the way back in The First Chapter, we have Tinker Bell. She’s arguably your strongest damage spreader, dishing out damage when she is played, and then later when she banishes characters. If you manage to play her when Bogo is on the field, you dish out an impressive two damage just from that card interaction alone, making her a great card for clearing your opponent’s board.

That damage can then be upped via Grab Your Sword or just using Tinker Bell to attack and spread damage via her Puny Pirate ability, assuming she’s been shifted via Morph.

Robin Hood – Archery Contestant

Last but not least in the deal-damage-gain-lore department we have Robin Hood. Robin Hood is really great at gaining you incremental lore kind of the way Merlin Goat does. All you need is one damaged opposing character in play and you will gain lore just from playing him. I’ve won many games so far from this incredibly handy ability.

In general you’ll want to avoid playing this particular Robin Hood early on or even Inking him as he can be very helpful to close out a game when you play several at once. However, if you don’t manage to get a Morph off your mulligan, Archery Contestant can be used as a Shift target for your Floodborn Robin Hood’s, ensuring a successful Shift as mentioned above.

Supporting Characters

While the cards above are your most vital characters, there are also several supporting characters that are important in this deck. The one I’ll mention first is Chief Bogo, simply because of his interaction with Floodborn Characters.

Chief Bogo

While you won’t get this effect off every game, when you get a good set up going, Bogo can be instrumental in spreading damage passively just from playing Floodborn characters.

This deck runs plenty of Floodborn characters, making including him something of a no brainer. Bogo is not essential to this deck’s strategy, however, as you have plenty of easier ways to dish out damage. But think of him as a nice supporting character to help get more bang for your buck as the flow of your game allows.

Donald Duck

Lastly, Donald Duck is a character I’ve been using in my Emerald decks for a while because of how handy his draw ability is paired with the fact he’s a Floodborn. That means he interacts with Bogo, and in a tight spot you can shift him (although it’s better not to). Meanwhile, rain or shine he will enable you to draw an extra card at the start of your turn with one important string attached: your opponent gets to draw a card, too.

That might sound bad but in reality it means allowing you to take advantage of that card first. Oftentimes you will be forcing your opponent to discard their bonus card via Whole New World anyways, so it’s not as big of a draw back as you’d think.

Emerald/Steel Damage Ping deck – techs

Apart from this core lineup, this deck list also runs two cards that lie outside the typical realm of dealing damage and gaining lore.

Those cards are Pete and Simba, and both are helpful in defending against other decks. Pete will block your opponent from playing actions.

Meanwhile, Simba is necessary to eliminate tricky items or keep your opponent from getting too far ahead with locations.

You also have Ursula Deceiver to eliminate dangerous songs.

Cursed Merfolk

Also, you could consider Cursed Merfolk as something of a tech in this deck. While not fundamental to the Robin Hood Shift strategy, I’ve found that including it in my deck helps increase my win rates. The reason is simple, really: in games that come down to one or two lore differences, getting some added questing in with Cursed Merfolk can mean the difference between winning and losing.

It’s low cost makes it easy to put on the board in addition to one of your other more vital characters, and its ability that forces your opponent to discard a card helps weaken – especially in the early game.

The last point on how Cursed Merfolk can help you is as a counter to decks that are either slow or that otherwise outpace you. For example, I’ve used Cursed Merfolk to help me keep pace with heavily aggro decks, making closing the game in time easier. It can also be an effective strategy to use against control-heavy decks like Ruby Sapphire, giving you some easy lore gaining power after a Be Prepared is dropped.

Why these songs?

The song choices for this deck were relatively easy, and also lean heavily into consistency as that’s what the most compelling selling point for this deck is. That means each song is included four times, maximizing odds you can reliably find them each game.

First of all, Let the Storm Rage On fits this deck like a glove, letting you draw cards while dishing out damage. As you don’t always need to outright banish characters to use a lot of your effects, damaging is simply enough, and that extra card can be a game changer.

Strength of a Raging Fire is actually something of a compromise choice for this deck. Ideally you would run And Along Came Zeus. However, that’s an Uninkable card and this deck already runs plenty of Uninkables as it is, making Strength of a Raging Fire the more economical choice.

A Whole New World is probably your single strongest song, helping you stay in control of your opponent’s hand while ensuring yours is always filled, and Grab Your Sword works really well with the overarching damage spread of this deck, subverting Wards and punishing aggro.

When you combine Grab Your Sword with combos like Tinker Bell and Bogo, you can often wipe your opponent’s entire board.

The tournament and matchups

After spending time theorizing about this deck, testing it with friends, and finally getting the final product bundled up and ready to go, I had the chance to compete in a local tournament today with some strong players and many friends.

At the tournament’s end, me and my Robin Hood Shift Deck went undefeated. Here are some of the decks I faced and how I handled them, as well as some nifty pictures from the event.

Amber/Emerald Hyper Aggro

All of my matches at this tournament were tough, and one against a guy who weirdly closely resembled Flynn Rider (while also running him in his deck) definitely pushed me to my limits.

His deck was heavily focused on aggressive cards designed to quickly race to twenty lore while denying you of any lore yourself.

He achieved this largely through a combination of Daisy Duck, Lyle from Into the Inklands, and a well played Rapunzel’s Tower.

Not for the first time my choice not to run And Along Came Zeus came back to haunt me a little as Grab Your Sword felt weak against Daisy’s four will power. Realistically, however, the even damage spread to all characters was life saving in this matchup as it at least prevented him from running away with characters he amassed like Cursed Merfolk and Flyn Rider.

The toughest play he had was the Rapunzel’s Tower defense. Luckily, I pulled a Simba just in time and was able to banish it and an already badly damaged daisy along with it.

Still, it came down to the wire at the end and I was able to just barely close it out by playing a Robin Hood Archery Contestant and gaining the final lore I needed to win.

Emerald/Steel

This match was actually my final one.

Although we were running the same Ink combination, our decks were largely different with the main commonality being we both ran the one-cost Robin Hood and five-cost Champion of Sherwood.

Once I saw the one-cost Robin Hood come out, I knew how vital it was to get rid of it before he could shift and match my Robin Hood’s board supremacy.

The first round of this match was largely just me dominating the board and saving a strategic Whole New World play for when whatever he would draw wouldn’t help him much.

In our second game, I honestly though I was going to lose because we were both top decking and he had the dominant character on the board. However, I was able to pull off the win via Chief Bogo and Tinker Bell. This board clear was enough to help me seal the deal, when combined with an early game head start on the lore race.

Amber/Steel Aggro

Finally, another very strong challenging match was against the Amber/Steel aggro deck. This one also gave me a run for my money and the biggest issue again was the Daisy Duck who I couldn’t take out with Grab Your Sword. Ultimately, she wasn’t the biggest issue, and one strategy that really helped (again) in this matchup was with the Bogo/Floodborn combo, helping me dish out extra damage and readily wipe the board.

Just as important, however, was the interplay of those cards with Beast Relentless. Beast was phenomenal at keeping me in place with lore and even helped with clearing the board via singing Strength of a Raging Fire.

While you may not have Zeus to damage characters, if you get things set up right, you can easily make up for that card by how much damage you can do to the entire board.

Robin Hood Shift is a solid deck thanks to its power and consistency

Ultimately, my goal in creating this deck was to build a deck that could quickly dominate the board and help me dictate the course of the game. And that can’t happen without the turn three shift. I think this deck is at an unsual advantage right now, however, given the fact of how many Shift three Robin Hoods you have in your deck.

I can’t actually think of any other card that allows you to take advantage of this insane consistency, making Robin Hood a hugely advantageous pick right now if you like decks that center around the Shift mechanic.

1st Place Robin Hood Shift Deck – Lorcana Emerald/Steel

Lorcana Robin Hood Shift Deck