Few Ink types benefited from the cards released in Shimmering Skies like Sapphire. Thanks to that buff as well as a reshuffling of the meta, Sapphire and Amethyst will likely be a powerful deck in the Set Five season.

In this guide, we’re going to be looking at my custom build for Sapphire/Amethyst after Shimmering Skies.

I’ve tested this deck out substantially and am really happy with the results. Because this deck relies quite a bit on The Blue Fairy for draw support, you have to be very careful about how you manage your hand. Cards like Fishbone Quill that typically make their way into Sapphire decks aren’t going to be ideal here. Instead, you’ll need to look elsewhere to add incremental Ink into your Inkwell.

Sapphire/Amethyst Deck List

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3 Vision of the Future
4 Aurora - Dreaming Guardian
2 Hide Away
3 Yzma - Scary Beyond All Reason
3 Tipo - Growing Son
4 Elsa - Spirit of Winter
4 Friends on the Other Side
4 Chernabog's Followers - Creatures of Evil
2 Merlin - Intellectual Visionary
4 Mickey Mouse - Detective
3 Elsa - The Fifth Spirit
4 Blue Fairy - Rewarding Good Deeds
4 Madam Mim - Snake
3 Merlin - Goat
1 Merlin - Crab
3 Merlin - Rabbit
2 Falling Down the Rabbit Hole
4 Madam Mim - Fox
3 Ursula - Sea Witch Queen

Sapphire/Amethyst StrategyGuide

Perhaps the toughest part about winning in Lorcana is knowing how to Mulligan. The ideal curve or play of characters in Lorcana will help you know what to Mulligan, however.

Turn one

Turn one, you are looking to play just one card– Chernabog’s Followers. Chernabog is a decent card in this deck for two reasons. First, it has relatively strong strength. More importantly, you can quest it to draw a card. That’s helpful to keep your hand from running out of cards while you build up Ink in your Inkwell.

Turn two

Your two best cards to play turn two are Blue Fairy and Tipo. Blue Fairy is going to be helpful to get even more cards in your hand later on when you start chaining her ability with Floodborn characters you play from your hand.

Tipo, meanwhile, lets you start getting your ramp engine going faster. The only issue here is having to Ink a card from your hand. Sometimes you just aren’t going to want to drain your resources in this way. However, if you have the right cards, it can be helpful to get you where you need to be faster.

If you don’t get either of these cards, you can also bounce your Chernabog and play the Snake. That can be helpful because Madam Mim is a pretty strong character with good stats for attacking. However, if you have the choice Blue Fairy is usually more helpful.

Additionally, you have Vision of the Future, letting you search the top five cards of your deck, putting one in your hand. This helps keep you from getting stuck and makes finding those cards you need right when you need them more likely.

Turn three

Turn three is a pretty important turn as it’s the first turn you will use your strongest ramp card in this deck. This means playing Mickey Mouse – Detective and ramping from the top of your deck.

Turn four

Assuming you got Mickey into play last turn, you’re going to want to use him to sing Friends on the Other Side, giving you more cards in your hand. If you have a Madam Mim Snake, you can bounce Mickey with her and then play Mickey again, easily bolstering your ramp further.

If you don’t have a bounce card, go ahead and take out a pesky Evasive character with Elsa – the Fifth Spirit. She chains well with Merlin – Crab to deal quickly with characters that you don’t want to see in play, especially Diablo.

Roll out your Floodborn characters

If you’ve done a good job ramping and setting up your Blue Fairies, you’ll be able to start playing your powerhouse Floodborn characters really quickly and collecting additional draw cards.

It’s worth taking a moment to go into each of your Floodborn characters specifically as they serve different roles in the current meta and which you choose to prioritize will depend on your matchup.

Aurora – Dreaming Guardian

Aurora – Dreaming Guardian may seem like a spicy card to be included in this deck list, but she fills several important roles. First of all, she’s a relatively low cost Floodborn character, meaning you can play her and start drawing extra cards sooner rather than later in tandem with the Blue Fairy.

Second, her Warding ability is quite helpful in a format filled with cards that love to choose opposing characters. Combine this with your Ursula Sea Witch Queen and it becomes very hard for your opponent to touch your characters outside of a Be Prepared.

Yzma – Scary Beyond All Reason

Yzma is a multifaceted card that has seen play in many, many different Amethyst decks. In this deck, she can be used to help you clear the board of undesirable, opposing characters or to draw extra cards. I’ve pulled off combos with this deck where I play her, gain cards from Blue Fairy, sent Merlin – Rabbit back to my deck, gained cards from her ability and Merlin.

She can be a pretty insane combo in this deck, but she’s not as powerful as what else this deck has to offer.

Elsa – Spirit of Winter has the strongest ability

Elsa is such a strong character that she can single handedly win you matches if you manage to get enough Ink to take advantage of her turn after turn. With Blue Fairy in play not only will you slow your opponent down with a Deep Freeze but you’ll also build up the resources in your hand.

The best part about Elsa is she’s really affordable (finally). I just purchased two of her on TCGPlayer for under $20 to complete this deck after testing.

Ursula – Sea Witch Queen steals the show

If there was any question as to howe powerful the new Sea Witch Queen is from Ursula’s Return, that question should be put to rest. She’s good. She’s really good. She has three lore, she can exert characters at a whim to make them easier to challenge, and she prevents your opponent from exerting characters to sing songs which is literally one of the strongest (if not the strongest) mechanics in the game.

She is strong in most situations and absolutely lethal against decks like Amber/Steel that rely heavily on exerting characters to sing for the win.

New cards from Shimmering Skies

Lastly, let’s take a look at some of the newest cards included in this deck from Shimmering Skies. Both Sapphire and Amethyst have the advantage of getting to use some of the best cards in Shimmering Skies, and these are specifically Elsa – The Fifth Spirit and Merlin – Intellectual Visionary.

Elsa is exciting as she gives you an easy way to take out opposing Evasive Characters before they can cause too much trouble. Meanwhile, she’s a great Shift target for your Elsa – Spirit of Winter who is pretty fundamental to this deck’s strategy.

Merlin, meanwhile, is one of the most exciting cards to come out of this set, and being able to take advantage of it is a huge boost for this deck. Merlin lets you search your deck for any single card you want when he’s played, as long as you used Shift to play him.

That’s an insane ability that will give you a huge advantage over any deck, and luckily you have plenty of Shift targets to play him.

Tech cards

This deck also runs a few tech cards to help with certain matchups. Most specifically, you have Hide Away and Falling Through the Rabbit Hole. Hide Away gives this deck an easy way to deal with Locations and Items that’s much more versatile than anything we’ve seen yet. Meanwhile, Rabbit Hole is a natural work around for the Ward Keyword ability.

Sapphire/Amethyst deck matchup guide

Last but not least, let’s briefly cover the matchups you are likely to face with Sapphire/Amethyst and what you can do to deal with them.

Against aggro

Aggro is going to be your most challenging matchup. This deck does great once you have a lead in Ink in your Inkwell, but it’s somewhat limited early on. From my experience, getting ahead in Ink is ironically even more important in the aggro matchup. You aren’t going to want to worry about card advantage so focus on getting Tipo into play rather than Blue Fairy.

Your best bet against aggro is going to be using Madam Mim an Snake to bounce and attack and clear your opponent’s board. Don’t worry about building up a ton of characters…if you can draw the game out long enough, aggro decks won’t be able to keep up.

Against Steelsong

Steelsong is tough but you have some strong plays against it. For one, your characters tend to be on the beefy side in regards to Will Power, making them something of a nightmare for Steel Song which likes to dish out tons of damage. You also have Ursula – Sea Witch Queen to use against them, forcing them to not sing for songs which is one of Steelsong’s greatest strengths.

Focus on building up your Ink while being especially careful of cards like Daisy – Donald’s Date who can quickly gain Lore. If you draw the game out long enough, you should have the upper hand.

Against Ruby/Sapphire

I tend to worry more about the cards in my hand than the Ink in my Inkwell when I play against Ruby/Sapphire. That deck can manhandle you pretty well if you let them get ahead too much in cards. If you can get rid of key items and defeat characters like Flaversham, you’ll be better off. Late game you should have just as many tools as they do to slow them down. Also, Aurora is great in this matchup, preventing characters like Medusa from taking out everyone.

I really love this deck and it has proven incredibly strong from my initial testing. Try it for yourself and let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Best Lorcana Sapphire/Amethyst Ramp Deck List (Set 5)