Steel/Sapphire Dime - Deck Tech and Strategy

Quite possibly one of the best decks in the current format, Sapphire/Steel Dime combines the powerful ramp from Sapphire with the utility and control capabilities of Steel to maintain board control and cycle through your deck. With high ink counts and hand size, you can fully utilize your powerful questing characters (only 3 characters in the deck quest for less than 2 lore) and set up a late game Lucky Dime as a finisher to instantly gain a character’s lore value without having to wait for them to dry and potentially be removed before questing.

Sapphire/Steel Dime Decklist

Sapphire/Steel Dime: Basic strategy

Simply put, your goal is to ramp ahead of your opponent using your Fishbone Quill to expedite the early stages of the game and get into your late game threats and control before your opponent has the time to establish their board or find counters.

Early Game Options: Set up for success

When it comes to your turn 1 and 2 play lines, this deck features numerous options to ensure your success given the specific match up.

Against aggressive decks, a Captain Hook - Forceful Duelist on turn 1 and/or Mr. Smee - Bumbling Mate are key cards to deal with early questers and the common cards used to protect them. Both Hook and Smee can hit for 3 strength which means they will evenly trade into either of the Mim shapeshifts or Simba - Protective Cub. You do not need to have both of these characters in play, oftentimes just having one down can cause your opponent a headache. I always save my Hook to challenge and never quest with him due to his Challenger +2 ability, however you can freely quest with Smee (especially with Hook on board to avoid Smee’s self damage) to secure 2 lore and force your opponent into making the trade.

In match ups where you can afford to play slower early on, both Develop Your Brain and Pawpsicle are great turn 1 options that replace themselves. Deciding when it is better to use one over the other can be tricky. In general, I find that Pawpsicle offers more flexibility and prefer to play that over Develop. Pawpsicle draws one card, but also stays on the board to be used for future card draw with your Hiram Flaversham - Toymaker draw engine and can even be used for its heal when needed. If you have both cards in your hand, and the rest of your hand is not looking great, Develop Your Brain might be the better option. While you still only draw one card, you get to look at two cards and decide which would be better. This could find you a turn 2 play you are missing, or even give you ink you may need in order to continue to fill the inkwell on subsequent turns.

Turn 3 Ramp: Accelerate your gameplan

Turn 3 is arguably the most important turn for this deck. Hitting one of your two ramp options is virtually a MUST and without it, makes the rest of your game a lot harder.

Fishbone Quill is the priority option for ramping. Quill allows you to ink a second card from your hand each turn. Importantly, these cards enter the inkwell hidden so you do not have to select Inkable cards and can be used to unclog your hand of your uninkable cards. Also importantly, the ink generated from Quill comes down ready to use, not exerted like some other forms of ramp. Mickey Mouse - Detective is your backup ramp option. Feel free to keep this in your opening hand if you have it in case you whiff your mulligan for Quill (more on the mulligan later).

6-Ink Characters: Call in the big guns

Your 6-cost characters are incredibly important for your post ramp. If you are able to find your Quill and everything pans out in the early game, your turn 3 turns into 4 ink (3 for Quill then use it to ink) and your turn 5 turns into 6 ink (ink from hand and with Quill). This allows you to drop your big 6-costs ahead of schedule.

Gaston - Intellectual Powerhouse is your all around better option in most situations. Ramping to 6 ink at the correct pace requires you to dump your entire hand so having the ability to replace Gaston is great. He can also help you find your A Whole New World to reload your hand next turn. In aggro match ups it is totally okay, and usually preferred, to prioritize Tinker Bell - Giant Fairy as your 6-ink choice, but be prepared to potentially be in top-deck mode for the next couple of turns.

A Whole New World: Reload yourself

This deck is playing A Whole New World (AWNW). However, its usage is a little different than most decks that run this card. Usually, AWNW is used to “wheel” away your opponent’s hand in hopes of forcing them to discard important cards. In this deck build, we use AWNW to reload our resources after we have dumped our hand by ramping. Singing this with our characters allows us to get a fresh hand to continue to ink and Quill and grow the ink deficit. Against Ruby/Amethyst, I do still like to use this in the more traditional sense to force my opponent to discard important removal cards, so I will try to more aggressively AWNW when I can.

VERY IMPORTANT: Against other decks that use AWNW (regardless of ink combo), we 100% want to be saving ours and forcing our opponent to use theirs. Only use it in absolute MUST situations!

Finish the Job: Only costs a Dime

Lucky Dime is our big finisher tool in our tighter match ups. Getting a Dime to stick to the board means you don’t have to worry about hard removal for the rest of the game. It’s an expensive item for sure, but if all goes to plan we will have plenty of ink to get a Dime down without breaking the bank (or inkwell). Paying 2 and exerting Dime allows you to gain a characters lore whether they are dry or not.

This means we can just farm lore by playing one of our many 2+ lore characters and then Dime to gain their lore. If they stick, great-we’ll quest with them next turn, if not, who cares-we’ll play another character and get their lore from Dime. This is really strong into Ruby that has zero outs to items and means that their Be Prepared, Maleficent - Monstrous Dragon, Lady Tremaine - Imperious Queen, and Madame Medusa - The Boss become virtually useless.

Removal Tools: Why we love steel

Steel is jam packed with strong, damage based removal tools. Ramping so far ahead also lets us use these tools more frequently because we can sing them with our characters or just hard cast our removal. For songs, And Then Along Came Zeus (ATACZ) is a strong single target removal spell that can also hit Locations. In all honesty, 9 times out of 10, I am using ATACZ on characters and just saying to myself, “I’ll outrace the location, surely.” Grab Your Swords is your AoE damage option that, when paired with Tinker Bell - Giant Fairy, pretty much just stops aggro decks in their tracks.

Let It Go was a tech option added to the deck to counter two cards — Cinderella - Stouthearted and Tamatoa - So Shiny! — neither of which we have any other strong answers for. Other tech options for removal are Fire the Cannons! and Ba-Boom! These are tech options to counter early aggression, especially against Emerald discard cards, like Cursed Merfolk - Ursula’s Handiwork or Flynn Ryder - Charming Rogue, as well as being a really strong option into the Flute deck’s Cinderella - Ballroom Sensation.

Location Location Location: McMansion

Hot Take: This is 100% the best Location in the game (sorry Queen’s Castle - Mirror Chamber). Whether you agree or not, McDuck Manor - Scrooge’s Mansion is an absolute beast of a card for your opponent to deal with. Being inkable means you can easily get rid of it when its not needed, as locations are pretty bad when behind. McDuck Manor is the perfect card when ahead of or even with your opponent to force them to make a choice. It is incredibly strong before a Be Prepared because it stays on the board and will get you 2 lore when they pass the turn back to you. We can often use this card as a bait or to force your opponent into a tricky spot having to decide if they deal with this or deal with the rest of your board.

Teching the Meta: My own flair

Outside of a couple removal options, two major tech options I included in this list for what I thought might counter an adapting meta were Beast - Hardheaded and Benja - Guardian of the Dragon Gem. Items like Sleepy’s Flute, The Sorcerer’s Spellbook, Lucky Dime, and sometimes Lantern are slowly becoming more and more popular and finding their way back into decks. I wanted to make sure that I had enough item break options to deal with all of these items, sometimes even multiple items in a single game (Flute decks).

Looking at the decklist, people probably notice one glaring difference: There are no copies of Beast - Tragic Hero in the deck. This was 100% a meta choice. Tragic Hero is becoming increasingly easy to deal with. There is a ton of ping in the game to stop his card draw, and there are more options to flat out remove him (Medusa and ATACZ) now with Into the Inklands. Because of this, I opted to swap out for the Hardheaded version. Not only can he break items, but at 4 strength, he is immune to Madame Medusa (who is still currently the more popular option over Lady Tremaine). At 5 ink, he can also sing our important 4-5 cost songs just as Tragic Hero could, if needed. Since we don’t need to preserve his health to enable card draw, we can use him aggressively to quest, challenge, or sing whenever we want. For budget players, it’s also nice not having to buy the super expensive Tragic Hero!

Understanding the Ramp Strategy

A very important skillset for this deck is to truly understand the ramp strategy. The core of our ramp strategy is to hit 6 ink on our turn 4. In order to hit this number we must expend 7 cards from our hand, 4 of which must be inkable. These are important numbers to keep in mind when you are going through your mulligan at the beginning of the game. The early turn ramp strategy should look something like this in a perfect world:

1. Ink for turn 1 (1 ink)
2. Ink for turn 2 (2 ink)
3. Ink for turn 3 (3 ink)
4. Play and use Fishbone Quill (4 ink)
5. Ink for turn 4 (5 ink)
6. Use Fishbone Quill (6 ink)

This combo does not include playing early game cards on turns 1 and 2, so keep that in mind when you are deciding how to play out your early turns.

If you start on the play, you only see 10 total cards to pull off this 7-card ramp strategy (unless you hit Pawpsicles/Develop Your Brain which can replace themselves). On the draw, you get the luxury of having an 11th card to hit the combo needed.

An important thing to remember is that in the early stages of the game you are only trying to ramp to the ink cost of your highest cost character in hand. Meaning if you are sitting on a Cogsworth and no 6 drop you don’t need to reach that 6 ink point on turn 4 and can wait to sustain your hand size before dumping more cards into your inkwell. If you have a sufficient way to draw cards, I would still recommend aggressively ramping, but make sure to play enough practice games to get a feel for when to ramp hard and when to slow down!

Match Up and Mulligan Guide

Before taking a look at specific match ups and how to mulligan properly it is important to first understand the very basics of mulliganing with this decklist.

Your “Standard Mulligan” strategy for (nearly) every match up is aimed at ensuring you hit:

1. Fishbone Quill*
2. Either Captain Hook or Mr. Smee
3. A 5+ cost character (preferably Gaston)
4. Look to keep Hiram Flaversham if you also have Pawpsicle
5. Enough ink to facilitate your ramp strategy

*If you are currently sitting on a Mickey Mouse and enough inkable cards, you can sit on the Mickey and use that for turn 3. However, if you have Mickey and a lot of other uninkables you want to hold, send the mickey back to try and hit Quill.

Easy match ups

Aggro (any color combo): Aggro is by far our easiest match up. GYS+Tinker Bell pretty much shut down all aggro decks. If you feel very pressured you can try for both Hook and Smee on board turn 1 and 2. Alternatively you can just remove their early drops with Cannons or Ba-Boom!

1. Mulligan to find our “Standard Mulligan”
2. Mulligan to find our Fire the Cannons! or Ba-Boom!
3. Mulligan to find Tinker Bell-Giant Fairy

If you have Grab Your Swords in opening hand think about keeping it if:

1. You aren’t keeping other uninkables
2. You’re on the draw (seeing another card to get ink)
3. Have BOTH Hook and Smee-we can get away with ramping into a turn 5 hard-cast usually if we have both characters down
4. You have a 5-drop that can sing it on the following turn

Emerald/Steel Discard: Pretty easy match up but can be difficult if the opponent draws the nuts. Tinker Bell is once again the most important card in the deck followed by Cogsworth to stop their Steel damage based removal. We don’t ever want to sit at <2 cards in hand and want to do our best to not sit with Songs in hand for too long. McDuck Manor is actually fairly useful in this match up since Emerald/Steel usually doesn’t run great options to remove it.

1. Mulligan to find our “Standard Mulligan”
2. Mulligan to find Tinker Bell-Giant Fairy
3. Mulligan away all of your songs
4. Always keep 1 Cogsworth

Amber/Ruby Mufasa: Another fairly easy match up, but depending on their Mufasa flips, it could get extremely difficult. The most important key to this match up is forcing your opponent to trade their Mufasa in on their turn, since the flipped card comes in exerted and they won’t be able to use it until their next turn. Mufasa will often get caught in the crossfire of your AoE, but that’s fine. Clearing an entire board and allowing them to flip one isn’t the end of the world. Always take into consideration what can be flipped and what else you may need to do in a turn — sequencing is important.

Let it Go is very important in this match up, so try to never Ink it. It’s our only answer to Chernabog!

1. Mulligan to find our “Standard Mulligan”
2. Hold on to both Hook and Smee since Mufasa decks tend to be aggro oriented
3. Always send back Let it Go
4. Mulligan to find Cannons or Ba-Boom! To banish Mother Gothel-Withered and Wicked and cut off their turn 4 draw 3 play.
5. Always mulligan away AWNW

Amethyst/Steel Jafar Wheel: I have only played against this deck a handful of times on Pixelborn and at locals, so I’m not 100% confident giving tips/guides to playing the match up. All I did playing against this was to make sure I have a way to clear early Jafars so they can’t shift him in and sing. I will update more when I get more confident with the match up and can give me solid, concrete advice.

Medium match ups

Ruby/Amethyst Control: This match up is a little more difficult and can be 50/50, though I feel a little more favored in the match up. The absolute KEY to this match up is swapping our A Whole New World play strategy to aggressively wheeling away opponent’s hands. We need to get them to discard Be Prepareds to make this match up easier. Every time you wheel, ask to see their discard pile!

If not, we need to be ready to play something like McDuck Manor before their turn 7 and not create too large of boards that just asked to be Be Prepared away. We can also afford to play a little slower in this match up, so our mulligan strategy will differ from normal.

1. Mulligan to find Fishbone Quill
2. Mulligan to find Pawpsicle and/or Develop Your Brain
3. Mulligan to find a 5 or 6 drop character
4. Keep Wheel in hand if you have a 5 or 6 drop to sing it or if you feel like taking the chance that you will mulligan or draw into one by turn 4 or 5

Amethyst/Emerald Bounce Tempo: This is another match up we are favored into, but with the right draws from our opponent, it could become very hard to keep up with their tempo. This is another list where Fire the Cannons! and Ba-Boom! become very important to slow their bounce strategy with Madam Mim. The key is to limit their bounce and force them to play a more standard aggro strategy, where we can capitalize on our board-wipe capabilities. Pay attention to what characters they are bouncing and use AWNW to force them to discard important cards like any of the Madam Mims and Merlin - Goat or Merlin - Rabbit.

1. Mulligan to find our “Standard Mulligan”
2. Mulligan to find Fire the Cannons!
3. Always keep Ba-Boom!
4. Mulligan away all of your songs

Amber/Steel Song: This is a match up that we specifically teched for to alleviate the headache of flutes. Cinderella - Stouthearted is the major red flag of this deck for us, but luckily, we have the ability to easily take out their Cinderella - Ballroom Sensation to prevent the turn 5 shift, and we have Let it Go for when she hits the board. Use our item break to remove flutes and our AoE removal to wipe their board. Bare Necessities can be tough on us, especially if used before we get our Quill down. This makes removing the turn 1 Ballroom Sensation all the more important.

Always let them wheel us!

1. Mulligan to find our “Standard Mulligan”
2. Mulligan to find Fire the Cannons! or Ba-Boom! if on the play.
3. Keep Benja in opener if you have other options for ink
4. Always keep 2 Quills in opener if you have them
5. Keep AWNW to bait out their Bare Necessities if we have Quill

Hard match ups

Sapphire/Ruby: This is our toughest match up, but it’s not impossible! The biggest issue we have into this deck is that they are able to capitalize on our AWNW since they can ramp just as efficiently as we do. For this reason, I try to never play AWNW unless I’m desperate for cards or unless I’m confident I can find a certain card I need, like Lucky Dime. If your opponent has a huge hand size and AWNW will reset their hand down to smaller size, you can use AWNW. Lucky Dime is our clutch finisher in this match up. Most lists will be running at least 1 or 2 Judy Hopps - Optimistic Officer to deal with Dime, however. Cogsworth also becomes a key part of this match up since he can’t be targeted by removal thanks to his Ward. Keep an eye out for Lady Tremaines, though, and protect Cogsworth with smaller characters.

1. Mulligan to find our “Standard Mulligan”
2. Prioritize Smee over Hook-even think about sending back Hook in most cases
3. Keep Cogsworth in opener
4. Mulligan for Pawpsicle and/or Develop Your Brain
5. Always mulligan away A Whole New World and Grab Your Swords

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