Deck Analysis: Steel Song
Today we are going to be doing an analysis of the Steel Song deck that came second in the Disney Lorcana Challenge in Bologna. I hope this helps you if you are looking to play Steel Song, or get better at playing against it!
Big Picture: Match Analysis
Let's first look at how this deck plays against other decks. I’m looking at playing this in Toronto this weekend, so I’ll just be focusing on the decks I expect to see there.
Ruby/Sapphire Items This turbo items list is what this Steel Song deck lost against in the Bologna finals, and even under the best circumstances it is a rough matchup. Most of the characters in Steel Song are small and they get taken out by a Sisu Empowered Sibling and an Ice Block. Steel Song has a large range of cards that remove characters but Turbo Items doesn’t provide us with many targets for that removal. Most of this removal is uninkable as well meaning it just feels like a dead card in this matchup. We do have The Bare Necessities though, and if we can use that turn 2 to take a Fishbone Quill out of the opponent’s hand then we might be able to slow down their ramp to buy us time. To win this match, Steel Song has to be an aggro deck, so flood the field with characters so you can quest by Turbo Items. Either way it is a tough match.
Amethyst/Ruby Bounce Bounce has been a favourite in tournaments since set two, and from what I’m hearing, it is believed that Toronto will be Bounce heavy, which would be great because I think Steel Song has a good chance against Bounce. Since most of Steel Song is smaller characters, you’ll want to save a Let the Storm Rage On for a Flynn Frenemy. The other removal in the deck like Strength of a Raging Fire or And Then Along Came Zeus are great at removing their characters (especially a Sisu Emboldened Warrior or a Merlin Goat), which you want to do because Bounce wants to have characters to bounce. Stopping them from being able to bounce their characters to protect them or get their Come into Play abilities a second or third time is key to winning this match. Also, a late game The Bare Necessities to get rid of a Be Prepared that might be in their hand is good! Though Steel Song might not have any ramp, the fact that it has a number of singers in it that can sing for more than their Ink Cost means it can do things turns before it should be able to.
Sapphire/Steel Dime This matchup will be pretty similar to the ones above, but it looks like Steel Song should have an easier time with it than with Ruby Sapphire Items. For Sapphire Steel, you will want to be the aggressor. This is a deck that can exert Dime for a lot, so you want to win before it gets there, so keep a hand with 2 and 3 lore questers you can get out fast! Beware though, Sapphire Steel runs Ba Boom! This will take out a number of the first turn and turn two plays. It’s still okay to play out those characters to bait out a Ba Boom! The Bare Necessities is a good card in this match and it has a number of great things we can take from their hand! The first option is Fishbone Quill. Just like in the match above, cutting this deck off from its ramp can stall it. You can also take away A Whole New World. You might be wondering why would we do that? Don’t we want a hand reset too? We do play the same card… and you would be right, we do want to reset our hand, but we want to do it on our schedule, not theirs. If they play A Whole New World, they needed a new hand. We want to get rid of a hand they like, so make them discard it, then play our own when they have drawn a bunch of cards! It is not worth getting rid of Lucky Dime. You might really not want them to have this card, but they can just bring it back with Tamatoa, so it’ll be a waste of The Bare Necessities. The key thing that makes this matchup more favourable for Steel Song is their removal options. Grab Your Swords doesn’t kill that much, and what it leaves alive we can heal with Rapunzel Gifted with Healing to draw cards. Perdita and Cinderella Stouthearted are great late game cards. Perdita will bring back your Golden Harps so they can quest, and Cinderella is very hard to kill. Sapphire Steel can only remove her with a Let It Go or two And Then Along Came Zeus because of her Resist +2. She, on the other hand, can remove a lot of problem cards here, especially since she can challenge the readied ones like Cogsworth and Ariel! Unlike Sapphire/ Ruby’s removal package which either results in a one sided board wipe (Sisu Empowered Sibling) or an unconditional board wipe (Be Prepared) Steel Sapphire can only represent Grab Your Sword + Tinkerbell as board wipes which line up poorly with Steel Songs Characters. This means you are able to commit to your characters to the board and be pretty certain that they can only be removed by individual removal spells.
Nitty Gritty: Deck Analysis
So let’s talk about the deck and the cards in it now. This deck has 19 songs and 41 characters. 12 of those characters have the Singer ability, meaning they can sing songs higher than their Ink Cost. Of those characters: 20 quest for 2 lore, and 5 quest for 3 lore. Though some of those questers are higher costed characters, many are not. Which brings us to the first question of Deck Analysis:
Why Play This Deck?
This deck is very fun to play! I love the fact that you can use your ink for playing characters, and then sing songs with characters. It feels like the benefits of ramp (playing things before the turn you should be able to if just using your one more ink per turn), but also has the aggro feel. It is an easy enough deck to pick up and play, but its multitude of decisions means it feels like you are playing the deck as opposed to having the deck be on auto pilot.
But, there’s more reasons that I like it or it’s fun to play a deck. After the Bucky changes and after the tournament in Bologna, we made some guesses about what the meta will be in Toronto. Bounce is Old Faithful, as it were, and many people have a bounce deck together. It is a strong deck and one that can be played well into an unknown scene. Set 5 is not legal yet, so Toronto is in a weird spot. It’s the old meta with one of the better decks badly hurt, so it’s tough to guess what people will play. There is a lot of talk that Bounce will be a favourite there, and it was 17% of the Day Two decks at Bologna. Steel Song feels good into Bounce, pretty okay into Sapphire Steel, and good into Aggro. It feels awful into Ruby Sapphire. We assume that Turbo Items will not be a popular deck (it’s new and harder to run), thus we need a deck to beat Bounce and Sapphire Steel. So I have picked Steel Song!
How Does This Deck Win?
The goal of this deck is to play a number of characters early on that quest for 2 lore, and just quest past your opponent. Characters like Smee and Lawrence are perfect examples of this, although those two characters do double duty as their stats are high enough to make them a threat to other characters in a challenge.
What Helps Support/Enable This Deck’s Winning Strategy?
There are a couple of things that help enable this deck’s win condition, namely the songs and singers. Having a Cinderella Ballroom Sensation out on turn one means that you can sing Let The Storm Rage On on turn two, and that should be enough to take out any of your opponent’s early game characters. Taking out a Flynn Frenemy is important as Steel Song does not have a lot of high strength characters and it does not take many turns for Bounce to run away with the game thanks to Flynn. An Ursula Vanessa can also sing songs, and she allows you to be able to sing And Then Along Came Zeus on turn three. This could either help get rid of a Queen’s Castle Mirror Chamber, or a Hiram Flaversham Toymaker, but you’ll still need to do one or two more damage to take either of those out completely. It does remove a Sisu Emboldened Warrior, a Belle Strange But Special, Merlin Goat, and a Tinkerbelle Giant Fairy. These are some noteworthy cards that you might want to get rid of!
As I said above, some of the helpful cards in the deck do more than one thing. While Smee and Lawrence both quest for two lore, they also deal 3 or 4 damage when they challenge another character. Together, these two characters can remove one Queen’s Castle, and they can each take out a number of other troublesome characters, but only if they are exerted!
Piglet Pooh Pirate is awesome! It’s rare Steel Song will have less than three characters out, so it means he is almost always questing for three lore! Cinderella Stouthearted does double duty as well as she is very tough to remove and has a high enough strength that she can fight and banish almost anything. The important thing about Cinderella Stouthearted is that she cannot be selected by a Madam Medusa. She can however be banished by Lady Tremaine, so make sure she is not your only character in play.
What’s an Ideal First Few Turns?
Knowing how this deck wins and what you need to do to get to that win condition is how you play the game. You’ll want a first turn play, and ideally that is Cinderella Ballroom Sensation. Next will be dependent on what your opponent has done and what is in your hand, but the general strategy is to play characters that increase the pressure until you win.
Here’s an example of a good start:
Turn One: Cinderella Ballroom Sensation or Robin Hood Beloved Outlaw. Play Cinderella if you want to sing songs early, Robin Hood if you have the shift Robin Hood.
Turn Two: play a pressure piece like Piglet Pooh Pirate or Mr. Smee Bumbling Firstmate. Smee is the choice if your opponent has played something you need to challenge. If you need to have Cinderella sing Let The Storm Rage On or The Bare Necessities. Remember to do everything that draws you cards first (general rule, sometimes you don’t want to do this!). So sing the song first then decide what you want to play.
Turn Three: If you have Robin Hood Champion of Sherwood in your hand (and the smaller Robin Hood in play), shift him! Otherwise play Ariel Spectacular Singer. Either way, your goal is to have one of them sing A Whole New World this turn or next. This will disrupt your opponent’s hand, and if they have been drawing cards or sculpting their hand at all, all that is now gone! Two warnings about A Whole New World, be cautious to not fill your opponent’s hands with cards if they had none in unless you need to. Also try not to use ink first, you want to be able to play as many new cards off of the song first.
So that’s your first three turns, what do you do after this? Well, it depends on a lot more factors now. What has your opponent played? What do you have in your hand? What do you have left in play? Here are some more general strategies for after turn 3:
Against Aggro: Though this deck does have an aggro component, it’s not the most aggro of aggro decks. You will need to control the aggro deck so you can win. Don’t get discouraged if they get up to 15 lore by turn 4, it might be disheartening but they need 20 to win. If you can get gradual advantage by questing and use your removal songs to keep their board state as small as possible you can get there. Just don’t play A Whole New World unless you’re desperate. You’ll just reset their hand and give them more options. You also have Cinderella Stouthearted, so keep songs! If they are close to the finish line Cinderella can challenge the characters they just played, keeping their board as empty as possible. Nothing they play will be a real threat to Cindy!
Against Control (Bounce): You want to be aware of a couple of cards they could play so you don’t walk right into them. Don’t unload your hand when they have 6 ink. The next turn they are in range to play Be Prepared and you’ll want characters saved in your hand after that card is played. Madam Medusa and Lady Tremaine are noteworthy too. Make sure you have more than one character out always (three is ideal because of Tremaine and Teeth and Ambitions). Keep questing and make sure you remove their characters so they have nothing to bounce. Also, Lawrence and Smee together can take out a Castle.
Against Control (Ruby Sapphire): It’s similar to Bounce. Try to get characters out fast and quest as much as you can. Be aware of the same things here as in Bounce. Be Prepared, Medusa, and Tremaine can all show up. You want to make sure you have more than one creature out to avoid Tremaine, and if you have just suffered a Be Prepared, do not play out one character, make sure you play two! Playing characters with a higher strength is also good as they avoid Medusa.
Against Control (Sapphire Steel): It’s also similar to the other control lists. The differences here are you can commit your characters to the board as there is no Be Prepared. Grab Your Swords and Tinkerbell all threaten your characters, so either play the bigger ones or keep some in your hand to play after Tinkerbell can challenge your characters and pop damage on other ones, so either quest with characters she can’t kill or just be aware in your math that Tinkerbell might two-for-one you. In the Sapphire Steel match, take out Flaversham as soon as you can. That is the card draw engine that feeds the deck. Do not reset their hand if they seem stuck, but do it if they drew a bunch of cards.
What Do I Mulligan For?
This can vary depending on what you are playing against and if you are going first or second, but, in general, you want to have something to do on your first three turns. Keep a Cinderella Ballroom Sensation, both Robin Hoods if you have both of them, an early game removal song like Let The Storm Rage On and something to play turn two, be it a Piglet Pooh Pirate, Ursula Vanessa, or Mr Smee Bumbling Firstmate. If Ariel is there, keep her too! Remember you have a lot of uninkable cards, so don’t mulligan cards that could be played for ink hoping something better will come along, especially if you have a turn 1, 2, and 3 play. Ideally, you will be drawing A Whole New World and playing that turn 3 or 4, so no need to plan out after that!