Canterlot Nights doubled the card pool in My Little Pony CCG, opening up exciting new room for deckbuilding. There are lots of new tools for old decks, as well as space for entirely new and unique deck archetypes; in this article I’ll discuss a deck I’ve been playing centered around something we had relatively little of in Premiere: Friend removal.
Here's the decklist, which you can also see in picture form by clicking here:
1xPinkie Pie, Pokey Pony
3xGlobe Trotter, Sight Seer
3xLily, Panicked Pony
2xPinny Lane, Bowl’em Over
2xCheese Sandwich, Wandering Partier
3xSnips, Schemer
3xPinkie Pie, Pinkie ‘Responsibility’ Pie
3xDownright Dangerous
3xChicken Costume
3xSugar Twist, Twister Sister
3xRoseluck, Flighty Filly
3xPhoto Finish, Picture Perfect Pony
3xStand Still!
2xNot on the List
3xJoe, Doughnuteer
3xGetting Hooves Dirty
3xJet Set & Upper Crust
Problem Deck:
2xGoof Off!
2xMean Meanie Pants
2xCheering Up a Friend
2xMy Pinkie Sense Is Tingling
2xMaybes are for Babies
This deck is a midrange deck focused on scoring a steady stream of points while removing as many opposing threats from the board as possible. You’ll notice some great tools from Premiere Edition, like Stand Still! and Downright Dangerous, alongside new ones like Not on the List and Chicken Costume. Chicken Costume and Cheese Sandwich in particular serve to punish decks that are designed to slowly increase their advantage over you using cards like Fluttershy, Guidance Counselor, while Downright Dangerous and Not on the List can prove very powerful against aggressive opponents.
Pinkie “Responsibility” Pie needs relatively little introduction, but the new Pokey Pony mane and Pinny Lane make her much more efficient, either removing a second card from play or refunding Responsibility Pie’s action token cost. Roseluck assists as well, helping to ensure a continued supply of party associates for your mane. Plus, both Roseluck and Pinny pull double-duty as color spotters, a valuable savings in deck space!
The deck also utilizes the new Pumped mechanic, with Globe Trotter drawing you your important cards, and both Snips and Photo Finish providing a supply of repeatable removal. With so much control over your opponent’s board presence, faceoffs to power Pumped with may be thin on the ground, but Joe, Doughnuteer is around to “feed” your Pumped friends all they could want and more.
All that removal makes Cheering Up a Friend and Jet Set & Upper Crust powerful ways to slow your opponent down, forcing them to fight through a storm of dismissal effects in order to hit the critical mass of Friends those cards demand, buying you more time to stretch your lead into a win.
I’ve been having fun with this deck both because the cyclical engines it runs are fun to assemble, and because it’s a refreshing change of pace from Premiere’s removal-light format, where Friends tended to stick around as long their controller wanted them to; the value of a card changes quite a bit in an environment where its presence is (sometimes extremely) temporary!
Hey everyone, one last note from Cups here: besides the Facebook and Twitter feeds where you can keep up on MLP: CCG news, spoilers, and more, there's now a new MLP: CCG Tournaments Tumblr blog! Locations of store championships, strategies and more decklists, and lots more can be found over there. Want to see a sneak-peek of the brand new Nightmare Moon card coming out this summer? Go take a look!
