That's right, the official My Little Pony Collectible Card Game has reached a new milestone: you can now run a Sweetie Belle deck where the she repeatedly encourages changelings to invade Equestria. Good times!
Head on down below the break to check out a deck from MLP:CCG dev Adam that uses plenty of cards from the new Marks in Time expansion, with a big focus on utilizing the new Dilemma cards to control the battlefield and rock some pony socks.
Marks in Time brings with it new Dilemma cards, which allow you to add extra Problems to the board in addition to the two you’re used to playing with! Many deck types can benefit from adding Dilemmas to their toolbox – but can we assemble a deck build around Dilemmas entirely? Of course!
Mane Character:
Sweetie Belle, Cutie Mark Crusader (Marks in Time)
Draw Deck:
3x Invasion of the Changelings (MIT)
3x The Great Crystal War (MIT)
2x Jest Clowning Around (MIT)
3x Kevin, Fitting In (High Magic)
2x Singing Barrel (Equestrian Odysseys)
3x Braeburn, Good Seed (HM)
3x Flitter, Flutterer (HM)
3x Party Filly, Bubble Burster (MIT)
2x Rarity, Soprano (EO)
2x Pinkie Pie, Remix Master (EO)
3x Apple Bloom, Re-Markable (EO)
3x Torch Song, Alto (EO)
3x Foodfight! (MIT)
3x Dreamseized (EO)
2x Party Hard (EO)
3x Rolling Tones (EO)
2x Assault Pie (EO)
Problem Deck:
1x Trading Traditions (MIT)
2x Unreasonable Demands (MIT)
2x Rodeo Ruckus (EO)
2x Family Feud (MIT)
2x Awkward Cuteceñara (MIT)
1x Figuring Out Friendship (EO)
There are six Dilemmas in Marks in Time, one in each color. Of the six, Invasion of the Changelings seems like one of the most interesting Dilemmas to build around – you’ve got to get enough board presence to confront it on your own, but once you do you get to start building an army out of your opponent’s Friends!
Of course, in order to do that you’ve got to make sure they have some Friends in the discard pile for you to take. There are a couple major ways to do that, and we’re going to try to make use of the two biggest: dismiss effects and discard effects. That means we’re pretty well locked into pink and orange, in addition to our white build-around card. To make that work, we’ll be including the inimitable Kevin, as well as Singing Barrel to make sure our Mane can help us out with all three colors as needed.
Speaking of Manes, we’ll be using Sweetie Belle, Cutie Mark Crusader; her ability to recur Resources will be valuable in making sure we keep our Dilemmas available. She’s got a lot of potential with other Resources too – we’re too tight on card space to make much use of it, but we will manage to sneak in a couple copies of Assault Pie so we can recycle them for extra removal – Resources that are retired for an effect have great synergy with this Mane. Sweetie Belle is also going to be our only white entry – but that shouldn’t be too much trouble, since she’s pretty easy to flip and we’re being careful with the color requirements on our cards.
On the removal front, some new Marks In time cards make an appearance – Party Filly, Bubble Burster gives us some board presence and can be Cutie Marked for a removal effect. This card is a great addition because it’s got a relatively low pink requirement, provides early pressure, and sticks around as a relatively large Friend even after its Cutie Mark trigger has been used. Foodfight! also does great work, helping take out large threats for cheap, and the whole package is backed up with Rolling Tones, which can hit anything Foodfight! can’t at the cost of being more expensive to play. We’ll also have Flitter, Flutterer floating around – she’s in the deck to help unlock our pink cards, but she can be a great play herself against decks full of tiny Friends and tokens.
We’ll also be running some great cards from Equestrian Odysseys. Rarity, Soprano makes an appearance as a great way for us to get powerful Friends into our opponent’s discard pile – and she also lets Singing Barrel do double-duty as a means to bounce Rarity and play her again, to trigger another discard.
We’re also including Dreamseized for hand disruption and Apple Bloom, Re-Markable for some action acceleration; Apple Bloom works particularly nicely since we can pitch extra Singing Barrels or other Resources for her cost reduction and then get them back to pitch again with Sweetie Belle, making sure that we can use Apple Bloom regularly without running out of cards. Party Hard also makes an appearance as a great card advantage tool – retiring unused Friends so that you can draw replacements and force your opponent to discard is already great, but it gets better when those discards are giving you even more Friends to borrow with Invasion, and better still when the Friends you’re retiring to begin with are borrowed, too!
Since we’re building around Dilemmas, we’re also including a couple copies of Pinkie Pie, Remix Master, allowing us to double-confront without losing our best Dilemma. After all, just because we can get them back is no reason to throw them away, and double-confronting without the need to start from scratch next turn is a powerful way to shorten the clock!
Invasion of the Changelings is our build-around card, but since we’re assembling a Dilemma-centric deck, we’ll want to include more than one Dilemma. The Great Crystal War works nicely, giving a power boost to our relatively small Friends. Plus, if we’ve also got Invasion going, Crystal War can stack counters on our ill-gotten Friends, too! Jest Clowning Around is a little more situational, but a great control tool against an aggressive opponent – replacing a Problem your opponent is setting up to confront will kick all their Friends there back home and slow them down significantly, as well as removing any problematic Troublemakers or helping you cycle your own Problem deck to something like Family Feud or Rodeo Ruckus.
There are a lot of moving parts in this fun, synergy-heavy control deck, but when it all comes together you get to turn your opponent’s own cards against them and build a team that plays differently in every matchup!
