Wojciech Zlomek took Amber Emerald to the European Championship in September 2026 and finished first. The full 60-card list is published on TCGplayer, and we've verified every card against the catalogue and priced the build at $253.06 from our daily feed.
- It won the European Championship. Zlomek's Amber Emerald list finished first on 09-13-2026.
- The engine is cost reduction, not raw speed. Aurora, Pluto, Grandmother Willow and Pocahontas - Guiding the Tribe all drop the price of the next thing you play.
- The lock is real. Pocahontas - Peacekeeper freezes challenges for a full turn when played via Shift, so exerted characters survive long enough for Elinor - Renowned Diplomat to fire.
- The price of entry is real too. Four copies of Pocahontas - Peacekeeper at $26.53 each account for $106.12 of a $253.06 total.
Here's what the deck is actually doing. It's not a pure aggro list, despite the label. It's a cost-reduction engine that floods the board cheaply, keeps its characters alive with a challenge lock, and converts exerted characters into lore and cards through Elinor - Renowned Diplomat. The aggro part is the pressure. The Peacekeeper part is the insurance.
The cost-reduction spine
Eighteen of the sixty cards cost one ink. That's not an accident. Aurora - Holding Court costs one and cuts the price of the next Princess or Queen you play that turn. Pluto - Friendly Pooch costs one and cuts the price of the next character, full stop. Together they let the two-drops come down ahead of schedule.
Grandmother Willow - Ancient Advisor at two ink extends that logic into the mid-game. Once per turn, the next character you play costs one less. Pocahontas - Guiding the Tribe, also two ink, goes further: play her, then play any one-cost character for free.
The curve reflects all of this. Eighteen one-drops, twenty-one two-drops, then a sharp drop to five threes and twelve fours. You're building a board in the first two turns, not waiting for a payoff.
The lock that makes it work
Here's the tension at the heart of the list.
Elinor - Renowned Diplomat costs four ink and her text reads: "At the end of your turn, if you have 3 or more exerted characters in play, deal 1 damage to chosen opposing character, gain 1 lore, and draw a card." That reward requires exerted characters to survive to the end of your turn.
A deck full of small exerted characters is normally an invitation. Without an answer, your opponent can challenge in, clear the board, and Elinor may never fire. Zlomek's answer is Pocahontas - Peacekeeper.
She costs five ink, shifts in for three.
Her text: "When you play this character, if you used Shift to play her and none of your characters challenged this turn, characters can't challenge until the start of your next turn." Play her via Shift at the end of a quest turn, with Pocahontas - Guiding the Tribe already in play, and the board is frozen.
Your exerted characters sit. Elinor fires. You gain lore, deal damage, draw a card.
Play her via Shift at the end of a quest turn and the board is frozen. Your exerted characters sit. Elinor fires.
That's the sequence the whole deck is built around. Every cost-reduction tool exists to make sure Pocahontas - Guiding the Tribe is in play by turn two or three, so the Shift window arrives on time.
What else is carrying weight
Dale - Ready for His Shot costs four ink. His text: "During challenges, your characters deal damage with their Willpower instead of their Strength." That flips the math on every challenge while he's in play.
Your small characters suddenly hit like big ones. It also makes the challenge lock more punishing to break, because the opponent who does challenge into it hits harder walls than expected.
David - Protective Snowboarder at two ink has Bodyguard. He absorbs challenges that would otherwise pick off your engine pieces. Four copies is a statement: Zlomek wants at least one on the board early.
Mike Wazowski - Heroic Climber costs two and digs for characters on the quest. Nani - Stage Manager at three looks at the top four cards and pulls a two-or-less character to hand. Both of them keep the board refilling without drawing blind.
The disruption package is quiet but it's there. Mowgli - Man Cub at two forces an opponent to reveal their hand and discard a non-character card. Ursula - Deceiver at two targets songs specifically. Bobby Zimuruski - Spray Cheese Kid cycles your own hand on entry. Against decks that rely on action economy, the early discard pressure is not nothing.
Mushu - Stealthy Dragon is the one copy in the list. He costs three, has Evasive, and draws a card when he quests into a hand advantage. He's a toolbox piece, not a finisher.
The full list
What it costs to build
$253.06 total, cheapest printing of each card from our daily feed. But the spend is not spread evenly.
Elinor - Renowned Diplomat adds another $44.84 at $11.21 each. Dale - Ready for His Shot runs $6.48 a copy, four copies, another $25.92. The top five most expensive cards account for just over $200 of the total.
The rest of the list is remarkably cheap. Pluto - Friendly Pooch, Thomas - Wide-Eyed Recruit and David - Protective Snowboarder are all under twelve cents each.
If you already own Elinors from another build, this deck gets cheaper fast. If you're starting from scratch, the Peacekeepers are the real decision.
Mickey Mouse - Expedition Leader at two copies and $1.57 each is worth noting. His text lets characters enter play exerted, and while exerted he reduces the Strength of a chosen opposing character by two each time one of your characters quests. That's another layer of challenge-proofing that costs almost nothing in the build.
Start here if you're building it
This deck won the European Championship in Zlomek's hands. What it does in your hands depends on how consistently you can land the Shift sequence, and that means owning four Pocahontas - Guiding the Tribe before you worry about anything else. She's $1.70 each. Buy those first.
Then decide whether the Peacekeepers at $26.53 each are the right next step or whether you test the shell with proxies before committing. The Elinors are non-negotiable if you want the deck to function as designed.
Pick up Pocahontas - Guiding the Tribe at $1.70, slot in the Elinors at $11.21, and you have the core of what Zlomek won with before a single Peacekeeper hits the table.
Prices update daily. Price any list as you build it in the deck builder, which reads the same feed as this page, and every card above links to its own page in the card library.
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