Harvey Parker-Acheson brought Emerald Steel to the North American Championship on August 30, 2026, finished 5th-8th, and published the full 60-card list on TCGplayer. The deck costs $236.19 to build from the cheapest printing of each card. Most of that is sitting in one playset.
- Angel - Experiment 624 runs $37.68 each. Four copies is $150.72, nearly two thirds of the total build cost.
- The deck is built around empty hands. Angel gets Resist +2 when you have no cards in hand, and the list deliberately burns through cards fast.
- Elinor - Renowned Diplomat is the engine. Three exerted characters at end of turn means damage, lore, and a draw, every turn.
- The curve is aggressively weighted toward three ink. Twenty-two of the sixty cards cost three ink. The deck wants to be doing something every turn.
Angel - Experiment 624 is $150.72 of this deck. That is the story.
Not because the card is the whole plan. It isn't. But four copies at $37.68 each represent 64% of a $236.19 build, and that concentration shapes every decision you make before you sleeve a single card.
What the deck is actually doing
This is an aggro deck that wants characters in play and cards out of hand. Those two things reinforce each other. The more you empty your hand, the more Angel - Experiment 624 benefits. The more characters you get into play exerted, the harder Elinor - Renowned Diplomat works.
Elinor - Renowned Diplomat costs four ink. Her ability reads: at the end of your turn, if you have three or more exerted characters in play, deal one damage to a chosen opposing character, gain one lore, and draw a card.
That is a lot of text for one trigger. Do it three turns running and you have put three damage somewhere, banked three extra lore, and replaced three cards.
The deck gets characters exerted by questing, mostly. Then it asks Angel to hold the line while Elinor generates value behind her.
The cheap shell and the expensive payoff
Twenty-two of the sixty cards cost three ink. Thirteen cost one. The curve is front-loaded on purpose. Parker-Acheson wants something on the board every single turn from turn one onward.
The one-ink package is straightforward. Darkwing Duck - Crime Fighter costs one ink and runs as a four-of. Tod - All Alone runs four copies as well. Omnidroid - V.8 fills two slots. Flynn Rider - Spectral Scoundrel takes the last two at one ink.
Flynn Rider - Spectral Scoundrel is worth noting. His text reads: BOOST 2, and while there's a card under him, he gets +2 strength and +1 lore. That is a one-ink character who can become a genuine threat with a single payment of two ink on top.
Four copies at $37.68 each represent 64% of a $236.19 build, and that concentration shapes every decision you make before you sleeve a single card.
At three ink, Strength of a Raging Fire is the removal. It deals damage to a chosen character equal to the number of characters you have in play. Get four characters on the board and that is four damage on demand.
Max Goof - Rebellious Teen costs three ink and retrieves song cards from discard. His text lets you pay one ink to return a song with cost three or less from your discard to hand. In practice he is a Strength of a Raging Fire recovery engine, keeping the damage loop alive.
The Huntsman - On the Queen's Orders runs as a four-of at three ink. He has Ward, which means opponents cannot choose him except to challenge. He is a body that sits there and makes your exerted count real.
Vixey - Forest Friend costs three ink normally. With Tod - All Alone in play, you pay two. She has Evasive. That combination, a discounted evasive character, is exactly what an aggro deck wants to resolve early.
Where the money sits
The five most expensive cards in the deck:
| Card | Per copy | Playset |
|---|---|---|
| Angel - Experiment 624 | $37.68 | $150.72 |
| Elinor - Renowned Diplomat | $10.27 | $41.08 |
| Max Goof - Rebellious Teen | $4.75 | $19.00 |
| Strength of a Raging Fire | $3.10 | $12.40 |
| Angela - Night Warrior | $1.88 | $3.76 |
Everything else in the sixty costs under a dollar a copy. The rest of the shell, all forty-seven other cards, totals roughly $9.23 combined. This is a deck where you can build most of the frame for almost nothing, then decide if Angel is worth the buy-in.
The full list
The hand-emptying plan
Angel - Experiment 624 has two abilities. The first: while you have no cards in hand, she gains Resist +2. The second: once during your turn, you may choose and discard a card to deal two damage to a chosen character.
The second ability feeds the first. Discard to shoot something, and if that was your last card, Angel immediately becomes harder to damage. The deck has several other ways to empty your hand quickly. You Broke My Smolder costs one ink and reads: discard your hand, draw two cards.
That is a hand-wipe on demand. Launchpad - Trusty Sidekick lets you draw then discard unless Darkwing Duck is in play. Ursula - Deceiver strips a song card from your opponent's hand when she enters play. Hand disruption runs both ways here.
Broadway - Sturdy and Strong rounds the top of the curve at five ink. He has Bodyguard, which means challenging characters must choose him if able. He also has Stone by Day: if you have three or more cards in hand, he cannot ready. That condition sounds punishing. In a deck built to empty its hand fast, it mostly isn't.
Angela - Night Warrior at three ink adds a combat trick. When she enters play, you can give a chosen character Challenger +2 and Resist +2 until the start of your next turn. That reads as a combat enabler. Get in, deal more damage, take less back.
How it fits the North Americans picture
Two other Emerald Steel lists from the same event are already on this site. Emerald Steel Finished Top 8 at North Americans for $217 is the cheaper build. Carried 59% of This $253 North Americans Deck shows a different cost distribution in the same ink pair.
Parker-Acheson's take is the most expensive of the three, by a margin almost entirely explained by the four copies of Angel.
Whether Angel - Experiment 624 is the right call over whatever is in those lists is the creator's judgement, not ours. We verified every card in this list against the catalogue and priced it from our daily feed. The deck is real, it is Core-legal, and it placed 5th-8th at North Americans.
Who should build this
If you already own Elinor - Renowned Diplomat, Max Goof - Rebellious Teen, and Strength of a Raging Fire, start there. Those four playsets run $72.48 combined and they do real work in every Emerald Steel build in this format. Then decide whether $150.72 for four copies of Angel - Experiment 624 is a buy at your local price point.
If Angel is out of reach, the shell is playable without her and still reflects Parker-Acheson's core strategy. If you are building from scratch, pick up Elinor - Renowned Diplomat first at $10.27 each. She is the card that makes the late game work, and she will be relevant in Emerald Steel whether or not Angel's price holds.
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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