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Where Amber builds wide boards and Amethyst out-draws you, Ruby just wants to take the board apart. If you're playing Ruby, you're here to do three things: banish your opponent's characters, drain their lore, and chip away with evasive threats they can't touch.

There's a common belief that a Ruby control deck means an expensive one — that you need an expensive Maleficent - Monstrous Dragon to compete. You don't. Those are luxury finishers, not the foundation. A Ruby deck survives by controlling the mid-game with hyper-efficient removal, and most of that removal costs pennies.

Below are the best Ruby staples under $10, organized by job: hard removal, lore drain, evasive win conditions, and aggressive tempo. Every card is verified against its current printing, and pricing stays qualitative because the market shifts constantly.

Hard Removal

Steel pings for damage and runs into Resist; Ruby doesn't care about willpower or armor. Its specialty is hard removal — effects that say banish. The target goes straight to the discard, no math. These are the most efficient ways to do it for under $10.

Dragon Fire

5-cost Ruby Action

The classic. Dragon Fire does one thing — "Banish chosen character" — with no conditions, no strength thresholds, no combat. An unconditional answer to anything your opponent plays, for a few cents. Save it for their biggest threat and it's one of the best removal spells in the game.

Be Prepared

7-cost Ruby Action · Song

The undisputed Lorcana board wipe: Be Prepared banishes all characters in play. Ward, Evasive, Resist — none of it matters. Thanks to reprints it's now an affordable reset button, and it's the anchor of every Ruby control deck. (It hits your own board too, so play it from behind.)

Madame Medusa - The Boss

6-cost Ruby Character · uninkable · quests for 1

So strong she shaped the meta. When you play her, banish a chosen opposing character with 3 Strength or less — and an enormous share of the format's best cards sit at 3 strength or under, so she hits almost everything. She leaves a sizable body behind too. Her one blind spot is Ward, which she can't target; pair her with strength-reducing effects to widen her reach even further.

Lady Tremaine - Imperious Queen

6-cost Ruby Character · Shift 4 · quests for 2

Medusa's counterpart, and the answer to Ward. When she enters, each opponent must choose and banish one of their own characters. If their only board presence is an untouchable Ward-protected threat, they're forced to sacrifice it — Tremaine makes them do the dirty work, bypassing the game's best defensive keyword entirely.

Lore Drain & Engines

Control decks struggle to gain lore because they spend their turns attacking, not questing. Ruby fixes that by turning combat itself into a lore engine — and by subtracting from the opponent's total.

Shere Khan - Menacing Predator

3-cost Ruby Character · 3 Strength / 3 Willpower / 1 Lore

The fix for control's lore problem. While Shere Khan is in play, whenever any of your characters challenges another character, you gain 1 lore. He turns your board-clearing into a passive win condition: if the opponent plays characters, you challenge them and gain lore; if they don't, you simply quest to 20.

Aladdin - Heroic Outlaw

7-cost Ruby Character · Shift 5 · 5 Strength / 5 Willpower / 2 Lore

One of the most brutal abilities in the game: whenever he banishes another character in a challenge, you gain 2 lore and each opponent loses 2 — a four-point swing per combat. Shift him onto a cheaper Aladdin (like the budget Aladdin - Street Rat) to land him on turn five and erase the lead an aggro player spent the whole game building.

Evasive Win Conditions

A control deck needs a safe way to actually score after it clears the board. Evasive characters can only be challenged by other Evasive characters — and since most decks run few, these act as untouchable questers ticking you toward 20 while the rest of your deck manages the ground war.

Pongo - Ol' Rascal

4-cost Ruby Character · 2 Strength / 3 Willpower / 2 Lore · Evasive

The sweet spot for evasive pressure: a 4-cost that quests for 2 every turn and can't be challenged by most boards. Left unanswered he just keeps ticking, and with 2 strength he can attack when you need him to. A few cents for a card that demands a specific answer.

Minnie Mouse - Stylish Surfer

3-cost Ruby Character · Evasive

Essentially a cheaper Pongo — a 3-cost Evasive quester that's a bargain in any evasive or aggressive Ruby shell. Drop her early and she chips away untouched while your removal handles everything on the ground.

Aggressive Tempo & Tricks

Ruby also loves to break combat's rules — attacking the turn a character lands, and trading up with cheap, oversized bodies.

Gaston - Arrogant Hunter

2-cost Ruby Character · 4 Strength / 2 Willpower / 0 Lore · Reckless

Reckless means he can't quest and must challenge if able — a drawback for most colors, a feature for Ruby. For 2 ink you get 4 strength of attacking power, a heat-seeking missile that trades up into the opponent's 3- and 4-cost characters while keeping your curve low.

Cut to the Chase

2-cost Ruby Action

Grants a chosen character Rush, letting it challenge the turn it's played. Drop a big body, play this, and blindside an opponent who thought their exerted quester was safe until next turn — instant, surprise removal on your terms.

Maui - Hero to All

5-cost Ruby Character · Rush + Reckless

A big body that challenges the moment it lands (Rush) and keeps swinging (Reckless), functioning as immediate, repeatable removal. He flirts with the top of our budget range but stays near it — a strong mid-cost threat that doubles as an answer.

Budget Core Cheat Sheet

The whole budget Ruby toolkit at a glance — ink cost is the printed play cost, not a price.

Card	Ink Cost	Role
Dragon Fire	5	Unconditional removal
Be Prepared	7	Board wipe
Madame Medusa - The Boss	6	Targeted removal (3 Strength or less)
Lady Tremaine - Imperious Queen	6 (Shift 4)	Removal that beats Ward
Shere Khan - Menacing Predator	3	Lore engine on challenge
Aladdin - Heroic Outlaw	7 (Shift 5)	Lore-drain finisher
Pongo - Ol' Rascal	4	Evasive win condition
Minnie Mouse - Stylish Surfer	3	Evasive quester
Gaston - Arrogant Hunter	2	Aggressive trade (Reckless)
Cut to the Chase	2	Grants Rush
Maui - Hero to All	5	Rush removal threat

The Verdict

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