Trials and Tribulations: Strategy Guide

Amber/Amethyst song-control with a damage-move ping engine. Two engines run in parallel and feed each other. The first is song spam: 8 songs (4× Trials and Tribulations, 4× Friends on the Other Side) plus 4× Making Magic, which moves damage and draws a card but is an action, not a song. Every song you sing erodes the opposing board: Tiana - Natural Talent's CAPTIVATING MELODY drops every opposing character's strength by 1 until the start of your next turn, and Trials and Tribulations sticks a -4 ¤ debuff on the biggest one. The second engine is the damage-move ping: Juju - Mama Odie's Companion and Making Magic each move 1 damage counter from one of your characters to an opposing one. That clears a counter off your wall and finishes any opposing character already sitting one point short of its willpower.

Win condition. Quest behind bodies that will not die. Eudora - Accomplished Seamstress is a 5-ink 1/9 2-lore wall, and at 5 ink she is the cheapest character in the game with 9 or more willpower. Behind a friendly Tiana - Restaurant Owner she is close to untouchable: SPECIAL RESERVATION gives any character that challenges yours -3 ¤ unless its player pays 3 ⬡. A 3 ¤ attacker with a Challenger +2 bonus swings at 2 ¤ into a nine-willpower body, which is nothing. Tiana's Palace - Jazz Restaurant removes challenges from the equation entirely, because NIGHT OUT means characters cannot be challenged while they are there. Dr. Facilier - Agent Provocateur is the closer: a 7-cost 4/5 3-lore Floodborn with Shift 5 onto any Dr. Facilier, and INTO THE SHADOWS returns any of your OTHER characters banished in a challenge to your hand.

Matchup role. Controller in every matchup. You are never racing: your lore comes from 2-lore and 3-lore questers standing behind walls, not from flooding the board.

Singer plus 2-drop keep. Cast a song every turn from turn 3 onward. Mulligan toward a 1-cost or 2-cost singer plus a song.

Always keep:

• Charlotte La Bouff - Mardi Gras Princess: 1-cost 1/3 1-lore. Best turn-1 play.
• Prince Naveen - Carefree Explorer: 2-cost 2/3 1-lore vanilla. First body that sings Trials and Tribulations free.
• Tiana - Restaurant Owner: 3-cost 1/4 2-lore, uninkable. Turn-3 anchor: 2 lore a turn, and SPECIAL RESERVATION taxes anyone who challenges you.
• Trials and Tribulations OR Making Magic: at least one interaction piece. Trials and Tribulations sung off Prince Naveen - Carefree Explorer on turn 2 is the cleanest -4 ¤ answer in the format.

Conditional keep:

• Dr. Facilier - Remarkable Gentleman on the draw: DREAMS MADE REAL looks at your top 2 cards every time you sing, keeping one on top and sending the other to the bottom.
• Prince Naveen - Ukulele Player ONLY with a song already in hand. Otherwise a 4-cost 3/3 with a blank trigger.

Ship hands:

• All top-end. Eudora - Accomplished Seamstress plus Prince Naveen - Vigilant First Mate plus Dr. Facilier - Agent Provocateur together, with nothing to do on the first three turns, is three wasted turns.
• All songs, no singers. Six songs and zero characters is six dead cards.
• Dr. Facilier - Agent Provocateur in the opener: uninkable 7-cost dead weight. Ship it.

Ideal T1-T3. Charlotte La Bouff - Mardi Gras Princess on T1. Prince Naveen - Carefree Explorer on T2, singing Trials and Tribulations free for -4 ¤ on their biggest body. Tiana - Restaurant Owner on T3, questing for 2 with SPECIAL RESERVATION live. End of T3: 3 to 4 lore, their best quester crippled, and the anti-challenge tax up.

Singers (the engine):

• Prince Naveen - Carefree Explorer: 2-ink Amber 2/3 1-lore vanilla. Your most-cast singer, and the first body that sings Trials and Tribulations free from turn 2. Two or three in play is plenty.
• Dr. Facilier - Charlatan: 2-ink Amethyst 0/4 1-lore, Challenger +2. The Shift target for Dr. Facilier - Agent Provocateur. Zero strength means he never trades voluntarily, and Challenger +2 makes him swing as a 2 when he is forced into it. Sings Trials and Tribulations.
• Tiana - Restaurant Owner: 3-ink Amber 1/4 2-lore, uninkable. SPECIAL RESERVATION: whenever a character of yours is challenged while she is exerted, the challenging character gets -3 ¤ this turn unless its player pays 3 ⬡. Opposing 2-3 strength attackers simply refuse to engage. Sings Friends on the Other Side and Trials and Tribulations.
• Tiana - Natural Talent: 4-ink Amber 2/4 1-lore, uninkable, Singer 6. CAPTIVATING MELODY: whenever you play a song, each opposing character gets -1 ¤ until the start of your next turn, and it stacks with every song you sing that turn. Two songs put their whole board at -2 ¤, and Trials and Tribulations stacks another -4 ¤ onto one target. None of that banishes anything by itself. What it does is strip their attackers of the strength to trade, which is what buys your questers the turn.
• Prince Naveen - Ukulele Player: 4-ink Amber 3/3 2-lore, uninkable, Singer 6. IT'S BEAUTIFUL, NO?: when you play this character, you may play a song with cost 6 or less for free. The most explosive turn 4 in the deck is Prince Naveen - Ukulele Player plus a free Friends on the Other Side for two cards, plus Trials and Tribulations sung off another body.

Walls and questers:

• Charlotte La Bouff - Mardi Gras Princess: 1-ink Amber 1/3 1-lore vanilla. Your turn-1 play.
• Dr. Facilier - Remarkable Gentleman: 3-ink Amethyst 2/4 1-lore. DREAMS MADE REAL: whenever you play a song, look at the top 2 cards of your deck, put one back on top and the other on the bottom. Your draws stay curated.
• Dr. Facilier - Savvy Opportunist: 4-ink Amethyst 4/2 1-lore, Evasive. Your only Evasive quester. Two willpower is fragile, so deploy him with a follow-up.
• Eudora - Accomplished Seamstress: 5-ink Amber 1/9 2-lore vanilla. At 5 ink she is the cheapest character in the game with 9 or more willpower. She absorbs, she does not trade. Move her onto Tiana's Palace - Jazz Restaurant and she cannot be challenged at all while she is there. Behind Tiana - Restaurant Owner, a challenging character eats -3 ¤ unless its player pays 3 ⬡.
• Prince Naveen - Vigilant First Mate: 5-ink Amber 2/6 2-lore, Shift 3, Bodyguard. Shifts onto Prince Naveen - Carefree Explorer for 3 ⬡. Funnels challenges so Eudora - Accomplished Seamstress keeps questing.
• Dr. Facilier - Agent Provocateur: 7-ink Amethyst 4/5 3-lore Floodborn, Shift 5, uninkable. INTO THE SHADOWS: whenever one of your OTHER characters is banished in a challenge, you may return that card to your hand. Shift 5 onto Dr. Facilier - Charlatan brings him down for 5 ⬡ instead of 7. The trigger only covers characters banished in a challenge, not ones removed by an action or an ability.

Damage-move ping:

• Juju - Mama Odie's Companion: 2-ink Amethyst 1/2 1-lore. BEES' KNEES: when you play this character, move 1 damage counter from chosen character to chosen opposing character. It is two-for-one tempo, since a counter comes off one of your walls and lands on their board. It only banishes a target whose damage now reaches its willpower, so aim it at something already hurt or at a one-willpower body, not at a big blocker that a strength debuff happens to have shrunk.
• Making Magic: 3-ink Amethyst action. NOT A SONG. No character can sing it, and it does not trigger CAPTIVATING MELODY on Tiana - Natural Talent or DREAMS MADE REAL on Dr. Facilier - Remarkable Gentleman. What it does give you is the same damage move plus a card, on demand.

Songs:

• Trials and Tribulations: 2-ink Amber song. Chosen character gets -4 ¤ until the start of your next turn. Any character that counts as cost 2 or more sings it free, which is every character in the deck except Charlotte La Bouff - Mardi Gras Princess. It is an answer, not removal: -4 ¤ strips a 4-strength threat of the ability to challenge or kill your questers, but it never banishes anything on its own, because banishing needs damage equal to willpower.
• Friends on the Other Side: 3-ink Amethyst song. Draw 2. Any character that counts as cost 3 or more sings it free. The best second cast off Prince Naveen - Ukulele Player.

Location:

• Tiana's Palace - Jazz Restaurant: 3-ink Amber, 8 willpower, 1-lore, uninkable, move cost 2. NIGHT OUT: characters can't be challenged while here. Play it on turn 3, then move Eudora - Accomplished Seamstress onto it for a 2-lore quester nobody can touch. It also adds 1 lore a turn on its own.

vs. Amethyst/Sapphire Evasive (Unfavorable): Watch for: their Evasive top end, fast look-at-the-top and draw engines Format's biggest archetype and our hardest matchup. Evasive bypasses our challenge stack entirely: SPECIAL RESERVATION on Tiana - Restaurant Owner only fires when one of our characters is challenged, and they never challenge. Dr. Facilier - Savvy Opportunist is our only Evasive body, so land him on turn 4 to contest the air. Dr. Facilier - Agent Provocateur on turn 7 closes if we are within range. Below 8 lore by turn 6 we are losing.

vs. Amber/Emerald Aggro (Favorable): Watch for: 1-2 cost flood, wide boards by turn 4 Our best matchup. The tax on Tiana - Restaurant Owner makes their small attackers refuse to engage: pay 3 ⬡ per swing, or eat -3 ¤ and bounce off the wall. Trials and Tribulations on their best three-drop erases the flood. Eudora - Accomplished Seamstress on turn 5 absorbs, and Prince Naveen - Vigilant First Mate with Bodyguard finishes the lockout. They burn out by turn 6 while we sit at 8 or more lore.

vs. Amethyst/Steel Challengers (Even): Watch for: pump tricks (Strength of a Raging Fire, scaled Challenger +N) Grind matchup. The tax on Tiana - Restaurant Owner forces them to pay 3 ⬡ per trade or swing into our walls at reduced strength. Hold Trials and Tribulations for their pump turn, where -4 ¤ stacked against a +2 swing flips the trade. Eudora - Accomplished Seamstress at nine willpower survives everything short of a stacked-up removal turn. Past turn 6, the recursion on Dr. Facilier - Agent Provocateur edges this one.

vs. Amber/Steel Steelsong (Favorable): Watch for: their songs racing ours, He Hurled His Thunderbolt as a sweeper Two song decks, but ours interact with their board through strength debuffs and the damage move, while theirs are damage and lore. Their Resist barely matters when we do not attack. Trials and Tribulations neutralizes their four-drop questers, since -4 ¤ leaves them unable to challenge profitably, and Making Magic finishes an opposing character already sitting one counter short of its willpower. Eudora - Accomplished Seamstress at nine willpower shrugs off Thunderbolt, which deals 4 damage. Out-grind them by turn 8.

vs. Ruby/Sapphire Control (Unfavorable): Watch for: hard removal (Dragon Fire), Maui as a Rush attacker, top-end finishers Removal eats Eudora - Accomplished Seamstress, who is a 5-ink vanilla with no protection. The damage move does not get around Ward. Plan: deploy threats in pairs so single-target removal still leaves a 2-lore body behind. INTO THE SHADOWS on Dr. Facilier - Agent Provocateur only recurs characters banished in a challenge, so a removal action goes around the loop entirely. Race under turn 8 or settle in to grind.

vs. Mirror (Amber/Amethyst Songs) (Even): Watch for: their Tiana - Natural Talent stacking against your board, their Dr. Facilier - Agent Provocateur Symmetric. Tiebreak: whoever lands Tiana - Natural Talent first snowballs. Do not waste Trials and Tribulations on their Eudora - Accomplished Seamstress. She is a 1/9 body, so -4 ¤ changes nothing, and a single moved damage counter is nowhere near her nine willpower. Save it for their Tiana - Natural Talent or Prince Naveen - Ukulele Player, both 4-cost engine pieces. Sequence two Dr. Faciliers into play before you Shift, so the recursion threat is live immediately. Whoever fires the free song off Prince Naveen - Ukulele Player first takes the race.

Against Evasive-heavy meta (6 or more Evasive bodies across the field): -2 Tiana - Natural Talent / +2 Tinker Bell - Fast Flier. CAPTIVATING MELODY is close to dead against opponents who never challenge. Tinker Bell - Fast Flier is a 3-ink Amethyst 1/3 with 2 lore and Evasive, so she races in the lane they are already using, and Dr. Facilier - Savvy Opportunist is a 4-of with no room left for a fifth copy.

Against hard-removal control (Dragon Fire, Wrong Lever! Mode 2): -2 Eudora - Accomplished Seamstress / +2 Tiana's Palace - Jazz Restaurant (to 4). Eudora is a 5-ink vanilla and a removal magnet with no protection. The location keeps your questers off the challenge board, and most removal cannot cleanly answer a location.

Against discard-heavy meta (Pull the Lever! Mode 2 decks): -1 Making Magic / +1 Tiana's Palace - Jazz Restaurant (to 3). Every song and action here is a card they can strip, while the location keeps producing lore after your hand is gone. Friends on the Other Side is already a 4-of, so a fifth copy is not legal.

Core path: there is not one. All 60 cards sit outside Core: every Dr. Facilier, both Tiana characters, every Prince Naveen, Eudora - Accomplished Seamstress, Charlotte La Bouff - Mardi Gras Princess, Juju - Mama Odie's Companion, Tiana's Palace - Jazz Restaurant, and all twelve songs and actions. A Core Princess and the Frog build has to start from a different engine, and the closest Core-legal anchor is Mama Odie - Voice of Wisdom, whose quest trigger moves up to 2 damage counters and keeps the damage-move plan alive. Treat that as a separate deck, not a swap list.

Outlook: Infinity-stable with no rotation risk, because everything here has already left Core and Infinity does not rotate. The Dr. Facilier Floodborn and Shift package, and the Trials and Tribulations plus CAPTIVATING MELODY stack, are evergreen. Watch for a new Singer 6 body that could replace Prince Naveen - Ukulele Player at a different cost slot.