Disney Lorcana kicks off the new year with its upcoming release of Winterspell, the latest expansion set for the popular card game. The eleventh set will have an early release on February 13 at your local game stores, followed by the wide release on February 20. The exciting bit for every card game and their new sets or expansions is the change in gameplay and what that means for the meta. There’s also, of course, the beautiful new cards for those collectors out there. In Winterspell, the game finally brings in characters like Pocahontas, Tod from The Fox and the Hound, and even Darkwing Duck. In addition, different versions of characters already here make an appearance, like Lilo and Stitch, alongside new friends who are prominently featured in this new set. With all these new cards and the expected power creep, players will have a good excuse to tweak some competitive decks or make new ones entirely.
Speaking of the newly introduced characters to Lorcana, Pocahontas and friends have a slew of cards to play around with. Namely, the legendary Pocahontas Peacekeeper card, which has a fun shift-related ability. When you play her onto the field using shift (which is upgrading an already played version of Pocahontas in play), you can freeze out your opponent’s characters from challenging until the start of your next turn as long as none of your characters challenged the turn it’s played. This means your characters can quest freely without having to worry about your opponent defeating them through challenges or battles on their turn. It’s quite a strong ability that also lines up with Pocahontas’ character in avoiding battles and creating peace. Some of the other cards from Pocahontas also focus on questing versus challenging, like Wisdom of the Willow or Mother’s Necklace. In a game where questing for lore ultimately wins you the match, I can see Pocahontas decks potentially lore rushing, since there are so many positives to questing with these cards than trying to control your opponent’s characters individually.
Another legendary card showcasing a new character to Lorcana is Darkwing Duck Cool Under Pressure. This character also has the ability to shift, but his power comes from his passive synergy with item cards. During the player’s turn, they may pay 1 ink or mana to deal 2 damage to a chosen character whenever an item is banished or discarded. Being the Batman-like character that he is, this is a pretty cool way to emphasize Darkwing Duck’s use of gadgets. He also has a secondary ability that allows him to challenge or battle ready characters if they have the classification of Villain on their card. Normally, you can only challenge rested or tapped characters, so unlike Pocahontas, Darkwing Dark is all about fighting. Other Darkwing Duck-related cards fall into the Steel and Sapphire type categories, which lines up with that color combo’s style of play. Between the toughness of Steel cards, and the numerous items and control cards in Sapphire, this legendary Darkwing Duck can wreak havoc with the right build.
In addition to these strong character cards, there are some location-based ones that could make games a bit more interesting. For example, the Game Preserve Protected Land location can gain Evasive itself if there’s a character with Evasive on that location. The Tod Playful Kit card, for example, has the ability to give a character evasive each time he quests, so the Game Preserve location will ideally have evasive every turn as long as Tod is on it, giving himself evasive. Another The Fox and the Hound card, Education or Elimination, is a song card with a similar ability of giving evasive. There are other location-based characters, like the new legendary Elsa Ice Artisan, which allows the owner to exert or rest a character with 3 or less strength when that Elsa or a location is played. While she’s at a location, she also gains an additional 3 lore when questing, so you want her on locations at all times. These are just some examples of the fun stuff you can do with various aspects of the gameplay getting further support.
Now that rotating sets have affected Disney Lorcana as well, that leaves players with a smaller pool of cards to optimize their decks. With that said, some older cards do get reprints, but it’s all for the sake of balancing the game. In a recent big competitive event, the top cut saw a lot of control decks with 5 of the top 8 running Sapphire. Amethyst was also popular with 5 of the top 8 players representing the color as well. Ultimately, a Sapphire/Emerald deck took the top spot in a mirror match that focused on filtering the deck with card draw alongside some removal and hand manipulation. Unfortunately, some of the new rare Sapphire and Emerald Winterspell cards don’t really work on this champion deck like Darkwing Duck, since there are no items in that deck. Still, cards like the new Moana Curious Explorer could be a worthy addition to keep your hand size while building up ink or mana through a different source like the discard pile.
Another deck in the top cut is an Amethyst/Steel deck that revolves around playing many characters, and being able to draw more because of low hand sizes and a legendary Dumbo. A new Winterspell card that could fit very well in this competitive deck is Angel Experiment 624, who can gain resist +2 if the player has no cards in hand. A fairly easy feat for a deck that likes to have fewer than 3 cards in hand. Angel also has another ability to discard a card to deal 2 damage to a chosen character. Yet another option to keep that hand size low. The deck is already proven, and this Angel card just optimizes it a bit more.
One color lacking in the competitive scene lately is Ruby, with no representation in the top 32 of that recent major event from late last year. It seems to be due to the card set rotations banning certain staple cards in the currently constructed meta, so hopefully the new Ruby cards can give the color a fighting chance. For instance, this new legendary Wreck-It Ralph Raging Wrecker card is a triple threat with his ability to get stronger, quest for 3 lore, and a potential board clear if given the support. It’s a bit expensive, but it’s nothing Sapphire can’t achieve with its ramping capabilities. With this and the location support Elsa Ice Artisan, there could be some meaningful Ruby decks in this upcoming meta.
Of course, this is all speculation, but that’s the fun part about getting into new cards and brewing new decks. Do you follow the meta and tweak decks to their optimized state, or do you build a spicy meta breaker to keep your friends and opponents on their toes? The Pocahontas cards seem to favor questing and the protection of that strategy. The Darkwing Duck cards make him the hero he was made to be while making opposing characters villains with negative effects. Plus, familiar characters like Moana get a new spin for an everchanging competitive scene. Players will have a fun go with these new Winterspell cards, and it’ll be interesting to see what people gravitate towards as the season progresses. For more on Disney Lorcana, check out our interview with the game designers about the Winterspell cards we exclusively revealed.
