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The Sixth set of Disney Lorcana Trading Card Game is right around the corner and the excitement for the new Azurite Sea set and the new cards is growing by the day. This week, Ravensburger kindly provided us with a copy of the two new Starter Decks and we have been super eager to get them to the table to test them out.
As usual, we have two different decks. The first one, “A Seaworthy Crew” is an Amber-Ruby deck filled with the new pirates. The two main characters featured on the box are “Jim Hawkins, Honorable Pirate” and “Tigger, In the Crow's Nest”. The second one is an Emerald-Sapphire Deck built around the new Inventor cards, hence the name “Genius Reinvented”. The two key foil-cards in his set are “Go Go Tomago, Darting Dynamo” and “Gadget Hackwrench, Brilliant Bosun”.
Interestingly, both decks are specifically designed to exploit the Characters of their specific group, and they have very different strategies.
Azurite Sea Starter Decks: contents
As usual, each deck comes with a ready made 60-card deck that also includes a foil copy of the two Characters depicted on the starter deck box itself. As for all previous Starter Decks, all of the cards included are also available in the main set and, therefore, there are no exclusive cards. However, both Starter Decks also include a few cards from the previous set, “Shimmering Skies”, that can not be pulled from these Booster Packs. If you are curious, there are 8 cards from set 5 in Genius Reinvented and 14 cards in A Seaworthy Crew.
Inside the box, there is also a standard Shimmering Skies booster pack with 12 additional cards of different rarity that can be used to boost your starter deck, a player’s guide with all the game rules, a small cardboard playmat with a lore tracker, a few cardboard damage tokens and one Lore tracker token. I really love the teal colour theme used for the box, the Playmat and the token, and I am looking forward to seeing the trove and other accessory in this colour.
Set sail to Victory with “A Seaworthy Crew” Deck
The strategy of the Amber-Ruby starter deck is focused around getting Lore and bonuses from different locations while keeping pressure on your opponents with your characters. The average Strength of the Characters of this deck is, in fact, pretty good, and there are a lot of them that either provide Support to your other characters or that can increase their Strength in certain conditions. The new “Winnie the Pooh, Hunny Pirate” and the new “Mickey Mouse, Courageous Sailor” are two great examples of this. Winnie the Pooh has also the passive ability to reduce the cost to play another Pirate Character by 1 every time he quests. Not a bad set of ability for a mere costs of 2 to play! “Kakamora, Boarding Party”, on the other hand, has a Strength of 5 and Rush to take care of any bigger threat.
In terms of Locations, this set includes “Ratigan's Party” from set 5, and the new “Skull Rock, Isolated Fortress” and “Hundred Acre Island, Pooh's Home”. Each of these Locations does not generate Lore but provides it if any Character is on them or gets banished while being there. Having a lot of characters in play and moving them to these Location is therefore key for your victory, and playing “Moana, Kakamore Leader” can help a lot by providing free movement to a location. Moana is also a very powerful foe considering her strength of 6 and Willpower of 5. The new 3-cost song “The Islands I pulled from the Sea” will also help achieve your goals by allowing a player to get any location card directly from the Deck.
Amongst the other cards, it is worth noting the new “Wendy Darling, Courageous Captain” that increases her Lore and Strength if you have another Pirate Character in play, and “Jasmine, Rebellious Princess” that can not only quest for 2, but forces your opponent(s) to lose a lore every time she quests. The star of the deck, in my opinion, is actually “John Silver, Ferocious Friend” due to its ability to ready a Characters every time he quests. The cost of this ability (dealing one damage to the Character) is then easily offset by using “Amber Chromicon” ability, making this combo extremely effective to perform multiple actions during the same turn.
Outsmart your opponent with “Genius Reinvented” Deck
With respect to the Amber-Ruby deck, Genius Reinvented does not contain many Locations but it comes with a lot of Items. I concede that this was quite expected in a deck featuring inventors. The two more interesting ones in terms of gameplay are “Emerald Chromicon” and “Megabot” as they both have very important functions. The Chromicon provides a passive protection to your Characters by returning a Character to their player hand every time any of the player Characters is banished. Megabot, on the other hand, can be used to either banish an opponent item or a damaged Character. The Deck also includes the new “Baymax's Healthcase Chip” that can be used to remove some damage every turn. “Baymax, Personal Healthcare Companion” can also help in keeping damage tokens away just by paying Ink.
To make sure players can find the right item when needed, the Deck also includes a few copies of “Hiro Hamada, Robotics Prodigy” that lets you fish out any Item directly from the deck for a cost of 2.
While having multiple items on board will support your gameplay, the real strategy of the Emerald-Sapphire Starter Deck is based on the ability of Inventors Characters to support and boost each other while staying on the board as long as possible. This last part is achieved by your Inventors characters having good Willpower on average, and by the many items and ability that can remove damage tokens. A good fraction of the cards in this deck also have the ability “Ward” that prevents them from being targeted by your opponents nefarious effects. The location “Institute of Technology” can also increase the Willpower of your cards by 1 while “Hiro Hamada, Team Leader” will grant “Resist +1” to all Inventors. Finally, the “Support” ability of some Characters can help in taking out key opponents cards when needed.
Dealing damage to your opponents can also be a valuable way to gain Lore quickly using the ability “Go Go Tomago, Dating Dynamo” ability “Stop Whining, Woman-up” that grants lore equal to the damage on the chosen opponent Character. Another easy way to get Lore is to play “Alistair Krei, Ambitious Entrepreneur” to gain a Lore if your opponent has a item in play. The 1-Ink cost “Fred, Mascot by Day” is also perfect to get quick Lore due to its ability to gain 2 Lore every time he is challenged. With a Willpower of 1 this ability will likely trigger only one but for a cost of 1 it is definitely a good trade. Last but not least, “Aunt Cass, Biggest Fan” is the perfect card for this deck as she can increase the questing ability to any Inventor by 1 every time she quests while bringing them great doughnuts and pastries in the process.
Among the other cards in the deck, there are two new Emerald songs that are noteworthy. The first one, “You came back” not only features my favourite Disney Character Stitch, but it can also ready a chosen character (with no limitations!). The other song, “Heffalumps and Woozles” will prevent a Character from questing and allow the player to draw a card. Not bad for a common card with a cost of 2 and definitely a potential great addition to any Emerald deck. In terms of card drawing, we should also mention the very useful, “Clarabelle, Contented Wallflower” from Set 5 that is a very good addition to this deck.
Azurite Sea Starter Deck – Final thoughts
As some of you may know by now, I LOVE Disney Lorcana Starter Decks and I think they are a very good and balanced product. I am proud to say I own all of them and I play them routinely with the aim of introducing new players to the game. I also like to evaluate them and to compare each of them to the others to see which one is the “best” Starter Deck. After a good number of play testing games with my son, I think the two Starter Decks from Azurite Sea are definitely pretty good and full of interesting mechanics. I dare to say that I like the Amber-Ruby deck the most, partly because of the nice Pirate theme and partly because of the huge use of locations. Don't get me wrong, the Emerald-Sapphire deck is also pretty good and interesting to play and I think it is the one that will have the higher chances to be improved into a semi-competitive deck considering how strongly it can benefit from meta relevant Emerald and Sapphire cards. Overall, the two Starter Deck are really good products and highly recommended for every player, new or experienced.