Disney Lorcana – Archazia’s Island – Starter Deck – Ruby & Sapphire

Archazia’s Island is the seventh and most recent set released for Disney Lorcana, the Trading Card Game and, for many players including myself, one of the most exciting set released in a while for this game. The first main reason for this set to be so interesting is the release of two new completely new mechanics: the Dual-Ink and the Illusion Glimmers.

As the name suggests, Dual-Ink Glimmers are cards belonging to two Ink colours at the same time and they can only be used in a Deck featuring both colours. This limitation is very important as these cards are essentially designed to support a specific Archetype or Deck engine and this helps in keeping the game very balanced. Illusion Glimmers, on the other hand, are a type of Characters that are automatically banished when the opponent selects them as targets for an action. This drawback is largely compensated by the fact the Illusions are more powerful that other Characters with similar stats. It is also very likely this new type of banish mechanics will open the door to future mechanics involving the discard pile.

I am very excited about these new rules and mechanics and I think they will certainly a bring even more fun to all Illumineers by adding new twists and depth to the game. At the same time, I am very interested to see how these mechanics will develop in the future and how much support they will get in future sets. I think they are very likely to become an integral part of the game thus it is quite obvious all players will need to learn how the new rules work and what impact they have on the game. For me, the best place to start in order to have a taste of these new rule are the new Archazia’s Island Starter Decks: “Feathered and Feared” (Amethyst-Steel) and “An Inventive Pair” (Ruby-Sapphire). I had the opportunity to test these decks ahead of the release thanks to Ravensburger providing me with a copy and I am very eager to share my finding with all the players. Let’s open the boxes and let’s start as usual from the contents!

Archazia’s Island Starter Decks: contents

As usual, we have two different decks. The first one, “An Inventive Pair” is an Ruby-Sapphire deck filled with the items and cards that interact with them. The two main characters featured on the box are the Dual-Ink cards “Belle, Mechanic Extraordinaire” and “Beast, Frustrated Designer”. The second one is a Amethyst-Steel built around the new Illusion Glimmers and features “Iago, Giant Spectral Parrot” and “Jafar, Newly Crowned” hence the name of the deck, “Feathered and Feared”.

Interestingly, both decks are using two Ink colour combinations that have been quite popular in the competitive scene and each of them is designed to fully exploit one of the two new mechanics.

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 done for all previous Starter Decks, all of the cards included are also available in the main set and therefore no exclusive cards are included in these Starter Decks. On the other hand, both Starter Decks actually include 44 cards from Archazia’s Island plus a few other cards from previous sets. These include two copies of 4 different cards from set 5 and 3 from the 6th set.

Inside the box, players will also find a standard Archazia’s Island Booster Pack with 12 additional cards of different rarity that can be used to boost the 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 white and teal colour theme used for the Set and the small nature elements added to the Playmat. I also appreciate a lot the work done by Ravensburger to create a very informative Quick Start Rulebook while also keeping it a fun read by adding flavour text and background lore into it.

Build your Victory with “An Inventive Pair” Deck – Strategic Analysis

The strategy of the Ruby-Sapphire Starter Deck is focused around using items to obtain an immediate advantage and then banish them in order to gain a long term benefit. The first key item of this strategy is “Unconventional Tool”, a 1-cost card that when banished discounts the next item played by 2. A great way to banish the Tool is questing with new Common 1-cost Character “Monsieur D’Arque, Despicable Proprietor” that will not only trigger the Tool ability but it will also allow the Player to draw a card. Banishing the tool can allow to pay 2 Ink less in order to play a new item and a good target can be the new “Ruby Coil”, a 2-cost item that increase a chosen character’s Strength by 2 whenever a card is put into the inkwell. If you played this type of Deck before you may have already realized that the ability of this item synergizes nicely with Sapphire ability to Ink more than one card in a turn as each Strength bonus can be either stacked on one character or applied to different ones.

Alternatively, the Tool can be banished to play the new “Belle, Apprentice Inventor” for free. This essentially means that on turn one a Player can play the Tool, banish it in order to bring the 3/3 new Belle to the playing field and than play the Coil for free. This is a massive setup for a first turn…. Having some items in the discard pile will benefit your strategy in the long term for example by increasing the Strength of the new 3-cost “Cogsworth, Climbing Clock” from 3 to 5 (7 if you have pick him as target for your Ruby Coil). Having these two Characters in play so early in the game will definitely increase the control ability of the Ruby-Sapphire build solving the weakness this deck previously had against aggro decks.

Having items in the discard pile will also allow to reduce the Shift cost of “Belle, Mechanic Extraordinaire”, a Super-Rare 9-cost card with a Strength and a Willpower of 7 that quests for 3 Lore. Belle also has the ability to move up to three items from the discard pile to the bottom of the deck to gain 1 lore for each of them. Finally, “Beast, Frustrated Inventor” will deal with the items (and his frustration) in a slightly different by dealing 5 damages to a chosen Character by banishing 2 items. I think it is easy to see how playing, banishing and recycling your items are the key feature of this deck engine.

Among the other notable cards, it is worth noting the new “All is Found”, a 5-cost Song that allows a Player to move up to 2 cards from their Discard pile into the Inkwell. Although this Song is pretty pricey, it can make a huge difference to boost your Ink resources in mid/late game. It can also be a good way to counteract the effect of “Ink Geyser”, another new card from the set that reduces the amount of cards in each Player Inkwell to just three when played. “Kida, Creative Thinker” is also an interesting card as she can move one out of two cards from the top of the Deck into the Inkwell. Bonus of this ability is that the Player will also know what card will be the next one on the Deck and that this action can be used multiple times in the game by just exerting Kida.

Final thoughts and how to improve the deck

In general, I think all Disney Lorcana Staarter Decks are a very good and balanced products that fit perfectly their scope. When Lorcana first released, these deck were meant as a good way to get into the game but, as the game progressively became more complex, they evolved into a more thematic products. Today, each Starter Deck is still a good way for Player to learn how to play Lorcana and to see what the game can offer them. At the same time, they also focus strongly on the set they feature either by exploring one of their main theme or a new rule/mechanic featured in the set. For example, An Inventive Pair Starter Deck explores the new Ruby-Sapphire cards and the new items providing a base build for a strong item-driven strategy.

With this in mind, Player interested in improving this Deck should focus on adding more Items and cards that interact with them together with increasing the copies of the main key cards mentioned in the previous paragraph. Among the cards I would consider to add, “Tamatoa, Happy as a Clam” and “Lucky Dime” are definitely two must-have. The new Tamatoa is not only able to bring back two items from the discard on play but it allows the Player to play an item for free upon questing. Lucky Dime is among the best targets for this ability as the item can then be exerted by paying 2 Ink to gain lore equal to the one of another character. In the worst case scenario, this can be just 2 from Tamatoa but it can be much more if you have “Ariel, Treasure Collector” or the original “Tamatoa, So Shiny” in play. In both cases, these cards work really well with this deck.

“Scrooge McDuck – Resourceful Miser” is also a great card to consider in order to bring more Items to your board.

In previous sets, Ruby-Sapphire Deck were all about control using “Ice Block” to reduce the Strength of some characters in order to banish them with “Brawl” or “Sisu, Empowered Sibling”. The new “Sapphire Coil” item released in Archazia’s Island can easily become a staple of this type of strategy as it allows a player to reduce the Strength of a chosen character by 2 every time a card is placed in the Inkwell. This item can therefore allow a Sapphire player to remove pretty much any character even using the 3-cost “Sisu, Daring Visitor” widening massively the control ability of this Deck.

Overall, the cards included in the Ruby-Sapphire Starter Deck offer a very good taste of the new set and the new game mechanics. The Deck is quite fun to play for new players and also provides a good level of strategy for experienced one. In addition, this deck can be a good starting point to create a competitive deck considering in particular that many key cards you will need from this set have a very low rarity. Unfortunately, as this particular Ink colour combination has been very successful competitively in the last two sets, players may found some of the more powerful cards from the previous sets to be quite expensive. This also means that there will also be tons of Deck lists around to help build you Deck though…