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Not that anyone is counting but there are only 10 days before the release of Disney Lorcana Chapter 4, “Ursula's Return”. In the new set the Illumineers will finally face the huge storm that has been building in the magical realm of Lorcana since the very beginning of our Journey into Lorcana magical real. As expected, the storm is gathering around a very powerful glimmer that was unleashed from the Great Illuminary since the release of the chaotic flood of Ink in Chapter 2.
Ravensburger and the Illustrators cleverly hid clues and hints on the cards releases in each set about who this powerful foe can be and I am pretty sure a lot of people were not surprised to find out it is no-one else than Ursula. I honestly was as I bet my money on Magica De Spell thus I am very excited to see how the new cards will interact with the previous ones and what the release of its very first Super- Villain will mean for this trading card game.
Considering there are just a few days to go, we have been able to see a good number of new cards reveal and we got some very interesting details about all the products in the set. Overall, there are a lot of reasons to be very excited about this new set and I thought it would be nice to summarize what we can expect from the new Disney Lorcana set Ursula's Return.
New Rules and Mechanics!
The powered gathered by Ursula during the previous Chapters of Lorcana allowed the Sea Witch to alter the realm and the glimmers massively. As a result, some of the most known mechanics of the game will be altered in unexpected ways.
The first one we know is a new way to pay the cost to Shift a Floodborn character where players will need to discard a specific type of card instead of paying a Ink cost as usual. For example, “Olaf, Carrot Enthusiast” can be shifted by discarding an item card while “Ursula, Eric's Bride” will require the player to discard a song in order to play it. Each Ink colour will have its own unique Shift cost that will fit its game style and we can expect this mechanics to be in addition to the usual ones as the set also includes Characters that can Shift for a Ink cost as usual. However, this new Shift mechanics will have a serious impact on the game as it will be more difficult to forecast when a Floodborn character may be able to enter the playfield and therefore it will be trickier to counteract it.
Alongside the debut of the new Shift mechanic, we will also see the new Sing Together songs. As you may imagine from the name, these are extremely powerful songs that can be sung by multiple characters at the same time. For example, Characters for a total cost of 10 can Sing Together “The Mob Song” to deal 3 damages to 3 Characters and/or Locations or “Second Star to the Right” to draw 5 cards. To help players getting the right pitch for these songs, Ursula's Return will also feature some terrifying new singers like the new “Ariel, Singing Mermaid” (Singer 7) and “Cinderella, Melody Weaver” (Singer 9). There will also be a Location, “Atlantica, Concert Hall” that will allow characters to count as having +2 cost when singing while at this location. I know, it seems Amber-Steel Song decks will become even more popular...
Last but not least I think it is worth mentioning that Ursula's Return will feature a few cards with the ability to deal damage to multiple targets. This is quite interesting as, so far, the only options to do a wide board removal have been “Grab your sword” (deal 2 damages to all opposing characters) or “Be Prepared” (banish all characters on both side of the field). In Chapter 4 we will now have cards like “Mulan, Elite Archer” that can challenge and damage one target to deal the same damage to up to 2 opposing characters. More important, we will be able to add to our decks “Ariel, Sonic Warrior” that can deal 3 damages to a character for a cost of 2 Ink every time a song is played. Not only these cards can strongly help controlling your opponent board but they can deal with Evasive characters and with those which abilities are triggered when they are challenged.
New Products and new ways to Play Lorcana!
Most of the products that were available for previous sets will also be featured in Ursula's Return. Booster Boxes will still include 24 Booster Packs with 12 cards each (6 Common, 3 Uncommon, 2 Rare or above and 1 foil). Pull rates of Enchanted cards are still expected to be 1 every case (4 booster boxes) making collecting all of them a very expensive ambition. Two different Starter Decks will also be available to help new player to get into the game. The first one focuses on Heroes and features Anna & Hercules, while the second one is centred on the Madrigal Family and features Mirabel and Bruno. This is the first time we saw this movie in a Lorcana set and we can expect these cards to provide a lot of fun to players. If you want to know more about these deck, you can read a very detailed preview here. The Illumineer's Trove will keep the improved format we saw in “Into the Inklands set” and therefore will come with damage dice, card dividers, a lore counter, and 8 booster packs. In this case, however the dividers seem to reflect the card rarity instead of the Ink colours as seen in the previous set to match the way some players store the card in their collection.
The star of the new set, however, is the brand-new “Illumineer's Quest - Deep Trouble”. This product take the slot of the Gift set that will not be available for Chapter 4 but I don't think anyone will be missing it as Deep Trouble is likely the most exciting product we've seen so far in Lorcana. The box introduces in fact the possibility for 2 to 4 players to play together against Ursula and her entangled glimmers. This is not only a great way to have fun with friends or to introduce new players to the game but it is also a sort of independent game as the box has everything you need in order to play including an Oversized Ursula Card, a scenario deck of 50 cards, 2 Prebuilt Disney Lorcana decks of 60 cards each, a playmat, 3 Lore tracker and 29 Damage counters. Deep Trouble also include an envelop with a Victory card to be awarded for beating Ursula. Everyone is trying to guess what this special card as everything is possible. Personally, I hope it may be an alternate art of the new Ursula card but I am so looking forward to find out that I hope no-one will spoil it for me.
Powerful new Card!
In the last few weeks we have seen a constant increase of new card reveals and so far there is a lot to be excited for. In general, we clearly saw a lot of new Magic Broom characters and card that interact with them. For example, the new “Yen Sid, Powerful Sorcerer” will be able to draw a card if there is at least a Broom character on the field and to quest for three if three are two characters. The new “Mickey Mouse, Playful sorcerer” will join his master from the movie “Fantasia” dealing instead 1 damage to an opponent character for each Broom characters in play. The set will also include a few new Broom Characters making this theme quite an interesting one to play.
In addition to the Magic Broom characters and the ones from the movie Encanto, we will see an increased focus on Item and Locations cards in this set. In particular, we will finally see a location designed to protect other locations (“The Wall,Border Fortress”) and a song able to destroy all items in play (“ I Break what's demanded”). The set will also feature a lot of new Bodyguard characters or characters designed to boost them like we saw in the previous chapter. I am very pleased to see a few new interesting Musketeers card too as this them as been a personal favourite of mine and my son in the First Chapter.
Together with all the new and recurring themes already mentioned, the set will include a lot of very good cards that will easily become staples in the game. The Emerald item “Hidden Inkcaster” for example will likely be in all decks due to its ability to always consider all cards in hand as Inkable. Finding a good balance between inkable and un-inkable cards is in fact one of the main limits of most of Emerald decks and this item will finally fill the gap for just a cost of 2 Ink. “Snuggly Duckling” is another amazing location from this set that will finally boost the Ruby aggro decks based on Shere Kan, “Menacing Predator” and the “Queen of Heats, Sensing Weakness” by providing additional lore every time a character at that location challenges another character. “Scar, Vicious Cheater” will be a perfect fit for this card considering its ability to challenge multiple times in a turn while providing 3 lore for each of them due to the location.