Disney Lorcana Into The Inklands Starter Decks Review - Doggone Good

Disney Lorcana tells the story of a magical trove of Lore scattered throughout the lands of Lorcana. Now it's time for players to delve deeper than ever before, exploring new lands in this magical world! With new threats and surprises along the way, are you ready to journey Into The Inklands? Ravensburger provided us with the two brand new Starter Decks for the new set, so read on for our thoughts on Disney Lorcana Into The Inklands.

What's Included In The New Disney Lorcana Into The Inklands Starter Decks?

There are two new Disney Lorcana Into The Inklands Starter Decks hitting shelves soon: Amber & Emerald and Ruby & Sapphire. Each Starter Deck contains the following:

• (1) Prebuilt deck of 60 cards, including 2 foil cards
• (11) Damage counters
• (1) Paper playmat
• (1) Paper tracker token
• (1) Quick-Start rules sheet
• (1) Bonus booster pack of 12 randomized cards

Each deck is completely built out and ready to play, with everything a single player needs. So all you and a friend need to do to get into Lorcana is each purchase one of the decks, shuffle up, punch out your cardboard damage counters, and play!

Along with ushering in the new set, both decks also feature - for the first time since The First Chapter introduced us to the game - a brand new card type: Location.

How Do New Disney Lorcana Into The Inklands Location Cards Play?

Locations are a new card type making their debut in the Into The Inklands set, and they add a new level of decision-making and strategy to the game. Played using Ink just like any other card, and laid on the table horizontally, each Location offers different benefits, with many giving their controlling player Lore at the start of their turn.

Let's take a look at two different Location cards, both included in the Ruby & Sapphire deck:

As you can see from the above, these cards have a cost in Ink to play them (and both of these examples can be used as ink in your inkwell). Each also has a Willpower - your opposing player can always attack your locations, and there's nothing you can do to defend them, they simply get dealt damage against their Willpower like any other character would.

Each card also has a Move Cost - that's the cost in Ink you can pay to move a character to that location. Moving a character doesn't grant them any special protection (in other words, you don't have to destroy the Location before attacking a character at that Location, or anything like that), but some cards have special abilities keyed to them moving to locations.

They also each have a Lore value. At the Start of your turn, you'll gain lore equal to the amount on your Location cards. You don't have to exert them (in fact, technically speaking, they're already turned on their side!), this is just a static ability. 

And these two locations do different things for the player. Agrabah has a nice high Willpower value, and nets its controlling player two Lore at the start of their turn (in our playthroughs that really stacked up). Motunui on the other hand turns characters defeated at that location into ink in your Inkwell.

How Does The Ruby & Sapphire Deck Play?

I think the two above location cards pictured, Agrabah and Motunui, do a really good job of serving as a microchasm for how this deck plays. The Ruby cards in this deck, like its Location Agrabah, are all about being aggressive and playing into their daredevil nature.

That aggression takes the form of making big swings for Lore, and constantly finding ways to thwart your opponent, and drain their lore.

There are a lot of Reckless Ruby characters in this deck (Reckless: This character can't quest and must challenge each turn if able), but the new addition of Locations gives these Reckless characters safer targets to attack. Remember, those rules state you have to challenge, it doesn't specify what you're challenging.

For the intelligent and creative Sapphire cards in this deck, they're big on supporting one another, card draw, and resource management.

With the exciting new inclusion of Ducktales characters, we see some nice synergy between Huey, Dewey, and Louie, as well as Scrooge McDuck's ability to cheat out free item cards.

In totality, the Disney Lorcana Into the Inklands Ruby & Sapphire Starter Deck is a truly rewarding, fun experience to play. It pairs very swift and aggressive Ruby questing with Sapphire's tendency to want to boost and bolster every other card on the field, leading to a well-balanced and very potent Starter Deck.

How Does The Amber & Emerald Deck Play?

I think, overall, the Amber & Emerald Disney Lorcana Into The Inklands Starter Deck is a more straightforward deck to play than the Ruby & Sapphire deck. That's not to say that it's simplistic by any means, but the paths to victory are a little more immediately obvious.

Essentially, the goal of this deck is to get a lot of inexpensive characters on the board, each boosting the others in interesting ways, and force your opponent to start picking them off instead of committing their own characters to Questing.

Even the two Locations included in this Starter Deck are very straightforward. Essentially copies of one another, De Vil Manor and Never Land both cost one Ink to cast, have a one cost Move Value, a four Willpower, and offer no special abilities. They each give their controlling player one Lore at the start of their turn. And this mimics the overall plan of this deck, get a bunch of these out because they only cost one ink, and let your Lore count slowly tick upwards.

Speaking specifically here, one of the additions to the game I'm most exciting about is Pluto - Mickey's loyal pup. One of my all-time favorite Disney characters, Pluto's debut in the game is a welcome sight. And he makes so much sense in Amber, as that color is all about amassing a lot of support characters and defending them.

His two versions included in this deck aren't the only dogs here, as Amber is absolutely chock-full of Dalmatians! With Rolly, Patch, Lucky, and a new Pongo joining the ranks, along with a multitude more Dalmatian puppies.

That's represented by one of the most clever introductions into this set: the card Dalmatian Puppy -Tail Wagger. A two ink cost 2/3 with one Lore, their special ability reads: You may have 99 copies of Dalmation Puppy - Tail Wagger in your deck. This breaking of the normal card limit of 4 copies of any single card is perfectly thematic.

Meanwhile, the Emerald cards in this Starter Deck are focused on, essentially, being a thorn in the side of your opponent. They either have Ward, or are powerful attackers, or can bounce characters back into your opponent's hand. I especially like the disruptive Action card Hypnotize, which originally appeared in the Rise of the Floodborn set.

Don Karnage and Kit Cloudkicker, two characters from TaleSpin, also make their Lorcana debut, and sit nicely in Emerald's adaptive and meddlesome archetype.

All in all, the Amber & Emerald Disney Lorcana Into The Inklands Starter Deck wants you to essentially build a wall of low-ink-cost Amber Characters, and then do a slippery slide into victory with your Emerald Characters, Actions, and Songs. It's a fun deck to run, and I think it can be easily understood by younger players.

Disney Lorcana Into The Inklands Starter Decks - Final Thoughts

Both of the new Disney Lorcana Into The Inklands Starter Decks offer a fun entry point into the game. If you're just getting into Lorcana, I highly recommend picking one of these decks up. And if you're looking to expand your collection, there may be elements from these decks (especially, I believe, the Ruby & Sapphire deck) that can be ported right into existing decks. In short, these are fun, easy to grasp, ready-made decks that will keep you questing for Lore!

To learn more about Lorcana, and see what other products will be released for Into The Inklands, head over to the Disney Lorcana official page.

The Disney Lorcana Into the Inklands Starter Decks used in this review were provided by Ravensburger. All images courtesy of the author.