Disney Lorcana Ursula's Return Starter Decks Review - Songs and Swords

The devious Ursula has slowly been gathering strength after being freed from magical confines, and now she's ready to unleash her dark powers across the land of Lorcana! Do you have what it takes to fight against the evil (or revel in its power)? The fourth Disney Lorcana set, Ursula's Return, hits hobby store shelves May 17, 2024 (and goes wide on May 31), and Ravensburger sent us early copies of the Starter Decks for review.

We've previously covered the second set - Rise of the Floodborn - starter decks and the third set - Into the Inklands - starter decks, so now let's take a deep dive into the two newest.

Disney Lorcana Ursula's Return - Amber and Amethyst Starter Deck

Centered around the Madrigal family from Disney's recent animated hit Encanto, the Amber and Amethyst Starter deck comes ready to play with a 60 card deck, tokens and damage counters, game rules, and an Ursula's Return booster pack (note: my early press copies don't come packed with that booster).

Overall, I think this Starter Deck could serve as a very good introduction to the game. And that, really, is how I think we should be judging these decks. They're obviously not competitive in a tournament sense, but this deck provides a strong collection of playable, perfectly serviceable cards to learn the game and begin to build a collection.

Now let's go into more detail as to how the deck plays - and where its possible strengths and weaknesses lie.

How Does The Ursula's Return Amber and Amethyst Deck Play?

This deck combines Amber's focus on flooding the playing field with a lot of inexpensive characters with the trickier nature of Amethyst to create a playstyle I would describe as an overwhelming presence. When everything goes your way, you're playing inexpensive characters that are all buffing each other and sneaking past your opponent's defenses.

Many of the Amber characters in this Starter Deck sport either the Bodyguard ability (meaning your opponent has to attack that character) or the Support ability (meaning when they quest, you can add their attack power to another character's attack power until end of turn).

Alone, they'll quickly be chewed up by enemy forces, but if you can lay out a nice smattering of characters you can quickly overwhelm your opponent.

For the Amethyst characters, abilities like Evasive are crucial to slipping through and either scoring tricky points or sliding through for damage (without much fear of retaliation). There's also a lot of classic Amethyst bounce back, ensuring your characters that are banished in challenges return to your hand, meaning you're hopefully never short on a supply of characters to get onto the board.

As for non-character cards, Amethyst only has two: Casa Madrigal, a new inexpensive and sturdy location that grants a lore each turn if you have a character there; and Poor Unfortunate Souls, a 2-cost Song that bounces a character, item, or location with cost 2 or less back to the owner's hand. For Amber, there are cards that heal, cards that weaken your opponents for a turn, and cards that let you search for character cards.

This deck does have its fair share of weaknesses, as you'd expect from a Starter Deck. I think for a deck that embraces flooding the field with characters and bouncing would-be-banished characters back to your hand, the cards that let you heal (which are almost never useful in any trading card game) are wasted space here.

Also, this deck is very weak to your opponent hitting their curve or having lots of answers to your characters. If you lose your momentum, or stumble to get characters out onto the board in a flood, it's game over for you. 

Disney Lorcana Ursula's Return - Sapphire and Steel Starter Deck

Centered around the characters of Disney's classic Hercules, among other familiar faces from across Disney, the Sapphire and Steel Starter deck also comes ready to play with a 60-card deck, tokens, damage counters, the rules of the game, and an Ursula's Return booster pack (again worth noting: my early press copies come without that booster).

Overall, I think this deck is an extraordinary introduction to the game. The characters are iconic and span across Disney properties: Hercules, Rapunzel, Aladdin, Aurora (aka Sleeping Beauty), and The Great Mouse Detective all make appearances, just to name a few.

But more importantly, because so many of them are keying off of one keyword ("Hero"), it's not hard to understand exactly what this deck wants you to be doing from the start.

How Does The Ursula's Return Sapphire and Steel Deck Play?

The Sapphire and Steel deck merges the card advantages that come with Sapphire with the strong fighting prowess of Steel characters, creating a deck that wants to build up resources and get into the thick of the fight.

The Sapphire cards in this deck are all very Hero focused and offer a few ways to manipulate your deck (drawing a card, putting a card facedown in your inkwell, looking at the top 3 cards of your deck and re-arranging). I'm also seeing repeating instances of Ward (basically meaning your character can't be messed with unless they're challenged in an attack) which balances nicely with Steel cards.

Meanwhile, those Steel cards in the deck are doing what Steel cards do best: They're taking up space on the battlefield with powerful attack and defense, while boosting each other.

Out of all the characters in the deck, more than half have the Hero designation, so you'll get a lot of mileage out of all the cards that boost other heroes.

The non-character cards in this deck further the tactics of the character cards, weakening your opponent's characters, dealing direct damage, making your characters harder to kill, and with the Steel location card Thebes - The Big Olive, you'll gain 2 lore every time a character banishes another character while at that location. That could be devastating.

This deck does suffer from cost of cards. A lot of your most impactful cards are going to be in the 3, 4, and even 5 or more cost range, so you'll be laying a lot of hopes on individual characters here (as opposed to building up a wall of characters as in the Amber and Amethyst deck).

Also, with so much of the deck focused on and rewarding your characters in battle, it can potentially become easy to get lost in the fight and fall behind when trying to gain lore.

Add to that the fact that this deck really needs Heroes out on the battlefield to amp up, it can kind of telegraph to your opponent what they need to do in order to dismantle your plan of attack. If your opponent simply targets and removes heroes before they become an overwhelming force, you could be in for a world of hurt.

Disney Lorcana Ursula's Return Starter Decks - Final Thoughts

As with all Starter Decks, and as the name implies, these are definitely more suited to new players. They're both fun to pilot, with plenty of win conditions and strategies, but each battle will feel like it could tip in any direction at a moment's notice. Maybe that's the fun of a Starter Deck, I think: You've got everything you need to play the game, and now it's time to begin to learn the ropes, even if your deck isn't perfectly balanced.

Of the two decks, I do think the Sapphire and Steel deck is more straightforward. I don't think new players will be lost, by any means, playing the Amber and Amethyst deck, but there's something very immediate about the Sapphire and Steel deck. You play strong characters, you banish your opponents' characters, and when you don't see any big threats on their side of the board, you start questing.

Should I Buy The Disney Lorcana Ursula's Return Starter Decks?

If you're looking to get into Disney Lorcana and want to jump into it with the newest set in a way that won't overwhelm you, starting with one of these two Ursula's Return Starter Decks is a great entry into the game. If, however, you're a veteran player and don't need to build out your collection, you'd be better served going a different route to procure cards, as these Starter Decks don't contain very much raw power.

Are you excited for the new Ursula's Return set? Will you use these Starter Decks as a way into the game? Let me know in the comments below!

The Disney Lorcana Ursula's Return Starter Decks used in the creation of this review were provided by Ravensburger. This review was written after playing multiple games with both sets against each other, and carefully studying card interactions. Card imagery provided by Ravensburger.