Summary
As with mostDisney Lorcanasets, Reign of Jafar launched alongside two starter decks, ready for a new player to shuffle up and play their first game. More than just a deck for beginners, though, these decks include both reprints and new cards from Reign of Jafar that established players will also want to get their hands on.
The Amethyst and Amber deck focuses on singing songs. The deck’s full of not just songs and singers, but ways to ready characters, search for cards, and even look at your opponents' hands whenever you belt out a tune.
10Dolores Madrigal, Within Earshot
Listen In On Your Opponent’s Plans
In any TCG, information is king. Knowing what your opponent has, and whether they can answer your threats, can guide your entire gameplan. Dolores lets you skip past the guessing and mind games and get straight to looking at what your opponent is holding on to.
If you can keep Dolores out from the start of the game, you’ll have a reliable way to contually peek at your opponents' hands. Unfortunately, her lack of the singer keyword makes her slightly less officiant, but it’s still a powerful ability you’ll want to keep triggering as often as possible.
9Try Everything
Dust Yourself Off
One of a handful of songs found in this deck, Try Everything is a handy way of healing damage off of one of your characters. It also helps that it readies them to prevent any crackback from your opponents in challenges. Even if it can’t quest or challenge itself after being readied, it can do the one thing this deck loves most: singing.
If you’ve got a character with a high singer number, using this could let you play multiple high-cost cards in one turn. The only downside is that Try Everything doesn’t draw a card to replace itself in your hand, unlike most other songs in the deck.
8So Much To Give
A Cheap And Easy Song To Sing
The effect of So Much To Give isn’t all that interesting; it gives a characterbodyguard, and that’s it. It’s a good way of throwing extra protection infront of your main singers, but other than that there’s not a whole lot going on. Instead, So Much To Give is good for two important reasons.
The first is that it draws you a card, setting you up for potentially singing multiple songs in one turn. The second is that, at two ink, it’s one of the cheapest songs in the deck, and an easy way to trigger many of the song-matters characters you’ll be playing.
7Pepa Madrigal, Sensitive Sister
Build Lore While Singing
Passive lore gain is always good, and Pepa doesn’t constrain it with the ‘once per turn’ clause that often ruins so many cards. All you need to do is use a character to sing a song, and Pepa will trigger to give you an extra point.
Unfortunately it is constrained by only triggering once for each song you sing, rather than each character you use to sing it, but that’s almost a moot point. Sing enough songs and the lore will add up over just a few turns, especially with the numerous ways in this deck of singing multiple songs each turn.
6Antonio Madrigal, Friend To All
Skip To The Good Bit
Searching your deck for a card is always a powerful ability, and Antonio lets you do it every turn you sing a song. The catch is that the card you find has to be a character with cost three or less, but that’s hardly a limitation with cards like Pepa Madrigal, Antonio’s Jaguar, and Mirabelle Madrigal in the deck.
Search for Antonio’s Jaguar and then play it to gain an extra lore point.
With its ability to quest for two lore and a relatively low cost of four ink, this would be one of the best song-centric cards in Lorcana had it just been one ink colour. As it is, being both amber and amethyst severely limits the decks you may run it in, and completely shuts it out of more popularsteelsong builds. It’s good in this deck, but you’ll be hard-pressed to play it anywhere else.
5Bruno Madrigal, Singing Seer
Draw Most Of Your Deck In One Go
Bruno Madrigal, Singing Seer has a similar problem to Antonio, in that being multicolour inherently makes it a less useful card. However, if you can run it, he can be absolute gas in a singing deck.
Seven uninkable is a high cost, but that just means Bruno can sing bigger songs and trigger for massive amounts of card draw. If you’re going wide, you could be picking up a significant part of your deck. If not, at least you’ve got a chunky 3/7 that can tank a lot of damage and quest for lore in the process.
4Huey, Reliable Leader
A Handy Cost Reduction
It’s easy to get lost in the sauce of a Lorcana deck and focus on its big, splashy rares. However, you’d be doing yourself a disservice to ignore the uncommons of the deck, as cards like Huey, Reliable Leader can really help you out.
Huey doesn’t have to join in with the songs, but by questing can help you get your other characters in play for one ink cheaper. Getting a Bruno Madrigal in play a turn early can really tip the momentum in your favour, or you could use it to play a one-drop for free and make your board wider.
3Fantastical And Magical
Everybody Join In
This deck really wants you to go wide and use multiple characters to sing one song, and Fantastical and Magical is the payoff for that. Throw out a bunch of cheap characters and get them all to sing together, and you could well win there and then by it gaining you lore for each character that sung it.
If not, you’re still drawing a huge grip of cards. Whether you’re drawing all your answers, or a way to sing more songs, or something to help you get those last few points of lore, Fantastical and Magical offers a ridiculous amount of profit. Just don’t hard-cast it, because it’d cost you nine ink and do absolutely nothing.
2Alma Madrigal, Accepting Grandmother
The Heart Of Your Deck
While other multicolour cards in the deck, like Bruno and Antonio, feel limited by having more colours, Alma feels more like one you’d build the deck around. In essence, the first song you sing each turn will be free, as Alma just readies those characters to go again.
Alma doesn’t even have the usual limitations of stopping that character from challenging or questing. You don’t have to choose between singing a song or advancing your lore count. It may only be once per turn, but Alma is the key engine of this deck that you’ll want to get out as soon as possible.
1Flower, Shy Skunk
Great In Any Amethyst Deck
In a deck full of song-singing, it feels weird that the best card is a three-ink rare that has nothing to do with songs. Instead, Flower is a must-include in just about anyAmethyst deckfor its ability to filtre through your deck at lightning speed. Whenever you play a character, you’re able to look at the top card of your deck and either keep it on top of put it on the bottom (known in other games as scrying).
Playing characters is the most common thing you’ll be doing in Lorcana, and having a way to zoom through your deck for your key cards is incredibly powerful. It fits just about anywhere; in go-wide decks like this, but it also works in the Amethyst bounce decks that are also popular.
