Ravensburger has been leaning into Dual Ink cards rather hard since their introduction. This is great news for Disney Lorcana players, as it has helped strengthen and diversify deck building significantly. Unsurprisingly, Ravensburger isn't slowing down, as even more Dual Ink cards are being introduced in Reign of Jafar.
Undermine
Right off the bat, Undermine feels rather familiar. Emerald players would most likely see Undermine as another version of Sudden Chill. Ruby players, meanwhile, may see this as Lead the Way under another name.
For a player using one of the specific Ink colors, there’s little reason to run Undermine right now if you’d prefer another partner ink color. You have the same kind of tool in-house after all.
Once the new set rotation is online, however, Emerald will lose its access to Sudden Chill. With this in mind, Emerald decks may want to look at Undermine as a pretty good two-for-one special.
Honey Lemon - Costumed Catalyst
On her own, Honey Lemon - Costumed Catalyst isn’t exactly great. As a 4 ink cost body, her stats are a little on the average side, depending on who she’s up against.
Fittingly, however, Costumed Catalyst works wonders as part of a larger team, thanks to her ability. She can turn any Floodborn character Shift into a bounce, which is a great bit of extra value.
On its own, it’s a pretty heavy investment, but if you’re already playing a Floodborn-focused deck with Shift lines, then having this on a character helps add a little more value for building a deep board rather than a wide one.
It also helps that Honey Lemon - Costumes Catalyst shares the same colors as Baymax - Giant Robot to make these Shift plays a little easier.
Don Karnage - Air Pirate Leader
Don Karnage - Air Pirate Leader seems to lean into Steel more than Emerald with his capability of giving his allies Reckless.
The Reckless ability isn’t necessarily common, but what is common are the plethora of cheap action cards Emerald and Silver have in their arsenal, set rotation or not.
All a player needs to do is play Don Karnage and drop a character that has an advantage when it comes to challenges like Calhoun - Marine Sergeant. After that, use something like Prepare to Board, and you’re easily swinging board presence in your favor.
Admittedly, this tactic is a little slow, being a three-card investment throughout three turns. That said, it does let Emerald-Steel have options for trading challenges with their characters at a faster pace.
Mulan - Charging Ahead
Speaking of the Reckless ability, Mulan - Charging Ahead comes with it and the added bonus of being able to target readied characters.
With threes for both Strength and Willpower, despite her ink cost of four, Charging Ahead can easily banish more fragile characters kept protected by never being exerted or those that have Ward.
For better or worse, her uninkable nature may force players to limit her to maybe two to three copies at best.
Get Out
Despite the threat of the upcoming set rotation, Ravensburger is seeding the card pool with replacements.
Get Out is basically a slightly more expensive version of Dragon Fire. Like Undermine mentioned earlier, however, there’s a little more versatility. Get Out also functions as a more transient Merlin’s Carpetbag.
It’ll be hard to spot how useful Get Out would be for Ruby-Sapphire decks after set rotation.
A lot of the tools Ruby employs, like Be Prepared or Lady Tremaine - Imperious Queen, will be gone, so Get Out comes in as a good replacement.
Unfortunately for Sapphire, Pawpsicle, one of the ink color’s best staple cards and a possible target for Get Out’s item recursion, will also be rotated out. Currently, there are not a lot of good alternative item targets from either ink color.
Bernard - Over-prepared
Bernard - Over-prepred is yet another tool Ravensburger is pushing for the Ally tribal support. Ironically, Bernard doesn’t have the ‘Ally’ tag himself, making his support function a little more reliant on the archetype.
To make matters worse, Bernard has average stats, making him feel like a fairly vanilla character. Thankfully, Over-prepared does come with a conditional draw function to reward players for using Ally characters in their deck.
Unfortunately, there are still not a lot of Ally characters at the 1 ink cost level that could make for a compelling reason to pick Bernard - Over-prepared as a first choice for now.
Bolt - Down but Not Out
Bolt - Down but Not Out marks the first time a character at such a low ink cost is being given a huge Lore score. That said, Down but Not Out isn’t the easiest tool to use in the arsenal.
With no Strength and only a 4 in Willpower, this version of Bolt also has the caveat coming onto the board exerted.
Direct board removal aside in the current rotation, there’s little stopping an opposing character from swinging into this little canine the turn he comes in.
Of course, there are tools to protect Bolt, like any character with the Bodyguard ability or by using Action cards like Safe and Sound.
Despite all of these negatives, however, Bolt does force the opponent to deal with him. Down but Not Out can’t be left alone for too long, or else he can win the game on his own by questing.
If anything, Down but Not Out feels more like an Emerald card in disguise, with how it forces the opponent to deal with it.
Alma Madrigal - Accepting Grandmother
Rounding out this list is one of the oldest members of the Madrigal family. For 6 ink cost, Alma Madrigal trades pretty well with her 5s in Strength and Willpower. However, where her value shines is her ability to allow her allies to ready themselves if they’re used to Sing.
Of course, such a powerful ability is limited to a ‘once per turn’ clause, though. That said, just having the option of readying a character for another type of action without restriction is a very versatile tool.
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