The Reign of Jafar is winding down its reveal season, yet, surprisingly, there are a lot more Dual Ink cards heading for the roster.
Antonio Madrigal - Friend to All
For their cost, Antonio Madrigal has painfully less than average stats, and while his ability may seem pretty powerful, it requires you to heavily invest resources to use.
In terms of deck building, playing Friend to All on curve might result in some interesting choices. Running single copies of useful 3 ink cost character cards could make this search effect invaluable. To use that effectively, however, you'd ideally need a way to tutor Friend to All into play too.
Ultimately, Friend to All is an interesting piece of card design that may be ahead of its time without the proper tools. For now, there may be better and more consistent choices when it comes to filling out your deck slots.
Ludwig Von Drake - All-Around Expert
All-Around Expert has surprisingly strong value despite its underperforming body. Disney Lorcana players who have some experience from Magic: The Gathering may raise some eyebrows as All-Around Expert has an ability reminiscent of the card, Thoughtseize.
If this wasn’t enough, any attempt to banish this fragile board piece will just accelerate the ink curve of the controlling player.
The only thing holding back Ludwig Von Drake from becoming a total nightmare is its ink color combination. Amber-Sapphire doesn’t naturally have the raw and domineering presence the likes Ruby or Steel have.
The ink combination that allows a player access to All Around Expert is a little bit more passive and utilitarian. A player would have to figure out how to weave a game plan without the tools that more aggressive ink colors usually have in their back pocket.
Kuzco - Impulsive Llama
If played on-curve, the Shift 4 Impulsive Llama has pretty impressive stats backed up by a pseudo-Banish as he bounces an unwanted body into the bottom of a deck.
Unfortunately for Impulsive Llama, he doesn’t have an appropriate Shift line. With Wanted Llama in danger of rotating out, the next best target to cheat out Impulsive Llama would be Bored Royal, which is also coming in the set.
Without a cheaper version to justify the use of Impulsive Llama, Amethyst-Emerald players may want to look elsewhere in the meantime.
Mother Gothel - Knows What's Best
Mother Gothel - Knows What’s Best promotes a very aggressive playstyle. Allowing her allies to bounce themselves back to hand when banished from a challenge can squeeze more value from your cards.
Unfortunately, if you want to play Knows What’s Best on Curve, your choices for targets are limited. Most 1 or 2 ink cost cards wouldn’t survive the 2 damage you’d put on them in the first place.
A player would either have to play Knows What’s Best outside of her ink curve or make use of more robust cards, like Illusions, to maximize her ability.
The Sultan - Royal Apparition
Speaking of Illusion cards, Royal Apparition does boast a robust, if a bit average, body given his character classification.
His ability to exert an opposing character can be useful since Steel does have bodies that prefer to challenge over quest. This, however, is pretty niche all things considered, given that you’d have to make a commitment to using Illusion-based characters.
Royal Apparition could be justified in a deck running Jafar - High Sultan of Lorcana due to the latter’s ability to cheat out Illusion units. Admittedly, this is less likely to happen given Royal Apparition’s uninkable nature.
A player could be persuaded to run 1 or 2 copies of Royal Apparition strictly as fodder for High Sultan of Lorcana, but given how valuable deck space is, this kind of decision making needs some very considerable weight behind its thought.
Anna - Magical Mission
While not exactly tribal support, the sisters from Frozen usually have abilities that activate or power up if both sisters are in play.
With her Shift 4, Magical Mission played on-curve is a recurring draw engine. Combined with her pretty robust stats when played on her Shift curve, and her Support boosting an ally, Magical Mission will need to be addressed by the opponent as soon as possible.
Unfortunately for this card, it also suffers from a lack of variety for finding suitable Shift targets. Thankfully, this issue is somewhat addressed by including Trusting Sister in this set.
At the very least, Trusting Sister can act as a second version of Tipo - Growing Son, assuming a copy of Elsa is already on the board.
Alice - Clumsy as Can Be
Clumsy as Can Be has synergy when played with allies who can use the damage she spreads to everyone. While this could be strong, Clumsy as Can Be suffers from the same issue as Impulsive Llama.
With currently no good shift targets available for now, a player would definitely be playing Alice off-curve. While the damage she brings to the table can be useful down the line, in the current rotation, there are definitely better choices for this ink combination.
Captain Hook - The Pirate King
With a Shift cost of 3 ink, the Pirate King can be monstrous in the early to mid-game. Ravensburger has further increased this Dual Ink card’s value by reprinting Forceful Duelist in the same set, keeping the latter card -and the best Shift target- alive into the new set rotation.
Easily synergizing with cheap ink cost damage cards like Mosquito Bite or the upcoming Quick Shot, the Pirate King can easily establish a strong board presence for its controlling player.
Once again, Ravensburger is giving us reasons to build a wide board, as having more pirate characters in play further increases the value of Captain Hook’s ability.
Gyro Gearloose - Eccentric Inventor
Someone had to draw the proverbial short end of the stick. Unfortunately for Eccentric Inventor, he was the one.
With only Evasive and a one-time Strength reduction as Gyro’s only abilities, not even the slowly budding support for the Inventor archetype can justify the use of this card in a deck outside of filling in deck slots.
To be fair to Gyro, that combination of 3 Willpower with Evade makes him fairly robust for the early game. There aren’t a lot of characters in the same ink cost weight-class that can't easily banish Gyro with a single challenge.
However, Gyro is highly susceptible to direct banish, either through effect or through damage. Even with the good points listed above, it is still hard to justify using him.
Mushu - Your Worst Nightmare
Your Worst Nightmare probably has one of the best support capabilities for its ink combination. Giving any newly played character a one-time package of Rush, Reckless, and Evasive turns all of his allies into pseudo-direct damage action cards.
The issue for Mushu in general is that he was only recently added to the Disney Lorcana roster. So if a player would like to play Your Worst Nightmare on ink curve using Shift, they would need to use the upcoming Fast-talking Dragon version as well.
Assuming you do get all the working pieces together, this is still a 3-turn card investment that you won’t see a return from until the fifth turn of the match.Even then, you’d still need another character to play to receive Your Worst Nightmare’s benefits.
It’s certainly not the most efficient card to play with. But Ravensburger can easily elevate Your Worst Nightmare if they print out just one good early game Mushu variant.