Disney Lorcana players are off to the races. It’s the first wave of testing for the new cards from the Reign of Jafar expansion. Due to this, there's never been a better time than now to see what the most-played cards are from this set’s opening week.
A quick shout out to inkDecks for collating the data from local tournament scenes from across the globe to give the public a glimpse of the developing meta.
5. Monstro - Infamous Whale
Usually finding a home in Amethyst-Sapphire decks, players tend to run Infamous Whale at about 2 copies in most deck lists.
Sapphire makes for a very natural partner ink color. If on point, the inkwell acceleration provided by Sapphire could potentially allow Monstro to come out two to three turns earlier than expected.
Interestingly enough, Monstro has been recorded being used with Amber, Emerald, and Ruby.
Amber can definitely take advantage of Monstro’s huge Willpower with Rapunzel - Gifted with Healing still in rotation.
Even at a single copy, the longevity Amber provides to Monstro with all of its healing can essentially turn this whale into a late-game win condition.
Emerald and Ruby strangely use Monstro as well, but from what we’ve gathered, it looks like they’re more for the late game options if a game isn’t closed fast enough.
Some of these decks only ran Monstro at a single copy, reinforcing this theory.
4. Rhino - One-Sixteenth Wolf / Power Hamster
We’re lumping together both Rhinos, as each deck we’ve seen has the two together as a package. Notably, both versions of Rhino are being played at maximum copies.
Unfortunately, the existence of Power Hamster makes Rhino exclusive to Amber-Steel decks. To be fair to both cards, however, they offer an extremely powerful early game drop.
One-Sixteenth Wolf’s existence allows Amber-Steel decks to cheat out Power Hamster on a Shift line.
With Steel, that means any character the opponent plays from the second turn onwards is under the crosshairs of Steel board removal, like And Then Along Came Zeus.
That still doesn’t take into account yet that Power Hamster is already difficult to dislodge with its Resist +2. With Amber providing support, it’s difficult to make the damage stick to remove that Resist.
3. Beyond the Horizon
This Action card is finding a home mostly with Amber and Emerald.
For Amber, it’s a little bit of a no-brainer given all the Singer character cards the ink color has access to. Paired with the relative lack of actual in-house draw power, Beyond the Horizon makes for a good alternative or complement to A Whole New World.
Emerald, on the other hand, is weaponizing Beyond the Horizon to the point that some players on the Disney Lorcana Reddit thread are starting to make it a topic of discussion
Prince John - Greediest of All is the enabler of this combo. Pairing the two allows for a one-sided hand nuke while the Emerald player still reaps the benefit of the card draw.
As if that wasn't enough, the most frightening thing about this is that Diablo - Devoted Herald is still in rotation. Given the bare minimum requirement, Beyond the Horizon can be sung as early as the fourth turn.
This kind of hand destruction is disconcerting, given how fast this could be accomplished. At the moment, it’s a little too early to say how oppressive this card combination will turn out to be.
A card errata may be in the future if Ravensburger sees a meta purely dominated by Emerald-Steel. Worse, the Disney Lorcana Forbidden/Limited might have an unscheduled update.
2. Lady - Family Dog
Lady - Family Dog makes it to another list as she’s proving to be a very effective in-house tool for Amber for almost every occasion.
Mostly used in Amber-Steel, Family Dog easily brings out an extra body for Strength of Raging Fire to get a boost or to set up a wider board for fast aggro play.
This is all the more apparent when decks are built with a character-heavy ratio and are packing Look at this Family. Family Dog and a cheap Singer 4 are all that is needed to activate this 7 ink cost song.
We’re also seeing Amber-Emerald decks taking advantage of Family Dog’s free body drop in a hyper-aggressive character-focused deck.
It appears that the goal is to field a potent amount of bodies and eventually get Chernabog - Evildoer close to the game.
1. Captain Hook - Forceful Duelist
We were unsure at first to include Forceful Duelist on this list. This Captain Hook technically debuted back in the First Chapter.
Due to set rotation looming on the horizon, however, we decided to give Forceful Duelist a pass as it is technically a part of the Reign of Jafar set.
Being a 1 ink cost character who can punch way above his weight class, that Challenger +2 on Forceful Duelist can find a home in almost any deck that uses Steel.
It also happens that Emerald can wholeheartedly take advantage of the Shift line Forceful Duelist gives with The Pirate King. This encourages a more tribal focused deck building approach for this particular ink combination.
In other Trading Card Games (TCGs), there are some cards that are designed to be easily accessible and are just good and what they do. It looks like Captain Hook - Forceful Duelist will be cementing itself as one such card for the foreseeable future.