Disney Lorcana: Ursula's Return Review

Summary

• Ursula's Return must follow the beloved Into the Inklands, making it challenging to live up to expectations set by previous era.
• Starter decks have improved with each Lorcana set, providing new players an entry point into the game's world of fun synergies and theming.
• The cooperative Illumineer's Quest - Deep Trouble adds narrative depth to Lorcana, while the new decks and characters reflect engaging battle themes.

It’s no secret that I’ve had some reservations about Ursula’s Return. The fourth Lorcana set is in the unfortunate position of following Into the Inklands, which is universally regarded as the best era of Lorcana yet. It had a meta so wide, diverse, and balanced that you could play nearly a dozen different decks and be successful.

Lorcana was fun to play and fun to watch, and even when the season ended the meta still hadn’t been totally resolved. Seeing a completely new archetype win the first Disney Lorcana Challenge was an incredible moment for Lorcana. Simply put, Ursula’s Return has a lot to live up to. And if Ravensburger isn’t careful, it could easily replace a healthy meta with a significantly worse one.

It’s important to come into every expansion with an open mind. Thankfully, this expansion has exceeded my expectations with its new versions of all of the usual product types: starter decks, Illumineer’s Troves, booster boxes, and accessories like deck boxes, sleeves, and playmats (including one featuring my beloved Big Tink). In place of a gift set, Ursula’s Return features a self-contained cooperative game called the Illumineer’s Quest - Deep Trouble. Across the board, these are the best Lorcana products Ravensburger has released to date.

Disney Lorcana's First Regional Challenge Event Was A Triumph

The first Disney Lorcana Challenge in North America was an incredible experience for fans and a great start for the Lorcana's competitive scene.

Starter decks aren’t something long-time Lorcana players will give much thought to, but it’s important to always have a new entry point into the game, both for young players who need relative simplicity, and new players who want to try out Lorcana without diving into the deep end. Each set of Lorcana starter decks has impressed me more than the one before, and the Ursula’s Return’s decks are no exception.

The Amber/Amethyst deck is a Madrigal typal deck with lots of fun synergies and theming, similar to Inkland’s puppy deck, but with more personality. Each Madrigal has an ability that feels perfectly themed, and while the archetype may not be competitively viable, the synergies provide a better introduction to deck building than previous typal starter decks like Seven Dwarfs and Puppies.

I’m even more impressed with the Sapphire/Steel Hero deck, which has quickly become my favorite Lorcana starter deck ever. It provides a framework for a Hero-themed deck that you can build upon, with a core of viable characters like Philoctetes, No Nonsense Instructor and Anna, True-Hearted that you can use to build a fun, and potentially even competitive deck with. If a starter deck is meant to be something you upgrade over time as your collection grows, this deck might be the best example of that yet.

Illumineer's Quest - Deep Trouble

The Illumineer’s Quest is a blast, and I can’t say enough positive things about it. It comes with two pre-constructed decks that each contain a new Legendary character, as well as a villain deck made entirely of cards with unique mechanics and artwork. Theming has always been one of Lorcana’s greatest strengths, and this new format brings in an element of narrative that I’ve been eagerly anticipating since Lorcana first launched. It’s quick to pick up and play, especially if you already know the rules of Lorcana, and it has scaling difficulty.

The easiest mode should be a breeze for almost anyone with the included precon decks. My partner and I played it on normal mode and didn’t have too much trouble. The two harder difficulties require you to build specific decks to win, and the Extreme difficulty is so hard, I’ve only seen it beaten by people using cheesy, exploitative strategies. You could sink a lot of time into strategizing deck builds specifically for this game mode, which is great.The Illumineer’s Quest fills a niche for cooperative, low-impact play that helps establish Lorcana’s identity among TCGs, and I love having a story-driven experience to cap off the game’s first narrative arc.

If the theme of Into The Inklands was ‘Adventure’, the theme of Ursula’s Return is ‘Battle’. With Ursula at the center there’s plenty of representation for The Little Mermaid and some cards that directly reference the narrative, like Ursula’s Trickery and Ursula’s Plan. There’s also an emphasis on the Hero archetype with characters preparing for war.

It feels appropriate that Mulan and the Imperial Army are given the spotlight in this set, along with a fresh crop of Musketeers, daring princes, and even Super Goof. Even the Magic Brooms are ready for battle. There’s a nice continuity of style and tone across the set, which may be ever-so-slightly more serious than previous expansions, but still maintains the characteristic charm and nostalgia of Lorcana.

Lorcana's Hero Starter Deck Is Perfect In Every Way

Lorcana's Stand Together starter deck has a great foundation for a new archetype that's fun to build.

But I think, for how well Ursula’s Return nails its themes, the story could use some support from supplementary material like comics, cinematics, or even short stories published on the Lorcana website to help flesh out its narrative, similarly to Magic: The Gathering.

There’s a lot of world-building and flavor in the artwork and flavor text of cards throughout the first four sets, and I was hoping Ursula’s Return’s story would be a little more cohesive than it ended up being (after all, Ursula featured in two of the last three sets, and so her ‘return’ really needed explaining). That said, the prize you ‘unlock’ after beating Deep Trouble is an exciting tease for the future of Lorcana’s story.

There’s been a lot of panic in the first few weeks about a pair of overpowered decks dominating the new meta. Both Ruby/Sapphire and Emerald/Steel - arguably the two strongest decks in the previous format - got major upgrades this round, while most other decks seemingly didn’t. With the addition of Ice Block and Sisu, Responsible Sister, Ruby/Sapphire has an easier time controlling the board until it's ready to gain a huge burst of lore with Lucky Dime and Tamatoa, So Shiny!. Emerald/Steel seems to be the more oppressive of the two, with new 3-cost Floodborn characters like Aladdin, Brave Rescuer and Diablo, Devoted Herald powering up Bucky, Squirrel Squeak Tutor by activating his discard ability sooner and more consistently.

Ursula's Return's Big Players

It’s far too soon to say how the meta will shake out, but the concerns are valid. For all we know, the Bucky decks will get slaughtered by some yet-unseen archetype at Lorcana Challenge Chicago this weekend and we’ll find that there’s still a healthy balance of competitive decks in the new meta. My concern isn’t that these two decks are too strong, it’s that they’re pretty miserable to play against. Both the ramp/control deck and the discard-your-entire-hand deck rely on strategies that feel oppressive and unfair, and far too polarizing to be part of what I would consider a healthy meta.

For me, it's not enough to have three or four competitive decks if half of those decks are built around demoralizing strategies. While I’m eager to see how the meta evolves and what counterplays we can discover, I’m not eager to go play Lorcana at my local shop right now just to play three Emerald/Steel matchups, discard my entire hand in four turns, then sit there trying to top-deck answers to Bucky that don’t really exist.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Emerald/Steel deck everyone is playing right now typically runs four copies of three or four of the most expensive Legendary cards, and costs between $500-600 to build.

A narrow meta also has an impact on the market, which affects collectors and players. With Emerald/Steel and Ruby/Sapphire squeezing so many different archetypes out of the meta, the only Legendaries from the set with any value are the two that go in those decks, Diablo and Sisu. We saw something similar happen in Rise of the Floodborn when Beast, Tragic Hero was the only non-Enchanted card worth anything.

Rise of the Floodborn is the only set that’s always available at my local stores now, because no one wants to open those packs. Cards like Mulan, Elite Archer and Ursula, Sea Witch Queen could see play one day, but when you open an Ursula’s Return pack right now, it feels like you lost if you pull anything other than a Diablo.

With any game that gets major updates throughout the year, the ebb and flow is unavoidable. Into the Inklands couldn’t be as great as it was if there weren’t other sets to compare it to, and while I’m grieving the format we lost, I'm just as bullish on Lorcana as ever. Art direction is as good as it's ever been, there seem to be fewer quality control issues, and I can’t overstate what a fantastic addition the Illumineer’s Quest is to the game.

I probably won’t remember Ursula’s Return as fondly as other sets when I look back ten years from now, but what matters is that I can still see Lorcana sticking around ten years from now. The consistent quality, expansion of design ideas, and thematic genius of each set will keep me coming back for more as long as Ravensburger keeps it up, even when the meta shifts in a direction I don’t enjoy.

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The perfect ending to Into the Inklands is a complete unknown deck winning the first major tournament.