The first Booster box of Disney Lorcana Attack of the Vine is as crazy as a Giant Red Panda. Wanna know what we pulled?
Attack of the Vine! Is finally here, and with it tons of new exciting cards and amazing new products. The core of the 13th set of Disney Lorcana is, as usual, the Booster Box, with its 24 Booster Packs filled with amazing new cards. Looking at the new themes and franchise in this set, I would say that Disney Lorcana Attack of the Vine! Booster Box feels a bit like when Mei Lee first poofed into her giant red panda form and looked into the mirror to see something big, bold, and absolutely impossible to ignore.
Getting your hands on a Booster Box of this set is not an easy feat, with the growing interest Disney Lorcana is getting these days. In my case, I have to thank, as usual, the amazing team at Ravensburger for sending me a few products of the new set ahead of the release and for allowing me to get my hands on this glorious box of cardboard goodness. I have to admit I pondered for a few milliseconds if I should actually open it all or if I should have slowly enjoyed opening a few packs every day, but honestly, the temptation was too much to resist. And with the improved pull rates in this set, there is nothing more exciting than opening all the booster packs one after the other. So take a deep breath, and let’s rip it open!
A whole new treat: Attack of the Vine!
As mentioned, Attack of the Vine! is the 13th set of Disney Lorcana and the first one released within the new Set Rotation. As a reminder, all non-reprinted cards from sets 5 to 8 are now officially not legal in the standard format and can only be played in the Infinity format.
For the first time in a while, Attack of the Vine! features double-colour Ink cards again and, for the first time, the new set is larger than usual and features a total of 207 cards. In the past, Ravensburger capped the sets at 204 even when they included double-Ink colour cards, and this created an imbalance of rarity slots between colour Inks. Increasing the set size by three cards allows the new set to have equal rarity slots across all Ink colours. As a result, each Ink colour will feature 37 cards, other than Sapphire, which will have 38 cards.
On top of the core set of 207 cards, Attack of the Vine! The card list also includes 18 Enchanted and 18 Epic cards, and two new Iconic cards, “Belle&Beast, Certain as the sun” and “Lilo&Stitch, Fun Loving Friends”. While the Epic cards will all be single colour, the two Iconic and two out of three of the Enchanted cards are double-Ink colour. The art style of both Iconic and Enchanted has been defined as “Cinemahyem” as it mixes multiple scenes and characters from the original movie with Lorcana lore.
As mentioned before, a standard Booster box includes 24 Booster packs of 12 cards each, featuring 6 Commons, 3 Uncommons, 2 cards Rare or above, and 1 foil card of any rarity. The pull rates for this set are very similar to the ones seen for Wilds Unknown, and this is pretty nice for both Players and collectors. Attack of the Vine! also features new foil cards with extended artwork and a new 9-card Puzzle art that can be created by putting together the art cards you will find in each Booster pack. Not surprisingly, the artwork shows the new Hunny characters in all their glory with Winnie at the centre.
What would you expect from the 13th set of Disney Lorcana?
In terms of lore, Attack of the Vine! represents the apex of the story started in Whispers in the Well. In this set, the Vine is finally here, and our heroes are trying to put an end to its threat to the magical Realms. This is not an easy feat as the Vine is using the magical Ink stolen from the depths of the Great Illuminary in order to summon an army of Glimmers controlled by the Vine itself (the “vinelings”). In terms of gameplay, these Glimmers are all Floodborn, although they do not shift.
In fact, Attack of the Vine! expands further the concept of Shift with many creative ways to use this ability. First, we have some cards with the news keyword “Team” that can shift onto two different characters. For example. “Lilo & Stitch, Fun-loving Friends” and “Belle & Beast, Certain as the sun” can be played on top of either one of the two Characters named in the card, and they have quite impressive abilities. Meilin Lee, our favourite character from “Turning Red”, on the other hand, can Shift into the 6-cost “Meilin Lee, Popular Red Panda” but, to be true to the character in the movie, she is forced to revert back to her human form at the end of every turn. Bonus feature: before reverting, she can fully heal all her damages, and if the Panda sings a song, the player gets 3 lore.
While it is not a Floodborn Character per se, we should also celebrate the return of one of my favourite characters: Morph from the movie Treasure Island. Interestingly, this new “Morph, Little Imitator” is not a reprint of the Emerald card from set 3 but a new Amethyst Character with a whole new artwork. Luckily, both cards share the same ability, and they can be used as a base to shift any characters on them. Of course, the new Morph had to be an Amethyst card.....
Together with Shift, the new set also provides a new take on the “discard” ability, used this time as a way to gain a direct benefit for the Player. “Rapunzel, Escaping the Tower”, for example, can get one more lore and Evasive if a card is discarded during the Player's turn. This is similar to Angel's ability to do damage at the cost of discarding a card, but today, which card you discard really matters. For example, discarding the new Action card “Look what you've done” allows the Player to play it from the discard to deal 2 damage to chosen Characters. Alternately, if the card discarded is “Mother Gothel, Evil as Ever”, the Player can play her instead right from the discard pile. In both cases, the Player will need to be able to pay the Ink costs to trigger these abilities from the Discard pile.
First Box Opening
The first box I opened for the Attack of the Vine! was pretty exciting. I was really hoping Ravensburger would keep this set aligned to Wilds Unknown, but there was no guarantee this would be the case until I started opening the packs. Once all packs opened, the scene in front of my eyes was amazing as the pulls included 5 Legendaries, 2 Epics, and 1 Enchanted. I think I cannot say any more that I am usually not very lucky when opening Disney Lorcana packs, as the updated pull rates really make opening a box an exciting experience.
Looking at the set card list, I admit I had my eyes on a lot of very cool Enchanted cards, but I cannot complain about pulling “The Madrigal Family, Every Generation”. Encanto is a really nice movie with one of my favourite Disney song ever. If you are wondering which one, I am sorry, but we do not talk about that in my family... The Enchanted, beautifully illustrated by Maxine Vee, shows all the Characters from the Madrigal family in different moments of the movie. Mirabel obviously takes centre stage on this card, and I find it exciting that she is holding the Miracle Candle. From a gameplay point of view, this card is also not too bad, providing the possibility to ink a card from the top of your deck if you remove at least one damage during your turn.
I am also pretty happy with the legendaries I found in my first Booster Box. Rapunzel & Flynn Rider is definitely one of the most intriguing ones for me among them due to its two abilities. The first one allows the Player to draw and discard a card upon questing, while the second one offers the possibility to play the discarded card if it is a Character (and you can pay the price). The value of this second ability is quite high, considering it triggers every time a card is discarded, not only when it is discarded using the card's first ability. In essence, Rapunzel & Flynn Rider can provide an alternative way to keep card advantage even when you have to discard cards to trigger other effects like Angel, etc.
“Mushu, Stealthy Dragon” is another very interesting legendary Emerald card. First, it is an Inkable with a strength of 3 and a Willpower of 2 that only costs 3 to play. Moreover, it gets the Player to draw a card upon questing if the opponent has more cards in hand than the Player. Considering Mushu is also evasive, I have a good feeling this card will find a spot in a few Emerald decks for sure.
The other card I was very excited to pull was “Sulley & Boo, Scare Buddies”. Unfortunately, I only pulled the Super Rare version of the card Zatu revealed for this set, but it was very nice to get it from an actual pack. Most importantly, this card is pretty interesting from a gameplay point of view, as it can be shifted to either Boo or Sulley (or both of them) for just four. Its ability, “The Power of Friendship,” offers one of the most interesting recurrences in the current game as it allows the Player to play for free the cards underneath Sulley & Boo when the card is banished. If one of these cards is “Sulley, The New Boss,” the Player can also take back a card from the discard pile. As you may imagine, the best option in this case is to take back Sulley & Boo, Scare Buddies to replay it next turn and repeat infinitely. I quite love this recursion, and I am pretty excited to build an Amber-Ruby deck to test how Attack of the Vine! will be impacting the meta-game. Which deck are you looking to build for this season
