With the card list of new set of Disney Lorcana, the Wilds Unknown, now fully revealed, the excitement for the new adventures set 12 will bring to the game. I am very excited for the new set and for all the new franchises and cards it will bring to the game and I hope you also have some good plans for when the set releases. As a remind, pre-release events will be taking place from the 8th of May and they can be found on Ravensburger Playhub while the actual release will be on the 15th of May.
Thanks to the always amazing team at Ravensburger, I was able to sneak an early preview copy of the Booster Box for the new set and I cannot hide that this box has been one of the best I ever opened since I started playing Lorcana in 2023. I am always very grateful to the team for choosing to send me any product but this one in particular has been a really an appreciated one. If you are curious to know which amazing cards I found in this box and how the set overall looks please keep reading. As a reminder, the content below will include images and details about the cards featured in Wilds Unknown, therefore if you want to explore the set first hand when it releases please do not continue to read.
Wilds Unknown: let new adventures begin!
As mentioned, Wilds Unknown is the 12th Set of Disney Lorcana and it will be the last one released before the next Set Rotation. As a remind, when “Attack of the Vine!” releases in July, all non-reprinted cards from set 5 to 8 will not be legal any more for standard events.
The new set will feature as usual a total of 204 card and it will include any double-Ink cards. In addition, Wilds Unknown will feature 18 Enchanted and 18 Epic cards (three per Ink colour), and two new Iconic cards, “Buzz Lightyear, Jungle Ranger” and “Merida, Formidable Archer”. A standard Booster box includes 24 Booster packs of 12 cards each. Each Booster pack will feature 6 Commons, 3 Uncommon, 2 cards Rare of above and 1 foil card of any rarity. The artwork on the Booster packs features Woody, Merida and Gadget Hackwrench although it is important to remember that the artwork on the pack does not have any link to its content hence it does not dictates the cards you can pull.
Wilds unknown will features a few foil cards with extended artwork. These cards are alternative version of foil cards where one of the borders has been removed to allow the cards to form a continuous picture. For the first time ever, Wilds Unknown features a four by two extended artwork featuring all Seven Dwarves and Snow White that therefore includes cards missing two or even three borders.
In addition to the playable cards, each Wilds Unknown Booster Pack includes a piece of a 9-card Pizzle art. Once combined, all these cards created a beautiful picture featuring an Illumineer gearing up for an adventure together with four different Traveler Glimmers. These Glimmers are a new addition specific to this set and they have all Ink-themed abilities that triggers when they quest if card-specific are met.
What to expect?
In terms of lore, Wilds Unknown is shaping up to be another strongly lore-driven set continuing the trend Ravensburger started with Whispers in the Well and Winterspell. In this set, our heroes are travelling the Inklands exploring its mysterious wilderness. During their travels, we learn that the Inklands are actually composed by large territories called “Domains” with each of them be thematically linked to one or two Ink colours. Some of them are also ruled by Villain Glimmers although they do not necessarily mean to harm the Illumineers.
In fact, the main treat in this set is still the Vine we saw for the first time in Hen Wen's Vision. While the Glimmers and the Illumineers are scattered throughout the Inklands, we learn how much the Vine actually spread so far and how it is impacting the Magical Realm. Each Domain is facing different challenges and the Illumineers will need the help of the new (and very thematic “Travelers” Glimmers) in order to find their way back to the Great Illuminary.
In terms of gameplay, the new Traveler Glimmers add some interesting synergies that are linked directly to the playing strategy of their Deck instead of to a certain card type or keyword. This type of mechanic is not new and we have seen a few examples of this approach before (for example the “Enigmatic Inkcaster”) but Wilds Unknown actually includes a very large amount of these types of cards with a potential to create greater combos.
Wilds Unknown also does not include any card with Boost although it features a few cards with interesting game ability. For example, “Dash Parr, Lava Runner” is a 4-cost Amethyst card with Rush and the ability to quest right away when it is played. This sort of Super-Rush for Questing fits very well Dash Super abilities but it also makes this card very interesting from a gameplay point of view in particular in late game. “The Leviathan, Guardian of Atlantis” is another very interesting card as it allows the Player to banish any number of Characters as far as their total Strength is 10 or less. Disregarding the fact that this Character costs 10 to be played, this ability seems pretty intriguing in particular considering the good amount of board wide removal we have been seeing in the last sets.
First Box Opening: Which amazing cards can you pull?
The first box I opened for the Wilds Unknown really set the bar very high for the set as I managed to pull: 6 Legendaries, 3 (three!!) Epics, and 1 Enchanted. I usually have a very average luck when opening Disney Lorcana packs and I would have never expected to find such a great box. The three Epic cards were already a very big surprise for me and I couldn't believe myself when the last card of the last pack was a beautiful Enchanted!!!
I think the card I am most excited from this deck is the Enchanted “Dunbroch Family Tapestry”. I love the movie Brave and it is quite fun I had the pleasure to pull this card after revealing a Mor'Du card just a couple of weeks ago. The Enchanted is not only beautifully illustrated but I also quite love that it seems to focus more on the role the tapestry has in the story more than the item itself. Natalie Dombois' artwork shows in fact the relationship between Merida and her mum, Queen Elinor, turned into a bear and it reminds strongly of tapestry we saw at the movie when the spell is broken and the curse lifted. The Rare version of this card, by contrast, shows the tapestry as it is at the beginning of the movie, thus creating a sort of before and after between the two cards.
From a gameplay, this card is an interesting item that forces all players to shuffle back their Characters card from the Discard pile into their Deck. The value of having cards in the Discard pile has becoming increasingly interesting over time and it seems Ravensburger is plotting to continue to develop the Discard pile into more than just the pile of the Player's used and banished cards. In this case, this item seems a very clever way of preventing the opponent to benefit from the their Discard pile. For example, this item can prevent Amber-Emerald to bring back “Lilo, Escape Artist” or it can limit the efficient of “Moana, Curious Explorer” or “The Black Cauldron”. Although these last cards are now largely played today, we need to consider the potential long term value of this item in particular after rotation.
Among the legendaries I found in the 24 Packs that came in the Booster Box, the three from Toy Story are likely the more interesting in terms of gameplay. The first one “Woody, Jungle Guide” has been revealed during the main set preview and it is also the prize card for the Set Championship. Together with making all other Toy Character more resistant, Woody can quest for two Lore, and allows the Player to draw a card and play a Character with cost 2 or less for free. “Buzz Lightyear. Jungle Ranger”, on the other hand, can return a Action card of cost 7 or less from the discard when he is played and can increase the Lore of any character by one any time an action is played. Most important, this Buzz can shift on other Buzz Lightyear versions, including the one whose ability are trigger by Woody one...
“Sid Phillips, Toy Surgeon” is likely one of the cards from Toy Story that will see more play in the future as it reminds a lot of Lady Tremaine from the earlier sets. In this case, Sid is also a 6-Cost Ruby card that force the opponent to chose a Character to banish at the price of banishing also one of the Player's Characters. This additional cost can be actually quite an intriguing way to create some chained events. For example, Olaf can be banished to bounce Sid or another of your Characters back to hand while Lilo can come back from the discard etc.
I think there are tons of very notable cards within the cardlist of Wilds unknown and it will take forever to go through all of them. However, I really want to mention the OmniDroid series as a great example of how the game designers are merging the themes of Lorcana into the gameplay. If you watched The Incredibles, you know that Syndrome perfected his final OmniDroid through trial and testing. In the game, this is obtained by a number of different versions of the OmniDroid that can be played on previous version in order using shift. Omnidroid v8 is the first card you can play for just 1 Ink and it is a very standard card with a Strenght and Willpower of 2. His first evolution is Omnidroid v9 and can be played for a cost of 2 on top of V8 to deal 2 damages to any Character. Omnidroid v9 also have better stats (strength of 4 and Willpower of 3) although it is not as powerful as v10 that has a Strength and Willpower of 6 together with Resist +2. Quite a fun and very thematic Mechanics!
