The Reign of Jafar is finally over and a new era is coming to the mystical realm of Lorcana. We don’t know yet how the story will unfold but we all know there will be many new adventures and mysteries waiting for our heroes. One of them is right around the corner and it all starts with the release of the 9th set of Disney Lorcana: Fabled.
As we know, the end of the Set Championship last weekend marked the end of second year of Disney Lorcana. Fabled, the third set of the third year of our beloved TCG will bring us the Set Rotation, the first reprints in Disney Lorcana, new Rarities and…. the characters from “A Goofy Movie” that the community has been waiting for since the release of this game in 2023. There is a lot of excitement around the new set and the fresh start it will bring to the game and everyone is waiting to get their hands on the products and the new cards as soon as they will release on the 29th of August (5ht of September on all shops and online).
The Reign of Jafar is finally over and a new era is coming to the mystical realm of Lorcana. We don’t know yet how the story will unfold but we all know there will be many new adventures and mysteries waiting for our heroes. One of them is right around the corner and it all starts with the release of the 9th set of Disney Lorcana: Fabled.
As we know, the end of the Set Championship last weekend marked the end of second year of Disney Lorcana. Fabled, the third set of the third year of our beloved TCG will bring us the Set Rotation, the first reprints in Disney Lorcana, new Rarities and…. the characters from “A Goofy Movie” that the community has been waiting for since the release of this game in 2023. There is a lot of excitement around the new set and the fresh start it will bring to the game and everyone is waiting to get their hands on the products and the new cards as soon as they will release on the 29th of August (5ht of September on all shops and online).
However, I am very excited as today I am able to share a full preview of all the products from Fabled thanks to great team at Ravensburger. I am very grateful for this opportunity and I cannot wait to share a first look to what Fabled has in store for all of us. Let the new adventure begin!
Fabled Playmat and Illumineer’s Trove
The first two products that caught my attention when I opened the box sent by Ravensburger were the new Mufasa playmat and the Illumineer’s trove. The mat features the stunning artwork of the Enchanted version of “Mufasa, Ruler of Pride Rock” created by Jochem van Gool for set five. I had the pleasure to meet and interview Jochem at the Disney Store in London when the set released and I remember it was really intersting to chat with him about this card. I think Mufasa was one of the best Enchanted cards from the Shimmering Skies set and one of those I always wanted to have in my collection although, unfortunately, I never managed to pull the actual card. However, the playmat is a great reminder of how beautiful this artwork is and I am quite pleased by how Ravensburger managed to perfectly frame Mufasa within the playmat. As expected, the mat itself is also quite sturdy and very well made and it add a great vibe when I will use it to play during the events for this set.
The Illumineer’s Trove is also an amazing product and the one for this set is full of surprises. The Trove has a general ivory background with pastel watercolour patterns all over the box. Themed around Fabled Characters, it features Powerline, Ariel, Max and Mulan on its four corners and the Mickey & Minnie main Artwork for the set on the bottom. As usual, the trove comes with eight Booster packs, 6 damage dice, 6 card spacers featuring cards and Characters from the set and a Lore Counter. However, the accessories of this Trove are quite special as both the spacers and the lore counter have a very cool foil finish! Being quite old, the foil pattern on the counter reminded me and my wife of a music CD. I don’t know if this was the real intention behind this but I don’t really care: they are amazing and I love them! The 6 dice are also quite peculiar as they are clear with sparkling bits inside them like those they came with the Shimmering Skies Trove but this time there is one for each Ink colour.
What about the Booster packs? Of course, I had to start my journey in Fabled by opening these packs. In the past, Illumineer’s Trove blessed me with some very good pulls and I must admit the Fabled one did not disappointed at all. Out of eight packs, I managed to get pull three Legendaries, 3 Super Rares including one foil, and 11 Rares plus 1 foil. Most important, I was shocked by pulling my first Epic card: “Max Goof, Rockin’ Teen”!!! The new Epic cards look actually very nice when you see them in person and I think they make the experience of opening packs even more exciting. Considering how much the artwork of the Enchanted cards evolved through the sets, the design of these Epic cards feel quite nice and just right for their level of rarity. Having pulled an Epic from the Trove I started obviously wondering if I will manage to get more out of the Booster box or from the packs within the Single Player decks…..
Amber-Sapphire and Emerald-Ruby Single players decks
Fabled product line includes two Single Player Starter Deck: Princess Power (Amber-Sapphire) and Standout Headliners (Emerald-Ruby). In both cases, they come with a 60-card deck featuring 2 foil cards, a paper playmat, 12 cardboard tokens (11 for damage and 1 lore tracker) and a small booklets with the game rules and some strategic guidance.
All the cards included in the Starter deck are labelled as set 9 and therefore they include both new cards and cards from the first four sets that have been reprinted within Fabled. Princess Power includes 6 new cards while Standout Headliners features 20 copies of new cards as they mainly come from those related to “A Goofy movie”. The inclusion of a good quantity of new cards makes this last set the more interesting one in particular for any long term player that may not be interested in getting reprinted cards they already have. It is also important to remind all foil cards from this Starter Decks have a Rainbow foil pattern that is unique to these product and thus is not the same of the one used on the foil version of these cards you can pull from the Booster packs.
It is also important to remind each Starter Deck comes with a Booster packs providing a chance to get rare cards including the new Epic and Iconic ones. I was not super lucky this time as I got two rare cards in each of the packs but I cannot complain as one of them was I2I (new song card from the Goofy movie) and “Moana, of Motunui” that was the cards I revealed recently.
In terms of Gameplay, the two decks play very differently. As the name suggests, Princess Power deck is filled with Princess cards and with cards that interact with them. The new “Aurora, Holding Court” is an amazing turn 1 play for this deck as she can quest on turn 2 to pay one Ink less to play any Queen or Princess card. “Mulan, Free Spirit” can be a good target for this power as well as “Hans, Noble Scoundrel” that gains one lore if a princess is in play. Both cards quests for two lore and the process can be repeated every time Aurora quests forcing your opponents to challenge her as soon as possible. To avoid her to be banished, players have a few choices including the new “Beast, Gracious Prince” that increases the Strength and Willpower of all Princesses by one or the new “Alice, Accidentally Adrift” that reduce the Strength of one opposing Character by 2 upon questing. The rest of the deck includes a number of songs, items and Characters designed to keep your Princesses in play as long as possible and you can read more about this deck strategy here.
The second of the new starter decks, Standout Headliners, is a very new Archetype in Disney Lorcana as it is filled with the very first Ruby singers. To set the stage, this Starter deck includes both “Powerline, Taking the stage” and “Max Goof, Rockin’ Teen” that can sings songs up a cost of 4 and 5 respectively. This provides the player with a lot of flexibility as these Characters can sing useful songs like “Be King Undisputed”, “Mother knows best”, “Stand out” or “You can Fly”. Powerline and Max can also Sing together the new “I2I” song or eventually the Ruby staple “A pirate’s life”. To extend the effect of your song, this deck also includes “Max Goof, Rebellious Teen” that allows to get back a song from the discard by paying one Ink and “Powerline, World’s Greatest Rock Star” that can play a song for free from the top four cards of the Player’s deck every after playing any other song. Way to love the encores…. Standout Headliners is then filled with cards with interesting support abilities and effects that trigger once Actions or Song are played. If you are interested to learn more on how this deck works and how it can be improved, make sure you follow this link.
And finally…. Fabled Booster Box opening
Opening your first Booster pack when a new set releases is always an amazing experience. You can experience for the first time the art on the pack, the new cards you saw during the previews and live stream and, of course, there is the anticipation of which amazing and rare cards you can get. Opening a Booster Box brings the same excitement multiplied by twenty-four times and I was super excited to get into my first Fabled Booster box.
In terms of statistics, my very first Fable Booster box brought 3 Legendaries: “Elsa, Spirit of Winter, “Scar, Finally King” and “Cruella de Vil, Style Icon”. They are all very good cards that can easily fit in good competitive decks The community has been discussing a lot Scar and its ability in particular considering the good Amber and Amethyst Ally cards released in the last sets. The two Ink colours can usually pair very well with Steel and Scar can offer an interesting way to increase a deck card draw by sacrificing a card from your play. In addition, we have seen a few cards that can come back from the Discard directly or through songs or the abilities of cards like “Lady, Miss Park Avenue” and this can lead to a number of interesting strategies.
Elsa and Cruella de Vil are also very good cards in particular for my beloved Blurple Deck. Cruella, in particular, seems pretty interesting as it allows the player to add the top card of their deck into the Inkwell once per turn whenever a Character with a cost of 2 is banished. The interesting part is that ability does not differentiate between your Characters or the opponent’s ones. In addition, Cruella has a passive ability that reduce the Strength of all opposing Characters by one during the Player team. Although both these ability have some limits, Cruella seems a good card to try in the first set after Rotation.
In addition to the three Legendaries I managed to pull 13 Super Rare cards (including a Foil one), 34 Rare cards plus 3 foil ones and 2 more Epic cards (“Ursula, Sea Witch” and “Be King undisputed”). While the Legendary count from the box was not super great, I realized three quarters of the foil cards I pulled were Rare of above and that feels quite nice overall. It is hard to know now if the pulls from this box can be considered average or not but I hope mine were a bit on the lower end and Ravensburger managed to keep the pull rate for the Legendary cards at least close the one in the previous set. To be honest, I have good hopes this will be the case as one of the packs I pulled from the Trove had two Legendaries and a foil Rare cards.
One final important aspect to mention: is there a puzzle art card in this set? Of course, there is and it is a beautiful 9-piece puzzle art featuring Powerline in all his Glory. There are no Lore cards this time but this makes sense considering that the background story of Lorcana is paused for this set and it is expected to continue in Whispers in the Well.
Final thoughts on Fabled products
Overall, I am quite pleased with Fabled products and cards. I know that a set largely composed by re-prints may not feel super appealing at first but I must admit it felt nice to open packs and see familiar great cards like Tinker Bell, Giant Fairy and Stitch, Rock star. The new cards from this set are also very interesting and they can easily go into a lot of decks.
I think the most important aspect for me is that the Set Rotation and Fabled reprints are forcing the players to come up with new design and strategies for their decks. I am sure I am not the only one who started putting together some list for the upcoming events and there a lot of new opportunities and fun combination to try. Moreover, the new meta will have much less removal and it will be slower then it used to be (in general). There is a strong expectation that Combo and Aggro deck will be more relevant than before but I fully expect new techs and ideas to pop up quite soon as we go into the new season. I think there are exciting times ahead for all Lorcana players and very good cards to pull from Fabled: Happy hunting!!!!
Zatu Review Summary
Zatu Score
99%
