The 9th set of Disney Lorcana, Fabled, also brings two new Single Player Starter decks, filled with amazing new cards and reprints from the Fabled set. This is not surprising as Fabled is the first set to be released after the Set Rotation and therefore it features a lot of cards from the first four set that have ben reprinted to continue keeping the game interesting and exciting. Fabled is also the first set of the third year of Disney Lorcana and together with the beginning of Set Rotation is expected to bring a fresh start to the game.
As usual, Starter Decks are a good way to catch a glimpse of the set itself and to get into the game if you have never played Lorcana. In this case, Fabled product lines includes two very different decks. The first one, “Princess Power” is a well rounded Amber-Sapphire deck filled with Princess Characters and cards that interact with them. This Deck features the new “Mulan, Considerate Diplomat” that allows the player to search for Princess Characters from their deck and “Ariel, Singing Mermaid” that can sing almost any song with her powerful “Singer 7” ability. Interestingly, Mulan was featured as a Character also in a Single Player Starter deck of the previous set, Reign of Jafar, although it was a different Ruby-Steel card.
The 9th set of Disney Lorcana, Fabled, also brings two new Single Player Starter decks, filled with amazing new cards and reprints from the Fabled set. This is not surprising as Fabled is the first set to be released after the Set Rotation and therefore it features a lot of cards from the first four set that have ben reprinted to continue keeping the game interesting and exciting. Fabled is also the first set of the third year of Disney Lorcana and together with the beginning of Set Rotation is expected to bring a fresh start to the game.
As usual, Starter Decks are a good way to catch a glimpse of the set itself and to get into the game if you have never played Lorcana. In this case, Fabled product lines includes two very different decks. The first one, “Princess Power” is a well rounded Amber-Sapphire deck filled with Princess Characters and cards that interact with them. This Deck features the new “Mulan, Considerate Diplomat” that allows the player to search for Princess Characters from their deck and “Ariel, Singing Mermaid” that can sing almost any song with her powerful “Singer 7” ability. Interestingly, Mulan was featured as a Character also in a Single Player Starter deck of the previous set, Reign of Jafar, although it was a different Ruby-Steel card.
The second Single Player Deck is an Emerald-Ruby Deck called “Standout Headliners”. This deck is based around the Character from “A Goofy Movie” and features the very first Ruby singers in the game. The main star of the show is obviously “Powerline, World’s Greatest Rock Star” with its ability to song a second song per turn by picking any from the first four cards in the Player deck. “Max Goof, Rebellious Teen” is a great partner of Powerline as he can sing a song cards from the discard pile when he is played. With a deck filled with Song cards, your opponents will be in for a great show!
Both these Single Player decks looked quite intriguing when they were first revealed and, thanks to the Ravensburger team, I managed to open and play both of them well ahead of the release of the set on the 29th of August. I had a lot of fun playing them with my son as usual and I wanted to share my first impressions on the decks and the new cards. Let’s have a look into the first of these two decks, “Princess Power”.
Fabled Single player Decks: contents
As usual, a Single Player Deck comes with a ready made 60-cards deck that also includes a foil copy of the two Characters depicted on the starter deck box itself. In Fabled, Ravensburger made a very important change as these foil cards are now featured in a Rainbow Foil Pattern that can only be obtained in the starter decks. The same cards can be pulled as standard foil from a Booster packs but rainbow foil cards will only be featured in the Starter Decks.
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 in particular includes 6 new cards while Standout Headliners include 20 of them. In both cases, a good majority of these decks is composed by reprints. Together with the 60-card deck, each Starter Deck comes with a standard Fabled Booster Pack with 12 additional cards of different rarity, a summary of the game rules with some strategic guidelines, a small paper playmat with a lore tracker and a few cardboard tokens to keep track of damage and Lore.
Lead your kingdom to Victory – Princess Power Strategic Guide 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 your Princess cards to be banished, the deck offer the Player have a few choices. The first on is the new “Beast, Gracious Prince” that increases the Strength and Willpower of all Princesses by one. The new “Alice, Accidentally Adrift” has an ability that can reduce the Strength of one opposing Character by 2 upon questing and this can be definitely reduce the risk for your Characters to be banished. The deck is also filled with items and Characters that can remove damages making this strategy more efficient and you can try to look for the cards you need the most by having “Aurelian Gyrosensor” in play to go pick the first card of your deck every time you quest. The new “Queen, Mirror Seeker” can also work as a good alternative to the Gyrosensor while also being quite difficult to remove with her Willpower of 5.
Making sure you always have more princesses to play is key for this deck to succeed and that is where questing with “Mulan, Considerate Diplomat” can come in handy. Singing “Be our Guest” or “Look at this Family” with “Ariel, Singing Mermaid” can also be of great help to make sure you never run out of cards to play. Remember also that “Cinderella, Gentle and Kind” can not only sing songs up to a cost of 5 but she can also remove up to three damages from a Princess Characters. Other cards in your deck will then support your strategies in various way although you should pay attention to keep your focus on your main Princess engine and to consider all these cards as additional ways to get lore or to support to your main plan. Having a lot of redundancies in this type of decks is a good thing as it helps with the consistency but you should always keep your eye on the bigger picture and on your strategy.
Singing to your heart content – Standout Headliners Strategic Guide
Standout Headliners is a very interesting Starter Deck as it is filled with the very first Ruby singers.
The two star of the show are obviously Powerline and Max Goof and this deck includes two versions of both Characters. “Powerline, Taking the stage” would be your first front-liner with its ability to sing Songs up to a cost of four even when it only costs 2 to play. “Max Goof, Rockin’ Teen” can then be played on turn three to add its Singer 5 ability to the mix. Max and Powerline can both sings powerful control songs like “Be King Undisputed” to banish a character chosen by the opponent or “Mother knows best” to send any character to their player’s hand. The new Fabled song “Stand out” or the reprinted “You can Fly!” are also good options for our Singers as they both provide Evasive to any Character while “Stand out” also increases their Strength by 3.
“Max Goof, Rebellious Teen” is also a very good Character to play once your show is on the road. While this version of Max is not a Singer per se, it allows the player to get back a song from the discard by paying one Ink. This ability can be particularly effective when you have a singer in Play to keep your hand filled with songs. However, you will need to be careful as the additional cost to use Max ability means that it only makes sense to play Max on turn four.
However, on the same turn (and for the same amount of Ink) your best play would likely be “Powerline, World’s Greatest Rock Star” that can be shifted for four on top of the cost two Powerline. The Greatest Rock Star lives up to its title not only because is a Singer 9 but also because it can play a second song for free from the top four cards of the Player’s deck after playing any other song. This ability can only be triggered once every turn but it means you have the possibility to chain multiple effects one after the other.
In order to make Powerline ability effective, you obviously need a deck filled with Songs to increase the chance to hit one among the first four of your deck. Standout headliners includes 12 songs in total that means you have a statistical probability to find a song every five cards. This is likely a bit too low to properly fuel your strategy efficiently but we will get back to the topic when we review how this deck can be improved. In the meantime, it is worth mentioning the deck comes with two high-end songs that can be extremely important to beat your opponent. The first one, “A Pirate’s Life” has been a staple in a lot of Ruby deck as it allow a player to gain two lore while each opponent loses the same amount. The second one is another new song from A Goofy Movie, “I2I” (yes, it should be read as eye-to-eye,). This song has an interesting wide effect that allows each player to draw 2 cards and gain 2 lore therefore it should be used carefully to avoid providing an advantage to your opponents. However, if multiple Characters sing this together they can all ready themselves and perhaps sing “A pirate’s life” right after in order to gain more Lore and partially even out the advantage previously granted to the opponent.
Looking to the deck composition so far, it is pretty clear that the main strategy of Standout Headliners strongly relies on Singers and Songs. However, this deck takes this mechanic a little further by including a number of cards whose effects trigger once Actions or Song are played. “Roxanne, Powerline fan”, for example, is a new card that increases her strength and questing by one making her a very good well-rounded Character for a cost of two. Another new card from A Goofy movie, “P.J. Pete” and the reprinted “Donald Duck, Sleepwalker” also increase their Strength when a Song is played. Considering they both have a willpower of 5, these cards can be very useful to keep pressure on your opponent by challenging their characters. If needed, “Le Fou, Instigator” can be played to have them Challenge a second time. Le Fou is actually a great addition to this deck as he can also ready any of your Singers to sing a second time (or a third time in Powerline’s case).
Last but not least, this Starter Deck also includes some support abilities to increase card draw. The first one if “Donald Duck, Perfect Gentlemen” that allows all players to gain a card every turn and the second one is the new “Goofy, Set for Adventure”. That can draw a card after moving to a location as far as he can also take another Character with him at the same location. I almost can hear this cards saying “Let’s go fishing, Maaaax”
Zatu Review Summary
Zatu Score
95%
