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A new card type is a big deal for any TCG, andDisney Lorcana’snew locations are set to make a big splash when they arrive with Into the Inklands later this month. As we venture beyond the Great Illuminary, we’ll find towns, cities, soaring ships, and even entire worlds to put into our decks.
Whether you’re roaring from the top of Pride Rock or solar surfing off the bow of the RLS Legacy, Ravensburger has given us five new location cards from Into the Inklands to show off ahead of its release on February 23.
Locations remain on the board after they’re played like characters, but can’t challenge anything. Instead, you can pay the move cost on the left of the card to move your own characters onto it, sharing its effects.
Pride Lands, Pride Rock
2 Ink (Not Inkable) – Location – 2 Move Cost – 7 Willpower – 1 Lore Value – Rare
We Are All Connected:Characters get +2 Willpower while here.
Lion Home:If you have a Prince of King character here, you pay one ink less to play characters.
Pride Lands is helping out the currently vastly underexplored King and Prince deck archetype. Any character on Pride Lands gets a +2 buff to its willpower, but, as long as you have a Prince or a King on it, you pay one ink less to play any other character.
Considering this only costs two ink on its own, and two more to move a character onto it, in normal play you’ll only need to play four more characters to get your value back from it. Amber is the ink best tied into going wide with lots of characters, so pulling that off shouldn’t be a problem.
Pride Lands, Pride Rock was the very first location designed.
The sticking point with Pride Lands is that Princes and Kings are more abundantly found in steel and emerald, not amber. In the first two sets, you’ve got Mufasa, Betrayed Leader; King Louie, Jungle VIP; Hades; King of Olympus, Prince Philip, Dragonslayer; and Simba, Protective Cub in amber, and that’s it. You’ll have to be careful which inks you run in your deck – perhaps the cost reduction Pride Lands gives will help amber/steel Steelsong decks get their singers out even quicker?
The Queen’s Castle, Mirror Chamber
The Queen’s Castle, Mirror Chamber
4 Ink – Location – 1 Move Cost – 7 Willpower – 2 Lore Value – Rare
Using The Mirror:At the start of your turn, for each character you have here, you may draw a card.
Card advantage is always good, and The Queen’s Castle might be one of the best card draw tools Lorcana has ever seen. Every turn, you draw cards equal to the number of characters you have on it, and, with a chunky seven Willpower, there’s a good chance it’s not getting removed quickly.
Throw in its move cost of just one ink, and you’ll be well-served just moving all your characters into the Mirror Chamber on one turn to get a massive boost of cards in your hand on the next. Letting an amethyst player draw this many cards is a big enough threat to force your opponent into some precarious positions trying to get rid of it before it’s too late.
Kuzco’s Palace, Home of the Emperor
Kuzco’s Palace, Home Of The Emperor
3 Ink – Location – 3 Move Cost – 7 Willpower – 1 Lore Value – Uncommon
City Walls:Whenever a character is challenged and banished while here, banish the challenging character.
As an uncommon, it’s to be expected that Kuzco’s Palace isn’t as flashy as some of the other locations on offer here. That being said, it’s a great way to force your opponent onto the back foot, especially when you combine it with characters that have Bodyguard.
Put any characters with Bodyguard onto Kuzco’s Palace, and your opponent will be forced to deal with it before they can challenge anything else, effectively sacrificing their own characters in the process. Even if you don’t have any bodyguards for them to throw themselves against, putting your key synergy pieces on it could be enough to dissuade your opponent from doing anything too mean before you may pop off.
RLS Legacy, Solar Galleon
RLS Legacy, Solar Gallion
4 Ink (Not Inkable) – Location – 3 Move Cost – 8 Willpower – 2 Lore Value – Rare
This Is Our Ship:Characters gainEvasivewhile here.(Only characters with Evasive can challenge them.)
Heave Together Now:If you have a character here, you pay two ink less to move a character of yours here.
Treasure Planet fans have been feasting with Into the Inklands thanks to the excellent Morph and multiple Jim Hawkins cards, and now we have the gorgeous RLS Legacy to tie everything together.
Giving your characters Evasive is a nice way to not just protect your own pieces, but answer some of your opponents’ more slippery characters. More importantly, this works as a one-two punch with Jim Hawkins, Space Traveler, which can play it and then move there for free. All of a sudden, you’ve got a 4/4 with Evasive, a location to add even more things to, and the makings of a really nasty board state.
You could argue that thisonlygiving Evasive makes it a tricky sell compared to The Queen’s Castle or Pride Lands, but we’ve all been in that situation where an Evasive creature is bearing down on us with no way to handle it. And at seven Willpower, no Evasive creature in the game can currently deal with it in a single hit, leaving your opponents cocky enough to try and take it out open to some pirate vengeance.
The Bayou, Mysterious Swamp
1 Ink – Location – 1 Move Cost – 3 Willpower – 1 Lore Value – Uncommon
Show Me The Way:Whenever a character quests while here, you may draw a card, then choose and discard a card.
Like Kuzco’s Palace, this isn’t a big, flashy, rare location. But for one ink, and then one ink to move a creature to it, you get a way to filter your hand for better cards while questing – something you’d want to do anyway.
The power of The Bayou is that it’s so unassuming compared to most other location cards. Quietly filtering your hand for the best cards makes it a hidden threat.
Note that this is per character that quests – three questing characters on it, and you’ll be drawing three cards. The discard clause makes it a double-edged knife, but having ways to so quickly run through your deck for the exact tool you need is very powerful at this ridiculously low ink cost.
Disney Lorcana’s Into the Inklands launches on February 23 in local game stores, ahead of its big-box retail release on March 8.
