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With Archazia’s Island,Disney Lorcanafinally introduced multi-ink cards. These two-ink cards can only be used in decks with both colours, but in exchange you get effects that are the best of both. As a perfect example of that, look no further than the Ruby/Sapphire starter deck.
This deck features the Beast and Belle in an item-smashing tag team duo. One wants to throw them away, while the other will pick them back up and use them to buff her lore value to an absurdly high amount. It takes a bit of setting up, but this deck features a terrifying value engine you’re going to want to put together.
Longboat (x2)
Medal of Heroes (x2)
Key Cards
Belle, Mechanic Extraordinaire
Belle is perhaps the card that most singularly drives the entire rest of the deck. Without Belle,your deck doesn’t do anything, so keeping her in play should be your top priority.
Questing with Belle can net you a whoppingsix lore, provided you have enough item cards in your discard pile. And at seven willpower, it’s not likely that Belle is going to be banished in a challenge any time soon, giving you the opportunity to storm ahead andgain advantagelong before your opponent has the chance to catch up.
The problem with Belle is thatshe needs a continual supply ot items.If you’re not drawing items and getting them into your discard pile, her effectiveness is practically halved. Every item card counts, and this deckdoesn’t have enough of them.
Beast, Frustrated Designer
It’s rare that both face cards for a starter deck are so closely aligned with each other, but Beast fits nicely into Belle’s strategy ofhaving items in your discard pile. Beast takes items and throws them at your opponents' characters, turning two items intofive damageto any character.
The character you choosedoesn’t have to be exertedlike it would for a challenge.
This not only lets you snipe out problem targets and keep Belle secure, it offers a great way toget items into your discard. Only two each turn means Beastcan’t keep up with Bellesingle-handedly, but topping it off withother sources of item banishmentshould be simple.
Monsieur D’Arque, Despicable Proprietor
While plenty of the items in this deck have built-in ways to banish themselves, having areliable, repeatable methodlike Monsieur D’Arque is always handy. While he does have to quest, which puts him in harm’s way, you’re rewarded withadditional hand advantage,and seeing Belle up for the biggest possible quest at the same time.
Despite costing only one ink,holding D’Arque for when you have items to banishis a smart play. There are enough one or two-drop cards in the deck thatD’Areque can be used elsewhereinstead of shoring up your opening hand.
Medal Of Heroes
Medal of Heroes takes an already great Belle and makes her even better. you may pay the cost and banish this cardbefore Belle quests, giving her an extra two lore value and putting an item in the bin for her to turn intoeven more lore.
As Belle can gain lore equal to thenumber of itemsshe returns to your deck, Medal of Heroes can be used tocatch upif you don’t have enough items in your discard pile. Otherwise, fi you’re already returning the maximum of three, Medal of Heroes turns Belle’s terrifyingsix loreinto a game-winningeightwith ease.
Kida, Creative Thinker
Kida may not directly contribute to playing items or putting them in your discard pile, but she does provide acrucial serviceto the deck: card filtering.
The deck has a few ways of putting cards face-down into your inkwell, and havingany of those be an itemcould becatastrophic.By using her Key to the Puzzle ability, you’re able to both ramp up your ink to get Belle into play as quickly as possible, and also work through your deck tofind the itemsbefore another card puts them in your inkwell, where you’re able to’t reach them.
Regardless of how you use it, Kida gives you anadditional inkevery single turn, which is nothing to sniff at.
This deck is focused chiefly on two strategies:itemsandramping lore.
Items
This is the primary win condition, and themajority of the deck is dedicated to it. The goal is to find any way possible to getitems into your discard pile, whether that be through discarding or banishing.
Beast, Frustrated Designersets up a great synergy withBelle, Mechanic Extraordinaire, with him banishing items to deal direct damage, before Belle takes them out of your discard pile to quest formassive amounts of lore.
This deck has a lot of cheap items, likeGold CoinandMedal of Heroes, as well as extra ways to get rid of them, likeMonsieur D’Arque, Despicable Proprietor.
Ramping Ink
Between cards like Belle and Lyle Tiberius Rourke, this deck has avery high ink curve. You’ll be wanting to play some high-cost cards, and to get there you’ll need to beramping your inkwell hard.
Fortunately, there are lots of ways to getadditional inkinto your inkwell, keeping ahead of your opponent.Kida, Creative Thinkeris the most consistent, letting you do it every turn, but there are also cards likeDonald Duck, Focused FlatfootandAll Is Foundto speed things up.
It’s not having ink to play expensive cards, though. This deck rewards you for the simple act ofplaying the ink itself. Lyle Tiberius Rourke deals two damage to each character once per turn when an ink is put into your inkwell, andRuby Coilcharges a character up with two additional strength every time you play an ink.
This won’t push you to victory as quickly as the item theme, but it does provide agood stalling packageto help slow your opponent down while you assemble your item engine pieces.
Your Opening Hand And When To Mulligan
Though this deck does suffer somewhat from ahving lots ofexpensive or uninkable cards, it does make knowing how to mulligan for your first hand a lot easier.
Sir Kay, Marie, Gaetan Moliere, Edgar Balthazar, and Chacadon’t add anything to this deck beyond just being bodies on the board, but they are inkable. Keeping a few of these in your opening hand as inkwell fodder is a great idea.
You should try and have a copy ofBelle, Apprentice Inventorin your hand. This ensures you have a shift target for Mechanic Extraordinare, and as a 3/3 it isn’t too shabby of an early play in and of itself.
After that, focus on havingitems in your hand. In the early stages of the game it’ll be easier to banish them through thier own abilities than any other way, so playing and binning them as soon as you can sets up your discard pile ready for whenBeast or Bellefinally land.
Weaknesses
Compared to some of the starter decks we’ve seen for Lorcana, this is a very focused deck with aclear gameplanand the means to pull it off. However, it does have a few key weaknesses to keep in mind when playing.
Primarily, just having one copy of Belle, Mechanic Extraordinare is a huge threat. One well-timed removal action cancompletely destroy your value engine, forcing you to rely on grinding out the game instead of making use of those items. Belle is your key lore generator, soprotect her at all costs.
The other weakness ishow few itemsthis deck uses. For something so central to the deck, you’re perilously close to not having enough items, and might find it hard to set up your discard pile. If you’re upgrading,swap a few of the dud cards like Chaca and Balthazarand swap them for other, cheap items to help speed it up.
Finally, the deck’s focus on ramping canremove key items you need. Getting cards back out of the inkwell is almost impossible, so accidentally putting even one in there canseverely limit Belle’s potential.
