We’ve gotten a little more detail from Ravensburger about what the upcoming Fabled set for Disney Lorcana will entail – and what that could mean for the post-rotation gameplay environment. Initially, it was stated that over half the set would be reprints. But now, the shock reveal is that there will be only 33 new cards and 171 reprints. Only six existing Legendaries are being waved into the Fabled stable, and down in the Commons there are 68 reprints and only 4 new commons. I have very mixed feelings about this- on the one hand, this is great for new players who missed the fracas over the first four sets and I’m very pleased that more folks can have access to some great cards. On the other, I’m not sure players invested in the game are going to care enough about variant art cards to buy booster packs. Further, it somewhat dulls the appeal of the Infinity format with so many cards making the reprint cut – and it also means that the meta might not be shaken up as much as we thought it would. On a personal player and collector level, I’m not sure I’ll pick up anything from the set other than singles, to be quite honest. And that does not help the Ravensburger bottom line.
So with that in mind and with the set’s release fast approaching on August 29, it’s time to wrap up my ongoing predictions/wish lists for what I’d like to see Fabled bring us. The calculus has changed somewhat as we look toward Ursula’s Return, which didn’t excite much on release. The problem is that the first three sets were so strong that there was a whiff of “more of the same” to Ursula’s Return, along with a bit of fatigue. The set did bring us the first of the Illumineer’s Quest games, which I like, but I also felt like this was the period of the game where it started to become not as much fun, IN MY OPINION (fifty foot tall neon letters), to play competitively. With this set, League play really crated at my shop as sweats and TCGbros seemed to chase off a more diverse, casual crowd. What was an 80+ person weekly event attended by a wide range of folks winnowed down to about 8 guys that took the game very, very seriously.
But this was also when I decided to refocus and engage with the game more casually and on my own terms, making fun theme decks and enjoying it with friends and family rather than sweaty strangers that do weird things like insist on eating a giant Subway sandwich during the match as some kind of weird psych-out flex or cuss out my then 12 year old daughter for winning a match (I am not making these up). I have to admit that I got a little negative toward the game around this time and The EIC here at Goonhammer actually took me aside and said hey bro, you aren’t making this game look like much fun. So I did some soul searching and shook off the bad vibes.
In retrospect, there’s a lot to like about Ursula’s Return despite my Lorcana slump – especially the introduction of Encanto, some clever and quite complex card designs, and my boy Flynn Rider got a kick-ass Ruby card. There were some real ringers in this set- Sisu – Empowered Sibling was an absolute terror and of course Diablo – Devoted Herald was pretty much the Emerald card of the meta. And I never expected Fortispehre to turn into such a problem, enough of one for it to become one of the first banned cards. In some ways, Ursula’s Return feels like a more advanced set overall, and I wonder if my initial feelings toward had to do more with the depth on offer not being readily apparent.
Now, with that confessional out of the way, here’s the cards I’m hoping make that Fabled top cut…which is much bigger than I thought it would be!
With just 7 Legendaries making it into Fabled, I think it’d be kind of a shame if this doesn’t make it. This feels like an iconic representation of Cinderella, and a massive play for a song deck that has the big, expensive songs. Plus, I really like that it supports Princess tribal, which isn’t quite something that’s popped off yet in competitive play. I also think there’s great opportunity to improve the art on this one, as what’s on the original card is really kind of basic- especially as it is a Dreamborn card.
This is such a quality removal common, which is not common for Amethyst. It’s cheap, singable and inkable, and it gives Amethyst access to an early game control play . On top of all of that, it has flexibility in that it targets a character, item, or location. True, it’s just good for 2 ink cards and it’s back to hand, but in that there is even more hidden flexibility – you can bounce cheap early game plays with when played effects to play them again. If this isn’t in the mess of reprint commons, I’d be very surprised.
I’m not picking Diablo – Devoted Herald because I actually think it won’t be selected for Fabled. It’s the kind of card that gets labeled “oppressive” and it could be regarded as borderline broken in some builds. So instead I’m going with a less evil card with The Muses. I love the art on this one, and I think there’s good value with it offering Ward as well as The Gospel Truth- a fun removal that triggers from a song to remove a character to hand. Like Poor Unfortunate Souls, it has some strategic flexibility, and here it’s on a sturdy 2/4 body. It’s a rare, and there’s plenty of room at that tier for it to go into Fabled.
Because you know we had to. This is the “kick- ass” Flynn Rider I mentioned. I’ve never met a Flynn Rider card I didn’t like and here’s yet another rock-solid one. This is a tremendous card when it pops off, and like other Flynn Rider cards I love that it has a big payoff when it works. Narrow Advantage gives you a whopping 3 lore just for having a character with higher Strength on the table than your opponent. Stacking these bad boys up is a win-con in some builds, and I especially like strategies that revolve around pumping up Flynn himself to score the trigger.
I recall pulling a foil Ice Block in the very first Ursula’s Return booster pack I opened. I was like WTF is this, who would even want this stupid card. But then I saw folks using this with the Flynn Rider above, the Ruby Sisu from this set (which will not, I think, make it into Fabled), and leveraging that -1 strength ding to hit triggers on other cards. This is a tremendous combo driver, and another high quality common that I bet you is going to make it into the next rotation.
I’m curious to see how many wipes/Wraths/board clearers make it into the next rotation- it’s a staple TCG mechanic and it remains to be seen if the designers bring forward the existing concepts or rework them a bit (looking at you, Be Prepared). This card featuring Luisa from Encanto (who had the best song in the film, I think) Banishes all items in play. It’s interesting because this wasn’t a card I would have even thought necessary or valuable in sets 1 or 2, but deeply wanted in 3 when everybody started trying item-heavy Sapphire builds. It’s 4 inkable, a song, and it hits everybody equally so it’s a well designed example of this kind of card.
I suppose there’s actually one more article in this series- because you know I’ve got to back and tally up my score. And of course to critique Ravensburger’s choices. So let’s see what happens as we head into preview season!
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