Drafting Madrigals in Ursula's Return

What’s up, Illumineers! Today, I’m talking about drafting Madrigal characters in Ursula’s Return. “Madrigal” is a new character classification introduced in the Ursula’s Return expansion set. There are cards in the set that reward you for having Madrigal characters in your deck. I will explain to the best of my ability and knowledge the correct way to utilize these Madrigal payoffs.

There are 15 total Madrigal characters in Ursula’s Return: five commons, four uncommons, four rares, and two super rares. Encanto didn’t get a legendary character because the movie didn’t do well enough at the box office. With this many Madrigal characters distributed across these rarities, the average number you should expect to see in a normal draft is... I don’t know. That math is honestly too hard for me, but I always seem to end up with a bunch of them even without going out of my way.

There are a lot of Madrigal characters, but it would not make sense to draft around Madrigals without one of the payoffs. The word “Madrigal” on the classification line of the card has no intrinsic meaning, so it only matters if a card calls out “Madrigal” in its rules text somewhere. As it happens, there are only two such cards, Alma Madrigal - Family Matriarch and Mirabel Madrigal - Gift of the Family.

Let’s start with Alma. The short answer is I think this card is extremely bad and you will improve your winrate if you just never put it in your deck. The longer answer will take me five paragraphs.

To begin, we’ll take a look at the numbers on Alma. As a 3-cost 1/3 that quests for 2, she’s below-rate across the board. To add insult to injury, she lacks the critical inkable symbol in the upper left. If you ignore all the text on this card and only focus on the numbers, she’s strictly worse than Félix Madrigal - Fun-Loving Family Man and Pain - Immortal Sidekick, which are already cards that I prefer to avoid if I can help it.

So, okay, the numbers on Alma are bad, but how about the words? There are a lot of words on this card, surely at least a few of them do something. It’s important to note that, while Alma’s ability specifically asks for a “Madrigal,” the card does not actually provide any inherent benefit to loading up your deck with Madrigal family members. Sure, there’s some utility in having a few things you’d like to search for, but realistically, you’re only going to want to search for something more expensive than Alma. There are few spots in a normal game of Lorcana where you’d want to spend your turn 3 putting a cheap character on top of your deck. About half of the Madrigals cost 3 or less, so your options are limited.

The most realistic way you’d use Alma is to make sure you hit your 4-drop on time, but there are some problems with this plan. Only two of the common Madrigal characters cost 4, so most of the time, your options will be Dolores Madrigal - Easy Listener or Luisa Madrigal - Magically Strong One. Both good cards, to be clear; I consider Dolores to be premium, and Luisa is a solid playable. However, they’re awkward cards to reveal to your opponent the turn before you play them, as they both lose value if the opponent knows about them. If the enemy player ends their turn without exerting any characters, you’ll be in the awkward spot of having to play Dolores or Luisa without getting the value from the card draw or from the rush, respectively. You could, of course, wait until later in the game to play these cards, but playing a 4-drop on a turn that’s not turn 4 is also a play that loses some value, so it’s kind of a no-win scenario.

There are two reasonable spots where Alma would make sense in a deck. One of them is if your deck sucks. If you drafted a lot of bad cards or a lot of uninkables (or both), then the line of putting Dolores on top of your deck on turn 3 gets a lot better, as you’ll be glad you didn’t instead draw one of your many unplayables. This isn’t ideal, and I obviously don’t recommend going out of your way to draft a bad deck. However, it’s a way you can make the best of a bad situation.

The other scenario where it makes sense to play Alma is if you have Isabela Madrigal - Golden Child. In my opinion, having played with and against this card many times, Isabela is a top-5 card overall in the set. There are few reasonable answers to her, and she ends the game very quickly if she goes unanswered. The raw power of this card is so great that I think she makes up for the power you lose by putting an uninkable 3-cost 1/3 in your deck. You are extremely favored to win the games where you draw and play Isabela, regardless of what your other cards were.

Now onto the other Madrigal payoff card, Mirabel Madrigal - Gift of the Family. My experience drafting and playing Ursula’s Return has been that this card is okay. It’s not amazing, but it isn’t terrible. You can put it in your deck. A really important factor this card has going for it is that it costs 5, and as I’ve discussed previously, the 5-drop situation in Ursula’s Return is dire. There just aren’t many 5-cost cards. In order to get a reasonable curve, you basically have to draft any card that costs 5 or more, regardless of what it is. For context, I’ve played a deck that had two copies of Dang Hu - Talon Chief with no other villains.

If you assume that I was correct to play my “2 Dang Hu, 38 non-Villain” deck (and I stand by my decision to do so), then Mirabel looks a lot better, as she’s a similar card with text that can potentially do something. A 3/5 support for 5 that quests for 2 is unexciting, but with the text, she can effectively be a 3- or sometimes even 4-quest character, which is... still somewhat unexciting. However, you do win the game by getting lore, so that’s definitely got some value.

Okay, so let’s say we all agree that Mirabel Madrigal - Gift of the Family is a card worth playing. What’s the best way to draft around her? Obviously, she needs some members of her family to have text beyond the word “Support.” So how should you adjust the way that you draft in order to maximize her potential?

That’s the neat part: You don’t!

You don’t actually need too many Madrigal characters to enable Mirabel. Having one or two others in play is sufficient, and you don’t need very many Madrigals in your deck to make that happen. I’m not much of a “math guy” (which is maybe bad for this game about hypergeometric probability, but whatever), but my vibe is that 5-7 other Madrigal characters should be plenty. You should naturally be getting that many in your average deck anyways, since so many of the Madrigals are great cards.

As previously mentioned, there are five common Madrigal characters. I already talked about Dolores and Luisa earlier in this article. The other Luisa, Luisa Madrigal - Rock of the Family, is an excellent card that I would take above most rares. A 3-cost 4/4 is so big that it feels like it should be illegal. Agustin Madrigal - Clumsy Dad regularly finds his way into my deck, as I always want 4 to 6 1-cost characters and am generally not very picky about which ones I get.

The bangers continue at uncommon. Antonio Madrigal - Animal Expert is basically the superior version of his father Félix, trading one lore for one Strength. He’s a great challenger and a card I value very highly. Camilo Madrigral - Prankster is another great challenger who can shapeshift into a great quester if controlling the board isn’t what you need at that moment. Julieta Madrigal - Excellent Cook can be somewhat awkward sometimes, as you generally don’t have damage on your characters by turn 3. However, there’s such high upside to her ability, and she also is less punishing to top-deck late game than your average 3-drop. I’ve found Julieta gets significantly better if you have ways to buff Strength in your deck, as the 1/4 body is sometimes tough to utilize.

As far as higher-rarity cards that I haven’t already discussed (Isabela, etc), they’re playable but oddly not as good as the commons and uncommons. Pepa and the 5-cost Bruno can be awkward cards if their abilities don’t line up well with the board state, but I’ve gotten use out of both cards. As I said before, the 5-drop situation is DIRE. The 4-cost Bruno is fine, if unexciting; this would be a much worse card in Rise of the Floodborn, but here in Ursula’s Return, the value of the word “Evasive” is much higher. There are also some cute combos with his ability, like playing him with Pascal - Inquisitive Pet, who lets you rearrange the top 3 cards of your deck. He does work with Alma, too, but you’d have to play off-curve to enable that combo. Given all the other problems with Alma that I already mentioned, I don’t really recommend that.

The only remaining Madrigal who does not already have a picture in this article is the other Mirabel, Mirabel Madrigal - Prophecy Finder. I actually drafted three copies of this card the last time I drafted Big Mirabel (I’ve archived that deck to Dreamborn, if you’d like to take a look), and my impression is that this card isn’t super important to the Madrigal strategy. There are so many good Madrigals that you shouldn’t need to pick one of the bad ones to enable Big Mirabel. That said, if it’s late in the pack and only replacement-level cards are left, I think it’s fine to draft a Little Mirabel if you already have a Big Mirabel in your pile.

And that about sums up my thoughts on the Madrigal family — in the context of gameplay anyways. I have other thoughts, like “Casa Madrigal should have had the ‘Madrigal’ subtype,” but I shouldn’t get started on that subject or this article will be twice as long. To summarize, you don’t have to do anything special to draft Madrigals, because one of the payoffs is bad and the other one only asks you to draft cards you should be drafting anyways. Thanks for reading and happy drafting!

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