Drafting in Ursula's Return: Early tips and tricks

Hello, gamers! With the release of Ursula’s Return, we once again have a new Lorcana draft format, and I wanted to put out a... well, “guide” feels like the wrong word. I don’t feel quite qualified to write something I’d call a guide since I’ve only done three drafts and one sealed at the time of this writing (although those events went well for me for what it’s worth). I would say these are more like observations.

A lot of drafting is about value over replacement, and in order to identify a card with high value over replacement, you have to know what the replacement value is. I went ahead and figured that out for you, and I have a few other tidbits to share as well!

Curve

If you’re not familiar with the term, “curve” in the context of Lorcana is the number of character cards at different costs you have in your deck. As a point of reference, this is a graph of what I aim for with the curve of my limited decks:

Generally, you’ll heavily rely on commons to fill out parts of your curve that are lacking, so it’s good to know what commons are available to you. Here’s a graph of the curve of commons in Ursula’s Return:

A few things jump out to me about this graph:

• There are more 2-cost characters than any other single kind of common. So far, this is consistent with how commons are distributed in Lorcana sets; this was true in the last three sets as well. However, this time around, the 2-costs are actually pretty close to the 3-costs and 4-costs. You still want to be careful about loading up too much on 2-cost characters, but it’s a bit harder than it used to be to completely mess up your curve using these cards.
• There are an absolutely massive number of non-character commons (which is to say: common items, common actions, and common locations). Regardless of how good a common card that isn’t a character looks to you, I would be hesitant to pick it over a playable character. You will assuredly end up with lots of non-characters in your pile just by the nature of pack distribution, and it will be easy to overload on these cards if you’re not diligent about picking serviceable characters when possible.
• Here’s the big one: There are only three common characters that cost 5. This is way down from previous sets. In order to have a functional curve with the five to seven 5-drops that I recommend, you will have to prioritize each one you see as though it is a super premium card. For reference, here are those three cards:

Regardless of how good or bad these three cards look to you (and I can appreciate that Tor in particular looks lackluster), understand that they are better than they look by the nature of value over replacement. Burn these three cards into your memory, because you will need them in order to put together a functional curve.

I’ll also make a note of Tick-Tock as the only 6-cost common in the set. It’s not necessary to have too many 6-costs in a deck, but the supply is somehow still lower than the demand, so you’ll frequently still find yourself needing to play this fellow.

Evasives

If you’ve played against a Ray or a Don Karnage in draft before, you’re probably already familiar with how good the keyword “Evasive” is on a character. This time around, Evasive characters that quest for more than one are less plentiful than they ever have been. Not only that, there are only three common characters that have Evasive!

Once again, each of these cards is better than they look (even if you already think they look good). Offensively, there aren’t many characters that can stop these characters from questing, and defensively, they are some of the only potential answers to any problematic Evasive characters your opponents present.

I’ll add an additional note for Magic Broom - Aerial Cleaner as the only common character that has Evasive on your turn. This ability obviously isn’t as good as unconditional Evasive, but it’s nice to have as an answer to your opponent’s Pegasus or Diablo or whatever they’ve got.

I think it’s worth discussing the uncommons too in the context of Evasive, since even there, you won’t find many. Including characters with Evasive during your turn only, here’s every single Evasive uncommon:

I’ve shown a total of seven cards in this section, and three of them are named “Pegasus”, so hopefully, I shouldn’t have to sell you too much on the idea that shifting Pegasus is a realistic plan. It will be challenging, as I expect these cards to be heavily contested, but I’m sure it can be done. Even if you don’t get there, I think Pegasus - Cloud Racer is a playable card without Shift in the context of draft. Not much is challenging it, so on the play, it could represent a threatening clock.

Overstatted Characters

“Overstatted”, a word my spellchecker does not acknowledge, is just a way of saying a character with above-average Strength and Willpower. Most characters you’ll see in draft will be commons, so it made sense to me to figure out the “size” of the average common of each cost. To calculate the average, it made sense to me to add up the Strength/Willpower of each common character then divide by how many common characters of that cost there are. There’s probably some problem with this method that I’m not thinking of, and I’m open to suggestions, but it’s the best thing I could think of. In any case, here are the common characters who were above average in both Strength AND Willpower:

As usual, the humble 2/2 for 1 is a solid turn 1 play. These cards keep your opponent honest early in the game, maybe chip in for a bit of lore, and probably contribute to a double challenge at some point in the game. Mulan - Injured Soldier, of course, only counts as overstatted by the letter of the word and not the spirit; she’s really a 2/1. That said, her text might be actively beneficial to you (more on that later).

Also as usual, 2/3 for 2 is serviceable, if unexciting, curve filler in this game. Naturally the Magic Broom is the best of these four cards as it has text, but I’d be happy enough playing any of them.

There’s only one unconditionally overstatted 3 cost character, which is Megara - Captivating Cynic. The numbers on this card are good, but the text on it, not so much. I haven’t tried this card myself, and based on how it’s been working for my opponents, I would say use caution when putting Megara in your deck.

As far as three drops that are conditionally overstatted, there are a couple. Calling Luisa Madrigal - Rock of the Family “conditional” feels unfair to the card, as her condition has been met every time I’ve seen her in play. As a 4/4 for 3, she’s wildly above rate, and I’ve seen her put in a lot of work. Jetsam is a 4/4 for 3 defensively, but he returns to a mortal size when it’s not your turn, so you’ll need to be careful about your opponent’s retaliation.

Finally, there are no unconditionally overstatted 4-costs, but Yao is another Challenger character. I think Jetsam is generally better than Yao because costing one less is worth a lot more than having one more Willpower, but Jetsam is also just better than most characters in general, so I would still feel good about having Yao in my deck.

As far as characters that cost 5 or more, it didn’t feel productive to figure out the average size of those cards. Like I said before, there’s not a lot of them, so you can’t be picky about them anyways. I assure you they’re plenty big.

Healing

This wouldn’t get a section in most articles I’d write, but I do want to make a note that there’s a weirdly high amount of common healing in this set, and it’s attached to cards that are better than what we typically see. You’ll probably encounter some of these cards, so be cautious about leaving damage on opposing characters if you don’t have a plan to finish them off.

If you have these cards yourself, you may find yourself more inclined to play characters that come into play with damage, such as Mulan - Injured Soldier, Beast - Wounded, or... huh, that’s it? Okay then. Moving on.

Sing Together

A new mechanic introduced in this set, Sing Together is a difficult mechanic to intuit just from reading it. 10 is certainly a big number. My experience so far is that these cards are all a lot easier to play than you’d expect. If you curve out for the first four turns of the game, your characters will have a total cost of 10 (1+2+3+4), and you are now able to play The Mob Song or Second Star to the Right.

While it’s realistic to play these cards, I’ve yet to determine if it’s a good idea to play them; you may have to turn every character you’ve got sideways, which may put them in a precarious situation. The Mob Song is probably the best of these as it solves that problem, since you can focus on first taking out any character that would have a good challenge.

Burn

Finally, there’s a weirdly high number of cards that can provide lore outside of a quest and give you that lore the same turn you play the card (which I will refer to as “burn” because I don’t want to have to write that whole sentence again). For the most part, burn is reserved to higher rarity cards, but even so, there’s enough of it that you should keep the possibility of burn in mind when calculating how close your opponent is to winning the game. It’s very possible they have a trick up their sleeve.

Most of these cards have counterplay: you can keep a card in your hand for Sign the Scroll, you can keep your opponent’s board small so that they can’t use Miracle Candle, and so on. However, there are enough of these cards and they have different enough conditions that I don’t think it’s practical to try to memorize the counterplay to all of them. I’d say just make a note in game 1 if you see one of these cards and try not to get got by it in games 2 or 3.

Only three burn effects are common, so it could be worth it to remember the counterplay to these cards. Hans gives a lore if he sees a Princess or a Queen character. This counts both players, so if your opponent’s only out is for you to play a Princess or Queen to enable their Hans, maybe just keep that character in your hand if you don’t need it to set up lethal.

Thebes is unlikely to matter, since a character that can challenge can just as easily quest, but it might make that character quest for just enough more to set up lethal, and it also allows reckless characters to contribute to lore. In any case, if you’re worried about this card, just don’t turn your characters sideways.

There’s not much counterplay to Glean since item removal is so sparse (and one of the only item removal cards is Glean itself, which isn’t helpful in the context I’m talking about). As far as Glean goes, just be suspicious of any Fortispheres or Hidden Inkcasters your opponent has lying around, and make a mental note that your opponent might secretly have 2 more lore than their twenty-sided die says they do.

The End

And that’s all I have for now! I could keep going, but I feel like this should be a good starting point. I’ve been enjoying this draft format so far, and I hope you will too. Good luck in your drafts, and remember not to pass 4/7s that cost 5.

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