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Azurite Sea is the swashbuckling sixth expansion forDisney Lorcana, setting off on a high-seas adventure full of treasure, mainsails, and, of course, Pirates. The Amber/Ruby Starter deck for this expansion celebrates these salty sea dogs, and has you weighing anchor at all sorts of locations along the way.
As one of the more impressive starter decks for Lorcana, knowing how it works and how to play it can be crucial to dredging up as much lore as possible.
Azurite Sea Amber/Ruby Starter Decklist
This is one of the most laser-focused starter decks Lorcana has ever seen, with it going full send on Pirates and locations.
Skull Rock, Isolated Fortress (x2)
Key Cards
This deck is laser-focused on Pirates and Locations, making these the cards you’ll want to focus on.
Jim Hawkins, Honorable Pirate
Being able tofilter the top four cards of your deckjust by playing Jim Hawkins is fantastic. You get the cards you don’t need, andgrab as many Pirates from them as you wantand put them into your hand instead.
Considering most characters in this deck are Pirates, you’ll quickly be able to get other key cards in the deck, like John Silver or Moana. Add to thatJim’s massive seven toughness, and the addition of bodyguard to protect your smaller, squisher pieces, and Jim becomes a key part of stalling your opponent out.
John Silver, Ferocious Friend
There are a fair few cards in this deck thatrequire your own characters to be damaged. While you could do that by challenging, that comes with the risk of banishing your key pieces, which is where John Silver, Ferocious Friend comes in.
It can deal damage to your own characters, before taking them out of harm’s wayby readying them again. This sets up things like Ratigan, Raging Rat; and Ratigan’s Party for a burst of value with minimal risk.
Ratigan’s Party, Seedy Back Room
As mentioned,having damaged characters is a subtheme of this deck. To bridge the gap between that and the deck’s larger emphasis on locations, Ratigan’s Party, Seedy Back Room is a wildly powerful way to creep ahead in lore.
As long as you have a damaged character on it, you’ll passively gain two lore each turn.Locations are also harder to deal withthan most other card types, making a well-defended location like this a nightmare to deal with.
Moana, Kakamora Leader
Moana is one of thebiggest win conditions in the deck, and should be played when the time has come for you to win. Once it enters, you’re able to move any characters you control to one location - this is greatfor avoiding paying costs, but it comes with another bonus.
For each character you move,you gain one lore. By going wide with Pirates, you can have a surge of lore that, if not outright win you the game, will have enough of an impact to make it almostimpossible for your opponent to catch up.
Pooh Pirate Ship
An unassuming item that costs just one ink, Pooh Pirate Ship offers your decka bit of much-needed recursion. As this deck is so focused on building up Pirates,having any removed can be a problem, but Pooh Pirate Ship works around that by bringing them back to your hand.
This is also a great way torecur characters with on-play abilities, like Jim Hawkins and Moana. As long as you can get them banished, Pooh Pirate Ship gives you a way toloop them over practically every turnfor wild amounts of card advantage and lore gain.
Amber/Ruby Playstyle
This deck has two main themes: Pirates and locations. By playing enough of both, you’ll be passively gaining lore, draining your opponent, and have a board state that will be very tricky for your opponent to unpick in time.
On the Pirate side, you’ll be playing cheap characters likeKakamora, Pirate Pitcher; Michael Darling, Playful Swordsman; and Moana, Self-Taught Sailorto build up a critical mass of Pirates. Keep an eye out forWendy Darling, Courageous Captainas well, as she gets a nice buff to her strength and lore value just by having as fellow Pirate in play.
Locations are the main way you’ll likely be winning, though. As mentioned, locations aredifficult for your opponent to deal with, especially if you have a lot of Pirates ready to challenge their characters the second they exert.Skull Rock, Island Fortressis one of the payoffs for this, giving you passive lore just for having Pirates on it.
Though not Pirates, cards likeMickey Mouse, Courageous Sailor; and Fix-It Felix, Jr., Delighted Sightseeralso get extra profit if you control locations, behoving you to always have at least one in play.
The third, much less developed theme of this deck is having damaged characters under your control. This is predominently found inRatigan, Raging RatandRatigan’s Party, Seedy Back Room, butJohn Silver, Ferocious Friendcan enable it very easily, whileAmber Chromiconcan quickly heal damage from all of your characters for when it comes time for challenging.
Your Opening Hand And When To Mulligan
As mentioned, this deck needs you to quickly get a decent amount of Pirates and locations out, somake sure you have a few in your opening hand. Cheap ones, like Michael Darling, Kakamora, and Rabbit are great early plays, as isSkull Rockto get your location strategy going.
While it’s tempting to keep the one-mana Moana, Self-Taught Sailor in your opening hand, consider mulliganing it away if you don’t have Kakamora Leader quickly available. Her only reason for being in this deck is as a cheap shift target for Kakamora Leader, and if she gets banished you may be stuck having to pay the full seven mana to get your win condition out.
There are a lot of other cards in this deck thatfeel deceptively suitable to keep. Wendy Darling, Courageous Captain is uninkable, and her and Fix-It Felix, Jr., Delighted Sightseerboth require you to have other cards in playto get their full value. It’s better to keep otherwise useless cards likeRuttandTuke, who add nothing to your deck and can be considered fodder for inking over cards that can give you value later in the game.
Don’t be afraid to mulligan away Pirates, asthis deck has multiple ways to search for them. Focus on getting tutors like Jim Hawkins, or discard recursion like I Won’t Give In should be more important than keeping an otherwise milquetoast Pirate like Owl just for the sake of having one in your hand.
Weaknesses
Compared to Azurite Sea’s Emerald and Sapphire deck, the Amber/Ruby one is noticeably more cohesive. It goes all in on Pirates and locations, with the latter being a strong card type that has seen success at high levels of play. That being said, there are a few weaknesses.
The first is the second face card of the deck; Tigger, In The Crow’s Nest. His ability suggests this deck has much more of anaction-slinging themethan it does, and leaning in to making him successful could lead you to miss the stronger synergies elsewhere in the deck.
There are alsoa few duds that could be replaced with more Pirates. Rutt and Tuke; Rattigan, Raging Rat; and Mickey Mouse, Courageous Sailor aren’t necessarily bad cards, but theydon’t contribute to the Pirate strategy, wasting resources that could be better spent perfecting your game plan.
The other problem is that a lot of the winners of this deck areincredibly expensive. Playing a Jim Hawkins or a Moana requires a heavy ink investment, which could see youlose before you have a chance to build any momentum.
