Lorcana: Archazia’s Island review — Something new

Starter Decks

Archazia’s Island is out and brings some new ideas to shake things up. As always, the Starter Decks are a great way to get a first impression of the chapter or jump into the game for the first time.

This set introduces dual-ink cards for the first time as well as some brand new keywords and characters. Dual-ink cards are exactly what they sound like. They have two ink colors and can only be used in decks that feature those two colors. Deck building takes on a new element of strategy with the more restrictive use of these cards but allows Ravensburger to play with balance in new ways by keeping cards away from interacting with cards of a different ink color that may provide too strong of a combo. This is a really cool idea and great for the balance and future development of the game. 

This set also introduces Illusions. Illusions play just like regular cards but have a new effect called Vanish that banishes them if they are targeted by any action The illusions on display in the Starter Decks seem like they are tuned just a bit stronger than regular cards of the same cost with the Vanish drawback acting to balance them out. Of course we also get regular cards that interact with Illusions in fun ways. It makes for a fun new mechanic to build a deck around.

The Ruby-Amethyst deck leans into the Inventors keyword and has a bunch of item cards to play around with. Cogsworth turns into a menace if you have an item in your discard pile, and there are some interesting plays you can make by banishing items to get discounts and buffs on your cards.

If you’ve been paying attention to the future release teasers, you may also notice there are quite a few new Jafar and friends cards in this set as well. Perhaps setting us up for a larger confrontation soon? 

As is often the case with Starter Decks, they are fun to play against each other but quickly fall short if you’re playing against someone with a purpose-built deck. That’s pretty typical, so I wouldn’t really call it a negative, but it's something you should be aware of. You’ll need to try your hand at deck building to get the most out of the game.

Trove Box

Every Lorcana set has an accompanying Trove box to store your set cards. Each box comes with card dividers, 8 booster packs, a lore tracker, and a set of dice to track hit points. The boxes are completely wrapped in beautiful featured artwork from the set and provide a great way to organize your cards. 

If you are familiar with other Trove boxes, there isn’t anything new with this set, but I will say the color choices for the dice are excellent. They are pretty to look at, but more importantly are super clear to see and read across the table. Other sets have gone a bit overboard with the dark colors that make them difficult to parse at a quick glance. 

While the Troves are both functional and nice to look at, if you fully load one up, you need to be careful. The construction is fairly thin cardboard. While that hasn’t been a problem for me so far, it does require some careful handling, especially if you intend to travel anywhere with it. 

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