How To Play The Emerald/Sapphire Starter Deck In Disney Lorcana

Disney Lorcana’s Azurite Sea expansion marked a huge debut to the game, with the Big Hero 6 team finally appearing for the first time. Baymax, Hiro, Honey Lemon, and the rest of the team were such a big deal for Azurite Sea that they also became the stars of one of the set’s two Starter Decks.

This deck is built around the Inventor card type, using Robots and Items to power up the team and potentially quest for huge amounts of lore in a single turn. While it can be unfocused at times, knowing how to play will help you come up with a crafty solution to your opponent.

Azurite Sea Emerald/Sapphire Starter Decklist

This deck goes heavy on the characters, attempting to build up an army of Inventors, with the help of a few Ally and Hero cards as well.

Key Cards

Gadget Hackwrench, Brilliant Bosun

The heavy lifter of this deck, Brilliant Bosun can shift onto a Perceptive Mouse quite nicely, before questing for a mountain of lore and being difficult to take down through challenging.

More importantly, Brilliant Bosun fits into the Inventor theme of this deck, providing a payoff for having a lot of items by letting you pay less for your other Inventors. This is a big, swingy card that’s going to help you win, but before you get there, it also provides a value engine to build up your board state. If you’re looking to ugprade this deck, adding in another Brilliant Bosun certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Hiro Hamada, Robotics Prodigy

In Lorcana, tutors (cards that let you search for other cards) are powerful as a way to assemble your engine pieces. Hiro takes that more literally than most, giving you the chance to go searching for an Item or Robot and putting it on top.

On top of giving you the chance to find the few Items in this otherwise Item-centric deck, it also lets you go and find Baymax or B.E.N., the two robots in the deck. In turn, this makes Baymax’s Healthcare Chip a vital card, as with a Robot in play its paltry single point of healing now becomes three every single turn.

Aunt Cass, Biggest Fan

A common card might not seem like a key player in the deck, but Aunt Cass, Biggest Fan provides major synergy with the Inventory theme of the deck. At three willpower, she’s a great early play when you have other, smaller Inventors like Gadget Hackwrench, Perceptive Mouse out on the table.

One of this deck’s big problems is it often strays from the Inventory-and-Item theme into Ally and Hero cards, but Cass is one of the few non-Inventors that is absolutely essential. A lightning bolt for removal that could’ve gone to your bigger pieces, who can buff up your more important characters, aim to get a few Aunt Cass out in play at the same time.

You Came Back

You Came Back is widely considered one of the best cards not just in the starter deck, but in the whole of Azurite Sea. It might not look like much, but this little three-ink action can swing games in your favour.

Readying a chosen character normally comes with the caveat that it can’t quest again that turn. This isn’t the case with You Came Back, letting you pull off massive turns. Imagine having Aunt Cass and Gadget Hackwrench, Brilliant Bosun out in play at the same time; if both quest, then you You Came Back Gadget, to quest her again, that’s a total of 11 lore in a single turn.

It doesn’t have to be your own character, either. For instance, you could ready an opponent’s Tiana, Restaurant Owner to turn off her taxing effect.

Institute Of Technology, Prestigious University

Locations are one of the trickiest card types for an opponent to deal with, as there’s little targeted removal, and challenging them uses up your questers and challengers with little benefit. That makes cards like Institute Of Technology such a threat, as they enable passive lore accrual with ease.

Drop an Inventor onto this Location, and they’ll get +1 willpower. That’s a nice way to keep things in play, but not really an effect to write home about. Instead, whenever there’s a character on the Institute of Technology, you get one free lore every turn. Lore on its own is great, protection on its own is good; both of them together, for just one ink, is incredible.

Emerald/Sapphire Playstyle

Nailing down the playstyle of this deck can be tricky, because it often prioritises flavour over mechanics. Ostensibly an Inventor deck with heavy Item synergies, it often dilutes that theme with Heroes and Allies, to ensure all the right characters from Big Hero Six and Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers make an appearance.

All of those cards are superfluous, though, and you should be focusing on amassing a board of Inventors first, and Items second. With all your Inventors out, cards like Aunt Cass become vital win conditions, and Institute of Technology becomes a passive clock on the game.

That isn’t to say the non-Inventors aren’t entirely without their uses, though. They’re fodder, things to challenge your opponent with while your Inventors push you to victory. In particular, B.E.N., Eccentric Robot’s support keyword makes it a terrifying way to quest for lore and buff up a character make it hit so much harder, before dropping Go Go Tomago to gain even more lore.

While you do want to build up your Items, there aren’t too many in the deck. Emerald Chromicon is great for keeping your pieces in play instead of languishing in your discard pile, but Baymax’s Healthcare Chip is the Item you want to find first and foremost, as it gives you a cosnsitent way to heal large amounts of damage.

Your Opening Hand And When To Mulligan

Despite being a big winner for the deck, you don’t need Gadget Hackwrench, Brilliant Bosun in your opening hand. She’s expensive to play without shifting, so instead focus on looking for Persistent Mouse, and hope you draw into Brilliant Bosun when you’re ready to close out the game.

By far the best early game plays for this deck are Fred, Mascot By Day and Institute of Technology, Prestigious University. Play Fred on turn one to give your opponent a difficult choice between banishing Fred and being two lore down, or risk you putting it on the Location and kick off that clock of passive lore game.

Hiro Hamada, Robotics Prodigy is also a great card to have in your opening hand, as its tutoring ability will let you quickly set up future turns.

Make sure you have inkable cards in your opening hand, too. Fortunately there are lots of cards in this deck that don’t contribute to your win condition much that are perfect for inking like:

• Ludwig Von Drake, Self-Proclaimed Genius
• Prince Phillip, Royal Explorer
• Basil, Hypnotized Mouse
• Dawson, Basil’s Assistant

Weaknesses

As already alluded to, this deck is very unfocused, choosing to include lots of cards that don’t immediately work towards your win condition. If all your value engines are destroyed and you’re left with a Ludwig Von Drake, you’ll struggle to eke out a victory.

Inventors and Item cards go hand-in-hand, but with only six in the deck, you might struggle to find the Items you need. This is why Robotics Prodigy is important as a way to force a bit more consistency, but without it you’re banking on drawing into them.

This deck also lacks much meaningful interaction. Megabot is your most useful one as a way to banish damaged characters, but having to banish it as part of the cost puts you down an Item in an already Item-sparse deck.