Skill and Advantage – A Guide to Amethyst Ink in Lorcana

We finally have the full spoiler for Lorcana, The First Chapter! Just the other day, Ravensburger released the official Lorcana companion app, which includes a complete, searchable card database and deckbuilder. And now that we can see all of the cards side-by-side, it’s time to break them all down and see what makes them tick.

There are six ink colors in Lorcana: Amber, Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire and Steel. Think mana types in Magic: The Gathering or energy types in Pokémon. Like those other TCGs, the ink color of a card plays a big part in deckbuilding. At minimum, your deck has to contain sixty cards, and you can only have four copies of a given card. Unlike those games though, Lorcana deckbuilding rules strictly limit you to one or two colors. That means it’s more important than ever to understand what each color has to offer, so you can make sure your deck has everything it needs to get you to 20 lore before your opponent.

Amethyst Ink Identity

Officially, Amethyst in Lorcana is the ink of the arcane and supernatural. Some of Disney’s most famous sorcerers and wizards can be found in Amethyst. Mickey Mouse, Wayward Sorcerer is the face of Amethyst in the Amber/Amethyst starter deck. You’ll also find powerful, notorious villains in Amethyst like Maleficent, Ursula and Dr. Facilier.

Oh. And Elsa. You may have heard of her.

There aren’t any keywords unique to Amethyst, but it access to many of them. Flotsam and Rafiki, for instance, have Rush (This character can challenge the turn they’re played.) Jetsam and Tinker Bell, Peter Pan’s Ally have Evasive (Only characters with Evasive can challenge this character.)

What makes Amethyst stand out are the triggered abilities on just about every character. They help define a core theme for your deck that you can then support with other inks – Amber and Sapphire come to mind

Know what’s in the cards

Amethyst is not an ink for Lorcana players who don’t like a lot of text on their cards. The key to making the most of an Amethyst deck is making good use of triggered effects. Whether you’re building around Mickey’s Ceaseless Worker ability to keep returning your Magic Brooms to hand or Ursula’s ETB (enter the battlefield) ability to draw a card and make your opponent lose lore, you can’t just throw down some cardboard and turn it sideways. A lot of Amethyst cards enable card draw or the reordering of cards in your deck. In a game with no maximum hand size, gaining card advantage by drawing more than one card per turn can really help you stay on strategy. It’s even better when you can control what card you’re going to draw.

Yzma, Alchemist is a 2/2 for 2 ink who quests for one lore. Thanks to her You’re Excused ability, when she quests you get to look at the top card of your deck and decide if you want to keep it there or put it on the bottom of your library. You’ll probably hear this called “scrying” a lot – the term comes from a keyword in Magic: the Gathering that does the same thing. This links up nicely with the song Friends on the Other Side, which lets you draw two cards for 3 ink (or by exerting a character with ink cost 3 or greater). Use Yzma to make sure you’re about to draw something you like. Amethyst’s other song, Reflection, helps with setting up good draw as well. For 1 ink, you can look at the top three cards of your deck and put them back in any order.

Where’s the aggression?

On top of powerful triggered abilities, characters in Amethyst have keywords like Rush, Evasive, and Challenger that improve their offensive capabilities. While questing to gain lore is the main objective of Lorcana, being able to attack your opponent’s characters to keep them from gaining lore is just as important. Rush lets you do that the turn you play the character. With Evasive, you can quest with little fear of being challenged – or you can challenge characters your opponent thinks are safe. And Challenger adds additional power when you attack with that card. At base, for instance, Dr. Facilier, Charlatan is a 0/4 for 2 ink. He only quests for one lore, but because he has Challenger 2, when you attack with him he gains +2 power. That’s enough to take out a lot of 1 and 2 ink characters, which tend to have much lower toughness.

Several cards in Amethyst allow you to exert one or more of your opponent’s characters. This opens those characters up to attack from your own characters, which can mean removing a powerful ability or strong lore generator from the board.

In Lorcana, the best offense is at least in part a strong defense. Because you have to make your character vulnerable to attack in order to quest and gain lore, it helps to have a larger body. Toughness higher than power is a feature of many Amethyst characters.

A flexible ink with deckbuilding potential

Ultimately, Amethyst is a solid ink choice for its draw power, card advantage and strong in-ink synergies. Pair with Amber to get more value out of Dr. Facilier, Remarkable Gentleman and Friends on the Other Side. Or try running with Sapphire to load your hand with inkable cards and trigger Belle, Strange but Special’s My Favorite Part! ability.

Got a decklist that runs Amethyst? Drop a comment below or tag me on Twitter. We might just make a video about it!

Lorcana releases in local game stores on August 18, 2023.