7 best Lorcana sapphire cards in The First Chapter
Indigo, out come results.
Blue is the colour of ink and items. The best Lorcana sapphire cards specialise in building up your ink while equipping you with handy items that can keep your characters safe and sound - or simply buff them up to help wipe away your opponent.
Helping sapphire build up your ink reserves faster than the standard one-a-turn are a number of effects that allow you to add the top card of your deck to your inkwell, or even turn cards into ink as they’re banished.
Best Lorcana sapphire cards
- Mufasa, King of the Pride Lands
- Mickey Mouse, Detective
- Scar, Mastermind
- Aurora, Dreaming Guardian
- Tamatoa, So Shiny!
- Belle, Strange but Special
- Hades, Infernal Schemer
While sapphire Lorcana cards tend to be slower than some of Lorcana’s other ink colours, combining its power to fill up your inkwell with its prowess in powerful characters can be a winning combination. It might take you a couple of extra turns to bring out your most powerful sapphire cards, but once you do it’ll be hard to stop you.
Other cards will help you fill your side of the table with item cards by reducing their cost or even playing them for free, granting you bonus abilities on your turns from then on - from gaining extra lore and drawing more cards to increasing characters’ strength and willpower. Combine sapphire’s inventors with the best item cards in Lorcana to unleash their full potential and overwhelm your opponent.
Whether you’re looking to ramp your ink as quickly as possible or build your Lorcana deck around items, sapphire can be a seriously powerful ink colour to play with. You could use its ink-ramping to speed along the slow might of steel, fuel the rapid attacks of ruby or dominate with the control of amethyst.
However you plan to use sapphire in your deck, the characters below represent the best Lorcana sapphire cards in The First Chapter. Stick them in your next deck and you won’t be left feeling blue.
1. Mufasa, King of the Pride Lands
Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance
While The Lion King’s Simba appears on a number of cards in The First Chapter, his dearly departed dad Mufasa only appears on a single card in the set. (If you don’t count his ghostly appearance on action card You Have Forgotten Me, that is.)
Mufasa, King of the Pride Lands makes up for being Mufasa’s sole appearance by being a powerhouse. For six ink (it can also be added to your inkwell), the card offers up a mighty three lore whenever you quest, along with robust strength and willpower of four and six, respectively.
With no other keywords or abilities, Mufasa, King of the Pride Lands is a very simple sapphire card: it has a formidable balance of both questing power and challenging prowess. But who needs more when what’s there is so good?
2. Mickey Mouse, Detective
He’s on the case
Mickey Mouse, Detective continues the Disney mascot’s trend of appearing on many of the very best cards in Lorcana. Look, it’s Mickey Mouse in a Disney card game, what did you expect?
Even amongst such impressive company, Mickey Mouse, Detective shines as an excellent card for helping ramp your ink past the standard one card a turn. Once you’ve got ink ink in your inkwell, you can spend it to play this card, allowing you to add the top card of your deck to your inkwell at the same time using its Get a Clue effect. While the card is put in your inkwell exerted - meaning you can’t use it until your next turn - it’s going to be a huge help.
With the chance to have up to four copies of this card in your deck, it’s a fast way to accelerate your ink past your opponent, helping you to unleash more expensive cards earlier in the game - or simply flood your board with cheaper cards - to help take you to victory.
Even past its essential ability text, Mickey Mouse, Detective offers a single lore when questing and three willpower to fend off a challenge or two. Even so, that’s not really why you’d want him in your deck - when it comes to gathering ink, this Detective can’t be beat.
3. Scar, Mastermind
Claw away your opponents’ strength
Joining Mufasa as one of the best Lorcana sapphire cards is his Lion King rival, Scar. Scar shows up a few times across The First Chapter - including brutally throwing Mufasa off a cliff in the action card Vicious Betrayal.
Scar, Mastermind sees him at his most manipulative, allowing you to use his ability to hatch an Insidious Plot and reduce an opposing character’s strength by five when Scar is played.
For his cost of six ink, you’ll then be able to unleash five strength and four willpower on your opponents, or send him questing for two lore.
Combined with other strong challengers, Scar, Mastermind’s power to sap away characters’ strength by such a significant amount allows you to challenge without risking any damage in return - a highly valuable position to be in.
4. Aurora, Dreaming Guardian
Sweet dreams are made of these
Sleeping Beauty’s princess is a common sight across sapphire decks - and for good reason. Aurora offers up a number of helpful effects, alongside some solid stats to boot.
Aurora, Dreaming Guardian is the best example of her potential. The five-ink card has a very solid five willpower and three strength, along with two lore. What’s more, you can bring her onto the table for just three ink by shifting her onto another Aurora card - of which there are plenty in sapphire. (That also means she can come in ready to quest or challenge, like all shifted cards.)
That alone makes Aurora a great pick for your sapphire deck, but it’s her Protective Embrace ability that elevates her further. While Aurora, Dreaming Guardian is in play, all of your other characters - all of them! - gain the Ward keyword. Ward stops your opponent from targeting them for any reason other than to challenge, keeping them safe from instant banish effects, being forced to exert or other similar effects.
The protection Aurora, Dreaming Guardian offers your other characters can be invaluable in buying them time to quest for lore or activate their own handy powers. With a couple of copies on the table, you’ll have some serious defence.
5. Tamatoa, So Shiny!
Go for the gold
Moana’s villainous crab Tamatoa is obsessed with gathering valuable objects. In suitable style, his appearance in Lorcana sees him collect precious items and lore to help you go straight for gold.
Tamatoa, So Shiny! is as pricey as the golden crab’s unusual shell, costing a whopping eight ink to get onto the field. (You can also stick it in your inkwell.) It’s a big cost, but one that comes with a lot of potential once you can afford it.
On the basic side of things, Tamatoa, So Shiny! has a tough shell of eight willpower, and a pinchy strength of five to help challenge opponents’ characters. That’s not too bad, but it’s not the reason you’d want this glimmering crustacean in your sapphire deck.
Tamatoa’s real potential comes via his two abilities. First, we have What Have We Here?, which allows you to retrieve an item card from your discard pile and put in your hand whenever Tamatoa quests, along with when he’s played.
That plays into sapphire’s strength as an ink colour full of powerful items, and it also comes with another benefit thanks to Tamatoa’s second ability, Glam. This increases the card’s lore value - which starts at just one - for every item you have in play.
Combined together, you can pull items from your discard pile and get them onto the table, boosting Tamatoa’s questing value to game-winning amounts - while staying protected thanks to that eight willpower and the effects of the other sapphire cards in your deck. Paired with a deck full of items, Tamatoa, So Shiny! could very swiftly spell defeat for your opponents.
6. Belle, Strange but Special
A Beauty and Beast of a card
Belle, Strange but Special is an absolute no-brainer for any deck touting sapphire and its speciality of getting ink into your inkwell as fast as possible.
At only four ink to put down, and with a decent four willpower to keep her on the board in the early game, the benefits of including Belle in your deck far outweigh the costs.
With her Read A Book ability, Belle allows you to double the amount of cards you can play into your inkwell each turn. That’s a huge amount of ramp for such little costs, provided you can keep her on the board.
You’ll want her to last the game, as well, because with her My Favourite Part! ability you’ll be able to turn ramp into value, as she’ll start questing for an enormous five lore as long as you have ten or more ink in your inkwell.
If only she wasn’t so difficult to get your hands on at the moment, due to the card’s popularity and rarity. Belle, Strange but Special is a must-have for anyone looking to play big characters as early as possible to overwhelm your opponent.
7. Hades, Infernal Schemer
Get rid of your opponent’s characters for once and all
Never turn down a character that will also do the work of an action card for you when they’re played.
Seven ink might seem a lot for a card with three strength and six willpower that only quests for two, but when Hades, Infernal Schemer hits the board you can put an opposing character facedown into that opponent’s inkwell thanks to his Is There A Downside To This? ability.
On the face of it, this might seem like a worse version of other removal cards - like ruby’s Dragon Fire - but bear in mind that this ability doesn’t count as banishing a character.
That means that any characters that have banish triggers won’t take effect and, as the card is placed into the opponent’s inkwell, you’re safe from any cards that will bring them back from your opponent’s discard pile. They’re gone for good!
Not to mention that, once your removal is done, you’ve got a decent character to boot.