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Following the introduction of Toy Story, Brave, and The Incredibles in April’s Wilds Unknown set, Disney Lorcana’s upcoming Attack of the Vine! is getting ready for the next wave of Pixar movies, and leading the way is my absolute favorite of all time, Monsters Inc.
Lorcana was first revealed in 2022 and joined the best card games shortly after, so I’ve been waiting for this moment for almost four years. Mike Wazowski, Boo, Randall, and, most importantly, James P. Sullivan himself are finally here, and these six cards show there’s a lot more to the Monsters than just looking scary. There’s a powerful deck in here, if you can generate the energy needed to run it.
We scare, because we care (about having more ink than we know what to do with)
Lots of the properties in Lorcana have a shared mechanic underpinning them. For instance, Encanto goes hard on the Madrigal characteristic, and Sword in the Stone has a bounce-heavy archetype. But we’ve yet to see one lean so overwhelmingly into a key strategy like we do with Monsters Inc.
Almost every card here cares about you squeezing every bit of juice out of your inkwell as possible, and it does that in two key ways. The first is in simply having a massive inkwell, which is seen on Boo - Human Child’s +2 Lore value if you have five or more cards in your inkwell.
We’ve also got some symmetrical ramp with Power Surge, a Sapphire Action card that lets you dump the top two cards of every player’s deck into their inkwell. I could maybe see this getting some use in the Sapphire/Amethyst control decks that already use cards like Hades - Infernal Schemer to throw cards into your opponent’s inkwell where they’re less of a threat, but really this is a way to trigger the likes of Boo.
Doing some serious exerting, putting up some big numbers
The second theme of Monsters Inc is one we’ve not seen a whole lot of so far; rewarding you for exerting all of your ink each turn. Randall Boggs - Envious Coworker is already impressive as a 3/1 evasive character for just two ink, but if you’re fully spent he’ll also gain an additional two Lore value to boot.
A key difference between Lorcana and Magic: The Gathering is that, in Lorcana, you can’t ‘float’ an ink. You can only exert ink to pay to play cards, rather than just tap all your lands for floating mana in Magic. That means you need to get a bit creative for some of these payoffs.
Sulley - Protective Monster is an uncommon take on this ability. He helps enable the fully-exerted strategy by optionally exerting all your ink when he enters, and as long as you have no readied ink, he’ll be able to challenge the turn he enters by gaining rush.
If you’d rather play it a bit safer, Scream Canister is another exertion enabler, with the added upside of being a control piece. Pay two ink and exert it to exert all your other ink and a character an opponent controls with two strength or less - the big downside being it itself can’t be inked.
As you’d likely expect, this archetype really helps push aggro to the fore in a meta that is largely dominated by control and tempo decks. Simply playing a load of cards and abilities to go fast and use up your resources every turn will be enough for Sulley to pick up rush and become a threatening beater.
Put that card back where it came from or so help me
The final card doesn’t neatly fit into the Monsters Inc archetype, which is a perfect bit of flavour considering Mike “Googly Bear” Wazowski never made it as a scarer like Sulley or Randall. Instead, his card - Mike Wazowski - Heroic Climber - is a non-character hosing card that really could become a big counter to the dominant meta.
Whenever he enters or quests, you and your opponent reveal the top card of your deck. If it’s anything other than a character, it gets put to the bottom of the deck, otherwise it goes into its owner’s hand. You might not get too many triggers of Mike’s ability, but getting rid of even one Junior Woodchuck Guidebook or Let It Go is going to be worthwhile.
Monsters Inc in Lorcana was well worth the wait
Sulley is my all-time favorite character in any media, and so I’ve been chomping at the bit to finally build a Sulley-centric deck in Lorcana, and it’s great to see the final result be so on-theme for the movie and so darn synergistic for the game.
I would have built a Monsters Inc deck regardless of how well it performed, but, much like how Wilds Unknown’s Toy Story cards gave Toys a reliable archetype, I can see Monsters Inc doing the same with inkwell-matters. It’ll be scary good.
Disney Lorcana’s Attack of the Vine! launches on July 24, with prerelease events being held starting July 17.
