Into the Inklands Set Review: Steel

Introduction

Disney Lorcana's third set will be releasing to local game stores very soon, so we are taking a look at the full set and reveiwing all the cards. With so many cards to go through, we will be breaking this series of reviews down by ink color. In this post, I will be reviewing all the Steel cards from Into the Inklands.

Steel has been one of the best colors in Lorcana so far. Their ability to deal with multiple threats efficiently with their song and action cards has been invaluable. And they also have plenty of card draw and powerful characters to supplement those removal cards. Will they continue to see success in these areas? Or will Inklands introduce some new archetypes for Steel decks? Read on to find out!

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Into the Inklands Steel Cards

Chief Tui - Proud of Motunui

We start things off with this vanilla Chief Tui card. We've seen this stat line before in Maleficent - Sinister Visitor, among others. It's not going to make the cut.

Rating: 1/5

Eeyore - Overstuffed Donkey

Eeyore gets a card in Into the Inklands and it is this Steel 5-drop with 4/5/1 and Resist +1. It's not the worst collection of stats on a card. It reminds me a bit of Cerberus - Three-Headed Dog. You are trading -1/-1 for the Resist +1, which is better than Willpower in most cases. A 6 Willpower and a 5 Willpower/Resist +1 character both die to a 6 damage hit, but the former also dies to two 3 and 3 damage hits, while the latter does not. So I think this card is slightly better than Cerberus, however Cerberus has not seen any play since the early First Chapter meta. So, in the end, this card isn't doing enough to see play in constructed. Solid in limited formats though.

Rating: 2/5

Gustav the Giant - Terror of the Kingdom

A 6 Strength/6 Willpower character is a lot of stats for only 3 ink. But Gustav the Giant comes with some drawbacks, which is that he enters play exerted and can't ready at the start of your turn. You have to banish another character in a challenge with one of your other characters to be able to ready him. That is going to be tough to pull off reliably. And even when you do ready him, he's only good for challenging stuff; with only 1 lore you aren't going to be questing with him. This is all way too much work. Just play a better card with slightly worse stats but a good ability instead.

Rating: 1/5

Hades - Hotheaded Ruler

Hades is a 6-cost 5/5/2 with the ability Call the Titans, you may exert him to ready your Titan characters. This is obviously going into a Titan deck and, in that deck, he will be an important piece. He lets you get off multiple activations of the abilities on Stratos - Tornado Titan or Lythos - Rock Titan. Readying things unconditionally can be very powerful, especially when that readying doesn't say "your characters can't quest for the rest of the turn".

The trouble is he only goes into a Titan deck and right now I don't see that deck being good enough. If we get more Titan characters down the road, maybe the deck can be improved enough to be viable, but for now this is just a good card waiting for the rest of the deck to catch up.

Rating: 2/5

Helga Sinclair - Right-Hand Woman

Helga Sinclair is a 3-drop with 2/4 that quests for only 1 lore. But you aren't using her to quest because she also has Challenger +2. A 4/4 for 3 ink is not bad, she's a slightly bigger Prince Eric - Dashing and Brave. Prince Eric has been known to see some play and this Helga could end up getting splashed into some decks.

Rating: 3/5

John Silver - Greedy Treasure Seeker

If you are looking for a location payoff card, look no further than this John Silver. A 3/3 for 3 ink that quests for 1 lore, and has the ability Chart Your Own Course, which gives him +1 Resist and +1 lore for each location you have in play. With just two locations on board, John Silver gains Resist +2 and quests for 3 lore! That's insane.

And he also has the Pirate tag, so can slot right into those pirate decks. You get to double up on synergistic effects with him and Jolly Roger - Hook's Ship, as he gains Rush and Resist +1 if you play him with the Jolly Roger on board.

But he also just works with vanilla locations as well and, best of all, he doesn't even need to be at the locations to gain value. You just play vanilla locations for their lore generation and then play this guy to keep piling on the pressure. Because of Resist, your opponent will often have to get through the high Willpower locations before they can take down John Silver himself.

This card is going to be seen a lot, particularly in pirate decks, but really any Steel deck that has a handful of locations available to it. A fantastic card.

Rating: 5/5

Kida - Royal Warrior

Kida - Royal Warrior is a color swapped Simba - Protective Cub. Simba has been a very good card that has seen a lot of play, especially in Stich - Rock Star decks. I suspect Kida here will fit right into those decks as well. And she also curves nicely into Kida - Protector of Atlantis. Amber/Steel aggro just gained some additional early game consistency with this Bodyguard character.

Rating: 4/5

Little John - Resourceful Outlaw

Little John - Resourceful Outlaw is a Steel Super Rare card that wants to be a build-around for Bodyguard decks. He costs 6 and you get a 4/5 body that quests for 2 and he's also Floodborn, so can Shift out for 4 ink. His ability gives Bodyguard characters Resist +1 and +1 lore whenever he is exerted. Bodyguards with Resist can be really annoying to deal with and your opponent will many times have to deal with them to get to this Little John. And then he gives them additional lore as well, which is perfect. You really never want to be challenging with your Bodyguard characters, you want to quest with them and then force your opponent to challenge into them.

So he has a lot going for him and will be a staple in a Bodyguard deck. Is that deck going to work? To get good value out of this Little John, you would ideally be playing a lot of cheap Bodyguard characters and at the moment there are only a few I would consider good enough to play. We might need to see a few more good Bodyguard characters, especially cheap ones, before this deck can really compete. But, overall, this Little John is a good card and I expect we will see people trying him out in their Steel decks.

Rating: 4/5

Little John - Robin's Companion

This 3-cost Little John is the clear Shift target for the Floodborn Little John. He curves nicely into big Little John (Big John?) and also has Bodyguard himself, so stands to benefit from the Floodborn Little John, once you already have him on board. He also is able to deal with Evasive characters via his Disguised ability. As a 2/4/1 for 3, he's not as good as The Prince - Never Gives Up, but he doesn't have a bad stat line.

So yeah, he's not going to replace The Prince as the 3-drop Bodyguard of choice for any Steel deck, but he will be a solid and important card in the Bodyguard deck with Floodborn Little John.

Rating: 3/5

Lythos - Rock Titan

Lythos is a powerful inclusion into Titan decks. A 4/1 body for 4 is obviously bad, but if you tack Resist +2 onto that body, you have my attention. It taking no damage from Grab Your Sword or Teeth and Ambitions or Let the Storm Rage On is quite good. All those are important removal spells in the current meta.

And then on top of that you get the Stone Skin ability, which lets you give chosen character Resist +2. This importantly doesn't say "other character", so you can target Lythos himself with his ability, giving him Resist +4! You will need a way to ready him after this, for that Resist +4 to matter, but the Titan deck has a few different ways of doing that. One downside to this ability, it doesn't say "until your next turn", so you can't use Stone Skin as a defensive tool to allow a character to survive through your opponent's turn. It is only useful when you want to trade something in on your turn.

Ultimately, this card will be a key part of any Titan deck, whenever they become viable. And just might be good enough to see play in other deck archetypes, depending on the type of removal we are seeing in the meta at the time.

Rating: 3/5

Mickey Mouse - Stalwart Explorer

This Mickey Mouse is just a worse John Silver - Greedy Treasure Seeker. You are getting the same stats for the same cost and an ability that cares about locations. But gaining +1 Strength for each location in play is way, way worse than gaining Resist and lore. These gain Strength abilities on characters have not been very good or useful, so this is mostly just a vanilla character, with the tiniest of upsides in a location-heavy deck.

Rating: 2/5

Mickey Mouse - Trumpeter

Mickey Mouse - Trumpeter heralds the arrival of the first Legendary for Steel this set. And what an interesting and unique Legendary it is. At 4 cost and uninkable you are getting a 0 Strength and 1 Willpower body. Uh, I don't need to tell you that that is very, very bad. But his Sound the Call ability lets you exert Mickey and pay 2 ink and then you can play any character in your hand FOR FREE. With this you can cheat out any character in the game on turn 5, or even earlier if you can ramp up to playing this Mickey.

Now, there are several issues with this card, at the moment. First up, he has to survive a turn before you can use his ability. And with only 1 Willpower, that isn't going to happen very often. Second, and more importantly, what do you want to cheat out with this? There aren't many expensive cards in the game that will make an outsized impact due to them coming out early. Maleficent - Monstrous Dragon? She's big but you need an opponent's character to target to get value. Ditto with Hades - Infernal Schemer. Stitch - Carefree Surfer has a big body but you need to have one other character on board for his draw ability to go off. It's definitely not worth it to play large vanilla characters like Goofy - Knight for a Day with this, as thematic as that may be.

If you are playing a high risk/high reward character, you need some real incentive, and right now the rewards are not looking all that great. This is a card that could become borderline broken in the future, if they print a high-cost character with a universally good and impactful ability. But for now, he is simply unplayable.

Rating: 1/5

Minnie Mouse - Funky Spelunker

Minnie Mouse is a 1-cost 0/3 character that gains +2 Strength while she is at a location. A 2/3 for only 1 ink would be nice, but you aren't paying only 1 ink, since you need to pay the move cost as well. She's more like a 2/3 for 2 and that's just a vanilla stat line. No thanks.

Rating: 2/5

Mr. Smee - Clumsy Sailor

Mr. Smee is a 2-cost 3/3/2 which is a fantastic stat line. We've already seen how strong a 2-cost 3/3 can be with the prevalence of Madam Mim - Snake in the meta, and this bumbling sailor quests for two! He has a drawback though, when he is exerted at the end of your turn, if you don't have a Captain character in play, he deals 1 damage to himself. So he would banish himself over three turns, if you can't get a Captain on board.

This is, honestly, not that big of a deal. You have the opportunity to get 6 lore out of him before then or can always use him to trade into a bigger threat. And, besides, there are some really good Captain cards you can play to keep him alive, such as Captain Hook - Forceful Duelist and John Silver - Greedy Treasure Seeker. He's also a Pirate, so will definitely make it into the pirate decks. But he has such good stats for the cost that you will be really hard pressed to keep him out of any Steel deck. Expect to see this card a lot.

Rating: 4/5

Mufasa - Champion of the Pride Lands

Mufasa is a big-bodied vanilla character that quests for 3 lore. He's better than Maui - Demigod as he has more Willpower and is one ink cheaper, while questing for the same amount of lore. But that's not saying much. An okay limited card but don't put this into your constructed deck.

Rating: 1/5

Nala - Fierce Friend

Another Lion King vanilla card, Nala makes her debut appearance in Lorcana. She's not good enough to see play and mostly feels like a Shift target for a future Floodborn Nala.

Rating: 1/5

Pyros - Lava Titan

Pyros is, along with Hades - Hotheaded Ruler, a way to ready your other Titans, so you can get multiple activations of their abilities. You need to banish something to do it but with 5 Strength, he should be able to do that consistently. He has a lot of cross-synergy with the other Titan cards, especially Lythos - Rock Titan and Hades - Hotheaded Ruler. Lythos can give this guy Resist +2, then he takes out something small and takes no damage. Then you ready Lythos, give him Resist +2 again, and exert Hades to ready both Titans and he can take out something even bigger, then ready Hades, who can ready the Titans, then he can challenge and banish something else, then ready Hades... etc. etc.

I love the idea of this type of deck that readies and activates abilities over and over again. It can especially be potent if you can get a Stratos - Tornado Titan to stick to the board with a couple other Titans and a Hades. I just think it will be too hard to consistently pull off. But I want to give it a try. Overall, a great card for Titan decks, although probably not quite good enough to make it into other decks.

Rating: 3/5

Razoul - Palace Guard

Razoul is a 2-drop that comes out onto the board as a 3 Strength and 3 Willpower character. In that respect, he's almost a better Madam Mim - Snake. But he loses his Strength whenever he takes some damage, which then allows him to be traded into more effectively. I think as a 2-drop though, it's unlikely he would take chip damage. He's probably either taking 3 damage or none at all.

So he seems pretty good and if the color didn't already have access to 003-184, he probably would see a good amount of play. But I feel Mr. Smee is just better, as he has a similar stat line when he comes out but quests for 2 lore. A good card, just unfortunately outclassed by another card in the same ink in the same set.

Rating: 3/5

Robin Hood - Beloved Outlaw

This Robin Hood is just the standard 2/2 for 1 cost, which is one of the most common stat lines we've seen in the game to date. But he has a Shift target that is very good, which means he is probably going to see a lot of play. But on his own, he's just a plain old vanilla.

Rating: 3/5

Robin Hood - Champion of Sherwood

Robin Hood gets a very spicy Floodborn character in this Steel Legendary card from Into the Inklands. At a base, he's a 5-cost 3/6 that quests for 2. His Shift cost of 3 means he can come down as early as turn 3. His stat line is very strong, 6 Willpower is a lot on something that can come out on turn 3. And then he has two abilities: Skilled Combatant allows you to gain 2 lore every time you banish something in a challenge on your turn and then The Good Of Others lets you draw a card when Robin Hood is banished in a challenge.

We have seen these abilities on characters before, namely Te Ka - Heartless and Kuzco - Wanted Llama. But having them both on this strong of a body that can come out so early is a deadly combination. You will usually get to banish a couple characters with Robin Hood before he is banished himself, giving you a bit of lore while controlling the board. And if you can't challenge anything you can always quest for 2 with him, so he's nearly always gaining you 2 lore a turn. And then, on top of all that, he replaces himself if/when he dies in a challenge. He is just a very good tool for board control that doesn't cost you much card advantage.

He also costs 5 as a base line, which means he can sing you all the best songs in Steel, including Grab Your Sword, And Then Along Came Zeus and A Whole New World. Any Floodborn character that costs 5 but can come out earlier and sing your powerful songs is worth considering in your Steel decks.

Robin Hood is just a card with no real weaknesses. He may not be splashy or a card that you want to build a deck around, but his combination of great stats with two relevant abilities make him a near auto-include in any Steel deck moving forward. Fantastic card.

Rating: 5/5

Sheriff of Nottingham - Corrupt Official

Next up we have Robin Hood's nemesis, the Sheriff of Nottingham. This Super Rare card is a 2/4/1 that costs 4 and is uninkable, so clearly you aren't playing him for his stats. No, you are playing him for his ability, which gives Steel yet another ping card. This one synergizes with Steel's card filtering effects found on cards like Simba - Future King and Cinderella - Knight in Training. These cards have seen some play already, so adding Sheriff into the mix, allowing you to ping things on your opponent's board while filtering your hand can be quite good.

The Sheriff is also a key piece of a potential one-turn-kill combo, which is what may end up being his true role in the meta. The combo consists of Beast - Relentless, The Bayou - Mysterious Swamp and the Sheriff. The way it works is you get a Beast down on board, move him into The Bayou, and then play Sheriff and start questing with Beast. Every time Beast quests, you draw a card and then discard a card. This allows Sheriff to do his thing, which allows the Beast to ready himself and quest again to do it all over again. You can do this for as long as your opponent still has characters on board to ping. And it results in double the amount of lore as there is Willpower on your opponent's stuff. So if they have a total of 10 Willpower on board, that is 20 lore in one turn!

As a standalone card outside the OTK combo, I think Sheriff is good but not great. However, this combo has already proven to be quite effective in early play testing. It can be surprisingly consistent and hard to stop. As long as you can stick a Beast to the board for a turn, you can combo out the following turn, with no other additional setup. Ultimately, this probably makes Sheriff a meta-staple.

Rating: 4/5

Simba - Fighting Prince

Steel gets another Simba card, this one a 7-drop Super Rare, that quests for 2 with a 5/7 body. He also comes with the Step Down or Fight ability, which triggers both on play and whenever he banishes a character in a challenge on your turn. It lets you do one of two things, draw 2 cards and discard 2 cards or deal 2 damage to chosen character. You are probably mostly choosing to deal 2 damage, but being able to cycle through a couple of cards can also be good in the right moments.

Ultimately, this card will likely be held back by its 7 ink cost. It is a lot and even though this Simba does do something the turn he is played, dealing 2 damage at that stage of the game is not as impactful as it is in the early to mid game. If this card were a Floodborn (when are we getting a Floodborn Simba, any way?), and had a Shift cost of 5, maybe he makes some lists. I mean, he is a good card, with good stats and good ability. But I think he's just a bit too expensive for what he does.

Rating: 3/5

Simba - Rightful King

Steel's other Simba card this set is this 5-drop, Simba - Rightful King. While 4/6 is a decent body for 5-cost, him only questing for 1 is a bit of a bummer. But mostly he's meant to be challenging stuff, as his Triumphant Stance ability lets you block an opposing character from challenging on their turn, whenever you banish something. This ability is not really that helpful though. You want to block opposing characters from questing and advancing your opponent's win condition, you usually are fine with them spending a turn challenging instead. So he's an okay body with a mostly irrelevant ability. In constructed, that's just not good enough.

Rating: 2/5

Thaddeus E Klang - Metal Head

Thaddeus E. Klang, a villain from the old TaleSpin cartoon, makes an appearance in Disney Lorcana. He's a 5-cost 3/5 that quests for 2 and has the ability My Teeth Are Sharper, allowing him to ping a character for 1 damage whenever he quests while at a location. This ability is reminiscent of Hans - Thirteenth in Line's ability, except Thaddeus needs to be at a location for it to trigger. This already makes him worse than Hans, in my book. He also costs 1 additional ink and only has +2 Willpower for that cost. I don't think you ever play him over Hans, even in a location deck.

Rating: 2/5

And Then Along Came Zeus

Steel is known for their damage-based actions. But one thing Steel always struggled with was dealing with characters over 3 Willpower. To banish them, you would usually have to chain a Smash into a Let the Storm Rage On or hope you had a board big enough to effectively use Strength of a Raging Fire.

But now Steel gets a card that can efficiently deal with characters (and locations!) of up to 5 Willpower. And there are a lot of important threats in the meta that have 5 Willpower. Cards like Beast - Tragic Hero, Stitch - Rock Star, Beast - Relentless, and even Maleficent - Monstrous Dragon all die to Zeus's thunderbolt.

It's a hugely impactful action and I think you would play it even if you had to spend 4 ink on it every time. But, it's a song, so you can cast it for free a lot of the times! The only drawback to this card is that it is uninkable and Steel is already stuffed with uninkable actions that they want to run. But I think you have to make room for this card in your decks, it is just that good.

Rating: 5/5

Ba-Boom!

More damage-based removal for Steel. Ba-Boom! is Fire the Cannons! that costs 1 more ink but can target locations and is inkable. That's probably a deal most players are happy to make. I don't know if this will see much play, simply because it's an embarrassment of riches for Steel when it comes to playable actions, but it is a good card. And if locations are proving particularly troublesome, Ba-Boom will get teched into decks as a solution.

Rating: 3/5

Olympus Would Be That Way

This card is another way for Steel to deal with the high Willpower found on many locations. But the card is very situational, as it requires you to have a character or characters already on board and a location that you want to banish, but are just a few damage short of doing it. When it comes to dealing with locations, I don't think you want to run this over Ba-Boom! or Rise of the Titans ,and certainly not over And Then Along Came Zeus, so it's probably not going to see any play.

Rating: 2/5

Rise of the Titans

If you are really struggling to deal with locations, then this card is for you. You don't need to worry about having characters on board or whether you can deal enough damage, you just straight up banish the location. While 3 ink is pretty pricy, this will always get the job done. And it can also deal with items as well, if you are up against an item deck. A solid tech card that will see play if the meta calls for it.

Rating: 3/5

Captain Hook's Rapier

Captain Hook's Rapier is a card draw item for Steel. We've seen these types of dram items before, in cards like Weight Set or Musketeer Tabard. This one fills a similar role for decks that wish to challenge often. It also comes with a slight benefit if you are playing Captain Hook cards. But paying to play the item and then paying to draw each time is pretty slow and expensive. These types of draw items have not typically been very good and I think this one will continue that trend. You can find better draw options in Steel.

Rating: 2/5

Gizmosuit

Gizmosuit is probably best compared to Mouse Armor. It performs a similar function, protecting your characters by giving them Resist, except it is a one-time use item. It also gives Resist +2, which is quite a bit stronger than Resist +1, due to how well Resist scales. It is a bit pricy at 3 ink but it is inkable, giving it some flexibility.

Ultimately though, it's just not going to do enough to really warrant inclusion into decks. If this were some type of permanent effect you could add to a character, like you are equipping the Gizmosuit on a character permanently, it might be good enough. But as just a one-time buff, it's not worth running.

Rating: 2/5

Map of Treasure Planet

Map of Treasure Planet is the location enabler for Steel decks. And boy does it fill that role quite well. Not only can you exert it and pay 1 less for the next location you play, it also has a passive effect of reducing movement cost for all locations by 1 ink. It's like a Lantern for locations that comes with a bonus ability!

The crazy thing is this effect is stackable, so you can get two of these Maps out and all of a sudden your characters can move to all locations of move cost 2 or less for free. Plus you can be playing a location for 2 ink cheaper each turn. Playing out a lot of locations cheaply can quickly become overwhelming for your opponent as there is no Be Prepared for locations. They have to deal with them individually and they all have much higher Willpower than a character of a similar cost.

I can see a deck full of locations, the Map and some card draw actually becoming a thing. Playing a lot of locations is going to rack up lore quickly and your opponent will be hard pressed to stop you. If you can add a few characters into the mix that benefit from locations, especially ones that benefit when moving to locations, then the deck could really take off. I think right now, there probably aren't enough good locations or characters that want to move there, to really support this deck archetype. But in the future, that deck could be possible and this card will be the reason why.

Cost reduction effects are very powerful and can be hard to balance in the long-term. At this moment, Map of Treasure Planet is merely a "good card" but it has the potential to truly be game-breaking in the future.

Rating: 4/5

Maui's Place of Exile - Hidden Island

Maui's Place of Exile is the Cogsworth - Grandfather Clock of locations. We have seen how powerful giving your characters Resist can be with Cogsworth. The problem I see is that this location is easier to remove than Cogsworth; it is always exerted and doesn't have Ward, so can be targeted with stuff like And Then Along Came Zeus. It also only effects characters at the location and so you are going to have to pay to move them there. Yes, you can use Map of Treasure Planet to make the move cost free, but that requires even more setup before the payoff takes effect. And, lastly and perhaps most importantly, it doesn't give you any passive lore gain. I think for all those reasons, this card is too clunky to see real competitive play.

Rating: 2/5

Nottingham - Prince John's Castle

Nottingham - Prince John's Castle is Steel's vanilla location. And it's probably one of the worst vanillas too. It costs 2 but still only has the 1 lore on it. Yes, 6 Willpower is a lot but I think I'd rather pay 1 for vanillas like Never Land - Mermaid Lagoon and be getting the same amount of lore while not losing that much Willpower. Probably not seeing any play outside of maybe decks that just want all the locations available to them.

Rating: 2/5

The Bayou - Mysterious Swamp

The Bayou is the final location for Steel this set, and the final card of our set review. As a 1-cost with 1 lore, I'm already intrigued. It does however have only 3 Willpower, making it the weakest location in the game right now. But it comes with the Show Me The Way ability, letting you draw a card and then discard a card every time a character at the location quests. These card filtering abilities have just been okay so far in Lorcana. In theory, they are a way to get around the punishing draws that come from running too many uninkables in your deck. And Steel has a lot of uninkables that you want to run. But in practice, most players have been getting around that by just playing even more card draw like A Whole New World and Beast - Tragic Hero. So having this filtering effect on the location is not that exciting, especially because you also need to have a character ready to quest and pay to move them there. On its own, I don't think this card would be good enough to see play.

But, since this card is a key component of the Beast/Sheriff OTK combo, it may end up not just being playable, it could end up the most played location in the game. Time will tell if that combo is good enough for competitive play, but early indications are promising, so we may just be seeing a lot of the Bayou in the coming months.

Rating: 3/5

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And that closes the book on Steel this set! I think Steel has just gone from strength to strength in Into the Inklands. It already had many of the best songs and actions in the game and now gets even more of them with And Then Along Came Zeus and Ba-Boom!. It also seems to be the color of choice if you want a location-heavy deck, thanks to cards like Map of Treasure Planet and John Silver - Greedy Treasure Seeker.

And I haven't even mentioned the Sheriff OTK combo or just the solid all-around cards they got like Robin Hood - Champion of Nottingham. Steel is now, in my mind, the best ink color in Lorcana.

Anyway, that wraps it up for our full Into the Inklands set review! Be sure to check out the other ink colors if you haven't already. And stay tuned for further coverage of the meta as it evolves and changes with all these new cards. Until then, good luck and have fun!