Lorcana Deck Guide:Anna Shift Amethyst-Sapphire

Hello everyone!

With the release of Winterspell, Lorcana's 11th set, we're making a grand debut today, with a deck centered on one of the new legendary cards.

As a bonus, it's also an ideal deck for fans of the Frozen franchise!

Let's go!

Our deck today focuses on the new legendary, Anna - Soothing Sister!

Anna possesses a conditional, but extremely powerful Shift, because it can be played for free. In other words, if the condition is met, you'll have a character with 5 Strength and 5 Willpower, who can easily dominate the initial turns of a game.

To do this, you'll need: an Anna character in play in order to Shift into; and cards or effects that remove cards from the discard pile, to fulfill the requirement.

In addition, Anna also has an effect that grants extra lore! When she performs a Quest, you can gain additional Lore equal to the Lore of a character in your discard pile and then place it at the bottom of the deck. Note that Anna even enables other copies of Anna - Soothing Sister!

Considering this new card and the necessary synergies, we have put together today's list: Amethyst-Sapphire Anna Shift!

Now that we have the list, let's talk about the general gameplan, and then analyze each card individually.

Game Plan

The deck isn't designed to be particularly fast, although with the right combination, it can quickly achieve victory, even from behind.

In fact, the idea is more about building a strong starting board and using it in your favor, bringing the powerful Anna - Soothing Sister to play as soon as possible. As a Plan B, if you don't have Anna available, we use The Horned King - Triumphant Ghoul, which has the same requirement of having cards leave the discard pile, but in this case generates extra Lore with its Quest.

We could say, then, that it's a tempo deck, since it seeks small combinations and synergies to make positive ink plays – that is, extracting more value from the plays than the ink used to make them.

Another interesting aspect of the list is its flexibility, or adaptability. Notice that all the cards in the list are inkable, so you'll actually have many possible choices of what to bring to your inkwell each turn. Furthermore, the deck was designed to work with only 4 inks in total, so you can conserve resources.

Now that we understand the deck's general gameplay, let's talk about each card and their roles.

The protagonist - Anna!

Anna is our main character, and the new legendary card has several synergies within our deck. Since it's a card that focuses on Shift, we need other Annas available, so that when necessary, we can transform one of them into Anna - Soothing Sister!

Braving the Storm is the main option for turn 2, since having 4 willpower means it's not easy to deal with. Furthermore, the deck has twenty-eight characters with the hero subtype, so this Anna will frequently generate 2 Lore.

Trusting Sister is another option, and one that accelerates your ink – that is, an indirect way to gain an extra card in hand – while also generating 2 Lore, so once again we can push Lore advantage.

Ice Breaker is essential to the deck's tempo strategy, as you can lock down an opponent's character, breaking many counter-attacks and gaining a valuable advantage, especially in the Lore race.

Finally, Little Sister deserves a highlight, as it alone can fulfill both conditions for shifting Anna - Soothing Sister! That is, if you play it on turn 2 and have a card available in any discard pile – for example, if your opponent played a Develop Your Brain on turn 1 – you can immediately shift Soothing Sister on top of Little Sister!

Of course, we also have Elsa!

It's mandatory to have a few copies of Elsa since, after all, the two sisters always have some synergy between them.

It's no different here, with Trusted Sister being practically another character that generates 2 Lore, considering the number of different Annas we have to fulfill this requirement.

Exploring the Unknown, on the other hand, even without having a specific synergy, is a character that immediately draws you a card, leaving you on resource parity and contributing to consistency in the deck.

Feeding the Discard

Our main star, Anna - Soothing Sister, has enormous lore-generating potential – provided we can discard characters with high lore, such as Creeper and Ratigan.

To support this mission, we'll use two cards that help maintain board control while fueling our discard pile – preferably with 4-lore characters, but occasionally we can use 2-lore characters as well.

Lose the Way is a cheap tool that deals with any opponent's threat. And best of all, the discard is basically a bonus: you'll only use it if you know you can, in the next few turns, leverage the discard with Soothing Sister.

Similarly, Nana is especially helpful in slowing down very fast starts from aggressive decks, giving you some breathing room while developing a 3-power character to the board.

Don't forget, too, that Creeper and Ratigan are inkable, so don't think you necessarily have to wait for a discard spell for them to be useful. You can use them as ink for the first few turns, and that's it!

More Support

These low-cost characters help the deck to not fall behind in the early turns, maintaining some presence on the board to contest the opponent's plays.

Olaf, in both the Amethyst and Sapphire versions, helps precisely by having useful low-cost characters, keeping the board under control.

HeiHei deserves special mention: he is capable of activating Soothing Sister's Shift, provided he challenges an opponent and doesn't survive! HeiHei's effect causes him to be returned from the discard pile, meaning that since he is placed in that zone and then returned to hand by his own effect, he automatically fulfills the condition of Soothing Sister!

Plan B

For games where our Anna - Soothing Sister stubbornly hides at the bottom of the deck, we have The Horned King - Triumphant Ghoul to fill in the role of heavy Lore generator.

In fact, in combination with Soothing Sister itself, you would consistently generate at least 5 Lore - potentially 8, if Anna returns a character that generates 4 Lore.

Of course, Horned King only has 2 willpower, so it's a much weaker win condition. But because it uses the same requirement as Soothing Sister, its synergy with the other tools in the deck makes it worthy of the Plan B spot.

And so we conclude our first Deck Guide with Winterspell!

The idea was to bring a different, fun, and competitively viable deck – especially considering the strength of Anna - Soothing Sister, with its 0-cost Shift.

I hope you enjoyed it! Leave your feedback in the comments below, including suggestions for other decks we can cover in the future.

Cheers, and until next time!