Lorcana: Deck Guide - Amber Steel Circle of Life

The 1994 film The Lion King needs no introduction. It was a landmark in animation, and one of Disney's biggest hits, both commercially and critically, winning two Academy Awards and a Golden Globe.

In fact, and unsurprisingly, both Academy Awards were related to the film's music: Best Original Score and Best Original Song. The film's setting, voices, and lyrics, all fit perfectly with the story, and make the whole experience even more memorable.

In Lorcana, we finally have the Circle of Life card released in Fabled, the game's 9th Set! And, of course, we couldn't miss out on highlighting a deck focused on this powerful song, as well as our first post-rotation guide! Let's get to it!

First things first: let's see the new card in all its glory, as we'll hopefully see when cracking our Fabled booster packs.

As you can see, it's an Amber card, a song, and the effect is extremely powerful: play a character from your discard for free.

The effect is, in theory, balanced by the card's whopping eight ink cost, but there's a catch: it's a song, and it also has the Sing Together ability. This means you can combine several characters on your board, adding their ink costs, and reach the required eight to sing Circle of Life without spending any ink!

Our deck today aims exactly to exploit this synergy, combining cards with Singer, and discards, to play powerful characters ahead of time! Let's check out the list:

It's also worth remembering that the deck is already adapted to the game's rotation, which begins with the release of Fabled. All the cards on the list are from sets 5-8, or were (re)printed in Fabled. If you'd like to read more about reprints, check out our article from last week by clicking here!

Let's take a closer look at the list and detail each card's role!

The Main Plan - Circle of Life + Big Characters!

As explained, Circle of Life allows you to play any character from the discard pile for free, so the idea is to take advantage of this to play big and impactful characters!

Mickey Mouse - Giant Mouse is our priority target for this. The gigantic version of Mickey has absurd stats, generates five Lore through his Quest, is a Bodyguard, and on top of that deals 5 damage to opponents' characters when banished!

Stitch - Carefree Surfer is one of Fabled's reprints, and while it doesn't have Mickey's strong stats, Stitch helps on another area – card draw. As we'll see later, the deck plays several small characters that greatly synergyze, so you'll usually meet the requirement to draw two cards with Stitch.

Finally, Atitaya - Fang General rounds out our big characters, albeit with only 2 copies. Although it doesn't have the same stats as Mickey, it's still quite resilient with 7 strength and willpower, in addition to questing for 3 Lore. It's also relevant that it's inkable, so if you already have a Mickey or Stitch in the discard, you can just use Atitaya as an ink.

Feeding the Discard

For our plan to work, we need the big characters in the discard pile. To do this, we'll use several cards that discard directly from our hand, thus jumpstarting the deck's strategy.

Mulan - Disguised Soldier is easily the best cost-benefit. For just 1 ink, it draws one and discards one - so, as early as turn one, Mulan can discard the character that will be played in the future with Circle of Life.

Similarly, Bolt and Ariel help cycle the deck and put the right cards in your discard pile.

For the Actions, Twin Fire helps maintain board control in the early turns, especially against opponents with fast decks. By discarding a card, it can hit two of the opponent's characters and set up something to return in the future. Desperate Plan serves both to cycle your hand and, in a longer game, to refill your hand by drawing 3 cards.

Ideally, you'll build your starting hand to have 1 of the big characters along with 1 of the cards that allow you to discard it, and thus make the Circle of Life plan viable. Let's see now how we can speed up to play this song!

Speeding up the Circle of Life!

The interaction between Sing Together and Singer is very important, as cards with Singer contribute to the value of Sing Together according to their singing stats!

In other words, since Circle of Life has a cost of 8, if you have two of the Singer 4 cards in play, you can sing it and won't need to spend any ink!

Thanks to the singing characters, Troubadour and Ursula, the deck's plan is possible as early as turn 4! By playing one of them on turn 2 and another on turn 3, and having discarded your big character between turns 1 and 4, you can then sing Circle of Life and bring out your powerful Mickey Mouse - Giant Mouse as Bodyguard, protecting all your characters!

Synergies and Consistency

In addition to the 10 big characters, which are thought as discard-fodder, the deck also uses four Lilo - Escape Artist, which is a nice synergy since they can also be played from the discard. In a longer game, it's another way to get characters onto the board without spending your resources in hand.

Be Our Guest is a consistency tool, helping us find a character we need—whether one of the big characters to discard, or even one that has a discard ability. Furthermore, because it's a song, it also has synergy with Ariel - Determined Mermaid.

Controlling the Board

Last but not least, we round out our deck with cards that allow some control over our opponent's board, giving us time for our big characters to come into play.

Captain Hook and Lawrence are great early-game challengers, able to remove more than one threat, or trade up. Lawrence can even generate 2 Lore in subsequent turns after surviving the first challenge!

Strength of a Raging Fire is another great reprint of Fabled, and it gives more value to our Singers, allowing us to remove characters without spending ink. This allows us to continue developing our board while keeping our opponent's under control!

Remember, the metagame will be in a very fluid moment, as many strategies will lose core cards, opening up space for many new strategies to take hold.

This was our first deck guide post-Core Constructed Rotation, considering both the announced reprints and the remaining legal cards from sets 5-8.

Furthermore, our deck was also designed with one of the most powerful cards in the new set, and also somewhat of a symbol of the Lion King franchise!

I hope you enjoyed it! Leave your feedback in the comments, and let us know what other ideas and lists you're considering with Fabled!

Cheers, and see you next time!