Disney Lorcana finally has a playable infinite combo

No trading card game is safe from the dangers of infinite combos. As more cards are released with every set the developers put out, more straws are added to the back of the metaphorical camel that is the game’s balance. Disney Lorcana is yet to release its third set, Into the Inklands, into local game shops this Friday, and already there seems to be an actually playable, technically infinite combo that could shake up the meta.

This isn’t the first time a combination of Lorcana cards has managed to go technically infinite. I use the word ‘technically’ because both the old combo and the one we’re discussing here require your opponent to have a few pieces out in play for you to use them.

The old combo, which never saw any real competitive play, required a hefty four cards to do anything meaningful, as well as an exerted character on your opponent’s side of the board. To set it up, you needed a Shere Khan, Menacing Predator - which gives you a lore whenever one of your characters challenges - and a Dr. Facilier, Agent Provocateur, which puts characters back into your hand when they’re banished in a challenge. These two already worked well together; if you had a character with Rush you could keep swinging at an opponent’s character to earn lore, then replaying your character when banished before repeating. But that could only last for as long as you had ink to spend on replaying the character with Rush.

In came Madam Mim, Rival of Merlin, who could be exerted to play a character with a cost of four or less for free from your hand. They also gained Rush, meaning they could challenge the same turn, and were banished at the end of your turn. By playing Lefou, Instigator with Madam Mim’s ability, Lefou’s enter play effect could be used to immediately ready her again.

The combo saw you swing your Lefou into an enemy character, gain a lore from Shere Khan, have Lefou banished and returned to your hand with Facilier. Keep going until you win the game. Does that sound complicated? Well it is - so much so that it pretty much didn’t get played by anyone.

Assembling four different game pieces and then hoping that your opponent either had an exerted character with enough willpower that you could keep swinging into them, or enough individual exerted characters, to win the game in one turn was too much to ask. Even hoping that your opponent would bother to exert their characters after seeing you assemble the game pieces on the last turn and wait for the next to play it all out was a big ask.

But with the release of Into The Inklands, a new infinite combo that is far more potent and only requires three cards to pull off is looking much more likely to appear on proper competitive ladders and possibly its upcoming official tournaments.

It’s all built around a card from Rise of the Floodborn that was turning heads due to its sheer power long before this combo was on the cards. Beast, Relentless is a six-cost emerald character with four strength and five willpower who can quest for two lore. More importantly, it has the ability Second Wind, which reads: “Whenever an opposing character is damaged, ready this character.”

Most ready effects in Lorcana specifically state that a character who is readied cannot quest again for the rest of the turn, but a select few powerful characters can ready and quest multiple times in the same turn. Beast, Relentless was just waiting to go infinite; there were already plenty of emerald-steel decks that used small bits of targeted damage to chip away at enemy characters whilst Beast continued to quest over and over again.

That’s become even easier with the release of two specific cards in Into the Inklands. The first is one of the new location cards introduced with this set, The Bayou.

Locations are a fresh new card type that can be played as a permanent game piece on the board like a character or item. They have a new effect that allows your characters to “move” there for a price. A lot of these new locations give special effects to any characters that are present.

The effect that The Bayou gives to our relentless Beast is part of our three card-combo. It reads: “Whenever a character quests while here, you may draw a card, then choose and discard a card.” That means Beast, Relentless can not only quest multiple times per turn if you can dish out the damage, he’ll also be drawing and discarding a card for you each time you do it.

Along comes our final piece. Sheriff of Nottingham, Corrupt Official is a 2/4 super rare that reads: “Whenever you discard a card, you may deal one damage to chosen opposing character.” With our Sheriff on the board, and our Beast hanging out at The Bayou, our technically infinite combo is assembled.

Beast quests for two lore. The Bayou triggers and allows us to draw and then discard a card. Discarding the card triggers Sheriff, who deals damage to an opposing character, which in turn re-readies our Beast. It forms a beautiful machine that can win a game in a single turn if the stars align.

What’s crucial is that you don’t need many stars to line up, either. The lovely thing about this combo is that only one piece of it needs to be on the board the turn before: the Beast himself. He’ll need his ink to dry before he can quest. The other two game pieces you can leave in your hand, waiting to be played on the turn you intend to win the game.

What’s more, the cost to play the Sheriff of Nottingham and The Bayou, then move Beast to The Bayou, amounts to just six ink in total. If you managed to play Beast last turn, you will already have the ink you need to get the other two game pieces into play.

The only other thing you need is largely out of your control - and that’s for your opponent to have enough collective willpower on their characters to withstand the Sheriff’s pinging before being banished and halting your combo. This is a lot easier to hope for than the previous Madam Mim perfect scenario, as most decks need characters in play to win the game.

Your biggest rival will be Cogsworth, Grandfather Clock from Rise of the Floodborn, as his ability to give all other opposing characters +1 Resist will completely turn off your Sheriff as his reduced damage won’t get through the Resist and Cogsworth’s Ward ability means you can’t target him either.

So it’s not a game-breaking combo, and there’ll definitely be answers from those playing against it, but this is by far the most lethal infinite combo we’ve seen from Lorcana so far. Will you be building an emerald-steel combo deck for the launch of Into the Inklands?