Building a Deck of Villainous Whispers

MWUHAHAHAHAHAHAR...

Forgive me, small frog in my throat...

What I meant to say is… Hello, Illumineers! My name is Baker, and I am your resident villain fanatic! My hobbies include drawing cards, banishing glimmers, and plotting the complete takeover of the realm. You may also recognize me as a broadcaster during Disney Lorcana Challenge season one, or as co-host of season two alongside Rebekah Quests!

Quick note: I know many of my loyal henchman have reached out with advice and well wishes concerning my recent endeavours, but I regret to inform you at this time I have not been successful at steal… I mean acquiring such prizes as an uncut foil sheet or playmat. Please rest assured that the quest continues, but that’s not what I'm here to talk about today!

Now, concerning previous articles, you’ve been in good hands, and frankly, that sickens me.

When it comes to deckbuilding you can’t go wrong with two-time DLC Champion Frank Karsten. He really is a genius—it’s easy to understand why his favorite glimmer is Gyro Gearloose – Gadget Whiz, because my gears feel loose by the time Frank’s finished explaining his high-level equations.

Rebekah is a wonderful Illumineer and it’s a pleasure to co-host DLC events with her. She provides a touch of pixie dust to everything she does—with wonderful event coverage and even a fun heroic deck for players to try out.

But, it’s all a bit “good,” isn’t it? Where’s the villainy? Where’s the malicious, mean, and scary? If you’re anything like me, you might be much fonder of the more sinister side of Lorcana, where monstrous dragons and vicious cheaters dwell. So here I am to crash the party and show you how you can express your inner treachery while playing the Disney Lorcana Trading Card Game!

Whispers in the Well has been an absolute blast! Delving into the Inkwell Caverns has revealed a plethora of mischievous and powerful glimmers to shake up the competitive scene, along with a lot of cool archetypes for Illumineers to enjoy in more casual play! The best part is that a lot of the most powerful new cards are Villains, so diabolical folk like you and me get to evil laugh throughout the entire match. (Don’t do that. It’s unsporting. But inside, we are cackling.)

Today, I am presenting three decks utilizing all six magical inks and focused on new Villain glimmers from Whispers in the Well.

Be prepared for some of our card choices to include some Heroes, Allies, and less nefarious glimmers. But Villains like Jafar, Hades, and Ursula have taught me that it’s okay to utilize the talents of the good guys for our own means when it suits our schemes.

Starting us off, we’ll be utilizing Amber and Amethyst ink for our first deck which will focus on menacing cards from Disney’s The Black Cauldron—one of the newest classic Disney stories introduced to the game in Whispers in the Well.

The Black Cauldron is a unique Amber item card that allows us to put character cards from our discard underneath it and then play them to the board. 10/10 theming, no notes. Our hand is the only place we can usually play cards from, so having The Black Cauldron act as an additional pool of resources is very interesting. We still have to pay the ink cost for those characters, so to complement this strategy, I've opted for a high count of low-cost glimmers that can quest high, or have useful on-play abilities, such as the new Mowgli – Man Cub.

The Black Cauldron will not be a fast game plan. This is more of a long-term scheme. The ink investment for the item will be considerable, and you need characters to make their way into the discard pile before you can recycle them. Other strategies that pair Amber with inks such as Steel or Emerald may find synergy in cards such as Mulan – Disguised Soldier or Scrooge – S.H.U.S.H. Agent. Feel free to brew your own dastardly strategies to unlock the power of this talisman.
 

Of course, it would be a disservice not to feature a glimmer of The Horned King. His goal is to use The Black Cauldron to raise a Cauldron Born army to take over the realm, so I think we should help him out, right?

Our 1-drop Heartless Devil is a simple 2 Strength, 2 Willpower character. But The Wicked Ruler is simply waiting to use his Shift ability for a very reasonable cost of 2 ink! When one of our other characters is banished in a challenge, our Wicked Ruler will let us return that character to our hand and then discard a card. This will allow us to recycle our most significant characters, such as those that have strong on-play effects like The White Rose – Jewel of the Garden or Genie – Wish Fulfilled.

You might even be able to use his Shift ability on your second turn for a head start in questing. But be careful that your Wicked Ruler glimmer isn’t then immediately banished in a challenge by your opponent, as his stat line is a little underwhelming, while his Arise! ability is great for our strategy. I would nearly always prefer to play multiple characters across your first four turns at least.

Our final version is The Horned King – Triumphant Ghoul who can quest for 2 lore if a card is left in your discard this turn. This synergizes well with The Black Cauldron.  At the core, we are an aggro deck. The emphasis is on questing high, protecting and redeveloping those questers. However, you may not always start questing early. It will often be preferable to set up your board and start to quest on a turn where you can first cause disruption to your opponent. In this case, use such cards as World’s Greatest Criminal Mind or The Horseman Strikes!
 

For card draw, we are putting our faith in Yzma – Conniving Chemist, who can refill our hand on turn five when we will be running out of resources. Hades – Looking for a Deal can also give us an extra two cards or let us remove a character from the opponent's board. A pretty good deal either way. Finally, Demona – Scourge of the Wyvern Clan is one of the most powerful new cards from Whispers in the Well. She forces all opposing characters to exert, and then both players draw until they’re holding three cards.
 

We aren’t a deck that does a lot of challenging, with some exceptions like Rafiki – Mystical Fighter. So we are mostly looking to benefit from the draw effect here, along with establishing a glimmer with good stats!
 

This strategy will not often be easy to pull off, but having a deck inspired by The Black Cauldron, full of souls and the mighty Horned King standing before your army of Cauldron Born, will make it all worth it as you achieve realm domination. Well, at least a win at your local game store.

Amber/Amethyst – The Cauldron Calls!

3 Daisy Duck – Donald's Date

4 Yzma – Conniving Chemist

2 The White Rose – Jewel of the Garden

3 Magic Carpet – Amazing Flier

4 Genie – Wish Fulfilled

2 Honeymaren – Northuldra Guide

4 Lady – Family Dog

4 Rafiki – Mystical Fighter

2 World's Greatest Criminal Mind

3 The Black Cauldron

4 The Horned King – Wicked Ruler

3 The Horned King – Heartless Devil

4 Demona – Scourge of the Wyvern Clan

3 Hades – Looking for a Deal

4 The Horned King – Triumphant Ghoul

2 Cauldron Born – Mindless Horde

4 Mowgli – Man Cub

3 The Horseman Strikes!

2 Sebastian – Loyal Crab

Next up, a deck with a lot of fierce and fearsome tactics!

Sticking with our theme of spotlighting our newest villains, we have three new glimmers of Shere Khan. The Emerald Fearsome Tiger can banish a damaged character when he quests, along with placing a damage counter on another character. This will require some setup, but the payoff will be delicious.

Our Ruby Fierce and Furious tiger is an 8-cost Floodborn glimmer who can Shift for 5 ink. He also has a huge stat line of 8 Strength and 8 Willpower. Additionally, you can pay 1 ink, and deal 1 damage to him to ready him, allowing Shere Khan to make multiple challenges in a single turn! Shere Khan – Keen-Eyed Hunter rounds out our package as a cheap and inkable glimmer with Shift ability!

Get ready for this next card! Scar – Vengeful Lion has Ward, keeping him protected from effects that need to choose a character. His ability lets us draw a card whenever we challenge an already damaged character. Ruby and Emerald can really struggle when it comes to card draw, so Scar will help, but we are also playing some Clarabelle Cow glimmers, which will likely be our primary draw.

So, we have some brute force strength and some card draw. Great! But how are we getting that damage on opposing glimmers to work with Scar and Shere Khan?
There is likely to be some damage on our opponents’ characters as they challenge into our glimmers like Captain Hook – Underhanded. However, we are also going to leverage one of the new strongest new song cards called Malicious, Mean, and Scary. This places 1 damage counter on each opposing character (getting around abilities like Resist and Ward). We are also going to include a princely package, with the Prince Phillip – Vanquisher of Foes allowing you to banish all opposing characters with a damage counter on them when you play him. Prince Phillip may be a Hero, but we are more than happy to put his power to use for our own villainy!
 

The last Villain glimmer I want to highlight in this deck is The Headless Horseman – Terror of Sleep Hollow, who has been one of my favorite cards of the new set. When you play him, the Leaves No Trace ability lets you banish a character with 2 Strength or less. Elsa – The Fifth Spirit, Donald Duck – Perfect Gentleman, and more commonly seen glimmers are excellent targets for this. The Gathering Strength ability will raise the Strength of all your characters by one for the rest of the turn every time you banish an opposing character. This allows for Villains with less Strength, like Ursula – Deceiver, to make more effective challenges!

There are many pieces to this puzzle, but if you can pull off the combos, you’ll be handsomely rewarded!

Ruby/Emerald – Wild Rage!
3 Ursula – Deceiver
4 Clarabelle – Light on Her Hooves
1 Anna – Diplomatic Queen
4 Clarabelle – Clumsy Guest
4 Scar – Vengeful Lion
3 You're Welcome
4 Captain Hook – Underhanded
4 Prince Phillip – Royal Explorer
4 Prince Phillip – Vanquisher of Foes
4 Webby Vanderquack – Mystery Enthusiast
4 Diablo - Watchful Raven
4 Malicious, Mean, and Scary
4 Shere Khan – Keen-Eyed Hunter
3 The Headless Horseman – Terror of Sleepy Hollow
4 Webby Vanderquack – Junior Prospector
4 Shere Khan – Fierce and Furious
2 Shere Khan – Fearsome Tiger

Our final deck features many powerful Villains, but The Headless Horseman – Cursed Rider is leading the charge. As a Sapphire deck, we’ll take advantage of cards like Tipo – Growing Son and Kida – Creative Thinker. These lets us put extra ink into our inkwell during our turn, helping us unlock the terrifying high-cost characters this deck contains.

Captain Hook – Forceful Duellist will do a great job of fencing off those early-game glimmers our opponents play while we set up. But we are also playing three copies of the new Spooky Sight, which is very on theme for our deck. This will help tremendously against those super aggressive decks that want to flood the board with low-cost characters, by sending them straight into the inkwell!

Unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of ways to draw cards after all this inking, so we are going to recruit the new Goliath – Clan Leader card. He allows both players to draw up to two cards at the end of their turn. The gameplan is to spend the first few turns of the game inking as high as possible, then use this card to keep drawing more so that we can play a high-cost, high-impact characters every turn. Goliath – Clan Leader also forces players to discard only two cards at the end of the turn—acting as disruption for opposing decks that want to build up their hand size!

Hades – Infernal Schemer provides excellent removal, while Steel characters such as Tinker Bell – Giant Fairy threaten a great deal of direct damage. Another new Villain glimmer we’ll try out is the new Whisper, Scar – Eerily Prepared, who can use the Boost mechanic to lower the Strength of an opposing character by 5 until the end of the turn! Finally, The Headless Horseman – Cursed Rider forces both players to draw and then randomly discard three cards each from their hand.

Witching Hour will then deal 2 damage to a character of your choice for each action card discarded this way. We run a high-action package ourselves, so you should expect to discard one or two actions from this effect consistently. If our opponent is also packing actions, you could see a total of three or four actions discarded for mighty damage!

We are also using Shift for our Horseman, with The Relentless Spirit, who is a 4-cost Bodyguard. I know what you’re thinking: “Why isn’t this just Cinderella – Dream Come True?” Sure, if you want to be meta, that’s a worthy card. Here we’re sticking with villainy, so we’ll employ the Shift ability on The Headless Horseman.

This deck is likely to be the most powerful of the three, and in all honesty, is about sick card changes from being a standard competitive Sapphire and Steel deck list.

Sapphire/Steel – The Cursed Rider
3 Tinker Bell – Giant Fairy
4 Tipo – Growing Son
4 Vision of the Future
4 Sail The Azurite Sea
3 Mulan – Disguised Soldier
4 Kida – Creative Thinker
3 Captain Hook – Forceful Duelist
3 Vincenzo Santorini – The Explosives Expert
2 Beyond the Horizon
4 Namaari – Single-Minded Rival
4 Hades – Infernal Schemer
4 Develop Your Brain
1 One Jump Ahead
2 Scar – Eerily Prepared
4 The Headless Horseman – Cursed Rider
4 The Headless Horseman – Relentless Spirit
3 Spooky Sight
4 Goliath – Clan Leader

And there we have it, three villainous decks to try out featuring new cards from Whispers in the Well! Are they all the most powerful versions of decks you could build in those ink combinations? Probably not, but I love leaning into themes and archetypes that speak to me, so if you just want to have some fun with some sinister strategies, go ahead and give these a try. Or better yet, come up with some of your own!

I wish you well, fellow villains!