Explore Disney Lorcana: Shimmering Skies Set Overview

It seems impossible but it has been already 2 months from the release of the fifth set of Disney Lorcana, “Shimmering Skies”. There were a lot of reasons to be excited for this new set starting from the fact that Shimmering Skies marked the first anniversary of the Trading Card Game released in August 2023. It was quite expected Ravensburger would make this set “special” in many different ways. For example, we saw the release an amazing limited edition “D23 Collection Box” and a “1st Year Anniversary pin” to celebrate the set launch event in August.  

In addition, the first part of Disney Lorcana storyline finally came to an end with the defeat of Ursula and her evil plot. In the aftermath of the epic battle, the Illumineers had time to relax and celebrate their victory although a new chapter of the story is already unfolding with our heroes setting to sail to explore the “Azurite Sea” in the newer set planned to be released in November. Together with its collection value, Disney Lorcana Shimmering Skies was also expected to shift the balances of the Meta game with new mechanics and new interesting card interactions. After being playing the set for two months and after 2 Regional Challenges, we can safely say that this expectation was met in full but let's see together why.

Shimmering Skies: Thematic and Artistic Highlights

As usual, Shimmering Skies includes 204 cards equally divided in the usual six Ink colours. Each Booster Pack features 12 cards (6 Common, 3 Uncommon, 2 Rare or Super Rare or Legendary and 1 foil card of a random rarity). In addition, each pack will also include an Art card featuring the new introductory product “Disney Gateway” and its four main Characters.

The stars of the new set are the Characters from the Disney movies “Wreck-it Ralph” and “Koda, Brother Bear” which made their first appearance in this set. Wreck-it Ralph is definitely the more represented movie with a lot of cards featuring not only the beloved Vanellope and Ralph but also King Candy/ Turbo and most of the Sugar Rush racers. There is even a location based on the movie but unfortunately there is no Sour Bill or the Oreo Guards. Perhaps they will appear in the next sets. As previously seen, all these thematic cards work quite well together and they can be used to make a fun (and fast) location-based deck. A new Snow White and the 7 Dwarves thematic set also released in Shimmering Skies. This time all the Characters are depicted as Knights and they are definitely more aggressive than the Amber versions we saw previously. If you are wondering, yes, also in this case all the cards can form a nice extended artwork when placed side by side.

Together with the mentioned new themes, there are a lot of cards from previously featured movies including new Characters from Frozen II, Zootropia, Aladdin, Robin Hood and The Lion King to mention just a few. The Illustrators have done an incredible job in creating a lot of extended artwork in this set including a nice display of Villains queuing to enter to a gala. I personally found this alternative take on these characters to be both very fun and imaginative as it departs from the movies to show a sort of slice of the life of these characters.  

In addition to the above, Ravensburger has also changed the design of the Legendary cards so that the main character in each of them is now embossed with a glossy finish. This change also applies to the foil version of each of these cards and the final result is really impressive. The Enchanted cards of Shimmering Skies have also been modified and they now have an full-card extended artwork. In terms or artwork, Shimmering Skies is therefore an amazing set to collect with a lot of small and large gems to discovers and love.

Chase cards and Set competitive value

In terms of gameplay, Shimmering Skies added a lot of very interesting cards including some extremely useful to boost your competitive decks. For example, the set provides more variability to the Sapphire Ink ramp to boost both Sapphire/Ruby and Sapphire/Steel meta decks and offers a few new interesting options for Amber-Steel Song decks as we will discuss soon. In the first case, the new key cards to look for are “Tipo, Growing Son” and “Chicha, Dedicated Mother”. The first one allows the player to Ink a card from their hand on play and therefore it acts as a single use Fishbone Quill for a cost of 2. Being Tipo a Character, he can also sing “One Jump Ahead” the turn after providing a lot of value for the ramp. Chicha, on the other hand, allows the player to draw a card every time a second card in placed in the Inkwell during their turn providing additional card draw to keep your Sapphire ramp going.

Among the new Sapphire cards, the most notable one, however is “Mufasa, Ruler of Pride rock”. Not only this card has an amazing artwork (and the enchanted version is to die for...) but it has the ability to bring back 2 cards at random from the player Inkwell once it comes to the field. In addition, every time Mufasa quests the player can ready all cards in their Inkwell making very easy to take the lead on the match considering also that the Ruler can quest for 4 lore....

The next set of key meta-relevant cards includes the Amber cards “Prince Naveen, Ukulele Player” and “Daisy Duck, Donald's Date”. For a very cheap cost of 4, a player can play Naveen to the field AND immediately sing a song up to a cost of 6 for free. It is quite obvious to see how this ability can provide flexibility to Amber-Steel Song but players also exploited it in Emerald/Amber decks that includes the “The Muses, Proclaimers of Heroes”.

Daisy Duck, on the other hand, does not have a powerful ability but she can be played for just 1 Ink and then she can quest for 2 every turn. At first glance, Daisy may seems very similar to “Lilo, Making a Wish” although she has a Willpower of 4 that makes Daisy a very tough card to remove from play. As such, Daisy can easily fit any Amber-Steel Song deck or Emerald-Amber decks to provide a quick way to make Lore while also forcing the opponent to commit a lot of resources to deal with her. Most important, Daisy is extremely valuable to make Aggro decks even faster disregarding if they are Amber-Amethyst of Amber-Emerald.  

Last but not least, a lot of Steel based decks (including Amber-Steel Song) started to include “Pete, Game Referee” is their lists. Pete is a very interesting card due to its ability that stops all opponents from playing Actions (and Songs) for a turn. Playing Pete at the right time can easily protect a player from the effects of “Be prepared” or “A whole new World”. Even if your opponent does not have these two super-effective cards, stopping them from playing an action can just grant the player one more turn to quest and gain lore and this can make a big difference against any deck.

Last but not least, I wanted to mention “Clarabelle, Light on her Hooves”, an emerald card that allows a player to draw cards at the end of their turn to match the hand size of an opponent. When the set released in August, it took a few weeks for the players to realize that the draw potential of this card also synergizes well with some of the most common Emerald strategies in particular those that force the opponents to take Characters back to their hand. It does not surprise therefore that Clarabelle's addition was able to keep Emerald-Steel in the competitive scene even after the changes made to Bucky in August.

How to best collect Shimmering Skies

As I mentioned a couple of times during the review, Shimmering Skies can easily be considered one of the best set of Disney Lorcana released so far. As a result, some of the most interesting cards of this set can be quite expensive on the secondary market, in particular before the Set Championships are over. In terms of timing, however, prices of single cards have already improved substantially after the Challenge in Birmingham thus now is a good time to buy some cards before the stock is gone. Magic Madhouse offers a very good selection of single cards including all the ones I mentioned above and their price is quite competitive at the time of writing. The added value of buying from Magic Madhouse is obviously the fast and very cheap shipment but it is important to also remind that they are a very trustworthy vendor and as such they always deliver high quality product in perfect conditions.    

On the other hand, if you are looking to collect all the cards from Shimmering Skies, you should consider to take advantage of the discounted price for the booster boxes. The best option in this case would be to invest in buying four boxes at the same time as you should be able to pull at least one Enchanted from every case (4 booster boxes). Together with being very collectible, the Enchanted from this set are different from those from previous sets and will likely have a good value both in the short and long term.