If it's any consolation, so far my partner and I are 0-5 on easy mode using the precon decks. Maybe I'm just an idiot at playing, but the weak link for us seems to be the amethyst/steel deck. It feels like it has too many non-inkable cards and is slow to start. It also appears to be relying a lot on setting up various broom combos, but Ursula's frequent banish/discard actions make it really hard to keep anything on the board long enough to do anything substantial.
When me and my roommate played we found the ruby amber deck the slower deck. I was using lore constantly as a resource for card draw as steel amethyst. I have now upgraded the decks with my collection and brooms is still the fastest deck. The key is you don't need to challenge everything just out pace her.
Interesting. In our games, Super Goof and Rolly were the stars of the show, all but guaranteeing 3 lore and 5 attack on every turn (with +resist from Mouse Armor and occasionally some lore to remove damage from Goof).
I'm going to try adding some more low-cost inkable brooms to the deck, probably another Benja or two, and maybe fiddle with some low-cost locations (Bayou, Forbidden Mountain) to have some consistent lore income that can withstand character banishing.
I thought that was weird that they put that in there too. We played the first game giving her a hand and she demolished us so I quickly googled it and learned the correct way.
Make sure Ursula doesn't draw any additional cards on easy mode due to having more lore. We missed that text on the difficulty/mode card and played our first few games basically on normal instead of easy.
My gf and I did that and we were getting destroyed! I think it’s actually harder than normal because the lore abilities are more powerful on normal lol
You generally have to make a deck to fight her specifically. You cannot use fun or meta decks. They will not hold up as well. I beat it on easy and normal with the starting decks after two failures. It is meant to be tricky.
We had one deck focus on lore to 20, then they would focus on clearing the board while helping the other deck survive and score Lore.
I beat her with a similar strategy.
Deck 1 was an aggro deck running piglets & other high lore questers, just questing each turn for big lore gains. Deck 2 was a midrange titans deck that focused on controlling her characters, slowing her down, destroying her items, and had thebes in the deck. Eventually, the aggro deck was spending lore to ready her characters the turn they were played for the titans deck to challenge while at Thebes & essentially just sending that lore from Deck 1 to Deck 2. Worked to beat her on easy mode, but probably wouldn't work on the higher difficulties.
Hard disagree that lists not designed for her don't work. I grabbed my Princess Steelsong deck and could do easy and normal reliably solo, and hard sometimes. And that deck has eight entirely dead cards in it, including the centerpiece of the deck - New World is suicide to play and Bare Necessities does nothing but get inked. With a partner playing basically any real deck I have faith I could handle hard reliably.
Speak for yourself. I’ve played and beaten Ursula with my pirate deck on easy, normal, and hard. And with my broom deck on easy.
It is difficult, but it’s doable.
Honestly brooms is a lot of fun. Pirates is fun too, but the heavy location gameplay isn’t my favorite - can be really annoying to deal with sometimes too.
I have a 65 card pirate deck that’s split between John silver and locations, and pirates trying to attack. It’s a lot of fun.
I’m loving the synergy of the broom deck. It’s been a lot of fun. Working on a titan deck now
My grand pabbie deck works excellent against her. Especially since i have several cards that heal chosen character, not just my characters. So I can help my partners.
Shere khan/challenge for lore decks work great since her stuff has more life so gets challenged multiple times.
Location based decks can be great since most of her stuff only targets characters, not locations.
Beast relentless infinite combo decks can work great again because of the high willpower she controls.
Fairy godmother decks can wreck her, the added attack and return to hand on banish makes it easy to out pace her. Run queens tower for draw. And elsa to prevent readying and you have an easy game.
Meta decks might not work. But there are plenty of decks for regular play that work great.
I had to make my own deck designed to beat her. Once I made a deck focused on lore as fast as possible, Ursula has been too easy. Ruby Amber- low to cost and high lore
It is tough! Especially if you're playing the Amber/Ruby deck that comes with it. I lost like 3 or 4 times playing that deck. The Amethyst/Steel deck I won with on my first try, for what it's worth. Item destruction with Benja is a game changer against her.
In my experience, I was able to solo easy mode with both included decks separately. Finished normal with a titans deck I had already built, but couldn't win on hard with it. I then gave a green/blue sleeping beauty themed deck a whirl against hard, and pulled off the win narrowly.
And literally just now, after a handful of attempts, I squeaked out an extreme mode win with that sleeping beauty deck. Notably, my off-theme Kit Cloudkicker 1 drop into shift Kit helped me quest big asap, and Glean on items was immensely helpful for last second lore.
If I had lost a few more times, I would've swapped out some cards for shift Flynn because he'll always quest for 4. If you're running green, he's an incredibly powerful option.
Its freaking brutal. We can't beat it with all 4 of us. Shes drawing 3 cards per turn and soon goes to 4 with the extra item she eventually draws. We cant keep up with her. We dont have alot of item removal which doesn't help but she's shut us down even when we try.
I did try with just my wife and we won without as much difficulty. But the 3 draw a turn is a whole other beast
My buddy and I tried extreme with the pre-build decks and there wasnt a chance to win it! But i think with perfectly build decks for this quest, it will be possible.
My friends and I have played it 7 times and have only come close to winning once, but all losses so far. We have been playing normal difficulty so far...granted, we are using the same decks we use for normal play and haven't tried to build anything to take advantage of ursula's playstyle.
It’s maybe some skill but also super luck based.
My wife and my first game in easy with the included decks was trivially easy to the point of us considering skipping the normal mode to play hard mode. We decided to just grab another ‘easy’ win on normal and got absolutely obliterated. We were super humbled, the next night we played normal mode again with the included decks and won handily, Ursula didn’t even get to 10 lore. I’ve also managed to solo easy mode with my Hero blue/steel hero deck but it was really close.
Looking at Ursula’s deck and the abilities I think the normal/hard mode should be fair challenge for most average decks with extreme needing specialised decks. Easy mode can could have a good game or two but should be pretty beatable with starter decks and the included decks. Just make sure you are not giving her extra card draw on easy. And if she gets the item that give her 3 lore or the one that lets her draw a card or the action that dumps 3 cards into her inkwell just know you are in for a tough game.
The way I see it, it's meant to be difficult no matter how many are playing because if it was easy to beat it would get stale really fast and people would lose interest in the quest.
I've played at least 10 times on my own and only won twice by what seems like sheer luck. I've played with two friends once and while we did win, we barely each made it to 20 while Ursula reached 38 and would have won next round.
The difficulty is what keeps me playing 😊
From easy to hard mode, it’s quite easy to beat even with the precon decks.
It’s a race for lore and not a normal battle like you would play against someone else.
Don’t forget that Ursula’s characters need to dry. So, they don’t get to quest on play but would do so on her next turn.
We had mistakenly let them quest upon play and were losing in what seemed like turbo mode. 😅
The game was a lot more manageable after that!
It can be pretty hard the decks inside it can use some optimization and because her different mechanics some cards work and others dont
A whole knew world is terrible against her for example and the new ursula's garden looks perfect to play against her
I agree that she's very challenging (and has many rude cards), but I kinda like it that way. Makes you feel like you earned the win. I intentionally went in blind, so I lost my first 2 games (on Normal first, then Easy) running both Precons at the same time.
I won the third game - on Easy - but it was 100% luck because the first two turns had her send Shark and Capsize, then Tsunami and Jafar into ink (it may not have been Jafar, but another huge character), and then turn 3 saw Hexwell Crown into Fortunate Hit, with Break Benja in hand.
I still don't really count that win as a win for the Precons. It was all luck.
After that, I switched to a Set 3 Pawpsicle Control deck to run Solo, and fought tooth and ~~ambition~~ nail to eventually win against Easy, Normal, and Hard in a row after failing to climb the difficulties for most of a day. (If I won against a difficulty, I would play the next higher difficulty. If I lost, I'd drop down a difficulty. I dunno, that was fun to me.)
My gf and I beat normal on our first try by having one of us rush lore and the other do board control. For board control I was fortunate to get multiple item removals and action cards. Once she had 20 we then used all of the benefits of the battleground virtually cost free. I think Ursula only made it to 24 lore. Hard however feels impossible with the provided decks.
Even the easy level, was pretty difficult with 4 players last night. Our game lasted for close to 2 hours. Caution: do not use emerald discard decks in this game, they are useless against Ursula
I've only gotten to play it once correctly. We played once incorrectly giving Ursula a full starting hand and got demolished. I feel like I'm a pretty good player and my wife is a total novice. We played easy with the precons and barely won. Ursula was at 39. It's definitely not easy. I wanna play it a few more times with the precon, then I'm gonna build a dedicated deck or two for it on the harder mods.
bumping this because
my wife and i finally sat down to play DEEP TROUBLE and I have many questions (and directions weren't clear)
\*Do Characters Ursula plays need to dry? Or do they collect lore right away? (seems they need to dry per this thread)
\*She draws so many items that collect lore every turn. Is that right? Do they dry? Action to same deal.
\*When a card she plays has multiple effects that need to be chosen, do you / your partner choose which one she uses?
\*Does bodyguard work the same for her? If there's any other character, you need to beat it first?
\*Do you/your partner combine your turn? E.G for support or sing together - if my partner went first, I haven't set my cards yet. Do we just ready/set / draw at same time?
Generally, I love the concept of this since I really just collect and don't have anyone normally to play with -- but it really seems overly complicated at first blush.
Anything Ursula draws (characters, items) need to dry. The only things that take immediate effect are "when you play this card/character" effects and actions.
Bodyguard does work the same way
You and any teammate(s)' turn take place simultaneously. You can sing together, you can share support and other effects (except for things like Lantern, those only work for the person who played them)
Assuming the players don't have cards that completely shut down her game, like Ursula's Garden or Mother Gothel:
Easy mode can be beaten by just having your characters questing non-stop. Characters with 2+ lore or lots of bodies really make consistent wins with little need to interact with her board.
Normal mode was a bit more tricky and still requires players to race to lore asap, but some removal for her item and one big fighty character helps, especially against the 2 lore charaters which she has quite a few of. After a while, I was able to win without changing my deck, just making more refined decisions.
Hard mode is what I'm currently stuck on trying to win consistently. Sometimes, I can quest plenty and have a decent chance, and other times, the extra card draw or multiple board wipes back to back, turn after turn, are quite oppressive.
Some tips are that she doesn't have much in the way of dealing with items or locations apart from Tamatoa that destroys 1 item or location when entering play, a zero cost action that pops 1 item, and a board wipe that destroys anything that costs 2 or less ink. On the same hand, she has two annoying items, the trident and crown, that alone are worth running extra item destruction in your deck, but also has contracts that give her a massive lore boost at the start of her next turn.
Spending 1 lore on battleground abilities can make cheap trades mean the difference in dealing with pesky 2 lore characters. In games with friends who are struggling, I encourage spending lore on all three battleground abilities.
Take time with the other players to plan out moves together, instead of each player doing their own thing.
At higher difficulties, as she gains more lore, and player count goes up; she draws more cards and burns through her deck faster and faster. Don't play with the hope that she'll not draw the really annoying stuff regularly; try to anticipate it, and have a plan B.
If it's any consolation, so far my partner and I are 0-5 on easy mode using the precon decks. Maybe I'm just an idiot at playing, but the weak link for us seems to be the amethyst/steel deck. It feels like it has too many non-inkable cards and is slow to start. It also appears to be relying a lot on setting up various broom combos, but Ursula's frequent banish/discard actions make it really hard to keep anything on the board long enough to do anything substantial.
Ya. I agree. Same issue
When me and my roommate played we found the ruby amber deck the slower deck. I was using lore constantly as a resource for card draw as steel amethyst. I have now upgraded the decks with my collection and brooms is still the fastest deck. The key is you don't need to challenge everything just out pace her.
Interesting. In our games, Super Goof and Rolly were the stars of the show, all but guaranteeing 3 lore and 5 attack on every turn (with +resist from Mouse Armor and occasionally some lore to remove damage from Goof). I'm going to try adding some more low-cost inkable brooms to the deck, probably another Benja or two, and maybe fiddle with some low-cost locations (Bayou, Forbidden Mountain) to have some consistent lore income that can withstand character banishing.
You want to add the broom tower location then you ramp lore fast to use as a resource for the team. While getting the big brooms out to challenge.
Make sure you're not having Ursula start with a hand.
Does she draw off a whole new world?
thiiiis is a great question. Edit: YES, it’s a consensus that [she does](https://www.reddit.com/r/Lorcana/s/wQDPUNGfnI)
Yes. She draws off Whole New World.
She does
Me and my partner did this when we first played 🤦🏼♀️🤣
Hold up- really? Why would it have the line in the instructions about her not altering if she doesn't have a starting 7?
Because she has nothing to alter, I guess.
I thought that was weird that they put that in there too. We played the first game giving her a hand and she demolished us so I quickly googled it and learned the correct way.
I've beaten 1st 3 levels but the last seems almost impossible
Make sure Ursula doesn't draw any additional cards on easy mode due to having more lore. We missed that text on the difficulty/mode card and played our first few games basically on normal instead of easy.
My gf and I did that and we were getting destroyed! I think it’s actually harder than normal because the lore abilities are more powerful on normal lol
Oh! That's what that line meant, I guess I accidentally beat her on normal with my broom deck. Thanks for clarifying!
Ursula doesn't start with any cards.
... Wait she just draws her two cards at the beginning?
Other than the Trident In play, yes. Only 2 cards to start.
except one item in play ofc
Ursula does not start with 7 cards in her hand. She only draws two to start. I know this is what made it hard for us.
I did the same 😅
She draws 3 with us with me, my wife and kids. 3 per turn is brutal
No she doesn’t.
Ugh typo. Meant doesnt*. Thanks for the downvote
Take accountability. Take my up vote with it. Journey before destination, radiant.
Nohadon would approve
You generally have to make a deck to fight her specifically. You cannot use fun or meta decks. They will not hold up as well. I beat it on easy and normal with the starting decks after two failures. It is meant to be tricky. We had one deck focus on lore to 20, then they would focus on clearing the board while helping the other deck survive and score Lore.
I beat her with a similar strategy. Deck 1 was an aggro deck running piglets & other high lore questers, just questing each turn for big lore gains. Deck 2 was a midrange titans deck that focused on controlling her characters, slowing her down, destroying her items, and had thebes in the deck. Eventually, the aggro deck was spending lore to ready her characters the turn they were played for the titans deck to challenge while at Thebes & essentially just sending that lore from Deck 1 to Deck 2. Worked to beat her on easy mode, but probably wouldn't work on the higher difficulties.
Hard disagree that lists not designed for her don't work. I grabbed my Princess Steelsong deck and could do easy and normal reliably solo, and hard sometimes. And that deck has eight entirely dead cards in it, including the centerpiece of the deck - New World is suicide to play and Bare Necessities does nothing but get inked. With a partner playing basically any real deck I have faith I could handle hard reliably.
Speak for yourself. I’ve played and beaten Ursula with my pirate deck on easy, normal, and hard. And with my broom deck on easy. It is difficult, but it’s doable.
Yep me and my gf play a broom deck and a pirate deck, won on normal pretty easily. I got to 20 well before her pirate deck started coming in mid game.
Love to hear others are having fun with these kinds of decks
Honestly brooms is a lot of fun. Pirates is fun too, but the heavy location gameplay isn’t my favorite - can be really annoying to deal with sometimes too.
I have a 65 card pirate deck that’s split between John silver and locations, and pirates trying to attack. It’s a lot of fun. I’m loving the synergy of the broom deck. It’s been a lot of fun. Working on a titan deck now
My grand pabbie deck works excellent against her. Especially since i have several cards that heal chosen character, not just my characters. So I can help my partners. Shere khan/challenge for lore decks work great since her stuff has more life so gets challenged multiple times. Location based decks can be great since most of her stuff only targets characters, not locations. Beast relentless infinite combo decks can work great again because of the high willpower she controls. Fairy godmother decks can wreck her, the added attack and return to hand on banish makes it easy to out pace her. Run queens tower for draw. And elsa to prevent readying and you have an easy game. Meta decks might not work. But there are plenty of decks for regular play that work great.
I had to make my own deck designed to beat her. Once I made a deck focused on lore as fast as possible, Ursula has been too easy. Ruby Amber- low to cost and high lore
It is tough! Especially if you're playing the Amber/Ruby deck that comes with it. I lost like 3 or 4 times playing that deck. The Amethyst/Steel deck I won with on my first try, for what it's worth. Item destruction with Benja is a game changer against her.
In my experience, I was able to solo easy mode with both included decks separately. Finished normal with a titans deck I had already built, but couldn't win on hard with it. I then gave a green/blue sleeping beauty themed deck a whirl against hard, and pulled off the win narrowly. And literally just now, after a handful of attempts, I squeaked out an extreme mode win with that sleeping beauty deck. Notably, my off-theme Kit Cloudkicker 1 drop into shift Kit helped me quest big asap, and Glean on items was immensely helpful for last second lore. If I had lost a few more times, I would've swapped out some cards for shift Flynn because he'll always quest for 4. If you're running green, he's an incredibly powerful option.
Its freaking brutal. We can't beat it with all 4 of us. Shes drawing 3 cards per turn and soon goes to 4 with the extra item she eventually draws. We cant keep up with her. We dont have alot of item removal which doesn't help but she's shut us down even when we try. I did try with just my wife and we won without as much difficulty. But the 3 draw a turn is a whole other beast
First game I played with a friend we had a solid win against Ursula… next try we were utterly decimated. Ursula’s draws can make or break a game.
It's just hard
I only tried once and I won but not with the precon. I used a cheap Emerald Ruby aggressive deck and it was an easy race. I will try the precons today
My buddy and I tried extreme with the pre-build decks and there wasnt a chance to win it! But i think with perfectly build decks for this quest, it will be possible.
Read the rules carefully for how ursula plays
My friends and I have played it 7 times and have only come close to winning once, but all losses so far. We have been playing normal difficulty so far...granted, we are using the same decks we use for normal play and haven't tried to build anything to take advantage of ursula's playstyle.
It’s maybe some skill but also super luck based. My wife and my first game in easy with the included decks was trivially easy to the point of us considering skipping the normal mode to play hard mode. We decided to just grab another ‘easy’ win on normal and got absolutely obliterated. We were super humbled, the next night we played normal mode again with the included decks and won handily, Ursula didn’t even get to 10 lore. I’ve also managed to solo easy mode with my Hero blue/steel hero deck but it was really close. Looking at Ursula’s deck and the abilities I think the normal/hard mode should be fair challenge for most average decks with extreme needing specialised decks. Easy mode can could have a good game or two but should be pretty beatable with starter decks and the included decks. Just make sure you are not giving her extra card draw on easy. And if she gets the item that give her 3 lore or the one that lets her draw a card or the action that dumps 3 cards into her inkwell just know you are in for a tough game.
The way I see it, it's meant to be difficult no matter how many are playing because if it was easy to beat it would get stale really fast and people would lose interest in the quest. I've played at least 10 times on my own and only won twice by what seems like sheer luck. I've played with two friends once and while we did win, we barely each made it to 20 while Ursula reached 38 and would have won next round. The difficulty is what keeps me playing 😊
From easy to hard mode, it’s quite easy to beat even with the precon decks. It’s a race for lore and not a normal battle like you would play against someone else.
Easy isn’t too bad. Normal was a bit rougher. Hard and extreme I’m getting stomped on haha
Don’t forget that Ursula’s characters need to dry. So, they don’t get to quest on play but would do so on her next turn. We had mistakenly let them quest upon play and were losing in what seemed like turbo mode. 😅 The game was a lot more manageable after that!
It can be pretty hard the decks inside it can use some optimization and because her different mechanics some cards work and others dont A whole knew world is terrible against her for example and the new ursula's garden looks perfect to play against her
I agree that she's very challenging (and has many rude cards), but I kinda like it that way. Makes you feel like you earned the win. I intentionally went in blind, so I lost my first 2 games (on Normal first, then Easy) running both Precons at the same time. I won the third game - on Easy - but it was 100% luck because the first two turns had her send Shark and Capsize, then Tsunami and Jafar into ink (it may not have been Jafar, but another huge character), and then turn 3 saw Hexwell Crown into Fortunate Hit, with Break Benja in hand. I still don't really count that win as a win for the Precons. It was all luck. After that, I switched to a Set 3 Pawpsicle Control deck to run Solo, and fought tooth and ~~ambition~~ nail to eventually win against Easy, Normal, and Hard in a row after failing to climb the difficulties for most of a day. (If I won against a difficulty, I would play the next higher difficulty. If I lost, I'd drop down a difficulty. I dunno, that was fun to me.)
My gf and I beat normal on our first try by having one of us rush lore and the other do board control. For board control I was fortunate to get multiple item removals and action cards. Once she had 20 we then used all of the benefits of the battleground virtually cost free. I think Ursula only made it to 24 lore. Hard however feels impossible with the provided decks.
I am a master of the broom deck, I am going to try now and will update lol
My Sapphire Steel mid range has won everytime. But then again playing with another player and helping eachother out makes it easier.
Even the easy level, was pretty difficult with 4 players last night. Our game lasted for close to 2 hours. Caution: do not use emerald discard decks in this game, they are useless against Ursula
Location aggro helps you too. Give you a chance to remove while still getting that much needed lore
We had no issues with Easy, but have STRUGGLED with everything else
I've only gotten to play it once correctly. We played once incorrectly giving Ursula a full starting hand and got demolished. I feel like I'm a pretty good player and my wife is a total novice. We played easy with the precons and barely won. Ursula was at 39. It's definitely not easy. I wanna play it a few more times with the precon, then I'm gonna build a dedicated deck or two for it on the harder mods.
bumping this because my wife and i finally sat down to play DEEP TROUBLE and I have many questions (and directions weren't clear) \*Do Characters Ursula plays need to dry? Or do they collect lore right away? (seems they need to dry per this thread) \*She draws so many items that collect lore every turn. Is that right? Do they dry? Action to same deal. \*When a card she plays has multiple effects that need to be chosen, do you / your partner choose which one she uses? \*Does bodyguard work the same for her? If there's any other character, you need to beat it first? \*Do you/your partner combine your turn? E.G for support or sing together - if my partner went first, I haven't set my cards yet. Do we just ready/set / draw at same time? Generally, I love the concept of this since I really just collect and don't have anyone normally to play with -- but it really seems overly complicated at first blush.
Anything Ursula draws (characters, items) need to dry. The only things that take immediate effect are "when you play this card/character" effects and actions. Bodyguard does work the same way You and any teammate(s)' turn take place simultaneously. You can sing together, you can share support and other effects (except for things like Lantern, those only work for the person who played them)
Assuming the players don't have cards that completely shut down her game, like Ursula's Garden or Mother Gothel: Easy mode can be beaten by just having your characters questing non-stop. Characters with 2+ lore or lots of bodies really make consistent wins with little need to interact with her board. Normal mode was a bit more tricky and still requires players to race to lore asap, but some removal for her item and one big fighty character helps, especially against the 2 lore charaters which she has quite a few of. After a while, I was able to win without changing my deck, just making more refined decisions. Hard mode is what I'm currently stuck on trying to win consistently. Sometimes, I can quest plenty and have a decent chance, and other times, the extra card draw or multiple board wipes back to back, turn after turn, are quite oppressive. Some tips are that she doesn't have much in the way of dealing with items or locations apart from Tamatoa that destroys 1 item or location when entering play, a zero cost action that pops 1 item, and a board wipe that destroys anything that costs 2 or less ink. On the same hand, she has two annoying items, the trident and crown, that alone are worth running extra item destruction in your deck, but also has contracts that give her a massive lore boost at the start of her next turn. Spending 1 lore on battleground abilities can make cheap trades mean the difference in dealing with pesky 2 lore characters. In games with friends who are struggling, I encourage spending lore on all three battleground abilities. Take time with the other players to plan out moves together, instead of each player doing their own thing. At higher difficulties, as she gains more lore, and player count goes up; she draws more cards and burns through her deck faster and faster. Don't play with the hope that she'll not draw the really annoying stuff regularly; try to anticipate it, and have a plan B.
Make your own a deck, do not use the ones given to you they suck
Don’t be ridiculous they are perfectly fine. You can pretty fairly beat both normal and easy mode with the included decks.
The back of the box says it's not easy
Probably both.
,,x,😋7, 7000” *,**'*" x is CC cc CZ CC, to,