Lorcana: Basil Disguised Detective Deck (Set 6)
Basil – Disguised Detective wasn’t exactly on my radar for cards I was excited to try out in this set. However, after testing the deck out a bit, I’m happy to say I really enjoy this strategy. It takes a bit of set up, but if you get what you need you can discard your opponent’s hand at a phenomenal rate and totally dominate the board.
Below, let’s look at my custom build for the new Detective Basil deck.
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3 Basil - Hypnotized Mouse
4 Basil - Disguised Detective
4 Prince John - Greediest of All
4 Pawpsicle
4 Sail The Azurite Sea
1 Lucky Dime
3 Belle - Strange but Special
4 Honey Lemon - Chemical Genius
3 Mother Gothel - Unwavering Schemer
4 Fishbone Quill
4 Mickey Mouse - Detective
4 We Don't Talk About Bruno
4 Hiram Flaversham - Toymaker
2 Great Stone Dragon
3 Mother Gothel - Conceited Manipulator
3 Mother Knows Best
2 Hades - Infernal Schemer
2 You're Welcome
3 Kit Cloudkicker - Tough Guy
1 Under The Sea
Breaking down Basil – Disguised Detective
Other than featuring some excellent artwork, this card is fun to play and pretty strong. He’s got some solid stats with four strength and five will power making him handy in a fight if you’re forced to challenge with him. His Shift 4 is pretty helpful as well. In a ramp deck like this one that’s a pretty easy level to meet. While often ramp decks don’t bother with the Shift mechanic, the three-cost Basil is actually pretty strong for a Shift target.
He’s got Evasive and three strength making him a powerful counter to the Diablos of the world, with the bonus of being a ready and willing Shift target for our friend, Floodborn Basil.
Twists and Turns
What really makes Basil exciting, however, is his Twists and Turns ability, letting you pay 1 Ink to discard one of your opponent’s cards whenever a card is added to your Inkwell. This discard effect works fast, and when paired with Prince John acts as its own draw engine as well.
The title of this ability is pretty apt as piloting this deck is fun partly because of how many twists and turns you go through, working your way from scratch to sometimes 20 Ink and an insane combination of discard and card removal.
Detective Basil Deck Mulligan Guide
It took me a while to figure out what a good mulligan looks like, and I do believe it is the secret sauce to doing well with this deck especially. There’s a lot of moving pieces here and typically there are about two different routes you can take depending on the cards you get.
The first route is the Flaversham route. This should be pretty familiar for anyone who has played a deck with Flaversham at the core of it. In this route, an ideal hand is going to look something like this:
A Pawpsicle
A “Sail the Azurite Sea”
A Fishbone Quill
A Flaversham
This set up ensures that you get your draw engine and ramp engine going off on the right foot, and is probably your strongest set up early game.
However, if you fail to hit these cards, there is a secondary route you can take that can help you still get the cards you need. This route is the direct Basil/Prince John route. In this route, you’re looking to get your discard engine set up first, and letting the ramping piece come in later when it does.
Here, you’re looking for the following:
A Prince John
Azurite Sea
Basil – Disguised Detective
All you need is a Prince John and a Basil – Disguised Detective in play to start discarding and drawing cards. You can also combine this route with any of the other ramp cards at your disposal, although Azurite Sea is the strongest early game.
Matchup specific mulligan strategies
Against aggro, it helps to priotize bodies on the board. Discard won’t be as important in this strategy as will cards like Kit Cloudkicker that are capable of bouncing low cost characters, as well as the strong Evasive three-cost Basil.
Against Bounce-specific decks like Ruby/Amethyst or the undervalued Sapphire/Amethyst, you are going to want to go hard into discard. This strategy if done right can totally steal their momentum and render them largely helpless.
New cards in Azurite Sea that supercharge Detective Basil
Azurite Sea is still new and you may not be super familiar yet with the cards and how they interplay with existing mechanics to unlock hidden advantages for your strategy. Let’s look at some of the new cards in Azurite Sea that this deck utilizes in order to win.
Honey Lemon
Honey Lemon is an effective, multi-purpose character. She can be used to gain lore rapidly, but she also has a strong discard ability that makes her ideal for a deck running Prince John. Although normally Emerald decks would have trouble paying an extra two Ink on play, this deck can do it very easily as it ramps quite rapidly.
The thing is, if you have Basil in play, you don’t really need this effect, meaning Honey Lemon might be of more use being added to the Inkwell than using her ability. However, you won’t always have a Basil on the field while you may be more likely to keep a Prince John around because it has Ward. So it’s nice to have extra cards around that discard like Honey Lemon.
Sail the Azurite Sea
Sail the Azurite Sea is an absolutely broken card that pretty much changes the way you play the game. It’s an early game ramp play that lets you gain resources in your hand and Ink additional cards. Unlock equivealent ramp cards like One Jump Ahead or Tipo, this Ink can then be used to play additional cards – in this strategy that means playing additional items, characters, or even another Sail the Azurite Sea.
Powerful card removal late game helps you dominate the board
While this deck doesn’t have anything that fully clears the board the way a Be Prepared does, it does boast an insane amount of card removal. What I found from some of my early tests is that you often end up having a massive amount of Ink in this deck, making it very easy to get powerful card removal effects off just leveraging the Ink in your Inkwell. Below, let’s go over each card in detail and why it is so effective.
Mother Gothels
Hades – Infernal Schemer
Hades has always been one of my favorite cards to slap down in a match. He’s a very satisfying card to play cause he instantly removes anything you want from play (assuming it doesn’t have ward). The only drawback here is that what he removes goes into your opponent’s Inkwell. If you’ve managed to discard your opponent’s hand, this shouldn’t be an issue because it’s less likely they will find the stuff they need to utilize their added Ink anyways. However, if you’re neck and neck this could be a problem, giving your opponent the resources they need to come back and win.
We Don’t Talk About Bruno is your strongest removal
I’m sure anyone who has played Emerald lately knows how deadly this card is, and that’s true in this deck. In some ways, maybe more true. With this Ink combo, Bruno becomes actually more playable because you can pretty easily use your Ink to play it as well as sing it. Combine it with Prince John and you get a card that removes a character, discards a character, and provides draw support for you.
This works especially well if you’ve managed to thin your opponent’s hand down first, meaning not only will you bounce the desired character, you may even discard it as well.
I’m loving how Mother Gothel feels in this deck, and the two cost Mother Gothel is especially powerful. While Floodborn Mother Gothel gets around the Ward keyword which is actuallly looking pretty strong in Azurite Sea, it’s the basic Mother Gothel that I often find is the nastier play. While normally paying a total of five Ink to get her ability off seems like a lot, this deck ramps so well that late game you can pay that like it’s nothing.
Under the Sea
I would consider Under the Sea an optional card that you could replace for something else depending on what you are likely to face. I like this card because of its ability to rid the field of an over-stuffed board. Against aggro decks, this can singlehandedly win you the game. Against other decks, it could be virtually useless. That’s why I only run one as a tech.
Low cost removal
In addition to these bigger, badder cards, you also have two lower cost card removal options. The first is the phenomenally helpful Cloudkicker which helps keep you ahead of your opposition early in the game.
The second is Mother Knows Best. This card is excellent to use early on as you have plenty of three cost characters capable of singing it.
You’re Welcome is highly versatile
You’re Welcome is worth including in this deck because of just how incredibly versatile it can be. It’s like a swiss-army-knife of a card, letting you remove anything that might be troubling you wether that be an item, a character, or a location. As if that weren’t enough, you can also use it on one of your one cards to get additional draw.
A note on Great Stone Dragon
Lastly, while the other items in this deck strategy feel straightfoward enough to not need much explanation, it’s worth while to talk a moment about Great Stone Dragon. In this deck, the Great Stone Dragon actually ends up being phenomenally effective. Because Basil’s ability triggers whenever a cards is added to the Inkwell, you can pull of the whole Prince John/Basil/Discard/Draw effect by having this card in play alone (assuming you have characters in your discard).
While this isn’t going to be a reliable strategy early in the game, getting it on the field so you can start leveraging it in the later game makes it a powerful ramp and draw engine for you.
I would use this card especially against control decks.
If you like tricky decks with a lot of card interactions and combos, I would definitely recommend this deck. It’s my favorite to play right now in the Azurite Sea format and I think it can be quite good with a little luck!
