If you picked up the 2-Player Starter Set at Target and you’re still learning, here’s the short version. The box gives you two complete decks, and this guide upgrades both. If you already play, skip to Deck 1.

• Inking: Each turn you may put one card from hand face-down as 1 ink (mana). Only cards with the swirl on the cost can be inked. Cards without it (here: Safety Rope, Lord MacGuffin — Clever Swordsman, Super Suit, Mickey Mouse — Experienced Traveler, Dash Parr — Super Speedy, Frozone — Super Cool, and the Shift cards) can never be inked, so you must draw and play them.
• Questing: Exert a character to gain its lore (the diamond, top-left). First to 20 lore wins.
• Challenging: Exert your character to attack an exerted opposing character; both deal damage equal to strength (¤). Damage ≥ willpower (⛉) banishes. You cannot challenge a ready (un-exerted) character, and this matters for the Deck 2 engine.
• Shift: Pay the Shift cost to play a character “on top of” one you already have with the matching name. It’s how the big Wilds Unknown finishers come down ahead of curve.
• Toy / Super / Hero: Character subtypes. Wilds Unknown builds whole engines around them.
• Core vs Infinity / rotation: Core is the most recent eight sets (right now, Sets 5–12). The oldest sets rotate out about once a year as new ones arrive: Sets 1–4 rotated out in 2025, and Sets 5–8 are next when Set 13 lands (~July 2026), leaving Core = Sets 9–13. Everything in this guide is Set 9+, so it survives that.

A few more terms you’ll see in the upgrades below:

• Mulligan (Alter Hand): after your opening 7, you may put any number of cards from your hand on the bottom of your deck, then draw that many fresh. (No shuffle, and it is not a full redraw, you choose which cards to swap.) Each tier lists what to keep.
• Flex slot: a deck slot with no locked-in card. Swap between the listed options depending on what decks you expect to face that day.
• Curve: how a deck’s cards spread across ink costs. A low curve plays out fast off little ink; a high curve needs more turns to come online. “3-cost-heavy” just means most cards cost 3.
• Tribal: a deck built around one subtype (here, Toy or Super) where those cards actively boost each other.
• Engine: a card or small combo that keeps producing value (extra cards, lore, or damage) every turn once it’s set up. The “sub-engine” is a smaller helper loop, like the Hamm/Bullseye cost-discount.
• Tutor: a card that digs through your deck to find a specific card (e.g., Woody — Leader of the Toys looking for a Toy).
• Anthem: a card that buffs all your other characters of a type at once (e.g., “your other Toy characters get +1 ⛉”).
• Evasive / Bodyguard / Rush: printed keywords. Evasive can only be challenged by other Evasive characters. Bodyguard must be challenged before your other characters. Rush can challenge the turn it’s played.
• Ping: dealing a small fixed point of damage to a character from an ability (not from a challenge).
• Cantrip: a card that “replaces itself” by drawing you a card when you play it, so it costs you no net cards.
• Playset: the most copies of one card you’d run. Lorcana’s hard limit is 4; some uninkable finishers we deliberately cap lower.
• Tall vs wide: a board-strategy distinction. Tall means a few big buffed characters (often Shift finishers stacked with anthems). Wide means flooding the board with many small characters to out-quest the opponent. The Toys plan in this guide goes wide; the Super plan goes a bit more vertical.
• N-drop (2-drop, 5-drop, etc.): shorthand for an N-cost character, ideally played on turn N. A “2-drop” is a 2-cost character (your turn-2 play); a “5-drop” is a 5-cost character.
• Stats like 3/1, 5/6: a character’s printed strength (the sword, ¤) and willpower (the shield, ⛉), in that order. 3/1 means 3 attack and 1 health; 5/6 means 5 attack and 6 health.
• Anti-tempo: a card whose own ability costs you ink or turn-time to use, slowing your deck down rather than the opponent’s (e.g., RC — Remote-Controlled Car taxes itself 1 ink every turn just to act).
• Anchor: the one card a deck’s plan revolves around. Drawing it on time wins games; missing it stalls the deck out (e.g., Andy’s Room — Home Base for the Toys plan; Mr. Incredible — Super Strong for the Super plan).
• Off-archetype / off-tribe / off-plan / off-engine: all four mean the same thing: a card that does not feed the deck’s main plan. Often fine filler in the stock box, but cut in the upgrades to make room for the real engine pieces.
• Modal: a card with multiple options to choose between when you play it or when its ability fires (e.g., Mrs. Incredible — Super Stretchy’s FLEXIBLE THINKING lets you pick one of two effects each turn).
• Freeze: TCG shorthand for an effect that stops a chosen character from acting (questing or challenging) for a turn (e.g., Strange Things freezes up to 2 characters from questing).

“Playful Teamwork” is the Amber/Emerald deck in the box, the Buzz Lightyear side. It’s the box’s watered-down take on “Andy’s Toys,” the headline deck of the whole set. Here’s the line it wants to play:

1. Turns 1–2, flood cheap Toys. Woody — Waiting for a Friend (1c 2/2), Alien — True Believer (1c).
2. Turn 3, land the engine. Andy’s Room — Home Base (“While you have only 1 character here, they get +2 ⛉ and +1 ◊”) and Jessie — Lively Cowgirl (“Whenever this character quests, if you have 2 or more other Toy characters in play, you may draw a card”).
3. Turn 3–4, convert cheap plays. Buzz Lightyear — On the Way (“Whenever you pay 2 ⬡ or less to play a character, deal 1 damage to chosen opposing damaged character”) + Hamm — Piggy Bank (”⟳ — You pay 1 ⬡ less for the next character you play this turn”).
4. Turn 5+, Shift the payoff. Woody — Jungle Guide (Shift 3 onto a Woody): “Whenever this character quests, draw a card. Then, you may play a character with cost 2 or less for free. … Your other Toy characters get +1 ⛉.”

You win by out-questing them while a cheap-play engine snowballs underneath you.

1. The engine ships at 1-of. Andy’s Room, Jessie, Buzz Lightyear — On the Way, Lenny — Toy Binoculars are all single copies.
2. The payoff isn’t in the box. Woody — Jungle Guide ships zero copies.
3. Zero real card draw. Only This Growing Pressure ×3.
4. Off-archetype dead weight. Agustin ×3 + Julieta Madrigal ×3 (a Madrigal Support fragment with no payoff in a Toys deck).
5. Actively anti-tempo cards. RC — Remote-Controlled Car ×3 (“can’t quest or challenge unless you pay 1 ⬡”, a tax every turn) and uninkable Safety Rope ×2 / Lord MacGuffin ×2.

Verified 60-card stock list (every card Set 12, Amber or Emerald, fully rotation-safe).

How to read the upgrade tables in this guide. The “Notes” and “Why” columns use a few quick conventions, all defined in the glossary above: → 4 means “increase this card to 4 copies in the deck”; Cut means “remove all copies”; Keep means “leave the card as-is.” Off-tribe / off-archetype / off-plan / off-engine all flag “does not fit the deck’s plan.” Uninkable means the card has no inkwell symbol on its cost, so it cannot be put face-down as ink (you must draw and play it). Stats like 3/1 are strength / willpower, in that order.

Goal: make it an actual functioning Toy deck, not just “stock minus the obvious cuts.” Pull the actively-bad cards (the anti-tempo RC, off-plan Queen, off-archetype Madrigal, dead uninkables) and bring the cheap engine up to playsets. No Woody — Jungle Guide yet; that’s the Tier 2 money jump.

IN (18) / OUT (18)

Price tag: about $12 in singles on top of the $29.99 box (checked 2026-05-18). The only card with real value is Jessie — Lively Cowgirl at about $2 a copy and you need three of her; everything else is pocket change. This is the most deck-for-your-dollar step in the guide.

Goal: install the payoff at a working count. Woody — Jungle Guide is the deck’s reason to exist. Mid runs it at 2 copies (enough to find and play the engine reliably with Woody — Leader of the Toys digging for it); maxing to the full 3 is the Tier-3 jump. That split is also what keeps mid under ~$30: the 3rd copy alone is ~$8.

IN (10 cumulative) / OUT (10 cumulative)

Price tag: about $30 in singles on top of the box (checked 2026-05-18). Almost all of that is the engine, Woody — Jungle Guide, at about $8 a copy; mid runs two of them. Everything else is pocket change.

Curve honesty (true at every tier of this deck): even tuned, this thing is 3-cost-heavy (~24–28 of 60). That’s not a mistake on my end. The Core Amber/Emerald Toy pool has exactly two real 1-drops (Woody — Waiting for a Friend, Alien — True Believer), so it physically cannot curve lower. Ravensburger’s answer, and this deck’s whole plan, is the discount sub-engine: Hamm ×4 (pay 1 less), Bullseye ×4 (a real 2-drop with a Woody or Jessie out), Woody — Jungle Guide (free ≤2 play on quest). Play those right and the curve feels two notches lower than it reads. Miss them and it clogs. That’s this deck’s one real weakness, and it’s why “Daring Heroics” is the more forgiving build.

Goal: stop approximating and actually build the real “Andy’s Toys” list. This tier adds the two engine pieces the budget tiers skipped (Metamorphosis and Pizza Planet — Spaceport), maxes the Toy tutor, and cuts the last off-archetype filler.

How it plays. A cheap-play snowball: drop Toys for 1 or 2 ink, get paid twice on every cheap play, then Shift in the engine that turns each quest into a free extra play.

The discount engine. Hamm — Piggy Bank (2 ink) taps for a 1-ink discount on the next character you play that turn. Bullseye — Loyal Horse (3 ink normally) costs only 2 ink when you have a Woody or Jessie in play. Together they turn most of your 3-cost characters into 2-cost characters.

The cheap-play payoffs. Every time you pay 2 ink or less to play a card, two things fire. Jessie — Lively Cowgirl debuffs an opposing character −1 ¤ until your next turn. Buzz Lightyear — On the Way either draws and discards a card (on a non-character play) or pings 1 damage to a damaged opposing character (on a character play). Jessie also draws you a card whenever she quests if you have 2 or more other Toys in play.

The utility 3-drop. Lenny — Toy Binoculars does two things on top of being a cheap body. On entry, your opponent reveals their hand and you choose one of their action cards to discard, free pre-emptive removal of a song, trick, or finisher fetch they were holding. Once per turn after that, whenever you play an action, you may ready him for a second quest. With three on-archetype actions in the deck (This Growing Pressure, Ranger Team-Up, Metamorphosis), the readying fires reliably.

The Toy tutor. Woody — Leader of the Toys looks at the top 4 cards of your deck when he lands. You may reveal one Toy character or Andy’s Room — Home Base to put into your hand; the rest go to the bottom of the deck.

The payoff. Woody — Jungle Guide (Shift 3 onto a Woody) draws a card every time he quests, lets you play a character with cost 2 or less for free off that trigger, and gives your other Toys +1 ⛉. Metamorphosis Shifts a character out of your discard pile for free, which lets you replay Woody — Jungle Guide (or Buzz Lightyear — Jungle Ranger) for just the 3-ink Meta cost. Best used to recover after a finisher gets banished mid-game, or to fetch one that ended up in the discard via Buzz Lightyear — On the Way’s loot trigger.

The location. Pizza Planet — Spaceport lets your Toys move there for free, and every challenge fought at the location costs the opponent 1 lore.

You win by out-questing the other deck behind an engine that fuels itself.

IN (10 cumulative) / OUT (10 cumulative)

Price tag: about $41 in singles on top of the box, or about $47 if you skip the box and buy all 60 (checked 2026-05-18; new-set prices move). The step up from mid is the third Woody — Jungle Guide plus Buzz Lightyear — Jungle Ranger ×2.

Locked Tier-3 decklist (60, Amber/Emerald, ≤4 each, all Set 12, rotation-safe)

Open or clone this exact deck on Dreamborn →. Proxy-print it, playtest it, or tweak it in the builder.

Mulligan: keep 2 inkable cards, at least one 1-cost or 2-cost Toy to land on turn 1 or 2, and Hamm — Piggy Bank or Bullseye — Loyal Horse. Those two are the discount engine that turns the whole deck on; without one of them, your 3-cost-heavy hand stalls out. Send back the Shift finishers (Woody — Jungle Guide, Buzz Lightyear — Jungle Ranger) if you opened them without a cheap Shift base in hand, since they cannot develop your turn 1 or 2 board. You will draw into them naturally; Metamorphosis is the mid-game backup that can replay one from the discard for 3 ink if a finisher gets banished.

A piloting note on Andy’s Room — Home Base: the +2 ⛉ and +1 ◊ bonus only fires “while you have only 1 character here.” If you move two questers in to “boost both,” the bonus turns off for both. Park exactly one Toy at the location at a time.

Flex slot: This Growing Pressure runs 1 to 3 copies depending on what you expect to face. Lean toward 2 or 3 copies against control decks. It forces an opposing character to quest next turn (which exposes them as a challenge target) and draws you a card, and that swing matters most against a deck that wants to slow the game down. Lean toward 1 copy against aggro decks, where forcing their character to quest does less because they are already racing for lore, and you want the slots for Ranger Team-Up combat tricks.

Rotation note: “Andy’s Toys” is a Set 12 archetype, so this rotation-safe build is the real meta list. You give up nothing to keep it rotation-proof here.

“Daring Heroics” is the Amethyst/Ruby deck in the box, the Mrs. Incredible/Elastigirl side. It’s the box’s under-tuned take on “Super Family.” Supers scale off each other:

1. Turns 1–2, cheap Supers. Mr. Incredible — Bob Parr (1c 2/2), Frozone — Super Slick (2c Evasive).
2. Turn 3, pressure + value. Violet Parr — Learning New Powers (Evasive; DEFLECT moves damage), Edna Mode — Fashion Designer (“Whenever this character quests, your Super characters get +1 ◊ this turn”).
3. Turn 4, draw. Mirage — Super Recruiter (“…if you have a Super or Hero character in play, you may draw a card”).
4. Turn 5, the engine. Mr. Incredible — Super Strong (Shift 3 onto Bob Parr): “This character gets +2 ¤ for each other character you have in play. … Whenever one of your Super characters challenges another character, draw a card.”

You win with a Super board that draws you a card every time it challenges. One honest caveat: you can only challenge exerted characters, so that draw fires when the opponent quests, not whenever you want it to. Your own ways to force the issue are thin (Frozone — Super Cool’s JUST CHILL; Mushu’s Rocket / Rush to swing the turn a body lands). Think of it as “you get paid for winning the combat race,” not a free engine. Hero Work stacks a lore swing on top.

1. The engine isn’t in the box. Mr. Incredible — Super Strong, the card the whole draw plan is built on, ships zero copies.
2. The Super payoffs ship at 1-of. Edna Mode — Fashion Designer, Jack-Jack Parr — Incredible Potential, Mrs. Incredible — Super Stretchy are single copies, so the plan rarely shows up.
3. No focused plan. The 60 is three half-decks jammed together (Supers + three Dwarfs + Ducks + Pooh); none of them is complete enough to win.
4. Off-tribe dead weight. Goofy ×3, Winnie the Pooh ×3, the Dwarf fragment and Sleepy Hollow aren’t Supers and do nothing for the plan.
5. The wrong cards carry it. Out of the box the off-tribe reprints (Goofy, Pooh) do the heavy lifting instead of the Supers, which is exactly backwards from what the deck wants to be.

Verified 60-card stock list. Note: LeFou — Instigator and Winnie the Pooh — Hunny Wizard ship as their Set 9 reprints (they also have old Set 1/2 printings, so note the box’s are the rotation-safe ones). Everything else is S9–S12.

Goal: pick ONE plan (Supers), bring the cheap core to playsets, delete the Dwarf splinter. Keep the strong S9–S11 reprint bodies as budget filler; they’re rotation-safe and fine until you can afford the real engine.

IN (18) / OUT (18)

Price tag: about $3 in singles on top of the $29.99 box (checked 2026-05-18). Every card you add is a common or uncommon; nothing here is more than pocket change.

Goal: install the engine at a working count. Mr. Incredible — Super Strong is the whole reason this deck exists. Mid runs it at 2 copies (you Shift it onto Bob Parr and dig with Mirage / Edna / Jack-Jack to find it); maxing to the full 3 is the Tier-3 jump. Same mid-vs-high split as “Playful Teamwork”: mid is the working engine, Tier 3 is the optimized list.

IN (9 cumulative) / OUT (9 cumulative)

Price tag: about $8 in singles on top of the box (checked 2026-05-18). Mostly the engine, Mr. Incredible — Super Strong, at about $2 a copy; mid runs two of them.

Goal: build the real rotation-safe “Super Family” list. Add the canonical 4-cost Dash the budget tiers never ran (they cut the wrong Dash), complete the Negaduck Shift package, and trim the off-archetype glue.

How it plays. A Super tribal combat-draw deck. The plan is to build a Super board that draws you a card every time one of them challenges, then close the game out with two different 5-cost Shift finishers.

The Shift bases. Mr. Incredible — Bob Parr (1 ink) and Negaduck — Evil Doppelganger (2 ink) have no abilities of their own. They exist so you can Shift the 5-cost finishers onto them on turn 3 or 4 for only 3 ink, instead of hardcasting them for 5 ink on turn 5.

The finishers. Shift Mr. Incredible — Super Strong onto a Bob Parr: he gets +2 ¤ for every other character you have in play, and any time one of your Super characters challenges another character, you draw a card. Shift Negaduck — Public Enemy Number One onto the Doppelganger: every time he challenges, the opponent loses 1 lore and you gain 1 lore, a 2-lore swing per challenge.

The supporting cast. Frozone — Super Cool (6 ink, Rush) exerts an opposing character on entry when you have another Super in play, which gives you a ready-made target to challenge into so the Super Strong draw keeps firing. Dash Parr — Lava Runner (4 ink, Rush) can quest the turn he lands for immediate lore pressure. Violet Parr — Learning New Powers (3 ink, Evasive) moves a damage in when she lands. Edna Mode — Fashion Designer (3 ink) pumps your Supers +1 ◊ every time she quests. Mirage — Super Recruiter (4 ink) draws a card on landing if you have a Super or Hero already in play. Jack-Jack Parr — Incredible Potential (4 ink) is a modal Super that scales with cards in your discard pile.

You win with a Super board that draws a card every time it fights, closed by the Negaduck lore drain.

IN (7 cumulative) / OUT (7 cumulative)

Price tag: about $12 in singles on top of the box, or about $15 if you skip the box and buy all 60 (checked 2026-05-18; new-set prices move). The step up from mid is the third Mr. Incredible — Super Strong plus the canonical Dash Parr — Lava Runner ×3. The cheapest meta deck in this guide.

Locked Tier-3 decklist (60, Amethyst/Ruby, ≤4 each, all Set 9+, rotation-safe)

Open or clone this exact deck on Dreamborn →. Proxy-print it, playtest it, or tweak it in the builder.

Mulligan: keep 2 inkable cards, one cheap Super to land on turn 1 or 2, and one of your Shift bases (Mr. Incredible — Bob Parr at 1 ink, or Negaduck — Evil Doppelganger at 2 ink). The Shift bases let you play the 5-cost finishers for only 3 ink on turn 3 or 4, instead of hardcasting them on turn 5. Mirage — Super Recruiter and Edna Mode — Fashion Designer are also strong keeps. Send back any 5-cost character if you do not already have a Shift base in your opening hand.

How the engine works. Mr. Incredible — Super Strong draws you a card every time one of your Super characters challenges another character. Questing does not count. So once Super Strong is on the board, your plan is to keep attacking with Supers, not just race for lore. Frozone — Super Cool helps here: when he enters with another Super in play, he exerts an opposing character, giving you a ready-made target to challenge into for the Super Strong draw.

Flex slot. The 4-to-3 split between Inner Strength and Like a Bird in the Sky is the deck’s main lever. Against decks that play few Evasive blockers, lean more on Inner Strength (+1 ¤ plus a draw, fuels combat). Against decks that wall up with Evasive characters, lean more on Like a Bird in the Sky, which gives one of your characters Evasive so it can quest past their defenders.

Why no Mrs. Incredible — Determined Rescuer? The strongest “Super Family” lists you see in tournament play are Amethyst/Steel, built around Mrs. Incredible — Determined Rescuer: a 7-cost Steel finisher that gives your whole board Resist +1 and readies a Super every time a character is banished in a challenge. This build stays Amethyst/Ruby because that is what the 2-Player Starter Set hands you, and Lorcana’s 2-ink rule keeps every Steel card off the table (the 2-ink rule, not rotation: Mrs. Incredible — Determined Rescuer is brand-new in Set 12 and Core-legal). Inside the Amethyst/Ruby restriction, the S9+ rotation-safe Super pool is only about 16 characters, so the S11 Negaduck — Public Enemy Number One Shift package is not a shortcut, it is the only way to field a complete 60-card rotation-safe Super deck. This list is that honest ceiling.

The $29.99 2-Player Starter Set gives you both decks, so this isn’t “which one do I buy.” It’s “which one do I sink my singles budget into first.” Both upgrade into real Core decks. Both are rotation-proof through July 2026: build it once, never rebuild it at the next rotation. The split comes down to cost versus ceiling, and the two decks pull in opposite directions:

• “Playful Teamwork” → “Andy’s Toys” is the higher ceiling. It’s a copy of the headline deck of the set, but it’s the expensive upgrade: its engine, Woody — Jungle Guide, is a ~$7.86 Legendary (a ~$24 set of 3), so taking the box all the way to Tier 3 runs ~$41, and that one set is about 57% of the spend. It also asks more of the pilot: a 3-cost-heavy curve that only sings if you run the Hamm/Bullseye discount sub-engine well.
• “Daring Heroics” → “Super Family” has the narrower ceiling, but its engine, Mr. Incredible — Super Strong, is a ~$1.78 Legendary, so taking the box to Tier 3 is only ~$12 (about $15 from scratch). Cleaner curve, more forgiving to pilot. The trade-off: it’s tighter and more linear, and the draw engine only pays off when the combat goes your way.

My call: do “Daring Heroics” first. For ~$12 in singles you turn the box’s Amethyst/Ruby half into a Core-competitive, rotation-proof deck, and it’s the easier of the two to learn on. Then, if you want the higher ceiling and don’t mind the ~$24 Woody — Jungle Guide set of 3, pour the bigger budget into “Playful Teamwork.” If you’re newer and only upgrading one, it’s Daring Heroics. If you’re chasing the strongest deck in the box, you end at Playful Teamwork Tier 3.

• Here for a Sealed or Prerelease event instead? This is a Constructed 2-Player Starter Set, not a Sealed product. Sealed and Prerelease events are played from Wilds Unknown booster packs and prerelease kits, not this box, so none of this upgrade guide applies there. We have a separate guide for that: the Wilds Unknown Sealed Deck Guide.
• New to the set? “Andy’s Toys” and “Super Family” are two of the headline Wilds Unknown archetypes, and these two starter decks are the cheapest way into both.

Every tier in this guide is a legal 60-card deck: exactly 60 cards, no more than 4 of any card, two inks, and every card from Set 9 or later so it stays legal through the next rotation (~July 2026). Card abilities are quoted directly from the official card text, never paraphrased. Prices are a Lorcast snapshot from 2026-05-15, Wilds Unknown’s release day, so new-card prices are still settling; treat dollar figures as launch-week estimates.