While I was vacationing in Hawaii last week, standing at the smoking crater of Mount Kilauea, my best Lorcana buddy Neuromorph texted me that Ravensbuger had issued the first bans in Disney Lorcana history. Needless to say, I was out of pocket and had no idea what he was talking about. Also needless to say, a quick perusal of the usual online Lorcana news clearinghouses revealed the dramatic news that indeed, Ravensburger had issued the first two official bans in Lorcana’s nearly three year history. Hiram Flaversham – Toymaker and Fortisphere, y’all are outta here!
To recap, Hiram is a widely-played Rise of the Floodborn Sapphire card (as in, virtually any Sapphire deck uses him) that has an especially excellent ability: Artificer. This enables you to banish an item when you play him or when he quests to draw two cards. He’s pretty sturdy at 6 Willpower so it’s not too hard to leverage it to draw 2, 6, 8, or even 10 cards over the course of a game- especially with cheap 1-ink items in abundance. Speaking of 1-ink items, Fortisphere is a Steel Ursula’s Return card that has two abilities. One is Extract of Steel, which costs an ink to banish it and give a character Bodyguard. Big deal. But the other ability is that when you play it, you draw a card. The combo with Hiram should be immediately clear.
The news was especially shocking as previously Ravensburger either did absolutely nothing to counteract oppressive, meta-wrecking and casual-destroying cards and combinations or they flubbed out an errata as was the case during the Great Bucky Nerf of ’24. I immediately thought back to all the cards that I thought should have been banned or restricted from the game’s earliest days- Be Prepared, A Whole New Wheel of Fortune (sorry, I mean A Whole New World), Madam Mim – Fox, Diablo – Devoted Herald- and wondered why these two cards, and why now?
To top it off, I had just submitted my Sapphire Steel deck commentary here for Goonhammer which of course featured four of each of these offending cards. In retrospect, no wonder all the Sapphire Steel decks have been seeing good results with these cards because yeah, they are sort of messed up. It’s important to note that, of course, the ban only affects organized and tournament play. Casual players, we are free to continue to exploit this busted combo all we want on our kitchen tables.
Ravensburger put out an official statement summing up the decision and hosted discussions with co-lead designer Steve Warner on the matter. Reading through it, the reasoning behind the bans is sound and I found myself nodding in agreement. Hiram has really kind of been a problem from day one of his appearance, and I recall early meta buzz around the card- especially once folks figured out the Pawpsicle interaction with him to gain early hand advantage. If you recall, Hiram was a starter deck card and it didn’t take long for him to become a Sapphire staple driving that $@#$@# Pawpsicle deck to many victories.
Fortisphere, on the other hand, seemed to take more time to settle in and I think it was really some of the interactions that emerged after its release that led to its ban. Per Ravensburger, the thought was that interactions like Hiram with Fortisphere sort of pushed Steel toward item-based builds. I think this is chiefly because Steel doesn’t have strong draw, and Fortisphere combined with Sapphire item banishing and recursion abilities suddenly “cheated” a Sapphire advantage into Steel and doubled up on that color’s strong ramping and card draw.
Funny enough, in my conversation about the matter with Neuromorph, one of the first things I said was “they really should have banned Pawpsicle over either one of these”. Lo and behold, in the Ravensburger statement they mention how they considered axing it. But I believe that Pawpsicle being Sapphire saved it as it’s more on brand for blue ink and doesn’t mess with the whole ink identity design concept. What’s more, a key element of Steel cards with draw is that they tend to have a functional cost of a discard- even A Whole New World stays in its lane as it has that attached, implicit cost.
In all, I think this was a good decision on Ravensburger’s part and it did make me think more about the cards I’ve thought deserved a ban. Even Madam Mim – Fox, as irritating as she is, still fits into the design brief for Amethyst and even as abusive as that card can be, it remains consistent with expectations for the color. Fortisphere did not. As for Hiram, I think the situation there was that some of the interactions he created were either underestimated or even unforeseen in playtesting and sort of emerged organically through the meta. I’m really kind of surprised that Hiram wasn’t errata-ed a la Bucky to keep him playable.
I’ve not caught up yet on how this has impacted the Holy and Sacred Meta (I expect that Ruby Amethyst will once again rise to annoying dominance), but as a casual player I’m not sure it will affect my life too much and none of my jank-laden, heavily thematic builds full of “unplayables” used either of these cards anyway. I’m also interested to see, moving forward if Ravensburger continues to be so conservative with banning cards, or if restricting cards could become a thing in the future.
Next time: With the banning dust settled, some Archazia’s Island budget deckbuilding fun!
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