My good friend Neuromorph has become something of a side character to the Mikey Mouse Club because well, to be frank, he’s the only close friend I have that is deep into Disney Lorcana. Dude also has an absolutely insane Enchanted hit rate, my man is out there pulling doubles of Enchanteds he already has while I have maintained my perfect record for never pulling a single one. He’s also heavily into the competitive side of the game and we exchange many texts about deck builds, strategies, where the meta is going, and what’s spicy these days. Of course we’ve been talking a lot about rotation and for him, the big deal right now is the Reign of Jafar set championships coming up that will also serve to close out the game’s first era.
He rang me up last night and asked me to test a couple of meta decks against his Emerald Amethyst discard build, and of course I was on board for it. I always have to laugh a little to myself when he asks me to test with him because I’m a strictly casual player trying to make a Goofy deck that can break even and he’s gunning for top cut. But Disney Lorcana, like all games, is for me foremost about fun and fellowship and even if I tank the games I know I’ll still enjoy hanging out with one of my best and oldest friends- funny enough, he used to be a regular customer at the game shop I ran back 20 years ago.
Image courtesy a mysterious, unknown Lorcana online client.
So I loaded up a Ruby Amethyst netdeck that was billed as winning a set championship 7-0-2. Absolutely not my kind of deck at all because it doesn’t lose half the time, and it is in fact the exact kind of deck that I grew to despise playing against in league. You know the one- the whole Madam Mim/Merlin bounce package that has dominated the meta since Rise of the Floodborn, the 4 Be Prepareds, a smattering of more recent cards that made this predatory and sometimes oppressive deck a right bastard to play against with one of my fun-first builds.
The first set I fumbled, playing with an unfamiliar deck and also coming over from playing a possibly unhealthy amount of Magic: The Gathering lately. It’s just such a different mindset, not having to hyperanalyze board state, hand cards, triggers, possibility of pulling off a massive combo, dealing with mana shortage/flood, going up against absolutely degenerate decks in the Platinum tier on Arena…Lorcana feels so much more chill, which is likely why so many early adopters were in fact MTG refugees.
We fussed around with the absolutely dreadful interface that the unofficial online client we use is saddled with for a while until we got another apparently quite successful Amethyst Steel deck loaded up. I’m much more familiar and comfortable with Steel and I found myself feeling more like I was able to hold my own against Neuromorph’s finely tuned, seasoned deck. As is usually the case with the discard archetype, you’ve got to grind the opponent’s hand down early to get ahead, and he just couldn’t manage. I won two sets straight with this deck.
Of course we talked a lot about the cards in both decks, and how some were already cleared for reprint in Fabled, and others were still in limbo. Absolute powerhouses like A Pirate’s Life is in. It’s generally agreed that Diablo – Devoted Herald won’t be making the cut as many feel that it is broken and oppressive. Indeed, when Neuromorph dropped one I thought “OK, that’s it, flip the table.” But I was able to dispatch the bird with little difficulty. But what about that whole Madam Mim thing? Be Prepared?
In both of those cases I found myself thinking that, even though I was winning handily with those cards in the mix, it’s time for them to go. They didn’t feel fun to play. In fact, the entire deck that I was clobbering Neuromorph with didn’t feel like much fun. It felt cold, sterile, and routine – but also ruthlessly effective. What’s more, given the fact that I am actually spectacularly bad at Lorcana, I felt like the deck was in some sense kind of piloting itself. I won four straight, but I didn’t feel like I was making clever decisions or pulling off brilliant plays. I was simply doing what the deck feels made to do.
Having just gotten back into Magic, it also inevitably forced me into comparisons that aren’t necessarily fair or justified. Magic is a game with over 30 years of history and development so it stands to reason that there’s simply more of it, and more variety. But I was thinking about how over in the Platinum tier on Arena, where I can usually be found scraping to make the little lights light up to advance me to the next tier, there are definitely archetypical decks but then also some really brilliant, weird, exciting outliers. I run a Orzhov deck heavy with the new Edge of Eternities cards that I’ve brewed up myself, and I’m doing well- when I win, I feel like I’ve made good choices from the deck construction to the play-by-play action. But playing a top level Lorcana meta deck just felt, to be blunt, empty.
Disney Lorcana is at a stage where it needs the big shakeup that rotation tends to bring in other TCGs like MTG, but with the huge number of reprints announced in Fables, I’m also concerned that it won’t be a matter of sending meta players back to the drawing board, but rather swapping out a few cards and continuing to brutalize anything a tier or more below it. I find myself missing the days when Tinker Bell – Giant Fairy or Kuzco – Tempermental Emperor ruled the day and were regarded as top tier cards.
That thought also led me to reflect on some of the announced choices for reprints. Some of them are definitely of the WTH are you thinking variety. Cards that were never really all that interesting to begin with, a lot of draft chaff for a format that still hasn’t really taken hold in the game. Maybe one of the 38 or so new cards will break open a new strategy to play some of the vanillas that are returning post-rotation. I’d love to see it.
If all this sounds fairly generalizing, it is because I don’t usually play meta decks at all- I know that Steel Song is still an ongoing concern (and that appears to be a lock to continue). “Blurple” item decks are most definitely a thing. Mufasa High Roller may or may not stick around, depending on reprints. It’s not like these Amethyst bounce decks are the only show in town. But I do find myself wondering how much will change over the next four sets – and I’m conflicted whether I want to see it go wilder and wider like MTG, or retain the quaint and more laid back charm the game had in its first cycle.
Either way, I’m gonna make a Powerline deck.
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