As of my writing this edition of The Mikey Mouse Club, the long-awaited and epochal release of Disney Lorcana’s Fabled set is upon us. Next week, you’ll be able to go down to your LGS and pick up booster boxes, troves, starters, and all kinds of new sealed product. These bountiful boosters will contain 33 new cards and 170-something reprints of all your favorites- meta-defining cards like Sergeant Tibbs – Courageous Cat, Flounder – Voice of Reason, and Virana – Fang Chief. Sigh.
Or, maybe you won’t be able to buy any Disney Lorcana Fabled, because word is getting around today, just a week from release, that allocations are slashed and some shops (such as my usual LGS) have no idea how much product they are or are not actually going to be getting. The usual TCG distribution rumors are swirling that product is being re-routed to big box stores- many of which still have tons of unsold product from a few previous sets. Preorders are being canceled. Prices are going up. And to be quite blunt, even though this all looks like a function of rampant demand versus short supply similar to what we saw during First Chapter and Rise of the Floodborn, many Disney Lorcana players are not planning on buying sealed Fabled product at all.
Now, I don’t want to go all Eeyore on Disney Lorcana or Fabled so everything that follows in this column is going to be tough love- critical and pointed, but also issued in hopes that Ravensburger does better and that the game remains strong and vibrant for years to come. And I’ve certainly enjoyed the lead-up to Fabled and the imminent rotation- it’s been fun to come up with “draft picks” and speculate about what is or isn’t going to be in the next era of the game. It’s been exciting, but here on the eve of release I can feel both my own excitement and the excitement of the community deflating. I’m left wondering if Fabled is going to be a big fumble.
Don’t get me wrong- I like the idea of the set and I’m totally on board with rotations and reprints. I think it’s great for the game to like how Magic: The Gathering used to do with their Core Sets and the recent Foundations set- offer players a solid curated, “best of” range of cards that can serve as an onramp for newcomers or as collection boosters for legacy players. But the initial potential of Fabled seems to have gotten lost somewhere along the way. And the large number of mostly mediocre reprints is the chief concern I have, other than the potential scarcity which could completely undermine the whole notion of giving new players a starting point.
In a few weeks after the dust clears I’ll be revisiting my Fabled draft picks to see how wrong or right I was, but surveying the cards that are coming back I have to say that I’m largely disappointed. Scrolling through the Disney Lorcana app or over on one of the deckbuilding sites, it’s a whole lot of the same old same old. Familiar cards that absolutely do not spark excitement at this point. And lots of “why the hell would they reprint that” fodder. To make matters worse, the new “Epic” treatment is hardly exciting when they are just borderless variants of mostly pre-existing and largely unremarkable cards. I absolutely love the Iconic Mickey and Minnie- but god’s sake, they are going to be so rare as to practically not exist.
I can’t say that I’m very excited to crack open a booster box of Fabled and wind up with another 10 Flounders to add to the 30 I have in a bulk box somewhere. As for the better rares- classic cards like Tinker Bell – Giant Fairy or Hades – Infernal Schemer- it’s great that they are coming back and many cards are in a lower rarity tier, but as someone with an established collection I’m also not interested in buying more of them. So if I were to buy packs, which I have decided I will not, I’m gunning for playsets of just 33 cards and the extremely improbable chance of pulling an Enchanted or Iconic.
I’m very excited for the 33 new cards- The Goofy Movie and Dumbo stuff in particular. But let’s be real, as someone with a big collection of Disney Lorcana cards, I’d have to be an idiot to invest strongly in sealed Fabled product. Many other players feel the same way based on the online discourse, and this is not a promising sign for the set. If the reprints had different artwork at least I think I’d be on board – like that Captain Hook – Forceful Duelist they did for Reign of Jafar which certainly seems like it was intended to be a preview of updated art in Fabled.
Again, for new players, this fine. But for every new player, there are five veterans chanting the “buy singles” mantra. And buddy, I am one of them. Don’t buy these packs if you’ve been into the game for a while. Just buy the singles you want. And that is something I don’t think Ravensburger wants to hear. Just ask yourself if you really want to open packs and get piles and piles of bulk and twenty-five cent rares to try to get just 33 cards out of the set or a needle-in-a-haystack premium rare.
It does make me wonder if this eleventh hour “whoops, not enough product” fiasco is a play to avoid mountains of Fabled sitting on store shelves release weekend. Undoubtedly Ravensburger has taken note of comments online and at events, and preordering up until this allocation shortage was pretty much open season. It’s not a good look if this set doesn’t sell out as soon as it drops. If I walk in to buy a TCG and it seems like no one is buying it and the new release looks like dead stock, that’s a dead game to me. If I have to go to three stores to scrounge up five booster packs and then I’m battling FOMO over paying scalper prices for a box- that’s a game that is viable, current, and I’ll have no trouble finding someone to play with.
I believe Ravensburger grossly misjudged the need for most of these reprints. When Fabled was planned, the team was likely looking at the product shortages and the assumption that players could not get to cards they wanted. Which was not wrong. But now, a couple of years on, it’s not exactly difficult to buy any Disney Lorcana card and if you really want Seargeant Tibbs, you can find someone like me and I’ll give you 10 of them. What is in these Fabled packs is, ultimately, of very limited value and that is in my opinion a big problem.
A much smarter plan would have been to break up the reprints- maybe with a more curatorial eye toward what really needs to be reprinted and what doesn’t- and sprinkle them throughout the next four sets in rotation. Give each of these reprints a new illustration to freshen it up and maybe even make it fit more with each set’s concept. Again, that Hook in Reign of Jafar was the right way to do it but then they just went did something else that wasn’t as great an idea.
Ultimately, Fabled is simply not a release tuned toward folks like myself and the intent is that it is more of a beginner product. Maybe Ravensburger expects that we’re gonna buy singles to get those 33 new cards. But that doesn’t really explain reprinting filler cards- barely even worth calling some of them draft chaff- and then pulling back on allocations right before release. Given the amount of product that I’ve seen on shelves lately, I’m sure there is fear of Disney Lorcana having a Fallen Empires moment (IYKYK – look it up if you don’t), but the good news is that there’s still plenty of new cards headed our way and maybe – just maybe – that grand meta shakedown many have hoped for. And it won’t be long before we are listening for Whispers in the Well!
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