Well folks, it’s time for the winsome M-I-C-K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E outro. We’ve made the decision here at Goonhammer to end The Mikey Mouse Club. To be completely honest, this was not just an editorial decision but also one that I was considering myself as it feels like the release of Fabled, which closes off the first era of the game, makes for a nice endpoint. I’ve covered Disney Lorcana here in this space (reminder- always, always casually!) for going on two years and that is a long damn time to write about one game for me. I’ve been in the games writing business for over 25 years and I have to tell you that committing to writing about just one game was interesting but also, here at the end, somewhat grueling.
Reflecting back on the past two years of The Mikey Mouse Club and this long-term assignment, I’m struck by the narrative it all tells. This is a game about stories, after all, so it makes sense. When I first started this column, the game was white-hot. We were just into The First Chapter and it was wild. The big Gen Con launch had just happened, cards were almost impossible to find, and organized events were bringing in big numbers of a wide range of players- many of whom had never played a TCG before. It was really a special time- it was exciting and it felt like, at the time, that Disney Lorcana was going to just completely blow up.
Those days were also personally really special to me because my kids, now 14 and 15, were heavily interested in playing and going to League every week. We had so much fun in those days, competing and getting excited to break our prize packs and cheering when we got a great pull. I was buying singles like crazy (paying way, way too much for chase cards) and hitting up every shop in town scrounging for boosters. This continued through Rise of the Floodborn, when Lorcana scalping really hit its peak. Even my FLGS was scalping boxes. I started to notice that some of the initial excitement was giving way to frustration and some of the new people that were coming around started to go away.
Over the next couple of sets, I think the game really hit its stride as a deeper, richer metagame emerged and viable strategies other than Ruby Amethyst started to pop up. I got really into Emerald Steel discard, and started to do better competitively. But when the first set championships came around, my daughter and I (my son having lost interest by then) went and noticed that the entire vibe of the game had changed. The event was not fun, marred by cheating accusations, angry middle-aged men swearing at each other, and a general sense of sweaty, over-competitiveness. For a while afterwards I was feeling kind of down on the game in general, as it had gone from a really fun, inclusive and exciting thing to yet another TCG driven into the ground by Mr. Suitcase and his peers- mostly ill-mannered men and boys with bad hygiene. The EIC of Goonhammer actually had to take me aside and say “Hey Barnes, your coverage has been really downbeat, you gotta get on the good foot here”. And I looked back on the articles of that time and totally agreed.
So, as my daughter winnowed out of the game and lost interest I found myself completely disinterested in competitive play beyond observation. I got more into making theme decks and exploring budget strategies. Pixelborn (pour one out) was a godsend, and I continued to play 40, 50 games a week and I found that I was actually loving the game more than ever- on my own terms. Lorcanito and Tabletop Simulator continue to provide a stopgap solution since Ravensburger still hasn’t produced an online platform, which I think is a tremendous mistake.
In the sets leading up to Fabled, I started to see a definite downward trend in the game- not necessarily in my enjoyment of it, but in its relative uptake. Boosters were overstocked, leagues were down to 7-8 players, and despite high profile events like the World Championship in Orlando a couple of months ago, it all seemed like the game had kind of settled into that third tier of TCGs, below Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon. Where all the games that are successful enough to keep going usually wind up. And with Fabled being, in my opinion, a pretty terrible product packed with unasked for reprints and limited new cards, I can’t help but wonder if the decline might go further over time.
Of course, active players are going to shout that down but here’s the thing. Over two years of development, I very much feel that Disney Lorcana may have reached its apex. They’ve mined most of the animated work, and the upcoming Pixar release might extend it for another year or so, but I find myself thinking that there’s only so much more that can be done with the mechanics and setting. And there’s nothing wrong with this- not every design can last like Magic: The Gathering. And even then, those decades are marked by some very sharp rises and falls.
So maybe this is a trough period for the game, maybe upcoming sets bringing in great IP like The Black Cauldron and Gargoyles will lift it back up. But even if, I still can’t imagine the game ever getting back to the same level of excitement and fun it was at two years ago.
I don’t want to sound overly negative about the game- I still think it’s awesome. I still get together with my buddy Neuromorph to play online and you better bet I’ll be all in if they do an Arena-like app for it. But I’m also at the point where pursuing it as a primary, ongoing gaming concern is a case of diminishing returns. I sincerely hope that Ravensburger, Ryan Miller, and the development team continues to have success with the game and finds new ways to explore the design space. I hope invested players continue to enjoy organized play and events like the set championships and other tournaments. The end is not in sight for the game, to be clear!
As for me, well, I’m moving on. As I said above, I’ve written about games for a very long time and despite my attempts to “retire”, I keep getting pulled back in. And when I was asked if there’s anything else I’d like to cover here at Goonhammer, I had something already in mind. So if you liked my writing here, stay tuned because coming up next is Games from The Crypt, an ongoing series where I look at the tabletop games of the pre-Kickstarter era. There’s so many games out there that many tabletop players today may not be aware of, or understand the importance of, so I’m going to excavate some choice titles and tell you why they still matter today. It should be fun!
Thanks to everyone who read this column, whether you enjoyed it or not I appreciate you all and thanks to the Goonhammer Editors for giving me a chance to write about this great game for so long.
See you real soon!
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