Humble Beginnings

Welcome to The Lorcana Brief! My name is Henry, and I am a new Disney Lorcana player from beautiful Indiana, USA.

I am starting this blog as a bit of a personal project to track my journey though Lorcana, and maybe as an interesting read for others out there! I have noticed there is a ton of Lorcana video content but very little text content to enjoy when one is unable to watch a full video. Perhaps I can be someone who tries to fill that void? I guess we'll see.

So what is this blog going to cover? Things could obviously grow and change, but my primary idea for now is to mainly use it to document my Lorcana experience. This includes my humble start with the game (that we'll get to shortly), going over decks I'm playing and new cards I'm acquiring, and of course talking about many of my games!

With that quick intro, lets get into some content!

Some Background

I am coming into this game as a relatively low spender. I have not seriously played/bought into a TCG/CCG for many years and am planning to play this game competitively on a budget. I enjoy playing with a "limited" card pool (playing only with what I pull, buying minimal singles, etc.) and don't have an unlimited amount of money to throw at paper and ink. So I hope that frames this blog as one that may better represent the average Lorcana player as opposed to the hardcore tournament grinder who mortgages their house for 20 playsets of legendaries!

That being said, I plan to play this game at a decent competitive level. I'm a naturally competitive person (having just come off of competing in the Star Wars Armada World Championships back in March) and I'm lucky enough to have the time and means to drive around to events/tournaments around the midwest every once in a while. I am already getting plugged into some local Lorcana league play here in Indiana, and plan to attend all tournaments I am able to in the area!

As for my experience with TCGs, I played all the classics growing up. MTG, Yugioh, Pokemon, etc. I had a pretty deep Hearthstone phase for a while (as I'm sure many did) and have even designed a few of my own TCGs, including self-publishing one! I attended Indiana University and majored in game design, so I like to think I understand games pretty well. That being said, I have not truly gotten stuck into a TCG in a long time, so I am excited to jump into Lorcana from the start and devote a good amount of time to it. I have already played about 50 games on Pixelborn so we're off to a good start!

The Current Collection

So as the title implies, I am starting from humble beginnings when it comes to Lorcana. I did not attend GenCon, but did the stupid thing and bought a set of starter decks on eBay (don't be like me). So I am starting my Lorcana journey with a single copy of each of the starter decks, and the 3 booster packs that came with them.

So what all did I pull from those booster packs to supplement the starter decks? Well, your boy got lucky! I managed to pull 4(!!!) legendaries out of 3 packs, including a foil. My best/most impactful pulls from those packs are:

• 1x foil Ursula Power Hungry

• 2x Maleficent Monstrous Dragon

• 1x Elsa Spirit of Winter

• 1x Cruella De Vil Miserable as Usual

• 1x Flynn Rider Charming Rogue

• 1x Goofy Daredevil

• 1x Triton Sea King

A foil legendary in the first 3 packs is luck I will absolutely take, even if Ursula isn't a top tier card.

Some of those pulls are obviously more impactful than others, but I got some really good hits! 2x Maleficents are huge, as that is a genuinely good top-end card in Ruby decks like Ruby/Amethyst control and Ruby/Sapphire ramp. The Ursula, while a gorgeous card in foil, is ultimately just fine. She is awesome in games with more than 1 opponent and fine in general constructed as a top-end threat that replaces herself and threatens big lore (although being un-inkable is really rough). Elsa shares the same un-inkable problem but provides excellent board control and lore that she ends up usually being more impactful than Ursula. Flynn is one of the lowkey best pulls here as he is great in both aggro and control strategies for emerald. Hoping to eventually snag a playset of him! The other cards there are all decent, especially with such a limited card pool that I have right now.

I will continue to mention new cards I acquire so readers at home can have an idea of the card pool I am working with at any given time!

Decks I'm Working With

So for now, this section is going to be pretty boring until I get new stuff, but this part will go over the decks I'm currently working on.

Right now, I am just sticking to the default starters with a few additions in the shape of some of the cards I got from the boosters.

Starting with Sapphire/Steel, this one had the least impactful new additions. I added in the Triton, a 4th Aurora Regal Princess, a Donald Duck Strutting His Stuff, and a few more cards mainly just aimed at getting some of the terrible cards out of the deck (goodbye 2x Frying Pan, 3x Coconut Basket, and 2x Magical Golden Flower! You won't be missed). On a side note, Frying Pan might be the worst card in the whole game. Utter garbage. So for now, this deck will be playing mostly the same until I get ahold of more cards to slot in.

Next, Ruby/Emerald. Outside of a few big bombs (looking at you Maleficent), I didn't have a ton of upgrades to this one. This was again a case of subbing in some decent cards and removing a lot of the trash from the deck. Notable additions were the 2x Maleficent dragons, 1x Flynn, 2x Jasper to complete the playset, 1x Goofy, 1x Curella, and 1x Genie The Ever Impressive (as a slightly better 2 drop than Aladdin Prince Ali). This deck still won't be able to shine until I get ahold of some of the big hitters in these colors (Be Prepared, Kuzco, etc.). The Ruby/Emerald starter deck definitely seemed like the weakest when I was testing the 3 starter decks on Pixelborn (more on that later), and I don't think these upgrades move the needle a ton, but they at least add a bit more consistency since I was able to get rid of some un-inkables.

Lastly we have Amber/Amethyst. This one of course got the most upgrades, as the majority of my big pulls were in these colors. Ursula, Elsa, Jafar Keeper of Secrets, a 4th Broom, and a few other cards found their way in here in exchange for most of the songs (not Friends on the Other Side obviously), many of the bad actions/items, and Sven (because I have better top end cards now). This is the starter deck I had the most success with on Pixelborn in my testing, and adding Elsa as a top end bomb (along with some other pieces) makes me think this deck is my best currently.

While I am sticking with the default starter deck combos for now, by no means will this stay true going forward. Once I have a bigger card pool, I will be mixing things up and trying to make actually cohesive decks instead of just a mess of the best cards I have in those colors. So stay tuned for more on this front down the road!

A Note on Pixelborn

As I mentioned a couple times, I played a good bit on Pixelborn before my starter decks arrived. I exclusively played with the starter decks on Pixelborn, which may seem odd at first given I could have played literally anything I wanted. The reason I did this was to not fall in love with a bunch of cards (particularly high rarity cards) that I may never actually get my hands on. Like I said at the top, I don't plan to buy a ton of singles, but rather am planning to play with mostly stuff that I open/trade for. So I didn't want to get used to playing with 4x Elsa or 4x Whole New World and then never actually get those cards IRL. Obviously I will eventually play with some stuff I don't own on Pixelborn, but I enjoy using it to test decks I actually own as opposed to those I don't.

So What's Coming Up?

I have a couple events coming up that I'm excited to participate in! A store near me is having a sealed starter deck release event on Saturday August 19th that I have tickets for, along with an organized play league starting the following weekend that I will be playing in. Like most stores, this one received incredibly limited product, so prices are through the roof and buying opportunities are scarce. In the starter deck release event, each player will receive a starter deck + 2 booster packs (3 if they stay for the whole event). So I should be nabbing myself a second copy of one of the starters as well as 4 total booster packs. That's not a ton, but at this point, that's honestly a ton of new potential cards that will make a big impact on my collection!

For the league, the store is again giving each player a starter deck + 2 additional boosters to upgrade that deck with. They then want all league players to continue to use only that deck + a max of 2 booster pack purchases per week to upgrade it throughout the league. They're running this on an honor system, so I hope that players adhere to that! While this is a bit of an odd format for a league, I'm happy to play any games of Lorcana I can get. I will of course keep this blog updated with my pulls for that and how that shapes up. League nights are every Thursday and Saturday, so I should be playing 1-2 times per week.

That's all for now though! I appreciate those of you who have read through all of this and look forward to documenting my Lorcana adventures here going forward!