Lorcana Sealed League Start

Its Lorcana League time! 12 weeks of league play began this past Thursday at a local game store near me. The format is a sealed league format, meaning players can only use cards they get from a starter deck plus 2 extra booster packs per week (if they choose to buy them). No other cards can be added to their pool except through trading with other league participants. League nights are every Thursday and Saturday and participants can earn a maximum of 10 league points per week through games played, wins, losses, teaching other players, etc.

I have not decided if I want to do a dedicated blog post every single week to go over my league play or if it would be better to just add a section to a blog each week that deals with league play in addition to another topic. We'll see what happens!

Starter Deck and Pulls

For this league, players had a choice of which starter deck they wanted (until some options started running out). I had a choice of all 3 starters and decided to go with emerald/ruby. I am on record saying that I believe this is the weakest of the 3 starters but I chose it because I have the least experience with these cards and wanted to give myself a fun challenge! The deck contains a few good cards (Dragon Fire, Mad Hatter Gracious Host, Aladdin Heroic Outlaw, come to mind) but ultimately it doesn't have a very cohesive strategy and can brick on uninkables pretty easily.

That being said, I was hoping that some of my pulls from my 3 total booster packs would add some fun options to play with! I was crossing my fingers for some good "challenge punish" cards like Cheshire Cat or Flynn Rider, but sadly there were none to be found. Instead, my pulls looked like this:

My "Big Hits" for the packs. Notice a conspicuous lack of two colors.

My applicable pulls for the deck I started with.

So yeah, the pulls were not amazing. I didn't get any of the cards I was hoping for, although a few of the pulls in other colors will be nice to have for my general collection. The league also allows for trades between league participants, so I had some ammo to try and improve my deck!

Out of the cards I pulled, I ended up adding most of them to my deck and taking out some of the bad cards, particularly uninkables. I added all the emerald and ruby cards I pulled except for Stampede and Tangle (up there as one of the worst cards in the game!). I didn't expect to get much (if any) use out of Moana Chosen by the Ocean for her ability, but an inkable 2/6 that quests for 2 is decent. The two copies of Tinker Bell Most Helpful and the single copy of Goofy Daredevil made me decide to go all-in on an evasive strategy. The starter deck already contained some solid evasive cards like Pongo Ol' Rascal so I figured why not hard skew into that? That meant that my deck became a sort of tempo evasive deck, focusing on getting decent evasive lore batteries out on curve and praying my opponent didn't have ways to deal with them. While the deck did contain a few decent late game threats, it had basically no card draw and no ramp, so I didn't have much flexibility in how I could play.

The Games

Game time! The league organizer said that the format for games would be casual. Just play with whoever you want as much as you want and keep track of wins and losses. I had the pleasure of playing against 4 different opponents.

My first opponent was playing sapphire/steel. I will try to outline the archetypes that the decks fell into, but being a sealed event, some of them will be pretty loose. This opponent was running a ramp-focused strategy with a lot of big late game threats. Game 1 my opponent totally bricked early and played almost no characters as their hand was full of all their high cost cards. I was able to set up my board totally unopposed and start questing. Later into the game my opponent was able to get some cards on the board, including a few big characters, but by then I had multiple evasive characters questing for 6 lore per turn and my opponent had no answer for them, so it was a smooth win for me. Game 2 I got stuck at 4 ink for most of the game but it didn't matter again. Tinker Bell Most Helpful and Pongo Ol' Rascal got out early and my opponent couldn't stop them from questing over and over. By the end of the game I had 2 copies each of Tinker Bell and Pongo on the board, exactly what my deck wanted. A quick 2-0 to start the league! This matchup illustrated the power of evasive when the opponent has few ways to deal with them.

After these first two games, I made my first trade of the evening.

I traded a Magical Golden Flower and Lilo Galactic Hero for a third copy of Tinker Bell Most Helpful and Captain Hook Ruthless Pirate. Did Captain Hook fit with my strategy? Nope. But he is one of my favorite characters in the set and was in a color I could actually play for now, so I was happy to get him.

Opponent number two only wanted to play a single game and I got absolutely wrecked. The game lasted all of about 8 minutes. They were playing sapphire/steel ramp and had been trading with multiple other people already. They ramped hard early and then top decked 3 big characters in a row once they hit 7-8 ink in their inkwell and there was nothing I could do. I got a few of my evasive characters on the board by the end of the game, but they just hit the perfect ramp and won with ease. My deck's slow build up and lack of strong early challengers was on full display this time around.

After the game, they were interested in trading so we did the following transaction.

I gave up Maurice World-Famous Inventor, Maui Demigod, Mother Knows Best, and Simba Rightful Heir in exchange for Just In Time (for my collection, not to play in the league currently) and Mulan Imperial Soldier. Mulan was a bit of a luxury buy for me, but the potential of her banishing an opposing character while I had a board of multiple evasives was just a bit too good to pass up. Plus I didn't own any copies of her yet anyway, so I was fine giving up a couple extra cards to get her.

On to opponent number 3! He was playing an amber/amethyst aggro/swarm deck.

Game 1 I fell behind early and never recovered. He was able to establish a wide board of small characters and quested early, while I struggled to build up my inkwell and get any kind of significant board presence. He had a clear strategy and executed it perfectly. Game 2 was a similar story at the start, but I was able to keep the lore count pretty low by stopping 1 character per turn from questing with Jasper Common Crook. That meant I was actually able to make it into the mid game relatively even on lore, which made all the difference. I shifted Aladdin Heroic Outlaw on curve and got the 4 lore swing to tie the game at 9 lore apiece. Later on, my opponent started to pull away again thanks to a few evasive characters and taking out Aladdin, but I drew Captain Hook Ruthless Pirate off the top and totally shut down his evasive lore batteries to seal the win for myself. I was happy to see Captain Hook make a genuine impact!

Game 3 saw me get the right draws at the right times and play multiple evasive characters on curve to pump up lore early. Captain Hook made another appearance at the end of the game to put the nail in the coffin and secure me the 2-1 match victory. Its great when all the pieces hit the board at the right times in this deck!

My final opponent of the day was playing an amethyst/steel control deck with as much draw power as he could cram into it. He had spent the entire evening trying to trade with every single player in the room since he wanted to play a color combo that wasn't a default starter deck. By the time we played our game, his deck was at full power.

I started the game off very well, getting an early lore lead with some evasive characters and keeping his board largely in check. That changed in the mid game, however, when I had 4 terrible draws in a row. He was able to use that time to draw into some removal in the form of Grab Your Swords, Smash, and Fire the Cannons to clear my board, which meant I lost all momentum going into the late game. His crazy card draw enabled him to get the cards he needed exactly when he needed them, so by the end of the game my deck had run out of steam. I almost had a line at the end of the game to take out his board (a combo of Jasper, Lefou Instigator, Dragon Fire, and challenging with everything) but I ended up just 1 card short and he won 20-16. It was an awesome game and a matchup I'd love to play again sometime. That meant I ended the day 4-3 in games, enough wins/games played to max out my 10 league points for the week.

I also made a few more small trades at the end of the day:

1. Traded 1x Archimedes Highly Educated Owl for 1x Gaston Arrogant Hunter

2. Traded 1x Magic Broom Bucket Brigade for 1x Pongo Ol' Rascal (completing my playset in this deck)

3. Traded 1x Freeze for 1x Goofy Daredevil

These small trades netted me a few more decent cards to add to my deck for next week. Pongo and Goofy obviously slot into my deck as extra evasive characters that quest for 2, and Gaston gives me a really good 2-drop to threaten my opponent's questing characters.

That wraps up this first league report! I don't plan to buy any additional packs from this store for the league for the next few weeks at least, as they are charging $25 for 2 packs, which is absurd. They have said that once they receive more product in mid-September, the prices for packs should go down, so I will be waiting until then. With that in mind, the only way to continue improving my deck in the meantime will be to make more trades and move some pieces around to "optimize" it as much as I can.

Until next time though, thanks for reading!