Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Lorcona podcast.
I am Max and I'm Sam and we are back to a two-hander for this podcast.
Sam has no longer abandoned me for all of you to be stuck listening to me.
So we're just getting back from SCGCon, if you're not familiar, that is Star City Games
out in Virginia.
It is their con.
They kind of go up and down the East Coast and do a little Lorcona magic and flesh and
blood, which was pretty fun.
It was our first big Lorcona tournament.
They had two 1Ks and a 5K over the course of the weekend.
And we did one of the 1Ks because Sam, you've never done a tournament before.
Nope, it was my first tournament.
Yes, it was an experience.
If you've never done a tournament before, it can be pretty intimidating.
It's not any different than your locals event where it's going to be a core constructed
event most of the time, but there's a lot more folks, there's a lot less space and there's
a lot more attention to time and your mannerisms.
You need to play cleanly.
You need to play efficiently.
So it can definitely be nerve wracking.
I think I shook for like the first half of the day.
I still do.
I've been playing trading card games in a tournament setting for probably 15-ish years and I still
get nervous at different points in the day.
Not unusual.
I think that's part of the fun, right?
Is it allows for players to make mistakes.
It allows for you to be able to jump ahead and make better plays because you see an opening,
especially in Lorcona, a very chess-like back and forth style that it has.
So Sam, what did you play at this 1K tournament?
I played Ruby Amethyst.
I also played Ruby Amethyst.
And why did you play Ruby Amethyst?
I played it Ruby Amethyst because one, I played it the last set.
So it was the deck I was most comfortable with, with going into this SCG con.
Pretty much brand new out of the new set into the Inklands.
We only got two short weeks to figure out what we wanted to play.
So I felt like Ruby Amethyst was my best bet at doing well because I understood the play
patterns already and not that much got added to it.
And also because I felt like it was one of the strongest decks that I could bring.
That makes sense.
I think one thing you'll hear a lot of when you start to get into tournaments with any
trading card game is you'll hear a term referenced.
That term is metagame.
And that's what the episode's about today.
It's not just a recap of our tournament.
So if you hung in there through that, thank you so much.
But it is about what is a metagame and how can you excel at different points during different
metagames?
So the first thing we kind of got to figure out is what the heck is a metagame?
Sam, have you heard of the term metagame before we started playing trading card games together?
No.
It's not super common in most circles to hear this term, but this term Wikipedia, I found
the definition of that is a game within a game or the way to play a particular game.
So it's a pretty interesting term when you apply it to a trading card game.
Generally, the use case when it comes to lingo of metagame is what decks are the best suited
for any particular point in time.
So during this tournament, there were quite a few different choices, as Sam alluded to,
it was brand new for Into the Inklands.
So some people were testing out new things like the new green purple tempo style decks
that were coming out of Europe.
There was the always classic steel song deck, always classic Ruby Amethyst control deck.
We have the blue steel deck, which is a popular choice towards the end of Rise of the Floodborne
and had gotten some good tools for the matchup.
The brand new purple steel Jafar style combo decks, as well as a slew of different steel
emerald variations that are all pretty much solid choices to be playing, not to mention
other homebrews and rogue decks that people felt like may have had an edge during the
metagame.
So that's generally what we're talking about when we apply the term metagame or when you
hear somebody say, I'm metagaming or I'm trying to pick the best deck for the meta, you will
hear turns a phrase like that, typically what it means is they are trying to select the
deck that they think is the best one or the best positioned to pick on the best one.
That's kind of the concept of a metagame.
So that is what they're trying to unpack.
And then the next thing you got to ask yourself when you're considering a metagame, typically
you'll hear a metagame referenced as healthy or unhealthy.
Sam, do you want to walk us through what healthy versus unhealthy meta might look like?
So a healthy meta would be when you have several different decks that have the potential to
win unhealthy is the opposite.
You have one, maybe two decks that might win and they just win all the tournaments and
you basically have to play that deck if you want to stand a chance to win the tournament.
It's a difficult time when there's an unhealthy meta because there is usually one, maybe two,
maybe it's one and a variation of the one best deck.
And one of the things you really have to do is try to figure out, am I going to just learn
to play this deck?
Am I going to take that deck and make a couple changes so that it's very good in a mirror
style match?
Or am I going to play a completely different off meta deck that I built entirely to best
this particular one deck?
That's a little tougher to do right now in Lorcan because at time of recording we've
only had three 204 card sets.
So we only have about 612 unique options.
So you can only get so honed in on beating one particular deck.
Now an unhealthy meta example coming out of Lorcan is probably what we had in Rise of
the Floodborne where Ruby Amethyst was just the best deck, kind of bar none.
It was the deck you saw placing at tournaments.
It was heavily infected in the Pixelborne meta, only breeding a couple options like
Blue Steel out of the absolute dominance that that deck had.
And the reason people started moving towards Blue and Blue Steel specifically was to try
to leverage the power of ramp and a whole new world to stop the red purple Ruby Amethyst
powerhouse style decks from controlling everything.
Since Inklands, at least initially, and with any new set, you tend to see a general healthy
meta game because cards tend to come out that answer previously troublesome cards.
In this case we have cards like the Bear Necessities and the new green two drop Ursula which allows
you to take out various different songs and or anything not a character in the case of
the Bear Necessities and be able to attack the game that way.
So aggro decks or the Steel Song decks have a bit of an advantage in that they can get
a little bit more information early in the game and try to have a better game plan going
into the mid game or just, you know, snipe that always pesky be prepared.
So lots of deck choices that we faced when we played over at SCGCon and we both won and
lost to a variety of different decks.
One of the things you can ask yourself is kind of what, how does a meta happen?
What is going on here?
Like why did this suddenly happen?
Well as I alluded to with the case of going from Floodborne into the Inklands, there was
an already established best deck and that was the Ruby Amethyst control deck.
So a lot of people were going to play that deck out of the gate.
They were also going to figure out how can I leverage some of these new toys in the way
of things like Bear Necessities and Ursula and well as three drop Ursula to try to take
over the throne from the Ruby Amethyst decks and that's kind of how this particular new
metagame started was the Ruby Amethyst decks were kind of, okay, this is going to be the
big target of the format.
So everybody started to build around and play around with things that took advantage of
it and we saw the green purple deck kind of spawn.
Oh, repeatable Ursula as you say.
That sounds pretty good to me.
Very cheap interactive characters.
They also impacted the board.
Cards like Klaugkicker could bounce.
The two drop Kuzco's and slow down the production of Madam Mims and that really gave the tempo
deck the extra couple of turns breathing room they needed to get ahead and then cement staying
ahead by taking good songs out of the Ruby Amethyst decks hands with Ursula and then
inevitably singing something like Mother Knows Best with the three drop Ursula to return
two characters and just cement the victory for them.
So lots of cool things can develop out of a metagame.
Traditionally, and we saw this in the first chapter, the first kind of significant play
pattern that we saw in Lurkana, the cards that people were just like, I don't know if
you can handle this or we need to be able to handle this or we're going to be in big
trouble and that was first turn Lilo, second turn Simba, protective cub.
So you could quest for two out of the gate and then protect it with the two, three stat
line that ended up being very good in the first chapter meta so that you can protect
your Lilo and continue questing and build up a quick amount of lore so much so that
your last few characters could get you over the finish line if your board got wiped or
your characters got challenged off the board.
So that was kind of the first major thing and that's not uncommon for an aggressive
deck to begin to cement things, right?
You need a proactive deck that's trying to win the game.
First question you're generally asking a game is how the heck do I win?
That is what the aggressive decks have started to do is go, okay, we're just going to take
the simplest route to winning the game.
Then you have to develop a deck that beats it and that's kind of where the Steel Song
decks and the initial builds of Ruby Amethyst started to come through.
We're just like, you know, we actually can interact in the early game with the steel
removal package or with some of the smaller, cheaper characters that we don't really care
what happens to early on and we just generate a bunch of card advantage through something
like a magic mirror and then just play a be prepared and they can't answer it.
And then we follow up by just controlling the board with expensive finishers like Elsa
and Maleficent Dragon.
So it was a really popular way to do that and Steel Song, of course, singing songs like
grab your sword way ahead of schedule to wipe three or four characters off the board very
quickly against an aggressive opponent.
So then we started to see the decks that beat it and then we started to see changes to those
decks because now those two decks started to become more popular in the first chapter
meta and they had to figure out ways to tech their deck out to beat the opposite one of
those particular decks.
So the mid rangey decks either adopted a bigger strategy or a bit of a smaller strategy to
go fast or a bigger strategy to try to control things a little bit more effectively and try
to play around, be prepared by having one or two characters on the board or shifting
to smaller characters early on like Lilo and Simba, who was also doing double duty to protect
her singers and using the steel removal suite to take care of opposing characters or be
able to give yourself cards back in hand through a whole new world after you depleted your
entire hand very quickly.
So there were a lot of ways that the metagame started to evolve.
Even in Lorcan we saw it.
It usually starts at step one, which is the aggro decks.
I think that's the one strategy you and I never really like jumped on that was kind
of the first deck you played weekly.
First chapter, I think it was one of the first decks we built because it was an easy deck
to play and the lemon lime aggro deck.
It was just easy to figure out.
There wasn't much thought to it.
You didn't like it because it was too easy to play.
Too easy to play.
It was still think the ones now.
I mean, they're a little bit more thought provoking, but still too easy to play.
They can be and they've definitely lost effectiveness, especially with things like Madam Mim Fox,
teeth and ambitions, the very effective line of first turn Cinderella, second turn, let
the storm rage on or strength of a raging fire to be able to answer threats early and
then go aerial and to grab your sword, which we saw since first chapter.
Pinocchio, purple Pinocchio, pick it up, re exert another character, smash into that first
character, pick that character up, refresh it.
It's very easy to answer aggressive decks that you're not always going to have the right
hand for it.
I definitely played against a lemon lime aggro deck at the SCG con and lost my first game
because I just didn't have enough heavy hitters out of the gate.
My one threes aren't good in a tournament structure when you don't know what you're
going to be playing against.
They definitely have the best chance on that opening game because you might not have your
teeth innovations or your low drops that you kept in your hand because you're not expecting
to play an aggro deck.
So I do think it can catch you off guard.
Certainly.
And with the tools to strip you out of late game effects or those removal spells, they
can catch you.
Bear Necessities can take your one removal spell you were hoping to use.
It can do a lot of work to leverage those advantages.
Or take your card draw.
So now you're kind of just stuck.
Stuck one card a turn is a lot worse in a control deck.
So there are a lot of options that you can do now.
And that's kind of how a meta tends to grow.
It starts with that seed that is aggression and then grows from there because aggro tends
to be the first, best, and most consistent deck just because it's the most obvious question
of how do you win?
And then they figure it out very quickly.
Oh, I can just turn these things sideways and until you stop me, I win.
Okay, stop me.
Then it's figuring out what the best way to in fact stop them actually is.
And then you start to see the decks that can deal with it begin to evolve from there and
they have to then start to fight each other.
And then what are the tools that are effective in that matchup?
So that kind of all brings us to one big question.
We talked about an unhealthy meta, right?
You can either play the deck that is very, very good or you play specifically to try
to leverage an advantage against that deck that may weaken you to other people who are
doing similar.
But what do you do in a healthy meta game?
What do you do then?
How do you pick the best deck during a healthy meta game?
So Sam alluded to it earlier when she was talking about selecting Ruby Amethyst as her
deck of choice and that was familiarity.
That's really important, right?
You can gain an advantage over somebody else because you understand the deck in a more
intuitive way than they do.
Even though you're both playing the best deck, you have learned how to play the deck, but
I truly understand how to play the deck gives me a significant advantage.
Whether if we're playing the identical 60 cards or not, maybe slight variations.
That's when you also start to see variations in the deck.
We talked a lot about Sorcerer's Spellbook getting back into the deck for SCG Khan because
it was just so darn important in the mirror.
Harder to protect the Queen's Castles when your opponent's deck has Maui's and Madame
Mim Fox's and Maui's Fish Hooks.
So we talked a lot about including Spellbook because the mirror is stone cold to it.
It can't interact with that item at all.
I heavily debated putting in two.
Yes.
We played a lot of different little micro variations of that and then from there, after
you've decided what's healthy, it's what are you comfortable with and learning how to play
against the other decks.
So that's just rigorous amounts of play testing.
So we are fortunate enough to have a bunch of folks from locals come over and we play
tested many days to make sure that we understood, A, what the heck do we want to play?
Which took too long to decide.
It took a very long time to decide.
Also figuring out what was good.
What was a flash in the pan?
There were some decks that were just like, no, no, no, this is not a real deck.
This is not, this is too cute of a strategy or doesn't do enough.
I don't know how to play this.
I don't know how to navigate this.
So I don't think that's going to work.
So you got to learn all those things, especially early in a meta changing like we've seen here
early with Into the Ink Land, especially adding in a whole new card type that is Warp
things with locations.
You have to then try to figure out after you've gotten comfortable with it, what are the optimal
choices and what are the optimal play patterns when you're playing against specific decks.
And this will come down to an episode about inking.
It's inevitable we're going to get to an inking episode.
And I know that's one of the more requested we've seen over on YouTube.
Thanks everybody for the comments.
Really appreciate those.
We see you.
One of the ways to succeed at inking is understanding what cards are good or bad in the matchup.
So you have to immediately start to understand quickly, this is not an effective card in
the matchup or this is my best card in this matchup.
This does not get inked at any cost, even if it is inkable.
So you have to start to learn how to leverage those things.
How do you mulligan effectively?
Everything changes going into games two or three because now you have a lot more information
than you do in game one where you're going, I'm going to keep a hand that is okay against
just about everything.
Right.
You want that borderline playable hand.
So picking the right deck is definitely a matter of personal preference.
It's definitely a matter of play style, especially in a healthy meta.
Are you more of a mid range player like me who would rather play something like the Amber
Steel song decks?
Are you more of a controlling player like Sam and you'd rather gravitate towards something
like Jafar or the Ruby Amethyst style control decks.
It's all about personal preference.
It's rare that you're going, you are going to be the one who breaks the game in half,
especially with a digital client like Pixelborne around for so many people to test so many
different cards so quickly.
So I'm not saying you shouldn't try, but definitely make sure you're paying attention to everything
that's going on.
Don't get laser focused on one thing or another.
Make sure you're considering everything.
Stack has to function against three or four or five different deck archetypes at times.
So you want to make sure that you're not stone cold to any one of them because we're not
just focused on one thing.
We're trying to spread ourselves as much as possible.
And then a game that doesn't have sideboards that makes it really, really tricky.
It definitely came down to comfortability for what I ended up choosing for the con.
And it went through three iterations of different cards here and there to what it was best against
everything.
Never would have thought we would cut all four surfer mini at the beginning of testing.
But now surfer mini looks kind of like a joke in there.
Maui's fish hook definitely cleans up a surfing mini or two.
But Pinocchio was not in my original 60 cards for this set.
And I think he really just changes the deck completely with what he can do.
It's an aggressive, offensive weapon that the deck hasn't normally had access to.
And it's good against everything.
It's good against aggro.
It's good late to take away their big threats.
Absolutely.
So he's MVP for me in this new deck.
He is quite strong, definitely showing off that he is in fact somehow the most played
Pinocchio in the current meta.
So that's pretty cool to see.
Definitely unexpected.
So hopefully this little discussion has helped you understand what the heck is a meta game?
What is a healthy versus unhealthy meta game and how can you take that information and
actually apply it to your times in testing, in playing, in whether it's locals or going
off to a big tournament.
How can you take the application of a concept of a meta game and actually apply it to your
actual practice?
I think it's pretty cool.
And one of those things that you learn over time, what's good, what's bad, how good are
they?
How bad are they?
How do I handle everything?
It just takes a lot of time.
So don't be afraid to invest, like we say, and I think we said it almost every episode,
try everything, certainly.
And remember, it's not a waste of time.
It's an investment of time.
Information and learning is just as important as winning or losing, especially when you're
getting ready for your tournament.
Sam, do you have anything else you wish to add?
I don't think so.
I think the only thing I would add is don't be afraid to go out there and try the tournaments.
It was my first one.
It was really nerve wracking, but I think next time I'd probably still be very nervous,
but a little less so.
It was very, very nice.
It was fun.
I had great opponents the entire day.
And I think the saltiest person in the room was probably me.
I probably agree.
Keep questioning.