Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Lorcanah podcast.
My name is Max.
And I'm Sam.
And we are here to talk to you today about a topic.
That's how this works.
But first we have some announcements to make because some things have happened within our
Lorcanah community that we think require at least minor addressing before we jump into
today's topic.
The first being the very first Challenger event has now taken place in Atlanta, Georgia
and Little France.
I hope I said that correctly.
Forgive me all you French listeners.
Hi and sorry.
Both events have fired off and we had two Ruby Amethyst decks in the finals, an Amber
Steelsong deck taking it down in France and in the US of A we got the event taken down
by an Amber Amethyst Mufasa style deck that no one saw coming outside of a select few
folks who are rather astute practicers of the set three format passed when most people
were interested because a lot of us weren't going to the Challenger event, us included.
But it was a really cool event to watch.
We got to see it streamed.
Both places did a stream.
I think there was success and failures on both sides of the stream.
I think the Europeans really nailed it.
They did a great job.
Specimen and Lurkana Villain did a great job with play by play and color commentaries as
well as the production value coming out of there was fantastic.
I think they did a great job keeping track of lore totals.
They did a great job of popping up card images.
That was a nice touch.
Yeah, it was really, really fun.
In North America, we had two sets of broadcasters.
I think that was a little tougher.
One of the sets of broadcasters was remote, so it didn't quite feel as nice to me to
have them as a little awkward.
Having those remote broadcasters, at least in my opinion.
I much prefer the commenters who are live.
I think that they did a pretty good job.
I think Specimen and Lurkana Villain really took the cake with their commentary.
In North America, we struggled a bit with lore totals.
We struggled a bit with card images.
I don't think we saw any.
It was a rough one from a production standpoint in North America, so I'm hoping to see a
little bit more cohesion come out of it.
By all reports, it was a very successful event.
A lot of people had a great time.
We got to see some really cool things.
Unexpected, some cool playmats on the prize wall, some prize ticket issues, it seemed
like.
A lot of people weren't thrilled with how things were laid out.
I'm not going to really touch on that.
On the whole, by and large, by a good margin, it seemed to be a very successful event for
everyone who went and had a good time and everybody who got to experience it from the
comfort of home.
Thank you very much to Ravensburger for putting that out for everybody to enjoy both in person
and virtually.
The second topic is a little bit more depressing.
I figured starting out with the good news was better, but we have gotten word that a
tool a lot of Lurkana players utilize.
If you're not familiar with it, it's known as Pixelborne.
It is a way for you to play the game virtually by computer or device of some kind electronically.
Unfortunately, the creator of that Pavel got a cease and desist sort of from Disney Ravensburger,
letting them know that the images are copywritten and the card images can no longer be utilized.
Pavel has been more than vocal about the fact that as soon as anybody gives him any word,
even a semi-official capacity to go, hey, can you pull this down?
He absolutely would.
He is living up to his word, so Pixelborne will no longer be a tool available to us.
It will be missed, certainly, I think, by a good portion of the Lurkana community.
I know some are heavily impacted as there's no chance for them to really play or experience
the game outside of this platform.
I'm hoping that in light of that, we'll see some other solutions come up.
I know Pavel's already hard at work on something different that is compliant with what Ravensburger,
Disney wants out of an online, at least will tolerate out of an online solution.
I'm excited to see what he has cooking, and I just wanted to take a moment.
I think both of us would like to thank Pavel specifically and really call out what an amazing
job he and the small team under him did to make Pixelborne run as efficiently as it did,
and to bring such a powerful tool both for playing and tracking to our community because
the game wouldn't be the same without access to such a powerful tool as Pixelborne.
So thank you, Pavel.
Yeah, definitely.
Thank you.
Let's move over now to the main topic of the episode.
Now that we've gotten the news out of the way, we are moving on to talking about a bird
and a squirrel because that is kind of where this new meta begins with a bird, Diablo,
a new card from set four, and Bucky, an old villain from set two.
He's not really a villain, but he is a villain for players of Lurkana who don't like Emerald
decks.
So I want to address kind of what's going on and what we're doing and how we can break
things down from here.
So we went from a very healthy meta with the set three being kind of this multi-choice,
you pick what deck, but not every deck answers every other deck kind of format to what looks
more at least initially, and this is not uncommon out of the gate.
We talked about this in a previous episode on metagames, so check that one out.
We're starting with what looks to be a tier zero metagame.
This Emerald Steel deck looks to be the absolute villain of the format, at least initially
coming into Ursula's return, despite the fact there's no green Ursula this time.
That was the last set.
We've got purple Ursula this time.
She is in the deck though, right?
The green ones are, but the purple ones, the new ones are not.
So what is the line for this Emerald Steel deck?
How does it work?
What is it doing that's creating such waves in this game?
Well, I'm going to walk you through the play pattern here.
Turn one, you play the one drop Diablo, who is a one, two for one, that when he enters
play he'll get to look at your opponent's hand.
You don't get to do anything.
You just get to look.
Then from there, that information allows you to sculpt your plan of attack.
The most common and most powerful line out of the deck at that point is playing Bucky
on turn two, using the shift from the three drop Diablo to discard an action and then
shift onto the one drop Diablo.
So now that triggers Bucky, which causes you to discard a card and then Diablo gets to
exert an either quest, but even common still to this line, which I know it sounds absurd,
is to sing Sudden Chill and force the opponent to discard another card.
So they are down two cards.
So if you were on the play, you're going to be down quite a few cards because you've
resourced twice as the opponent.
Get with this going on and you may most likely have committed some kind of card, played something
for that one or two.
And goodness forbid if you did something on one and two, because you probably had about
one card left in your hand at this point.
Turn three, you play Aladdin, the new Aladdin that is a Floodmourne or another Diablo, goodness
forbid, and then turn four, you play Dreadnought Jafar most commonly or a different Floodmourne
of your choice.
That's going to lose out on a total of four cards at this point, if not more.
Obviously more Diablos and more of these Sudden Chills can change a lot of things.
Diablo being able to sing, even just removal ahead of time can help clear the board.
The one drop Diablo can help let the player know if they need to go two drop Bucky or
two drop Ursula to take a troublesome song out of the opponent's hand, like grab your
swords.
It's scary what this deck can do.
Referring to it as an opening move largely in the community, this opening line, we refer
to it here of course as a play pattern, is very easy for the decks to do and it is extraordinarily
backbreaking to run your opponent out of resources so quickly.
Because remember in Lurkana, it's not like a Magic the Gathering card where it usually
makes you discard a non-land card.
This is just wholesale discard cards.
You're just getting rid of cards so you don't have any cards left to resource into ink.
You don't have any cards left to play and put in to try to deal with this combination
of synergistic cards that is just causing you a massive headache.
So it's really difficult to go from playing a game on turn two to by turn four your top
decking and hoping that you can find, hoping the top two cards of your deck are inkable
and grab your swords respectively.
And to your point with Ursula, if they play Ursula, they're getting rid of a card that
helps you deal with the situation.
Exactly.
And that's bad news.
It is an extraordinarily oppressive opening set of maneuvers from this deck and it is
causing a lot of people a lot of outrage to be perfectly honest.
This is the first time we've seen people really freak out.
Every time we see a set of cards in Lurkana that tend to work synergistically to do something
very powerful, there is often an outcry from the Lurkana community that this is too strong,
this is too difficult, the dreaded three letter ban word starts to get dropped.
I think that this is very, very powerful and I think this definitely harkens back to when
we first saw what Hiram Flavisham could do with some Popsicles in Rise of the Floodborns
meta where all of a sudden Blue-Red became the best deck bar none.
Seen outcry with Blue-Red, we've seen outcry with Red-Purple with the goat and bouncing.
People just sick of Red-Purple basically.
It's really difficult to address how, and this just does something so much quicker in
the game than first turn Popsicles, second turn One Jump Ahead, third turn Hiram.
That's still quick, that's very quick and it is, we'll talk about that line of play
a little later on, but it is extremely oppressive because at least if your opponent's over there
doing that, they're drawing cards.
I was going to say there's a little difference because you're not losing anything being the
opponent of the Red-Blue player and them drawing cards, you're not losing stuff yourself, they're
just gaining.
Exactly, and in this case, you're getting card advantage from Diablo while Bucky is
also tearing down your opponent's hand.
So there's a difference there, right?
And we did another episode, I'm going to reference a bunch of old episodes here, but some good
foundational ones.
We did an episode on card advantage.
This is not only a tempo advantage, it is also a card advantage at the same time because
you're making your opponent go down cards while you're adding characters to the board,
which is a way to win the game, while you are in some cases with Diablo going up cards.
So if your opponent's best answer is to find Hiram to be able to draw multiple cards to
be able to pad their hand out, they're giving you cards too.
They're never breaking parity with you, ever.
You're always holding on to an advantage.
No matter what your opponent does, you're holding on to an advantage.
It's really strong and by the time a lot of decks can cobble together a significant answer.
I mean, I remember points when I played this deck initially that I had somewhere in the
wheelhouse of like two and a half to three dozen cards in my hand at the end of the game.
It's unbelievably oppressive.
It is extremely hard to deal with.
In addition to the card draw cards becoming worse and the board state expanding and your
opponent's hand expanding, which one of those things are you going to choose to address
and which one of those things can stem the bleeding the fastest?
So your plan of attack has to change pretty dramatically depending on where you're at
in the game, right?
If you can stop it early, the best thing to do obviously is try to shut down the first
and foremost the biggest threat I think out of the gate is Bucky.
However, I will not beat around the bush.
Bucky is extraordinarily hard to deal with.
I'm not going to tell you there is a solution that is just a panacea.
Do this and you will always beat Green Steel.
Not the case.
Sam and I have played decks that were tuned to try to beat Green Steel and Green Steel
still is not a total dog in those matchup.
You have the most control over that is to try to stem the bleeding quickly, right?
You see where the flow is.
You need to stop it right away.
Break up the Diablos, break up the Buckeys, try to answer everything quickly.
It's hard to do.
Would you say the best card to deal with Bucky would be Grab Your Sword?
Grab Your Sword is probably the most played card that deals with Bucky the cleanest, right?
You could definitely go on the play, go aerial, find a grab your sword, have enough cards
in your hand to then use her the following turn to sing Grab Your Sword.
But it's difficult, right?
Your opponent's now drawn a lot of cards potentially with Diablo.
They're going to be able to find a Strength of a Raging Fire or something similar to blow
up your aerial before you can sing the sword and then they're just going to strip it out
of your hand or they're going to go, oh, okay, you found that with aerial, my turn,
Ursula.
So you kind of just ramp to do a quick grab your sword.
Absolutely.
So you have to have a plan to do that.
And that's kind of step one is you have to have a plan.
You have to.
You have to know this exists.
The only way to go around this or to kind of get an edge here or at least try to have
a game here is to acknowledge this is here.
It is extraordinarily powerful and it needs an answer right away if you're going to do
it.
So you need to come up with a plan.
Whatever your plan to beat it is, that needs to be your plan.
You need to have cards that interact.
This is the final step.
And that agreement requires that you are going to sacrifice yourself going in and
is in blue steel as an answer to this because she can come down on turns four I think at the
earliest turn two one jump turn three fishbone and then play her we're seeing that some less
common choices in steel avalanche which is a new action they can't take it with Ursula it'll destroy
a location which is irrelevant though not entirely because some decks now are playing the hideaway I
think or the cove which is the one that gives all of it's a green location that gives all the
characters who are there plus one strength and plus one willpower so it lets them survive the
initial wipes some decks are starting to play that as an answer to the answers so they're evolving
things pretty interestingly avalanche helps answer that now if you two buckies there blow that up get
rid of those buckies that's really nice some other non-standard answers in steel triton's decree
so one cost uninkable card that is fire the cannons but the opponent gets to pick what character gets
the cannons so if your opponent has out bucky and diablo they have to pick which one is getting
nuked and which one is not I don't love historically giving your opponent a choice that's always one of
the worst things you can do in a trading card game versus fire the cannons but let's be real
you cannot fire the cannons bucky cannot do it yeah it's the quickest way to take care of bucky
yes if you have that on turn one and they play bucky on turn two you can then go ahead and decree
and get rid of bucky and I do think there's plenty of times where we see just a lone bucky
oh yeah bucky is one of the big deciders on whether you're keeping or mulling or how you're keeping
or mulling getting your hand in the green steel decks so they're definitely more than a number of
games where my first play of the game is bucky no question so that helps beat it we also see other
removal like fire the cannons baboom those things being played as well to answer the dd the diablo
part of the problem quickly and baboom particularly common to see because of its ink ability and the
fact that diablo typically won't be a problem in the ideal line or just played out for us a little
while ago until turn three yeah but most of the time turn three it's coming down they're not
getting a card you're taking care of it and moving on with your life but it's hard it's really hard
and then being able to kind of pad your hand out because so many of the decks you're talking 20
plus in some cases floodborns in these decks that are just so very oppressive and hold the game down
and just give you no ability to ever get back in the game because even if you draw a few cards
your opponent is just going to then go okay and now you have none again it's very very difficult
and i know it can be frustrating to deal with right like we have some decks that can naturally
deal with it blue steel is kind of been the forerunner of how the the meta is evolving
because blue steels come up and gone well we can answer this deck the best but there's going to be
other decks that people are playing that just answer blue steel so it's a toss-up right like
the ruby sapphire decks which are historically the really tough matchup and they have a tough
time but they do have some answers right they have the big sisu in their deck that can't be
stripped out and it takes care of all basically every character that's under four in that deck
gets answered i guess alladin doesn't but with ice block a lot of every character does so that is an
answer it's not a great answer it's not a cheap answer but it's an answer brawl helps deal with
diablo in the short term madame medusa a little later in the game again ice block really helps
with the three drop sisu so you can three drop sisu shift and then play the big sisu a little
quicker which is really a good effective line with the paired with the blue ramp so there's a lot of
options there mid-range and aggro i've been having a lot of success beating the deck with steel song
of course because it draws so many cards whole new world very good against the bucky decks because
they can make you discard but you can just draw seven again and now you have to go through all
that again but now i found answers and i have singers and i can answer the board more effectively
and take over the game the new red purple deck is quick it can yeah things like flin rider just get
out those couple find an answer beginning it might not matter because the the characters in green
steel are so low strength right even the bigger characters robin hood and beast only hit for three
so queen's castles are a problem so you can absolutely find aggressive and proactive ways
to deal with the threat as well and of course the final way to stop it is to learn the mirror just
embrace it and play it and be the bad guy and learn how do you beat the other bad guys out there
so that is definitely an option as well some things i want to call out too to kind of just
avoid and one sam brought up that's a really important one has to do with ramping one
specifically very powerful blue card that may not be as good as you think what is that card
fishbone quill and why is that card suddenly not good because you're you're then taking more cards
from your hand and putting them into your inkwell which is giving you less cards in hand and they're
just going to be gone before you know it exactly you don't want to play into it and the same goes
with the play pattern of you you brought up as well for a more aggressive deck is playing too
many small characters that may not matter two twos for one and things like that don't add up
to a whole lot against the green steel deck remember one of these main threats is evasive
so it's going to quest if you're just playing things that can't deal with it it's going to
just keep questing so that's a big problem so you don't want to run out a bunch of cards because
then you're going to get rid of all the padding your hand has to hold on to an important answer
or the ink you need to utilize to be able to play your answer so you got to be careful and pick your
moments pick your cards pick your battles to play because it is a crappy thing to have to think
about what cards do i want to hang on to because others are going to be discarded but it's extremely
important if you're a steel song player you know how already the deck can beat you up in the early
part of the game and you have to not make plays you want to make because you have to retain inkables
sometimes not dissimilar to that so it's definitely a skill that is worth utilizing and kind of the
biggest thing is don't be dismissive and give up don't just go whatever i'm just going to wait
until raven's burger bans diablo or bans bucky because i'm just gonna i'm just that's stupid and
i hate it and it's stupid there are cards i dislike personally as well there are cards sam
dislikes that i like there are cards i dislike that sam likes there are cards that we all like
and dislike depending on our play style i just don't want people to get reductive and say this
just quote needs to be banned i do think that it can be oppressive i do think it can be difficult
there are more than a number of times i've screamed and yelled about flaversham being a 1-6 and having
no answer to this stupid thing or about fishbone quill just allowing starts that i can't keep up
with that's what the cards were designed to do do i think that there should be bans one way or another
i don't know not yet i don't think in my opinion i don't think yet i'm not even going to give my
opinion here because it's not worth arguing with anybody about because everybody nobody's right
nobody's wrong yet we're seeing what develops which is why going back to the early announcements
a platform like pixelborne or some some way to garner a lot of results and data is important
because we need to see how oppressive these decks really are how they feel is one thing but what
kind of data is being put out there to support just how good these decks are we've all seen small
tournaments now we all saw i'm sure we saw the image from amishi monday which was all top eight
of all green steel so there are no doubts that this card is powerful we need results we need data
driven analytics to actually come up with a real answer and i think that being dismissive being
reductive and just throwing in the towel too early i think is not the way to do it i think you need
to get creative i think you need to be persistent and you need to practice and no matter what in
order to win a game of lorikana you need to keep questing