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Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Lorcanah podcast.

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My name is Max.

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And I'm Sam.

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And we are here to talk to you today about a topic.

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That's how this works.

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But first we have some announcements to make because some things have happened within our

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Lorcanah community that we think require at least minor addressing before we jump into

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today's topic.

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The first being the very first Challenger event has now taken place in Atlanta, Georgia

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and Little France.

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I hope I said that correctly.

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Forgive me all you French listeners.

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Hi and sorry.

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Both events have fired off and we had two Ruby Amethyst decks in the finals, an Amber

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Steelsong deck taking it down in France and in the US of A we got the event taken down

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by an Amber Amethyst Mufasa style deck that no one saw coming outside of a select few

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folks who are rather astute practicers of the set three format passed when most people

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were interested because a lot of us weren't going to the Challenger event, us included.

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But it was a really cool event to watch.

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We got to see it streamed.

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Both places did a stream.

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I think there was success and failures on both sides of the stream.

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I think the Europeans really nailed it.

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They did a great job.

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Specimen and Lurkana Villain did a great job with play by play and color commentaries as

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well as the production value coming out of there was fantastic.

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I think they did a great job keeping track of lore totals.

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They did a great job of popping up card images.

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That was a nice touch.

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Yeah, it was really, really fun.

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In North America, we had two sets of broadcasters.

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I think that was a little tougher.

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One of the sets of broadcasters was remote, so it didn't quite feel as nice to me to

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have them as a little awkward.

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Having those remote broadcasters, at least in my opinion.

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I much prefer the commenters who are live.

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I think that they did a pretty good job.

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I think Specimen and Lurkana Villain really took the cake with their commentary.

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In North America, we struggled a bit with lore totals.

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We struggled a bit with card images.

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I don't think we saw any.

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It was a rough one from a production standpoint in North America, so I'm hoping to see a

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little bit more cohesion come out of it.

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By all reports, it was a very successful event.

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A lot of people had a great time.

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We got to see some really cool things.

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Unexpected, some cool playmats on the prize wall, some prize ticket issues, it seemed

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like.

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A lot of people weren't thrilled with how things were laid out.

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I'm not going to really touch on that.

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On the whole, by and large, by a good margin, it seemed to be a very successful event for

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everyone who went and had a good time and everybody who got to experience it from the

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comfort of home.

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Thank you very much to Ravensburger for putting that out for everybody to enjoy both in person

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and virtually.

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The second topic is a little bit more depressing.

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I figured starting out with the good news was better, but we have gotten word that a

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tool a lot of Lurkana players utilize.

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If you're not familiar with it, it's known as Pixelborne.

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It is a way for you to play the game virtually by computer or device of some kind electronically.

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Unfortunately, the creator of that Pavel got a cease and desist sort of from Disney Ravensburger,

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letting them know that the images are copywritten and the card images can no longer be utilized.

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Pavel has been more than vocal about the fact that as soon as anybody gives him any word,

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even a semi-official capacity to go, hey, can you pull this down?

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He absolutely would.

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He is living up to his word, so Pixelborne will no longer be a tool available to us.

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It will be missed, certainly, I think, by a good portion of the Lurkana community.

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I know some are heavily impacted as there's no chance for them to really play or experience

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the game outside of this platform.

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I'm hoping that in light of that, we'll see some other solutions come up.

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I know Pavel's already hard at work on something different that is compliant with what Ravensburger,

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Disney wants out of an online, at least will tolerate out of an online solution.

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I'm excited to see what he has cooking, and I just wanted to take a moment.

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I think both of us would like to thank Pavel specifically and really call out what an amazing

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job he and the small team under him did to make Pixelborne run as efficiently as it did,

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and to bring such a powerful tool both for playing and tracking to our community because

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the game wouldn't be the same without access to such a powerful tool as Pixelborne.

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So thank you, Pavel.

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Yeah, definitely.

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Thank you.

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Let's move over now to the main topic of the episode.

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Now that we've gotten the news out of the way, we are moving on to talking about a bird

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and a squirrel because that is kind of where this new meta begins with a bird, Diablo,

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a new card from set four, and Bucky, an old villain from set two.

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He's not really a villain, but he is a villain for players of Lurkana who don't like Emerald

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decks.

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So I want to address kind of what's going on and what we're doing and how we can break

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things down from here.

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So we went from a very healthy meta with the set three being kind of this multi-choice,

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you pick what deck, but not every deck answers every other deck kind of format to what looks

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more at least initially, and this is not uncommon out of the gate.

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We talked about this in a previous episode on metagames, so check that one out.

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We're starting with what looks to be a tier zero metagame.

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This Emerald Steel deck looks to be the absolute villain of the format, at least initially

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coming into Ursula's return, despite the fact there's no green Ursula this time.

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That was the last set.

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We've got purple Ursula this time.

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She is in the deck though, right?

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The green ones are, but the purple ones, the new ones are not.

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So what is the line for this Emerald Steel deck?

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How does it work?

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What is it doing that's creating such waves in this game?

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Well, I'm going to walk you through the play pattern here.

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Turn one, you play the one drop Diablo, who is a one, two for one, that when he enters

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play he'll get to look at your opponent's hand.

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You don't get to do anything.

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You just get to look.

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Then from there, that information allows you to sculpt your plan of attack.

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The most common and most powerful line out of the deck at that point is playing Bucky

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on turn two, using the shift from the three drop Diablo to discard an action and then

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shift onto the one drop Diablo.

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So now that triggers Bucky, which causes you to discard a card and then Diablo gets to

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exert an either quest, but even common still to this line, which I know it sounds absurd,

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is to sing Sudden Chill and force the opponent to discard another card.

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So they are down two cards.

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So if you were on the play, you're going to be down quite a few cards because you've

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resourced twice as the opponent.

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Get with this going on and you may most likely have committed some kind of card, played something

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for that one or two.

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And goodness forbid if you did something on one and two, because you probably had about

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one card left in your hand at this point.

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Turn three, you play Aladdin, the new Aladdin that is a Floodmourne or another Diablo, goodness

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forbid, and then turn four, you play Dreadnought Jafar most commonly or a different Floodmourne

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of your choice.

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That's going to lose out on a total of four cards at this point, if not more.

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Obviously more Diablos and more of these Sudden Chills can change a lot of things.

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Diablo being able to sing, even just removal ahead of time can help clear the board.

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The one drop Diablo can help let the player know if they need to go two drop Bucky or

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two drop Ursula to take a troublesome song out of the opponent's hand, like grab your

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swords.

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It's scary what this deck can do.

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Referring to it as an opening move largely in the community, this opening line, we refer

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to it here of course as a play pattern, is very easy for the decks to do and it is extraordinarily

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backbreaking to run your opponent out of resources so quickly.

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Because remember in Lurkana, it's not like a Magic the Gathering card where it usually

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makes you discard a non-land card.

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This is just wholesale discard cards.

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You're just getting rid of cards so you don't have any cards left to resource into ink.

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You don't have any cards left to play and put in to try to deal with this combination

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of synergistic cards that is just causing you a massive headache.

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So it's really difficult to go from playing a game on turn two to by turn four your top

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decking and hoping that you can find, hoping the top two cards of your deck are inkable

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and grab your swords respectively.

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And to your point with Ursula, if they play Ursula, they're getting rid of a card that

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helps you deal with the situation.

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Exactly.

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And that's bad news.

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It is an extraordinarily oppressive opening set of maneuvers from this deck and it is

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causing a lot of people a lot of outrage to be perfectly honest.

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This is the first time we've seen people really freak out.

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Every time we see a set of cards in Lurkana that tend to work synergistically to do something

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very powerful, there is often an outcry from the Lurkana community that this is too strong,

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this is too difficult, the dreaded three letter ban word starts to get dropped.

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I think that this is very, very powerful and I think this definitely harkens back to when

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we first saw what Hiram Flavisham could do with some Popsicles in Rise of the Floodborns

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meta where all of a sudden Blue-Red became the best deck bar none.

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Seen outcry with Blue-Red, we've seen outcry with Red-Purple with the goat and bouncing.

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People just sick of Red-Purple basically.

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It's really difficult to address how, and this just does something so much quicker in

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the game than first turn Popsicles, second turn One Jump Ahead, third turn Hiram.

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That's still quick, that's very quick and it is, we'll talk about that line of play

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a little later on, but it is extremely oppressive because at least if your opponent's over there

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doing that, they're drawing cards.

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I was going to say there's a little difference because you're not losing anything being the

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opponent of the Red-Blue player and them drawing cards, you're not losing stuff yourself, they're

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just gaining.

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Exactly, and in this case, you're getting card advantage from Diablo while Bucky is

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also tearing down your opponent's hand.

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So there's a difference there, right?

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And we did another episode, I'm going to reference a bunch of old episodes here, but some good

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foundational ones.

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We did an episode on card advantage.

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This is not only a tempo advantage, it is also a card advantage at the same time because

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you're making your opponent go down cards while you're adding characters to the board,

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which is a way to win the game, while you are in some cases with Diablo going up cards.

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So if your opponent's best answer is to find Hiram to be able to draw multiple cards to

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be able to pad their hand out, they're giving you cards too.

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They're never breaking parity with you, ever.

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You're always holding on to an advantage.

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No matter what your opponent does, you're holding on to an advantage.

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It's really strong and by the time a lot of decks can cobble together a significant answer.

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I mean, I remember points when I played this deck initially that I had somewhere in the

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wheelhouse of like two and a half to three dozen cards in my hand at the end of the game.

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It's unbelievably oppressive.

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It is extremely hard to deal with.

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In addition to the card draw cards becoming worse and the board state expanding and your

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opponent's hand expanding, which one of those things are you going to choose to address

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and which one of those things can stem the bleeding the fastest?

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So your plan of attack has to change pretty dramatically depending on where you're at

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in the game, right?

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If you can stop it early, the best thing to do obviously is try to shut down the first

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and foremost the biggest threat I think out of the gate is Bucky.

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However, I will not beat around the bush.

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Bucky is extraordinarily hard to deal with.

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I'm not going to tell you there is a solution that is just a panacea.

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Do this and you will always beat Green Steel.

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Not the case.

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Sam and I have played decks that were tuned to try to beat Green Steel and Green Steel

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still is not a total dog in those matchup.

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You have the most control over that is to try to stem the bleeding quickly, right?

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You see where the flow is.

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You need to stop it right away.

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Break up the Diablos, break up the Buckeys, try to answer everything quickly.

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It's hard to do.

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Would you say the best card to deal with Bucky would be Grab Your Sword?

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Grab Your Sword is probably the most played card that deals with Bucky the cleanest, right?

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You could definitely go on the play, go aerial, find a grab your sword, have enough cards

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in your hand to then use her the following turn to sing Grab Your Sword.

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But it's difficult, right?

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Your opponent's now drawn a lot of cards potentially with Diablo.

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They're going to be able to find a Strength of a Raging Fire or something similar to blow

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up your aerial before you can sing the sword and then they're just going to strip it out

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of your hand or they're going to go, oh, okay, you found that with aerial, my turn,

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Ursula.

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So you kind of just ramp to do a quick grab your sword.

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Absolutely.

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So you have to have a plan to do that.

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And that's kind of step one is you have to have a plan.

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You have to.

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You have to know this exists.

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The only way to go around this or to kind of get an edge here or at least try to have

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a game here is to acknowledge this is here.

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It is extraordinarily powerful and it needs an answer right away if you're going to do

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it.

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So you need to come up with a plan.

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Whatever your plan to beat it is, that needs to be your plan.

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You need to have cards that interact.

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This is the final step.

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And that agreement requires that you are going to sacrifice yourself going in and

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is in blue steel as an answer to this because she can come down on turns four I think at the

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earliest turn two one jump turn three fishbone and then play her we're seeing that some less

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common choices in steel avalanche which is a new action they can't take it with Ursula it'll destroy

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a location which is irrelevant though not entirely because some decks now are playing the hideaway I

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think or the cove which is the one that gives all of it's a green location that gives all the

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characters who are there plus one strength and plus one willpower so it lets them survive the

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initial wipes some decks are starting to play that as an answer to the answers so they're evolving

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things pretty interestingly avalanche helps answer that now if you two buckies there blow that up get

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rid of those buckies that's really nice some other non-standard answers in steel triton's decree

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so one cost uninkable card that is fire the cannons but the opponent gets to pick what character gets

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the cannons so if your opponent has out bucky and diablo they have to pick which one is getting

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nuked and which one is not I don't love historically giving your opponent a choice that's always one of

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the worst things you can do in a trading card game versus fire the cannons but let's be real

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you cannot fire the cannons bucky cannot do it yeah it's the quickest way to take care of bucky

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yes if you have that on turn one and they play bucky on turn two you can then go ahead and decree

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and get rid of bucky and I do think there's plenty of times where we see just a lone bucky

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oh yeah bucky is one of the big deciders on whether you're keeping or mulling or how you're keeping

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or mulling getting your hand in the green steel decks so they're definitely more than a number of

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games where my first play of the game is bucky no question so that helps beat it we also see other

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removal like fire the cannons baboom those things being played as well to answer the dd the diablo

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part of the problem quickly and baboom particularly common to see because of its ink ability and the

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fact that diablo typically won't be a problem in the ideal line or just played out for us a little

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while ago until turn three yeah but most of the time turn three it's coming down they're not

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getting a card you're taking care of it and moving on with your life but it's hard it's really hard

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and then being able to kind of pad your hand out because so many of the decks you're talking 20

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plus in some cases floodborns in these decks that are just so very oppressive and hold the game down

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and just give you no ability to ever get back in the game because even if you draw a few cards

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your opponent is just going to then go okay and now you have none again it's very very difficult

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and i know it can be frustrating to deal with right like we have some decks that can naturally

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deal with it blue steel is kind of been the forerunner of how the the meta is evolving

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because blue steels come up and gone well we can answer this deck the best but there's going to be

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other decks that people are playing that just answer blue steel so it's a toss-up right like

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the ruby sapphire decks which are historically the really tough matchup and they have a tough

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time but they do have some answers right they have the big sisu in their deck that can't be

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stripped out and it takes care of all basically every character that's under four in that deck

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gets answered i guess alladin doesn't but with ice block a lot of every character does so that is an

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answer it's not a great answer it's not a cheap answer but it's an answer brawl helps deal with

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diablo in the short term madame medusa a little later in the game again ice block really helps

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with the three drop sisu so you can three drop sisu shift and then play the big sisu a little

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quicker which is really a good effective line with the paired with the blue ramp so there's a lot of

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options there mid-range and aggro i've been having a lot of success beating the deck with steel song

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of course because it draws so many cards whole new world very good against the bucky decks because

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they can make you discard but you can just draw seven again and now you have to go through all

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that again but now i found answers and i have singers and i can answer the board more effectively

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and take over the game the new red purple deck is quick it can yeah things like flin rider just get

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out those couple find an answer beginning it might not matter because the the characters in green

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steel are so low strength right even the bigger characters robin hood and beast only hit for three

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so queen's castles are a problem so you can absolutely find aggressive and proactive ways

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to deal with the threat as well and of course the final way to stop it is to learn the mirror just

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embrace it and play it and be the bad guy and learn how do you beat the other bad guys out there

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so that is definitely an option as well some things i want to call out too to kind of just

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avoid and one sam brought up that's a really important one has to do with ramping one

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specifically very powerful blue card that may not be as good as you think what is that card

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fishbone quill and why is that card suddenly not good because you're you're then taking more cards

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from your hand and putting them into your inkwell which is giving you less cards in hand and they're

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just going to be gone before you know it exactly you don't want to play into it and the same goes

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with the play pattern of you you brought up as well for a more aggressive deck is playing too

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many small characters that may not matter two twos for one and things like that don't add up

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to a whole lot against the green steel deck remember one of these main threats is evasive

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so it's going to quest if you're just playing things that can't deal with it it's going to

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just keep questing so that's a big problem so you don't want to run out a bunch of cards because

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then you're going to get rid of all the padding your hand has to hold on to an important answer

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or the ink you need to utilize to be able to play your answer so you got to be careful and pick your

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moments pick your cards pick your battles to play because it is a crappy thing to have to think

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about what cards do i want to hang on to because others are going to be discarded but it's extremely

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important if you're a steel song player you know how already the deck can beat you up in the early

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part of the game and you have to not make plays you want to make because you have to retain inkables

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sometimes not dissimilar to that so it's definitely a skill that is worth utilizing and kind of the

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biggest thing is don't be dismissive and give up don't just go whatever i'm just going to wait

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until raven's burger bans diablo or bans bucky because i'm just gonna i'm just that's stupid and

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i hate it and it's stupid there are cards i dislike personally as well there are cards sam

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dislikes that i like there are cards i dislike that sam likes there are cards that we all like

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and dislike depending on our play style i just don't want people to get reductive and say this

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just quote needs to be banned i do think that it can be oppressive i do think it can be difficult

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there are more than a number of times i've screamed and yelled about flaversham being a 1-6 and having

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no answer to this stupid thing or about fishbone quill just allowing starts that i can't keep up

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with that's what the cards were designed to do do i think that there should be bans one way or another

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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

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opinion here because it's not worth arguing with anybody about because everybody nobody's right

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nobody's wrong yet we're seeing what develops which is why going back to the early announcements

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a platform like pixelborne or some some way to garner a lot of results and data is important

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because we need to see how oppressive these decks really are how they feel is one thing but what

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kind of data is being put out there to support just how good these decks are we've all seen small

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tournaments now we all saw i'm sure we saw the image from amishi monday which was all top eight

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of all green steel so there are no doubts that this card is powerful we need results we need data

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driven analytics to actually come up with a real answer and i think that being dismissive being

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reductive and just throwing in the towel too early i think is not the way to do it i think you need

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to get creative i think you need to be persistent and you need to practice and no matter what in

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order to win a game of lorikana you need to keep questing