Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Lurkana podcast.
My name is Max.
And I'm Sam.
And this episode, we're looking at Shimmering Skies.
We got eyes in the skies for this episode.
And we want to talk about how we decide and make an evaluation if a card is going to be
playable or how competitive a card might be.
So I wanted to get a quick disclaimer in there before I start going through our process.
Also an announcement before the disclaimer.
Announcement, we will be doing our usual set review coming up on this coming Sunday.
If you're hearing this at the time of release, that would be August 4th of 2024.
We will be doing that at 8 o'clock Eastern over on our Twitch channel.
If you want to watch it is twitch.tv slash Supra Liminal Films.
All one word Supra Liminal Films.
If you can spell it, you can find it.
And of course, we'll be in the Disney channel.
If you go to Twitch and look under Disney, we'll be there as well.
Doing that review as always, we will release a recap here for you beloved viewers who listen
to our long set reviews.
And we wanted to give you some background information.
We haven't done this yet.
And since we're going to be evaluating another big load of cards, it would be a good time
to probably give you some insight onto how we evaluate cards, how the testing group we
work with evaluate cards.
And I think in general, how a lot of people tend to come to a decision on cards, especially
sight unseen, right?
Like these are generally untested or the first card you want to target to start testing.
Now we're going to play with our paper proxies and our testing versions of cards to try to
see if these cards are in fact as good as we think they are, or where does this very
good card have a home if at all.
So now that I've done that announcement, disclaimer, not every powerful card is going
to be a playable card.
We're discussing playability in core constructed for Lurkana.
That is the sole evaluation we are making.
We're not talking about limited.
We're not talking about multiplayer.
We might mention them as that might be a possible home for a card every now and again, because
everybody gets to play this game the way they wish, which is very important.
But our evaluations and the way we look at cards is specifically through the lens of
core constructed.
Now that being said, not every card that looks underpowered is going to be unplayable either.
There may be cards that look a little like what is this card doing here, but it serves
an important part of a deck.
We see this from time to time with cards that now in this day and age of almost five sets
in at time of recording, and we still see people playing cards that are stats.
We saw this with the red yellow location deck that Towelman Purple made popular playing
card soldiers.
We saw this especially towards the very end at the Challenger event with purple steel
making a big breakout event.
And that was on the back of big boy Chen Po.
Argus, 4-1 that's shutting off Flynn Rider got pretty popular at the end of the set.
Right at the end of set championships meta.
Yeah, 4-1 for two inkable Titan just shut down a lot of Flynn Rider shenanigans out
of the gate and trades up pretty effectively with that four strength.
So yes, great call out there as well.
So we're going to try our best to determine what is good, what's different, what is going
to be playable.
And I just don't want anybody to be like, well, this card's crazy powerful.
And you may be right, but there may be reasons why it does not get core constructed play.
And goodness knows we'll probably miss some because none of us would have put Argus on
the very playable side except for maybe Steadfast who was playing it with weight set like right
out of the gate.
So shout out to Steadfast for being so far ahead of the curve that he was at the end
of the meta at the beginning.
Well done.
So let's first talk about one of the things we look at.
I think it's one of the easiest ways to evaluate the cards or most obvious I should say.
And that is when a card comes out that fulfills a need in a pre-existing archetype.
And when I say archetype, I mean a strategy.
So for example, a couple versions of an archetype might be the blue item based strategy.
So we see this a lot with blue steel.
We see this a lot with Ruby Sapphire.
These are the decks where their strategy is to ramp up in ink very quickly, generate a
whole bunch of ink and start playing very powerful, expensive cards way ahead of schedule.
Another archetype, Sam?
Agro.
So you're talking about cheap and aggressively statted characters, perhaps.
Yes.
Things that give us the ability to come back from behind.
Things like Arthur is a good example of something that helped the aggro decks along, especially
the quote unquote hyper aggro style decks.
Yes.
Or like Piglet was a good one for the aggro.
A great one.
Yes.
Pooh Pirate Captain, one of my all time favorites.
There are also tempo style decks.
We see this a lot with the very popular green purple and a little bit more controlling with
the Ruby Amethyst style deck.
So there are a bunch of different strategies.
What does this card fill a need in one of those?
So for example, blue decks in chapter one were struggling immensely.
Blue wasn't a super playable color.
We also saw the potential in cards like Tamatella and one jump ahead.
But until a little item that came out in cost one was printed in Rise of the Floodborne,
the color struggled pretty badly.
And that card was popsicle and it definitely filled a need that that deck had.
It put a cheap item on the board.
It also refilled your hand by replacing itself, which was excellent.
And the card is an absolute staple of the color at this point.
Right.
And I think Hyrum goes right along with that.
It really does.
We're going to call out that particular card several times during this.
Does it fill a need?
Does it improve over an existing card?
I think we saw one of the biggest improvements possible when in the first chapter meta, especially
in the Ruby Amethyst decks, we're playing the three cost uninkable Rafiki.
So three three for three uninkable with rush, quested for one.
Then in Rise of the Floodborne, we got one of the most defining cards of the entire game
of Lurkana.
And that was the three cost uninkable for three rush, Madam Mim Fox, which is an absolute
contender for one of the if not the best card printed in the game up to this point.
This card is extraordinarily format and game defining.
And that was an extreme upgrade over Rafiki.
And finally, when you're looking at filling a need, does this card help the deck win the
game?
I think that we got another big up for Sapphire in into the Inklans when we got a little item
by little.
I mean, gigantic.
It's a little item, really, if you think about it, though, it's a dime, but it costs seven
because it's so darn lucky.
And that card ended up really defining how these decks won the game.
Now it wasn't long and grindy and they just exhausted everything and won with a couple
cards in deck that can still happen.
But now with the redundancy of Tamate and the ability to play Lucky Dime and activate
Lucky Dime when your Tamate can casually add six or seven lore to your lore total, that
card became a win condition.
And we saw similar with the Queen's Castle, which is now how the Ruby Amethyst decks tend
to win the game if they're not just goading, which is another thing that helps that deck
win the game.
That's gotten a lot of tools, it seems like over time.
And it's definitely changed in the first chapter.
Tamate or Ruby Amethyst was a straight up long game control deck.
You played Magic Mirrors.
You went to time.
Time decked out.
Literally the tech was befuddling your magic brooms so that you didn't mill yourself out.
That's how long and grindy these games were.
Cut to now, the preferred line of play is Flynn Rider, friend of me on two, Sisu and
Bulban Warrior on three, Queen's Castle on four to try to close the game out in a couple
of turns.
Right.
Explosive power like we hadn't seen previously.
Quite a bit different.
All the cards we just talked about fill a different need.
And I think that's an important step in evaluating a card.
And it's obviously easier to do or at least more obvious to spot because a lot of times
you're playing the deck, you're going to go, oh, if only I had a card that did this.
Oh, if only this card did this.
And then they print that card for you and it's like, oh, my prayers have been answered.
This is exactly what the deck needed.
Yeah.
My hope is that we'll get a good Ruby or Amethyst item removal.
Yes.
I know we got some bounce to set, but.
Yeah, it definitely knocks them off tempo when they play lucky dime too fast.
That's usually how the game spirals out of control for Ruby Amethyst when they're playing
against the blue decks, because then they just get value every time they play something
before you can be prepared.
And that makes it very hard to win.
So if it's not filling a need in a current deck, then maybe it's a card that'll make
a whole new archetype or fill in parts to create a strategy that was a fringe playable
strategy.
One of the most obvious examples of this would be, again, going from Tamatoa to Popsicle,
right?
We knew Tamatoa was going to be awesome.
We knew this card was going to be very powerful.
Right.
But in the set one, there was nothing.
There was nothing to do.
Right.
So is this card opening the gate for something brand new?
So is it something crazy powerful?
We saw this in our most recent set at time of recording, which was Ursula's Return,
a little three cost birdie called Diablo.
This card completely warped the metagame.
It made it to where one could argue it was a major contributor to Bucky being errata-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t
and changed over to the point where it might most likely not be playable anymore because
Diablo is just so darn powerful.
Hiram Flavisham completely created what seemed like an unbeatable archetype for the first
four to six weeks of flood-borne core constructed.
It was extraordinarily powerful.
It was baffling that a card that powerful could be printed levels of baffling.
I was concerned about the game's health when I saw that card.
It seems like when a new set releases, we definitely have that one deck
that just beats everything for the first couple of weeks.
And in Public Enemy number one, that is definitely we talked about that
in our metagames episode, so a good call out there as well.
For sure. There's one strategy is just like, oh, this is real good now.
And then takes us a few weeks to figure out how to beat it.
Green Steel was the bully of the format up until very, very recently,
probably like second to third week into set champs.
We started to see finally a bit of a decline there.
If it's doing something new, does it allow a deck maybe to play around
things that are in the meta or get an edge in these cards?
So, for example, Ursula, Deceiver, Bear Necessities, two cards
that kept the control decks down because they were so much faster
than Be Prepared.
But we got a huge boost when Sisu came out, the big legendary Sisu.
Wow. Now we have a way to play something on eight that's untouchable
in our hand, unless just purely discarded or conversely shifted on six.
So it can even come out ahead of schedule and very ahead of schedule sometimes.
Or if you do Sisu on three, ramp again and then you can get the big Sisu
down as early as turn four or five. It's very, very oppressive.
So that really helped and became such a playable card because it played around
a lot of the hand disruption that was very, very popular,
especially at the beginning of the Ursula's Return meta game.
So that's making something new.
Same as any other card you want to call out in the making something new category.
Just making sure I didn't overlook anything.
The only thing I can think of is maybe like locations.
We did see some location control decks. Absolutely.
We did see a few of those, again, Tauman Purple coming up
and making some cards like Tiana's Palace and the Underworld.
All of a sudden, very scary. Brought back Jim Hawkins and the card
that was somehow very good in that deck that I don't think is very good
just in time. It was just very powerful, very quick to the ground
and just created a lore advantage.
Ruby Amethyst ended up kind of replicating in a lot of ways.
Yeah, that deck, if you get caught off guard with it, nothing you can really do.
Some other things to keep in mind that don't really like fill out
an entire category on their own.
The major contributor, I would say, above all else, is the cost.
Cost is everything.
The sooner you can do something, the more powerful it is.
We saw this with Diablo, the big play pattern for Emerald Steel.
We talked about it a lot on the podcast is turn one Diablo,
check their hand, coast is clear. Turn two Bucky,
shift Diablo and then sing something.
The Lemon Lime decks really take pretty obnoxious advantage of this
because you replace Bucky with Ursula, strip out their song removal
and then sing Bear Necessities with the shifted Diablo
and then strip out like their baboom.
I've just beaten Green Steel several games where it's just like,
I've taken all your removal now, so I'm going to have Diablo out
for the next multiple turns.
It's very, very oppressive against Ruby Amethyst.
You get to strip out their brawls and then it just you guarantee it sticks around.
The cost is everything in a lot of cases.
A good example of this when it comes to flexibility,
especially we're talking about ink ability.
We're talking about options on the card.
These are very important.
So cost and flexibility really are the hallmarks.
The new Pete, Pete game referee is really quite a bit different.
He's a three, three, one for three inkable that when he comes into play
until the start of your next turn, your opponent can't play actions.
That is absolutely insane.
And it's very similar to a card we had previously, which was Tiana,
the four cost uninkable that required you to have no cards in hand
and her to be exerted.
So you can see the cost and the flexibility are so much less for Tiana
than they are for Pete.
Pete, if it's not going to be useful, I ink it.
Tiana stuck in my hand.
If I draw two Tianas and I can't play them, it's going to be even harder
for the first Tiana to go off.
Pete doesn't have that problem.
Pete can play with Madam Mim very well because you pick it up, put it back down.
Tiana, not so much.
No actions turn after turn.
Right. You can see kind of the flexibility
and the positives and negatives.
Another example of cost being a major factor is sometimes we see an effect
that's big and grandiose, but it's expensive.
So we'll see this usually attached to like rares or super rares
where like a very stripped down version will be on a common.
So a good example of this, two very playable cards would be Elsa versus Pinocchio.
Pinocchio is all two drop that's uninkable that comes in and just exerts.
It doesn't freeze or keep something exerted, just exerts.
But on the other hand, we have Elsa, who's a gigantic eight drop
that's uninkable at quests for a lot.
And it comes down and it exerts two characters and keeps them exerted.
Huge difference in what you're getting.
Huge difference in cost.
Cards that are typically on the Elsa side of the spectrum
are the ones that tend to be less playable.
A good call out to represent this would be a card like Friends on the Other Side,
which is probably one of the most defining cards in Purple,
versus Second Star to the Right, which is extraordinarily expensive card.
It draws over double the amount of cards,
two and a half times the amount of cards as Friends on the Other Side.
It also costs over three times more.
It can be sung, but there's just so little going on over here.
It's not uninkable.
It just doesn't check enough boxes to see play.
And it only saw fringe play in certain Jafar style decks,
where Friends on the Other Side, if you're playing Amethyst,
probably one of the reasons you are is because of Friends on the Other Side.
So that's kind of the difference there.
Another good indicator of if a card can be playable in core construct,
is it an effect that's stapled onto a character card?
What I mean by that is, is it an effect that takes an entire card,
or is it part of the card?
I'm going to, again, go to an example that I made a little bit earlier
with one of the cards, and that was the two-drop Pinocchio
that exerts a character when he comes into play.
Compare that to first chapter action, Freeze.
Pinocchio is not uninkable, Freeze is.
They both exert a character.
Freeze keeps it exerted.
Pinocchio does not.
But Pinocchio is a 1-1-1, so he can quest for one.
He has one strength and one willpower.
Pinocchio saw infinitely more play than Freeze.
Yeah, you can pick him up and do it again.
Repeatable effects, right?
We talked about Madam Mim already.
There's a whole plethora of cards, and we're getting a new one,
a new Madam Mim in the upcoming Shimmering Skies.
Picking things up and putting them back down
is going to be a color identity thing for Purple.
Like, that's what Amethyst wants to do,
is pick things up and put them back down.
That is extremely powerful with comes-into-play style effects,
wherein one-time use actions, you're using an entire card.
Pinocchio, I'm using part of a card.
Now, imagine Freeze said, gain three lore.
All of a sudden, that's a lot more powerful of a card.
Pinocchio can kind of do that.
Pinocchio can trade with something.
Pinocchio can get buffed and smack into something.
Pinocchio can quest for the win.
Freeze can't do any of that.
It's always one-for-one in a card.
Pinocchio can be one-half for one,
and that's a huge difference.
When we're talking about cost of cards,
the biggest increase in a game is from zero to one,
nothing to something.
Something that costs one is way worse
than something that costs nothing.
The next biggest jump is two, from one to two, right?
Because two is twice as much as one.
Two to three, that's not twice as much.
Zero to one is infinitely more.
One to two is twice as much.
They're the two biggest costs in a game.
So when you're evaluating cards,
a card that costs three or four
and a card that costs one or zero or two,
there's a lot different evaluations going on.
So cost, the ability to be stapled onto a card
and do something essentially as part of a card is huge.
Multipurpose is another thing
that makes a card very playable in Core Constructed.
A card that we're hemming and hauling about
on our set review for Into the Inklands
was Rise of the Titans.
How important are locations gonna be?
We didn't think Lucky Dime was gonna be as impactful
as it ended up being,
and it ended up, because of the combination of things
like McDuck Manor, Queens Castle, and Lucky Dime,
Rise of the Titans was insanely playable.
It had technically three modes
because it was inkable on top of destroying a location
or an item.
Banish things or ink it.
Perfect, you don't play items or locations,
we're inking it.
I play the third mode.
Same with like Baboom,
with it being able to target a location
as well as a character.
Absolutely, or being.
Yeah.
Three modes, we love it.
That makes it very, very playable.
What makes a card hard to evaluate
is how I wanna close this out
because I think it is worth calling out for sure.
Is it a brand new card?
Is it something we've never seen before?
This happened to us,
and into the Inklands, when locations were introduced,
we had no idea if they were gonna be playable.
How important was it that they were inkable?
How important was the actual willpower of a location?
How important was the cost to move to a location?
How important was how much lore it generates?
All questions that we're still asking to some extent
today, we're starting to learn things.
We know like some baselines now.
If it has seven willpower,
it means it can't be one-shotted by Maui,
so that's very important.
We've seen cards like Hercules start to come to the forefront
to answer cards like this.
That's another card that's just stats.
Never in a million years,
where I thought that a bad looking Maui
that was uninkable and only had three willpower
ever be played,
but it was being played like a Bad Rise of the Titans
in the Ruby Sapphire decks towards the end of Set Champs
because it's like,
I just need something that can one-shot a Queen's Castle.
I need something that can be vitalisfeared
and smack into an answer a McDuck Manor.
I need something like that,
which is really, really surprising.
And that's what makes these cards hard to evaluate.
There's brand new cards.
There's maybe a new effect that we've never seen before.
This set has a legendary card, it's Sapphire Merlin,
that actually lets you search through your deck
for any card you want.
We have never seen that in Lurkana.
That's brand new.
Searching your deck is not something
that's commonly done in Lurkana, period.
That is uncharted territory for us.
So maybe it's gonna be really good.
Maybe it's too slow and clunky.
Maybe we have to wait for the cheaper version
of the legendary Merlin to come out.
And then of course, there is the powerful,
but expensive aspect to a card.
We saw this with Jafar.
It was very expensive to play,
but the ability could win you the game.
So there's other things like that.
And in tandem with Jafar,
is it reliant on other cards to be good?
Because that can also be a trap.
Jafar, we've seen, I think, missed the mark.
A lot of people put it out.
A lot of people put it as completely game changing
and defining like Madame Mim and Madame Medusa were.
That card ended up being a little bit of a misfire.
I think it is still a build around card that's okay,
but it's a build around card that's okay.
It's not a card that's so broken,
it was the first card to receive a Ratta for the game.
So that's the difference.
Cards that reward you for doing the thing
you already want to do, on the other hand,
are very dangerous, which is why we see a Ratta for Bucky.
That's a card that just goes,
oh, are you already playing cards in the game?
Oh, cool.
Then have your opponent discard a card
every time you play cards in the game.
That's insane.
Oh, are you trying to win with Lore?
Are you gonna play characters to quest?
Cool, when you put this one into play,
it's gonna gain you a Lore.
You know what?
As an added kicker for no additional cost to you,
when it leaves play, you gain a Lore too.
That's why it's the GOAT.
So it's really hard to evaluate cards
for a plethora of reasons.
So hopefully, these little check boxes
will help you with your evaluation.
Hopefully, it'll stop you from shouting yourself horse at us
when we do our evaluation, which by the way,
at time of recording will be this Sunday, August 4th,
at eight o'clock p.m. Eastern time on twitch.tv
slash supraliminalfilms.
And of course, we'll put it on here
for all of you to consume if you prefer your podcasts,
mono aural and no video, but it'll be in stereo,
not mono aural, which is the old mono versus stereo track.
It was a joke if you're an audiophile.
Hope you enjoyed that joke.
Hope you enjoyed us giving you some insight.
And we hope beyond hope when you're playing Lurkana, you.
Keep questing.