Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Lorcanah podcast.
My name is Max.
And I'm Sam.
And we are here yet again with you fine listeners to discuss some Lorcanah.
This is a little bit more of a foundational style episode for episode 17.
Thanks for tuning in.
And if you've been tuning in, thank you so much.
We appreciate you being here and hope that you keep coming back if you're new.
Same thing, no notes.
This week we are here to talk about ways that people tend to play the game or quote methodologies
that you can use to improve your game.
And before we dive too far into it, I just want to preface everything and I will mention
it again to bookend the episode because that's just good writing that you should play the
way you get enjoyment from the game.
One of what we're about to go over is more correct than another way.
It's all about what you prefer and we don't want you to think the way you do it is necessarily
the wrong way.
And you may do it one of these ways.
You may do it a little differently.
There's no right or wrong way.
Having played different trading card games for quite a long time, I have found that there's
generally about three buckets that people tend to go into when we're talking about ways
they approach the metagame, deck building and deck choices.
So that's really what we want to highlight in this episode.
Sam, do you want to walk us through the big three categories of deck choices?
Sure.
We got our generalist, our specialists and our hybrid players.
Yes.
There are three buckets there, a generalist, a specialist and kind of the mix with your
hybrid style player.
Most people, if I had to take a stab in the dark, are going to fall into that hybrid category.
I think a good testing team would encompass many of those things.
And I think that most people tend to be one of these styles.
So let's start off with the generalist.
What is a generalist?
This tends to be a player who builds many decks or plays many styles of decks, especially
the quote unquote most powerful meta deck choices in the format, irrespective of what
they play.
So some archetypes we see a lot, Sam, what do we got in the mix for usually some of the
best decks in Lorcan?
We got Ruby Amethyst, Steel Song.
Popsicle of your choice.
These are all disparate, right?
You just named a kind of controlling tempo style deck with the Ruby Amethyst style deck.
You named a very large swath of possible ways to build a Steel Song deck.
And you also named controlling style decks with the Popsicle style of decks, Hyper Agro,
who you're starting to see a lot of the green purple tempo decks, things like that tend
to flare up, but they're all different styles.
A generalist will play whatever one is quote the best or one of the best choices, right?
You'll see this a lot in tier lists where it comes to S tier or back in my day, we called
it tier one to whatever your ranking system of choices.
So would you say that the generalist is typically playing like whoever won the latest big tournament?
Maybe not playing it, but definitely building it to play against it.
They're the person when you're play testing comes with a pile of decks built and are like,
I'll play any of these you want me to play with, which is an amazing person to have on
your testing team.
The generalist is going to be the person who will run you as one of the other two categories
through the most testing.
They're going to bring a lot of decks.
Everybody will bring a couple of decks, usually that they're excited to try.
The generalist will come with a pile of these different decks.
They are definitely interested in that.
They don't care about the play pattern.
They don't care about the color combination.
They just care about the strongest decks in the metagame.
So they're going to have that big giant pile that they're hoarding around with them.
And I think that they'll have the widest knowledge pool.
And by that, I mean they will know the most about all of the decks.
They'll know how to operate every deck.
So the cons there is while they have a wide knowledge base, they will not have a deep
knowledge base for any particular deck.
Definitely not for about more than a month if they get it at all, just because they're
so focused across the board and saying, we've seen this and I'm sure you've seen this out
there listeners, if you've gone on your set championship for Ursula's return, I've seen
people show up every single set champs.
They were bringing a different deck with them.
They were just like, okay, this one overperformed or this one put up the best results the week
before based on all of my research and they'll do the research.
They'll get your data.
They do all kinds of great things.
If you have a generalist on your testing team or you are a generalist, bless your heart
because you do a lot of heavy lifting for any team.
So hats are off to you.
They're also one of the big benefits to being a generalist is they typically are not surprised
by any deck because they just know, oh yeah, that placed eighth in this 5K that was three
and a half weeks ago and is slowly ticked up in popularity over the past couple of big
tournaments.
That's what a generalist will pull out of their brain.
And this is an insanely important thing.
You're going to see generalists, if you're familiar with content creators in the space
like ourselves, Zan Sayed is one of the big generalists and pushes a lot of people to
become generalists because one of the big benefits to being a generalist, Sam, is if
you know how a deck works, even if you're not playing it, you can play against it inherently
when they're struggling.
What to expect.
What's a strong like, oh, that's their best line.
That's their best opening move.
I'm in trouble or oh, that means they got that opening line.
That means they got nothing.
That is the power of a generalist.
So it's really important to know that and to kind of keep that in the back of your mind
and they have such a best 10,000 foot view of the Lurkana meta have their hands and their
eyes on everything.
So what do they not do so well?
They are prone to making play mistakes because they don't have a deep knowledge and they
often don't have the finest interactions and the most subtle interplay in their deck.
You'll see somebody often miss sequence a turn on occasion who tend to be generalists.
They've taken their 10,000 hours and divided it across the thousand decks versus taking
their 10,000 hours and putting it into one deck.
So that is definitely something that works against being a generalist.
And having been a generalist, I think at the beginning of Lurkana and every set I tend
to try something new and push my boundaries.
I can definitely see that and I definitely know when the first dozen, two dozen, five
dozen times in with a new deck, I'm still seeing places I can improve the hallmark of
a good player seeing where they could play better.
Our next category, which is a specialist, a specialist is pretty much the exact opposite
of a generalist.
So if a generalist has a wide view and understands everything, a specialist has an insanely deep
view, but a very limited width of field, right?
Like they have a huge depth of field, but a very narrow width because they're absolute
masters at one color combination or two colors.
That is what they do.
We've seen this a lot over time with players, especially with the color combination of Ruby
Amethyst.
No, I'm not.
Kendall Burnett, very, very specific specialist in the Ruby Amethyst archetype.
And the reason I think we see that archetype yield specialist, Lurkana Brawa is the same
for Amber Steel Song.
These are two of the oldest archetypes in the game.
They've been around since the first chapter meta and they continue to evolve and continue
to put up results.
And I think that these color combinations have a lot to offer in the game and they have
a lot of really powerful card choices.
And we see these people who become master craftsmen of this one archetype and one color
pair where it's like, Oh no, it's really important.
You understand that I switched out this random two drop for this random two drop because
you need the inkable now that Prince Navin's around, you need to be able to go like two,
three, four, and that needs to be a good line.
If you don't have your one, three shift line, like they understand all of these inherent
things.
Kendall Burnett very good at calling out cards that might fly under your radar as just a
generalist to put into your Ruby Amethyst decks and really increase the power levels
within because that's something that somebody may just bypass that card.
It's a common that I didn't read because it's kind of a draft card where no, I'm not is
digging deep into it and going, you know what, if you look, there's this a very fine interaction
here with these two other cards that are already in the deck.
So putting this card in actually is crazy.
Those are the things you start to pick up as a specialist.
They see things that generalists don't generalist are looking for the most powerful cards typically,
right?
Cause they're looking at every card in Lurkana that comes out in every set where these specialists
are like, well, I'm just focusing on two colors of six.
So they have a much narrower field of view and they become master pilots of their deck.
They're not going to be playing mistakes made.
They're going to know those very deep interactions.
If I top deck this, I can then do this, do this, and that'll result in putting me in
not necessarily in the lead, but it'll put me closer to parody.
They know that.
And I have two of those in my deck total.
I haven't seen any, I haven't inked it.
They're just master pilots of their deck.
One of the cons though to that is they don't have a lot of knowledge of the other meta
decks.
They're aware of them and they kind of know the deal.
Oh, it's control deck.
Oh, it's a combo deck.
Oh, it's an aggro deck.
But the way they understand their deck, they don't understand other decks as well because
they've put all of their focus into their deck.
They also are restricting the card pool they're looking at.
So they often at times will be limited on cards that can answer certain meta staples.
So it's like, oh, this archetype got really popular.
I think we've seen it.
Lucky dime.
When we're speaking about Ruby Amethyst specifically is a nightmare card for Ruby Amethyst historically
because you don't have any item interaction.
None.
The two colors do not interact with items.
A little bit more now, but the cards are kind of fringe, but not even cards that interact
specifically, but how do we undo this strategy, maybe get under them before they can do it?
Seen this a lot last set in the Ursula's return meta where Ruby Amethyst played against Blue
Steel.
Blue Steel had to bring in Argus to counter the Flynn Rider frenemy into Sisu and Bolden
Warrior into Queen's Castle line, which wrecked Blue Steel.
And it was really hard for them to do anything against it.
It was so lightning quick.
So they didn't bring in a card to counter Lucky Dime.
They just went, no, it's three cards.
We'll just win the game first.
How about that?
I'll just counter it, right?
I'll just win.
Great concept.
This is what deck specialists are really, really good at.
And that's why they're very, very powerful to have on a testing team because they're
going to be sitting over there in a corner stacked up with these cards of these two colors
only and they're going to understand these fine little interactions that come up and
they go, oh, well actually, and push up their glasses and tell you that there's a card that
was a common from three sets ago that also gave a card exert in addition to this other
thing.
But now that's playable because then they go into this long rambling scenario about
how that interacts with this and that that Charlie Day meme of him connecting all of
the crazy yarn together and looking insane.
That's what the specialist is over in the corner doing, trying to explain to you how
they can get the cards of these two colors to work together.
Really, really neat and really fun.
And they just have such this strong intuition and knowledge of these colors.
It makes them a real weapon on a testing team.
You can see why they work hand in hand with the generalist, right?
Because now the generalist is going to sit there with a pile and play them with the best
decks in the meta and that's going to teach them how to respond to those decks in kind.
And then the specialist is going to say, I think I could pilot this deck really well.
I don't know if you generalists will have the best shot with it because it's not inherently
the most powerful.
I think this is the most powerful version of this deck.
And I think if you put in more time, you can get very good with it.
But I think where you're at right now, you might just want to pick this deck.
That's just a more meta strong out of the gate meta choice specialist.
Like I said, no, I'm not great call out for a specialist there.
Lorcanabro, a big believer in the Amber Steel song deck.
We see a lot of specialists who put out content and generally we tend to gravitate towards
the specialist that put out decks that do the thing we like.
And that kind of leads us into the third and I think probably the most common play style.
I think Sam and I both fall into this category more than the other two.
And that's the hybrid of the two.
And this is kind of like if you mushed them both together.
So the hybrid player tends to prefer a play style or a series of play patterns over a
specific color combination.
But they also like one play style and tend to gravitate towards that.
I think a really good call out for a content creator who's very good at this is Artebax.
Artebax loves the purple surrounded decks, the ones that tend to be more tempo oriented.
They're capable of controlling the board just long enough to give them an edge in the lore
lead and then take over the game.
Or just keep their foot on the gas and just win the game like an aggro deck.
That's what the tempo deck does, right?
Tempo means playing to the board or playing to in play for Lor'Kana versus in the hand,
which is more the hallmark of a control deck trying to gain card advantage versus tempo
deck trying to really push down board advantage.
Both through putting highly-statted characters into play ahead of time, like Madame M. Fox
being the hallmark card in Lor'Kana for a tempo card versus friends on the other side,
which grants them card advantage and they can turn that into board advantage.
So they're not putting down things like Daisy Duck.
They're worried about putting down Madame M. to deal with the Daisy Duck and then quest
with their Curse Merfolk.
Knock you down in cards while they go up cards and keep that advantage, right?
They have the steady stream of cards going from the hand to the board and trying to limit
your ability to do both.
And Artebax really I think highlights that I've seen him play.
Ruby Amethyst I've seen him play obviously really broke out on the scene during Into
the Inklans with Emerald Amethyst.
That was really his hallmark and premier child, if you will, in the game.
And I think he did a great job of championing it.
And we still see people playing that color combination.
Now two sets later, it's one of the big color combinations.
Brendan Candio is a good call.
Plays Mufasa, plays Steel Song, like generally plays something in that range, tends to be
like in the amber range, like wants to be proactive and typically a little bit more
mid-rangey.
I think that is a really good example, but the hybrid player is willing to play anything
that fits into that style.
It doesn't matter what the color combination is per se, so long as it fits in that style.
Is it a mid-range deck?
I'll try it.
Is it a tempo deck?
I'll try it.
Is it a
tempo deck?
entire day with this thing.
I don't typically like the decks that you play.
Right.
I like decks that operate on typically lower resources,
and often decks that will put opponents in a position where
they are working off of limited resources.
But if your deck is designed to draw a bunch of cards,
or we're both drawing a bunch of cards,
that's when I struggle.
Because there's so many choices, and I get analysis,
paralysis.
And that's what I like.
I like having a bunch of cards in my hand,
playing to the board, bouncing.
Yeah, you like the tempo style decks.
You really want the big hand with a lot of options,
and you want to always have the upper hand
on your opponent on the board.
And that is the comfort zone a lot of people play in.
I only like this kind of deck.
I only like that kind of deck.
And it can extend all the way into things like,
I only like playing decks I make.
And if you get outside of that comfort zone,
it can get a little scary.
And that definitely makes sense.
I think it's a really neat way to kind of set the balance
between them is to do that.
The pros kind of land in the middle, right?
You're not going to get caught off guard very often,
because you know what a lot of the decks are.
But you will often kind of look at a deck
and go, not for me, and just move on from there.
Respect what it can do.
You get more card choices, but again,
you are a little bit more susceptible like the generalist
to fine errors in your play, less so than a pure generalist,
but you will often make very small micro,
miss sequencing mistakes, things like that,
just because of the nature of the fact
that you will play larger swath of cards
than the average specialist.
So that's the three different buckets that we see
or I've seen and Sam has seen over time
as we've learned and tested.
And our play group has all of these.
Sam and I are in here, we have another one.
We have a hardcore generalist
and we have a hardcore specialist in our play group as well.
And it's really fun when we get together
and kind of argue with each other
about who's doing the right thing, the wrong thing,
the right way or the wrong way.
Because what's fun about having everybody together
is you all offer a different perspective on the game.
And that's why I keep saying the strength of a team
or a group of friends, whatever you want to call them,
playing together are gonna make you think about the game
a way you haven't before.
Even though this is a one-on-one game
at a competitive level,
the benefit of having people behind you
and knowing that you have a support staff,
you have a group of people
who have all put their conscious effort
into making sure everybody on the team
is going to a tournament with the best deck
is really, really heartening.
And even if nothing else, it's a great morale boost.
And from an analysis perspective,
you're not gonna beat it.
A generalist gathering you all this data,
a specialist telling you why this color combination
can do something you might not imagine
just because it's not high on a meta deck list.
And the hybrid players looking at the ways
they like to play the game and bringing those decks
for even further, deeper enrichment is just fantastic.
And again, to bookend at the beginning,
at the end, like a good writer would,
none of these are the right way or the wrong way.
You can switch roles over time.
I've been different in different trading card games
I have played.
I've been different at different points in my life.
I can't afford to get entirely into this game.
I'm gonna become a specialist and just get cards
that do this because then I can afford to play the game.
I'm not saying you have a choice in the role you get.
And I'm not saying there's a right or a wrong choice
with any of it.
It's literally making the best of what you can.
And in order to win Lurkana,
the one thing no matter which one of these you are,
you have to keep questioning.