Lorcana: A Review of DLC Bologna and the winning deck!

Hello, everyone!

On the weekend of October 4th and 5th, the first Disney Lorcana Challenge (DLC) of the new season took place in Bologna, Italy!

DLCs are open events, meaning anyone can participate, with no prior qualification needed. The DLCs are, in fact, a grand celebration of the game, of Disney, and of the community, bringing together a mix of casual and competitive audiences for various events.

Today, we'll focus on the main event: the Challenge itself. Competitively speaking, it's the most prestigious event, since in addition to the unique prize pool, the top finishers also earn spots in future Regional Championships and, of course, the Lorcana World Championship.

DLC Bologna had 1,864 players on the first day of the event. Furthermore, the events are now in a Best of 3 format, already known and popular among other card games, and more familiar to a good part of the audience.

The Metagame

The excellent coverage team gathered full info about each ink pair present in each of the 1,864 decks:

The number of players using the Amethyst-Sapphire combination is immediately striking, accounting for almost 37% of the total. Another striking number is the extremely low presence of the Ruby ink in general, with only 34 participants out of 1,864 using this ink at all—just under 2%.

On the second day of the event, which required 18 points to qualify, we had 285 participants. The most popular ink combinations remained almost the same, but with significant changes among the less represented:

As you can see from the images above, Amethyst-Sapphire was the most popular combination on both Day 1 and Day 2, with a very similar percentage: 37% on Day 1 down to 33% on Day 2.

The second most popular combination, Amber-Steel, had almost the same percentage: 19% on Day 1 and 20% on Day 2. Similarly, the third and fourth combinations had practically the same percentage from Day 1 to Day 2.

It was in the Amber-Emerald combination that we saw the first major divergence between the days: from just over 6% on Day 1 to almost double that, 11% on Day 2. Furthermore, the combination had two players all the way to the Top 8, a feat only accomplished by another combination, Amethyst-Steel, which had three players in the Top 8.

However, it's not all sunshine and roses for Steel ink. The Emerald-Steel and Sapphire-Steel combinations had low conversion rates between Day 1 and Day 2, going from over 80 players combined, to only 8 players. Still, one of the Emerald-Steel players made it into the Top 8 of the event - it's certainly a list to keep an eye on, since it achieved such an outstanding result.

The Champion - Lükas Marcellin - Amethyst-Sapphire

After 8 rounds of Swiss format on Day 1, 4 swiss rounds on Day 2, the Top 32 cut, and the entire elimination round leading up to the grand final, Lükas Marcellin was crowned champion, masterfully taking the only copy of Amethyst-Sapphire in the Top 8 to ultimately win it all.

Lükas's list proved to be extremely interesting, a mix of Ramps, thanks to the Sapphire ink, with card draw and evasion, from the Amethyst ink:

Basically, the deck's early game is geared toward accelerating its inkwell with Sapphire cards, and with the powerful Into the Unknown song keeping the board clear of bigger threats.

With this acceleration, strong board-control cards can be used a few turns in advance, giving the deck a huge tempo advantage. Belle, Hades, Monstro, and others, all contribute to the plan, in addition to being good Lore generators.

As for card draw, Finders Keepers, Dig a Little Deeper, and Second Star to the Right give the deck all the fuel it needs for late-game strength. And, complementing the early game, we have Rafiki - Mystical Fighter and Basil - Practiced Detective—also an excellent answer to Illusion-type characters.

As you can see, a very complete deck, undoubtedly refined by the champion, judging by the numerous one-ofs —which, in fact, are mostly there to complement other cards already in use in the deck, such as a copy of One Jump Ahead, to complement four Sail the Azurite Sea and four Tipo - Growing Son.

Lükas has also qualified for Lorcana's Second World Championship! He's proven himself to be both a good player and deckbuilder, so we can expect many creative deck ideas in the future!

DLC Bologna kicked off Lorcana's second competitive season, and with more and more events all around the world, we'll see plenty of variety both in decks and in strategies.

The Core Constructed format, for which we just had the game's first rotation, has proven to be quite diverse, with several competitively viable options. However, some point to the dominance of Amethyst and Steel as potential problems for future events, along with the apparent decline of Ruby, with very few players using decks with it.

We can still expect the format to evolve, and look forward to Ruby players that will find a formula within the metagame that will set them apart and enable a more competitive list.

I can't wait for the next event in Milwaukee!

Cheers, and see you next time!