Lorcana - December's Big Independent Events in Review!

Hello, everyone!

Although the next Disney Lorcana Challenge won't happen again until next year – we should have an event in China in January! –, the year 2025 shows that Lorcana is still going strong! Independent events, but with support from the official circuit, continue to take place around the world, attracting players from everywhere to this fantastic card game.

Furthermore, the recent set, Whispers in the Well, has been present in several decks, and even a surprising new combo! We will certainly see much more of this set be explored in the coming weeks.

Let's then analyze two major events from last weekend: the CCS 25k in Atlanta, USA, and the CCQ Bologna, in Italy. The lists presented were posted on InkDecks – as usual, thank you for this! OK, let's go!

CCS $25.000 - Atlanta, GA

Let's start with the event in the United States! The city of Atlanta, GA, hosted three hundred and thirty-three Illumineers at its main event, and what we saw was a continuing predominance of Amethyst ink.

Basically, the Amethyst package, led by Genie - Wish Fulfilled and other evasive threats, making Dumbo - Ninth Wonder of the Universe an absurd source of card advantage and a very strong win condition at the same time, makes the use of other ink colors challenging, unless the idea is to ignore the opponent's board and go all-in on the Lore race. But hold on! We'll talk about that part later.

To exemplify a more traditional version of lists with Amethyst, we present the list used by Jonathan Williams, who was the runner-up in the event:

This is a decklist that has evolved over the months, since it settled in the metagame starting with Fabled. However, we already see many new Whispers in the Well cards in the list, such as Cheshire Cat - Inexplicable, Lexington - Small in Stature, Hades - Looking for a Deal and Demona - Scourge of the Wyvern Clan.

In addition to these characters that fit ideally into the deck's ink curve, we also have the new song He Hurled His Thunderbolt, which is extremely powerful, even in mirrors, dealing with Dumbo, Genie, Iago, and the like.

Jonathan was one match away from winning the event, but the title went to Zan Syed, using a deck that had been appearing on the competitive radar but still lacked a significant result.

That's right, a Combo Deck, using the combination of Monstro - Infamous Whale and The Great Illuminary - Abandoned Laboratory to draw and discard the entire deck, and win with a loop of We Know the Way by having Alan-A-Dale - Rockin' Rooster on the board.

Incidentally, we talked about this very deck idea a short time ago, although the CCS 25k winning list has some differences: instead of being totally focused on the combo itself, it takes more advantage of the Amethyst package, playing like a normal midrange deck, but with the opponent always forced to respect the combo if Monstro is played.

In addition to the previously mentioned new cards, the list also uses Junior Woodchuck Guidebook as a new way to fill your hand, and another card that makes Amber a great color to counter the profusion of decks with Amethyst: The Horseman Strikes!.

CCQ Bologna - Italy

Changing continents, let's go to Europe, more precisely Italy, where we had four hundred and thirty-seven Illumineers gathered in the city of Bologna.

Once again we saw the Amethyst package in action, showing that it's the lynchpin of the current metagame, combining consistency, card advantage, and a win condition.

Not surprisingly, the current world champion, Dinh Khang Pham, brought his new favorite - Amethyst-Sapphire - and even reached second place, one game away from victory.

Interestingly, Amethyst-Sapphire was the winning combination of the Bologna DLC in October, and once again ot almost reached the top.

Dinh's updated list incorporated new cards, which we even mentioned before: Cheshire Cat - Inexplicable, Hades - Looking for a Deal, Demona - Scourge of the Wyvern Clan and Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, but these don't affect the deck's overall strategy. The idea is to use ink acceleration, which is crucial on turn 2, such as Sail the Azurite Sea and Tipo - Growing Son. This way, the deck reaches the magical number 4 in the inkwell one turn earlier, and starts playing its Amethyst haymakers. However, this time the Amethyst ink did not prevail in the finals, although once again Amber was crowned champion! Stefano Zamagni, with his Amber-Emerald, affectionately nicknamed ChromiDogs, was the champion of the event:

Since the release of the Lady and the Tramp cards, aggressive decks focused on these characters have been nicknamed Dog Decks. One of my favorites was ChernaDogz, which took advantage of the synergy between Tramp - Street-Smart Dog and Chernabog - Evildoer to create a gigantic board.

With the rotation, and especially the departure of Chernabog from the format, some adaptations were necessary, hence the introduction of Emerald Chromicon, providing protection for your characters. We also have Lilo - Escape Artist for its synergy with Tramp, Bobby, and Scrooge, as well as Webby and Mowgli - Man Cub - the latter practically a fifth copy of Ursula - Deceiver. Finally, to close out longer matches, Go Go Tomago - Darting Dynamo.

It's worth highlighting, once again, the powerful card The Horseman Strikes!, which in the current metagame is capable of dealing with numerous threats from Amethyst decks and also draws you a card!

The metagame is showing signs of increasingly consolidating around the Amethyst package, which in turn allows for strategies that fight back this ink, as seen in the Amber decks using The Horseman Strikes!.

Although many strategies seem similar, the fact is that there is an interesting variety in ink colors – the 4 decks highlighted in this article, which took first or second place in important tournaments, showed five ink colors represented. However, even with this variety, there is also an imbalance, since Amethyst has been very prominent in recent sets, while Ruby remains without a clear presence in the metagame.

We will continue to follow upcoming events and update you on the news!

As always, leave your feedback in the article's comments so we always know what we can improve.

Take care, and until next time!