Competitive Analysis - Lorcana European Championship - Metagame and Results!

Hello, everyone!

On the weekend of December 6th-8th the first Lorcana Championship took place, in Paris/France!

In addition to the main event itself, there was a series of side events, panels with the developers/designers from Ravensburger bringing news, guest artists signing cards, in short, it was a great celebration of both the Disney franchise and the success of their card game, Lorcana.

Our focus today will be on the main event - we'll talk about the metagame, the most popular decks, cards from the newest set, and review the Champion's deck! Let's go!

The Metagame - Understanding the most popular decks

There was a lot of expectation about what decks the best European players would bring to the event, especially with the recent launch of the sixth set, Azurite Sea, which brought some new tools to stir up the metagame.

The Lorcana Championship is not an open event - in order to qualify, you had to achieve Top16 in one of the Lorcana Challenges held across Europe - there were 4 in total, therefore 64 players -, in addition to thirty-two players qualified by winning a “Last-Chance Qualifier”, or LCQs - single-elimination tournaments that took place throughout the first day of the event.

So, in total, we had 96 of the best Lorcana players in Europe, who chose to bring the following decks:

If we group the most popular decks, a little more than 85% of the decks were in one of the four following archetypes:

Ruby/Sapphire, 34% of the Metagame: about a third of the participantes brought some version of Ruby/Sapphire focused on items, a deck we went more in-depth in a previous article. The deck comprises a combination of strong Ruby board control cards with card draw and high Lore gain from Sapphire, the result being one of the best Control decks in the meta.

Amethyst/Emerald, 21% of the Metagame: a deck that combines the Lore gain and card draw in Sapphire with hand control in Emerald, one of the decks that made good use of many new cards introduced in the newest set. As we previously analyzed, the deck had already won a recent event with 140 participants, and its presence in the European Championship undoubtedly solidified it in the metagame.

Emerald/Steel, 18% of the Metagame: Diablo, Devoted Herald is considered one of the strongest cards in the game, and this deck is focused on using it and destroying the opponent's hand and board, through a combination of Emerald and Steel ink cards. The deck was the eventual winner of the last Lorcana Challenge in Seattle, and such good results certainly helped its popularity in Europe.

Amber/Steel, 13% of the Metagame: last but not least, the classic Amber/Steel Songs showed it has a loyal fanbase, although the deck could be considered not very well positioned at the moment, given the amount of control decks capable of keeping up with the resource gain generated by Steelsong. Our recent article talked about the version that had been very successful throughout the Challenges in Europe, and although the recent set's additions were timid, the deck proved to be up to the task of the European Championship.

These were the most popular decks at the event - and interestingly enough, we can see that every ink color is in attendance! But when the curtain fell and the tournament was over, none of these ended up the winner...

The Champion - Ruby/Amethyst Bounce

The fifth deck in popularity, which is certainly not indicative of its power level, was Ruby/Amethyst Bounce - specifically, the list brought by Domingo Martinez Rodenas, who after seven rounds of Swiss on Saturday and a top16 single-elimination on Sunday, became the 1st European Lorcana Championship Champion!:

We also talked about this deck in the last article, when we analyzed the decks with greater potential after the release of Azurite Sea. Interestingly enough, the two decks we analyzed - Ruby/Amethyst and Emerald/Amethyst - were exactly the two finalist decks of the European Championship!

However, unlike the more experimental list used by Edmond Chiu in the US, the European champion opted for more consistency, with more copies of his key cards. Of course, that didn't stop some very interesting innovations on the list:

In addition to the four copies of Genie - Wish Fulfilled - the only Azurite Sea card in the deck -, Rodenas also included two copies of Belle - Accomplished Mystic. Although there is no way to use the shift ability to speed her up to come into play, Belle is another important board control card, and works very well with the synergies around returning characters to the hand and generating value with its effects.

Rodenas also opted for four copies of Elsa - The Fifth Spirit, plus more copies of Be Prepared and Maui - Hero to All. All of these inclusions were aimed, first and foremost, to increase the number of “inkable” cards in the list, thus allowing for a more fluid and progressive development of the game, with a lower risk of failing to increase your inkwell. Secondly, they also provide more consistency to the deck, since from turn 5 onwards there are a series of different threats that the opponent needs to take into account, making it almost impossible to play around them all.

Rodenas' list, it should also be highlighted, has only one legendary card - a single copy of Sisu - Empowered Sibling, showing that Lorcana is much more than just a combination of high rarity cards - the synergies within the deck and, of course, the player's skill, are fundamental to success.

Conclusion

The European Lorcana Championship was a true demonstration of game play, with Europe's best showing a high level of both deck building and play skill.

It was also a great demonstration of how healthy Lorcana's metagame is, and while there are undoubtedly some archetypes more popular than others - competitively speaking -, different ink color combinations each have their own strengths and weaknesses, with player skill being a key factor in the end.

The hype will certainly increase further with the North American Championship, at the beginning of January, and the results of the European Championship will certainly influence the metagame. We'll be on the lookout to bring you a full analysis of this next Championship as well!

And what about you, did you follow the coverage of the European Championship? Did any deck catch your attention the most? Would you like us to highlight it in a future article? Share with us!

Hugs and see you next time!