Lorcana Competitive Analysis - Previewing the Lorcana Championhips

Hello, everyone!

After the season of Disney Lorcana Challenges, or DLCs, the community now turns its attention to the two upcoming large events, the Lorcana Championships!

These will be two high level events, as to participate it was necessary to have reached the top 16 in one of the seasons' Challenges, or try and win one of the Last-Chance Qualifiers that will take place on the eve of the respective Championships.

With the recent release of the Azurite Sea set, many new cards are appearing in competitive lists, and we will undoubtedly see their impact in the European Championship this next weekend.

As a “preview” of the Championship in Paris, let’s analyze two recent and relatively large tournaments, which took place, respectively, in the United States and France!

Battle of the Bay - USA - 138 Players

The “Battle of the Bay” tournament took place on november 23rd in Berkeley, California/USA. There were 138 players, and at the end of the tournament Edmond Chiu was crowned champion - he had already been champion of the Disney Lorcana Challenge in Texas, last July. “Ed”, in fact, used an updated version of the same deck that gave him the title in Fort Worth:

Champion's Decklist

The Azurite Sea addition were modest, albeit important ones:

Genie - Wish Fulfilled is another "card draw option", but with better stats and Lore generation than Merlin - Rabbit. The 3-3 split was probably necessary to balance the number of uninkable cards in the deck.

The powerful Maui - Half-Shark allows for a broader range of removals to be used, and as such the deck has both a "mass removal" option in Be Prepared, and "single-target removal" option in both Dragon Fire and Brawl.

In the end, Ruby/Amethyst is a deck that combines good card draw with strong board control, in addition to also having some of the best cards power-level wise within the game. The Azurite Sea additions brought a little more consistency in some aspects, making Ruby/Amethyst undoubtedly one of the most competitive and essential decks in regards to practice/preparation for any major event.

Tournoi “For The Lore” - France - 140 Players

The “For The Lore” tournament, or “Tournoi FTL”, took place on november 24th in Paris - the very place of next weekend's Lorcana Championship! There were 140 players attending, and at the end of the tournament, “IKL_Mouche” became champion with an innovative Amethyst/Emerald Bounce Aggro!

Champion's Decklist

Let's start by addressing the elephant in the room - this list has SIXTY characters! No songs, actions, items or locations, which means every interaction, card draw and win conditions are performed exclusively with characters and their effects.

The list also makes use of several cards from the new edition - to a point where it could be stated that the archetype ends up being “competitively possible” only thanks to the contributions brought by Azurite Sea:

In total, there are sixteen copies of new cards from Azurite Sea, and it's not a coincidence to see the beloved Genie - Wish Fulfilled again. Its card draw ability, added to its good defensive stats, evasive, and generating 2 Lore, making it a good addition also for aggro lists.

IKL_Mouche's deck manages to make excellent use of the “bounces” in Amethyst, but in addition to reusing Lore gain and card draw effects, it adds protection effects from Emerald, such as Gazelle - Angel with Horns and especially Go Go Tomago - Darting Dynamo.

Go Go Tomago - Darting Dynamo, in fact, is really efficient against decks that try to control the board through challenges between characters. The Emerald/Amethyst list can punish an opponent who prioritizes keeping characters alive with damage on them - for example, Maui - Hero to All.

Emerald/Amethyst was undoubtedly the highlight of “Tournoi FTL”, with three players using similar versions reaching the top8, and one of them winning it all.

Conclusion

As we can see, the sixth set, Azurite Sea, is already making changes to the metagame - which remains diverse, with all ink colors represented in some way if you look at the game's most competitive lists.

The European Championship, this weekend, will be another excellent opportunity to see the new cards in action, and will also provide some excellente data to look over before the next Championship, the North American one, in january.

One can also hope we'll even see new decks show up, maybe some spicy brew that players/teams will have developed to “attack” the current metagame.

Most importantly: Lorcana remains varied and fun!

And you, what do you hope to see in this weekend’s Championship? Share with us!

Hugs and see you next time!