It’s no secret that I love Disney Lorcana, the Trading Card Game designed and published by Ravensburger in the summer of 2023. I have been playing it since day one with my son, enjoying both the collecting and the playing aspects of the game. Luckily, we’ve found a few very nice places where we can chat with like-minded Illumineers, explore new casual play formats and, of course, practice for more competitive events.
Among these last ones, a key milestone for many Disney Lorcana players is the set championships, and this time I had the great pleasure to attend my very first Set Championship at the Disney HQ in London, together with a few other Influencers. How did it go? Well, the event was super fun, extremely well organized, and I had a lot of interesting discussions about the cards and the hobby. Unfortunately, I did not rank in the top 8 this time but I brought back a lot of good ideas to improve my deck for the next tournament and I wanted to share the overall experience and a few fun facts that I hope you will enjoy.
Disney Lorcana Set Championship – What is it?
First and foremost, what is a set championship, and what makes the one for Archazia’s Island set an interesting event? A Set Championship is a type of Competitive event that happens approximately every three months in the last few weeks before a new Disney Lorcana set releases. Each store can host their own championship, and they usually provide some booster packs or other products as prizes for the event.
However, the prizes everyone is hoping to get are those provided by Ravensburger in particular the Enchanted Promo cards and the Playing mat. Both of these prizes are specifically designed for the events depicting the same art and theme of the last set released before the championship. For example, Archazia’s Island Set Championship Enchanted and Mat are showcasing a beautiful alternate artwork of ” Hiro Hamada, Armor Designer” while “Scar, Heartless Hunter” was the one picked for Azurite Sea.
The Enchanted Promo cards are exclusively provided for these events, thus can only be obtained by ranking among the top eight competitors of each tournament while the mat is reserved for the Player in the first place after the top-cut matches. However, starting from this set Ravensburger is also providing a non-foil version of the same Enchanted Promo card to all players attending the tournament. I personally think this is a very nice initiative as it allows everyone to bring back a nice and exclusive memento even if they rank last in their tournament. This change further enhances the prize pool for these events after the increase of the Enchanted promo cards from four to Eight put in place a couple of sets ago. Overall, I think it is really important to see how much effort Ravensburger is putting into sustaining the community and making sure these events are less about the prizes and more about having fun and making memories.
Archazia’s Island Set Championships – Picking a deck
Picking a deck for set championships is always one of the most stressful parts of the experience. Depending on the type of player you are, you may consider what your opponents may be playing (if you know your local meta), what type of deck may have more chances to win, and, of course, your playing style and which mechanics you enjoy the most. I personally love Amethyst game style and I usually find myself picking a deck that benefits from its higher drawing ability.
Picking the right deck for Archazia’s Island was a bit more challenging than usual due to the recent ban of Hiram Faversham and Fortisphere. Considering a few players moved away from Sapphire after the ban list came out, I thought there was a high chance of facing a Diablo-powered discard deck during the tournament. The Diablo-Prince John-Muses engine has been quite solid in past tournaments but struggled to keep up with the speed of the newer Sapphire-Steel aggro decks and from the wide removal of Sapphire-Ruby. With the Sapphire drawing engine limited by the lack of Hiram, the meta definitely shifted a lot toward Emerald and Amethyst decks. And, of course, Steel-Song also came back among the main contenders for this set championship.
Personally, I have always been a big fan of Sapphire decks, and Sapphire-Steel and Ruby-Sapphire were definitely among the decks I tested for this tournament. Among them, Sapphire-Steel was definitely my favourite due to the terrifying combo “Alice, Savvy Sailor” and “Cogsworth, Grandfather Clock” although without Hiram my main card draw relied on “Doc, Bold Knight”, “I’m still here” and “Let’s the storm rage on”.
I also considered a very fast Lemon & Lime deck based on the new Lady and the Tramp cards and, of course, my all-time favourite Amethyst-Ruby. The first deck relies on an explosive lore gaining in the first 2/3 turns while the second one tends to control the opponent board in the late game to prevent them from winning. Both strategies proved quite efficient in the early events of the season and they can definitely be good options for your tournaments.
In the end, I decided to bring an Amethyst-Steel deck to this first Set Championship. I considered that this type of deck will have a lot of drawing potential to eventually balance discard decks and the Steel portion will offer good opportunities to remove Evasive treats like Diablo. I also wanted to make my list a bit faster than my usual build thus I decided to add four “Maleficent, Biding her time” and four copies of the new “Jafar, Aspiring Ruler”. I think this last addition to the deck strengthens the overall strategy of the deck as Jafar can quest for 2 lore to keep the momentum of my deck and it also provides a character with Challenge +2 boosting the natural aggressivity of my Amethyst characters. This Ink colour combination usually relies a lot on “Merlin, Crab” to take out Locations and characters with high Willpower and Jafar can extend both the questing and challenging abilities of my deck.
The deck has been shuffled – Which cards I drew?
The first Set Championship at Disney HQ involved 16 players, thus we expected to play 4 rounds with a top 4 cut that would be handled in a single elimination round. All rounds were using a best-of-3 format which is usually the most common format for these tournaments.
Round one obviously had to start with a mirror match as I faced a fellow Amethyst-Steel player. The deck list my opponent chose was slightly different from the one I made but the majority of the deck was similar therefore the rounds were very balanced. Our decks both included “Calhoun, Marine Sergeant” to keep pressure on the opponent while gaining lore together with “Pete, Games Referee” and the Madame Mim/Merlin bouncing engine.
Drawing has been a key factor determining the outcome of this match together with deciding when to quest and when to challenge. As both sides were using Calhoun, questing or challenging our characters was only possible by bouncing them quickly after to prevent the opponent from challenging back and gaining lore in the process. The match was quite close but sadly, I lost two to zero. I loved the challenging aspects of this mirror match-up and how strategically my opponent played his game.
During round two, I hit another Amethyst deck, although this time was paired with Emerald and included cards like “Diablo, Devoted Herald”, “Prince John, Greediest of them All” and “Muses, Proclaimers of Heroes”. This deck list was actually quite interesting as included two cards from the newer set that I was not expecting. The first one is “Diablo, Spiteful Raven”, a dual-Ink Evasive card that gains Challengers +2 during the player’s turn, and “Kuzco, Panicked Lama”, another dual-Ink card that can either force both players to draw or discard at the beginning of the player’s turn. I think both cards were a great addition to my opponent’s deck as they provided more options to deal with evasive and to force the opponent to discard cards. In fact, Kuzco’s ability proved very versatile to either force me to discard a card or to ensure I have some cards in hand I can then be forced to discard later in the turn. Luckily for me, my opponent was not using “Peter, Shadow Finder” to allow all his Evasive characters to have Rush but he still managed to pull out the wins both times. With a 2-0 win rate, the tournament was not going well for me.
Round three started in the best possible way with me finally winning the dice roll to go first. Pumped up by a great dice roll, I decided to start strong by playing “Maleficent, biding her time”. My Opponent looked at my card and said “If we need to race, let’s race!” and it followed through by playing a “Daisy Duck, Donald’s Date” taking me a bit by surprise: I was facing a Lemon & Lime deck!!! On paper, Amethyst-Steel decks have very good options to control this type of super-fast aggro deck but it all depends on which cards were drawn in the very first turns from both sides. Lemon & Lime can in fact easily stockpile lore and win in just three or four turns before I can even find the cards I need to answer my opponent’s high questing characters.
Going first in the first game worked to my advantage as I managed to play both “Madame Mim, Snake” and “Madame Mim, Fox” early to control my opponent’s board. Calhoun was also pretty useful to banish their characters while gaining lore leading the way to reach 20 lore and win the round. My second round went in a completely different way as my opponents managed to play four 2-Lore questing Characters by turn three getting to 17 in a flash. It did not help that when I managed to finally banish all his characters, “Chernabog, Evildoer” found his way to the board to seal the win for my opponent. Interestingly, Chernabog was also a key card in the third round although this time it played in my favour as my opponent, unfortunately, drew three of them in the first few rounds. Being un-inkable, all these Chernabogs just stayed in my opponent’s hand preventing them from playing other cards and slowing them down enough for me to win. With a win finally on my side, my hopes started to rise a little bit.
And then, I faced an aggro Sapphire-Steel deck very similar to the one I was planning to take to the tournament. I took this as a sign that my deck was not a great match-up against this type of deck as we both have similar Characters and Actions belonging to the Steel portion. In fact, my strategy relies a lot on the direct damage I can deal with Song and Action cards but this approach does not work well against all the Sapphire cards with Ward my opponent was likely playing. Against all odds, I managed to still win the first round and get to 16 in both the second and the third one. Unfortunately, my opponent played much better than me and managed to beat me 2 to 1 in the end. It did not help that I top decked three times in a row into “Fire the Cannons” but I hardly imagine I could have done better against an army of Alice and Cogsworth.
Reflection:
My first attempt at the Archazia’s Island set championship was a lot of fun even if I only managed to rank 13th in the end. To be fair, I was expecting this tournament to be quite tough considering all the players were very experienced and facing a good challenge is always a great opportunity to enjoy Disney Lorcana.
Looking back at my choices, I think Amethyst-Steel was likely the right deck to pick. Most of my matches felt reasonably balanced and I think I put up a good fight in every match, including the one against a very strategic Amethyst-Emerald discard deck. My deck will likely benefit from having more copies of “Happy, Lively Knight” to deal with Diablo in the early rounds and I may need to consider swapping my “Fire the Cannons” for “Smash” to deal with Calhoun’s Resist +1 ability but overall I think the deck performed well. I noticed this deck has been quite present in the most recent competitive events after the ban, and it makes sense considering how well this Ink colour combination performed last Set Championship and in the one before it. If you are attending any Set Championship events I strongly recommend preparing for this match-up as it is very likely you will have to face Amethyst-Steel in order to secure your copy of the Enchanted Promo card.
I am hoping I will have better chances in the next tournament but I was quite happy with how this tournament went. Together with some very fun games, I was able to meet again some of the best Influencers for Disney Lorcana and of course the Ravensburger team. I also managed to get a copy of the participation card for this Set Championship and I must admit it felt quite nice. In the past, not arriving in the top 4 or top 8 players of these events usually meant going home empty-handed with perhaps just one Booster pack gained on entry. I know playing Lorcana for a full day is great fun and it can be considered a prize on its own but it honestly felt much better to bring back home a fancy new card after committing the full day to the tournament.
Overall, I had a great day out for which I have to thank Ravensburger. First for making a great and very enjoyable Trading Card Game and then for creating a great opportunity to spend time all together! I will also mention we had Pizza for lunch and that is always a sign the event is very well managed. Now, I will need to make sure I work out a better deck for the next Set Championship I will attend. As a reminder, Archazia’s Island Set Championship events will be held from the 3rd to the 25th of May on weekend days only and you can find any participating shops at this link. I hope you will all enjoy these events and I hope you will get a lot of amazing cards!!
