Winterspell as been one of the Disney Lorcana sets I enjoyed the most in a while. It has both a great theme to enjoy and a lot of interesting cards that can boost many different strategies and decks. As a result, this set widened a bit the meta-game of Disney Lorcana increasing the reliability and overall performance of a few Ink combination we usually don't see in Competitive events. At the beginning of the season, it felt almost like this set only pushed Amber-Emerald Dog Deck into a top tier deck. However, the more events are played the more decks start to emerge and become good contenders to the top tier decks.
Personally, I was really looking forward to have a Disney Lorcana set like Winterspell and I have been enjoying playing it quite a lot. With the release events now behind us, I am starting to consider which deck I want to bring in the upcoming Set Championship that will kick off on the 4th of April. This is always a difficult choice but, thanks to Ravensburger, I had the opportunity to attend a Winterspell Set Championship limited to Content Creators. I am always very grateful to Ravensburger for inviting me to these events as they are always very fun and super well managed.
Starting from the last one, these events are also progressively getting closer to the community as they are moving away from Disney HQ in London to be hosted by local shop and Game Cafés. This time, we had the pleasure to play at Players Paradice in Newport Pagnell (https://www.wargamesworkshop.co.uk/). It was the first time for me visiting the area and I was really impressed by the size of the shop and by the amount of gaming areas you can book in order to play your favourite games. They also have plenty of rooms for miniature games and RPG events that is pretty awesome. If you are in the area I would definitely recommend to pay them a visit and you can follow them on their socials (@wargamesworkshopmk) to see which events they are hosting.
Winterspell: Flurries of fun and Meta decks
As mentioned, I was very excited about Winterspell while the set was progressively revealed and I have been quite impressed by the good amount of interesting new cards this set brought to Disney Lorcana. Together with a lot of fun cards to play in casual events, Winterspell actually provided a very strong boost to a variety of decks with more decks becoming top contenders in the meta-game. Right after the set released, we saw for example Amber-Emerald Decks taking a strong lead in the very first official CCQ and DLC together with Amethyst-Steel and Amethyst-Sapphire Decks that have been already among the top contenders. However, the metagame scene today grew a bit wider with more strategies and Ink combinations becoming progressively more relevant. Emerald-Sapphire and Amber-Ruby for example became more and more interesting thanks to their wide board cleaning while Sapphire-Steel and Ruby-Sapphire have also seen an increase in the number of players using them in particular considering that Dogs is a more likely match-up in tournaments.
Overall, I think Winterspell succeeded in adding a lot of variety to the Lorcana competitive scene. Picking a good Decks to bring to a Set Championship is quite fun as there are many options that can both fit your playing style while still being quite efficient. In my personal case, I initially considered playing Amethyst-Steel or Amethyst-Sapphire as these have been my favourite decks for quite some time. I was quite torn about the Deck I wanted to play but then the fate stepped in and I decided to play Sapphire-Steel for two main reasons.
First, Neil, one of my friend from the community playing at the Lionsheart Bookshop Café took this Deck at Ghent and came 33rd.. I think the Deck did quite amazingly considering he had to make his way through a large amount of Dogs and Amethyst Decks and I was very pleased he secured an invitation as someone among the first 32 players already had one.
In addition to the above I recalled that I have been beaten by Sapphire-Steel twice at the last Content Creator tournament in London. If you read my report from the tournament you know that I was completely powerless against Harlan and Kimberlyanne list and I thought it would be nice to see if playing this Deck will bring me more fortune than playing against it.
Once my decision made, it was time to tune the Deck list and to put some up some practice with it, My first stop was obviously have a chat with Neil to learn from his experience and match-up in Ghent. In general, the strategy with Sapphire-Steel requires growing your Inkwell as quickly as possible in order to play your stronger Characters to control the board. This Deck is generally slower than other more aggro Decks and can suffer quite a lot in those match-up. The current Amber-Emerald Dogs Decks is likely one of the worst match-up as they can run away quickly enough to go around the control abilities of my Allies Deck in particular if my ramp is not quick enough. “Jasmine, Steady Strategist” can actually help with these match-ups and I also included a few “Lexington, Small in Stature” to provide a good early threat to the Lady and the Tramp cards.
Together with being potentially slower than other decks, Sapphire-Steel also needs some card draw to balance the cards you need to add to the Inkwell. While “Sail to the Azurite sea” and “Doc, Bold Knight” are good options to have some card draw, Neil decided to go for the Allies version of this Deck in order to use Jasmine shift line to draw more cards. Most important, the ability of “Jasmine, Steady Strategist” can allow the Player to find and play “Pleakley , Scientific Expert” on turn 3 in order to grow your Inkwell to have seven Ink in turn four. Winterspell also added “Pete, Ghost of Christmas Future” to this deck that can provide a very efficient way to draw more cards mid-game while also choosing the cards that can better fit your strategy. Let's also note that Pete is an Ally and he has a terrifying 5 in both Strength and Willpower that adds even more control to this Deck...
Pairings are up: Let's roll the Dice!
The very first Winterspell Set Championship hosted by Ravensburger featured 14 players thus the plan was to do 4 best-of-three rounds with a top cut of four. As per standard rules, the top eight players will get the Foil version of “Tinkerbell, Snowflake Collector”, while the best player winning the final will receive the very special Playing Mat with the same artwork as the prize card. As done previously, all players participating in this and in all other Set Championship received also a non-foil version of card awarded to the top 8 ones.
In a very weird turn of events, my first opponent was Ed Templer (@GameHogGames) that I also faced in the first round at last Set Championship. Unfortunately, he decided last minute to use a Amber-Emerald Dogs Deck that in my mind was likely the worst possible match-up I could have had. Obviously, he also managed to roll an eleven winning the possibility to start first and to play a “Daisy Duck, Donald's Date” right away. This Daisy Duck would prove to be quite a nasty opponent for me in the game as she managed to send quite a few of my very important actions to the bottom of my deck. Luckily for me, my starting hand included a Jasmine and a couple of Sail to the Azurite sea that would ensure my Inkwell grew very fast.
The first round of was very close although I made a very stupid mistake playing Lexington on turn three using the extra Ink from Sail before banishing my opponent's Ursula. I completely forgot Ed played the Emerald Chromicon and my Lexington came immediately back to hand. Ultimately, this error cost me the first round as I lost the opportunity to slow Ed's Deck long enough to allow my Deck to take control of the game.
Even if I lost my first game, I realised my deck had enough draw and control power to stop my opponent's aggro deck thus I started thinking I had a good fighting chance. In fact, I ended up winning both my second and third Round by going as wide as possible and by banishing Ed's cards as quickly as I could. “Tinkerbell, Giant Fairy” proved to be the MVP of the game, removing a few cards with her on-play ability and forcing Ed to lose valuable time to avoid her to pass damage to any ready Characters. Not bad as a start!
After the first round, I was quite excited as I not only managed to win my first game but I also beat an aggro deck! Even more exciting, my opponent in the second round was the one and only Baker, aka Lorcana Villain (@LorcanaVillain). It has been a while since last time I had the opportunity to play against him and I was quite confident his Amethyst-Ruby Deck will be a very tough opponent. Not unexpectedly, Backer managed to win the first game and we drew on the second one after running out of time.
I was very close to win my second game but having spent almost 40 minutes in the first round did not help... Both games were quite strategic with me and Backer playing conservatively in an effort to find a way to get the upper hand. On his side, Demona was quite instrumental to keep his hand filled while on my side Doc and Goliath tried their best to do the same. In retrospective, playing Goliath was probably not a great move.
Both rounds actually showed me how good are the new Ruby cards added in Winterspell, in particular the action “Marching off to battle” and the Whisper “Scrooge McDuck - Ghostly Ebenezer”. This last one in particular caused me a real headache as the only effective way to deal with him was to send him into the Inkwell but with Demona constantly refilling my opponent's hand, all this additional Ink ended up playing against me. Overall, the second round was a very great one even if I ended-up losing.
With one win and one loss, the fate paired me against another Amber-Emerald Deck driven by Louis (@LorcanaEnchantedQuest). Meeting and Playing against Louis was an amazing opportunity and I had tons of fun. This time I managed to go first in the first round and that offered a very valuable opportunity against Aggro deck in particular considering my hand was really really bad and filled with uninkables. Luckily, I decided to shift Jasmine right away on round two providing me a really good source of extra (and inkable) cards. “Cinderella, Dream Come true“ also helped a lot in particular after Mowgli managed to snipe the only Action I had in hand. Unfortunately for Louis, the TCG gods were not on his side as he really struggled to draw any of his good cards on this first round and I managed to slowly make my way to 20 lore.
The Second round was very similar with my Deck slowly building up Lore out of a wide number of small characters while my opponent struggled to find any of the key Characters that make Amber-Emerald such a strong Deck. Having an Emerald Chromicon in play significantly helped my opponent but at one point I managed to gain a strong card advantage by having both Pete and my Floodborn Jasmine in play and I sealed the game. Tinkerbell was again quite key to secure my victory although I must say the game would have been very different if my opponent had found any of his Lady or Lilo Characters.
After two wins and three games I was pretty excited to find out my opponent in the last round would be Sam (@FalconeHosts). Sam is pretty local to me and we bumped into each other a few times during previous Set Championships thus it was quite nice to finally have a chance to play against each other. However, I was a little less happy to find out that I would face Dogs for the third time in this tournament. I guess I manifested it considering I was worried Amber-Emerald would be my worst match-up..
First round started on a good note as I rolled another eleven going first and playing a beautiful “Jasmine, Resourceful Infiltrator” that was shifted right away in order to provide some early card draw. Jasmine proved to be a great help against Amber-Emerald considering his good Strength and high resistance threatened pretty much every Character that tried to quest early. “Grandmother Willow, Ancient Advisor“, on the other hand, proved to be quite powerful allowing Sam to flood the board at every turn while Emerald Chromicon kept my board to go too wide. Ultimately the game was determined by me going first as I secured a 20 to 17 result that would have been the other way around if Sam had won the dice roll.
The second round went the other way around unfortunately as I missed my ramp completely and Sam managed hit 20 lore even before I could go over 10. Angel and Lexington tried their best to slow Sam down but I just couldn't deal with all the characters he had on board at one point. At least I went first again on the third round and this time I was able to find some of the cards I needed to ramp up quickly. However, I failed to secure the win as I top decked too early and just failed to draw any card that could have provided me the advantage I needed to turn the game around. In the end, time ran out (again) and we ended up tiding up at 17 Lore.
With the four rounds of Swiss completed, it was time for the final ranking and I was very pleased to end up on 5th position. Tying against Sam ended up being the worst result for both of us as I dropped off from the top four spots while he dropped off from the top eight. On a positive, Harlan was also using a Sapphire-Steel deck and he managed to win against Backer bringing becoming the first Winterspell Set Champ! Overall, it was a good day for this Ink combination.
Time to celebrate!!
My first Set Championship event for Winterspell has been a real blast! I found an amazing new location, I had a chance to have a chat again with some other Lorcana content creators, and, of course, I won the Foil Enchanted card! I was also quite happy I managed to win this event using a deck based on the one my friend used at Ghent DLC and similar to those that beat me last time!
Thinking of the upcoming Set Championship season, I would likely consider giving this deck another go. I am pretty sure I am not the only one that loves Sapphire, Steel and Allies and I really think this Deck has everything it needs to be a great contender in any tournament. The Deck felt overall pretty cohesive and well balanced even when facing Aggro decks. However, I haven't had the opportunity to play against Amethyst-Steel and I think I should up my strategy in order to be ready against an horde of evasive Characters. Considering this possibility, Lexington become a must have and I will consider increasing it to three copies if not up to four. On the other hand, I don't think Goliath has been very useful thus perhaps I will bring him down to two/three copies only. Scuttle is another card I would love to keep but I realised that I likely need more space for a few more big bodies. Taking down Scuttle may then offer the possibility to add “Pluto, Steel Champion” for some strong synergy or even “Namaari, Single-Minded Rival”.
Overall, I don't think the deck needs any major changes but a few minor tweaks can really make this deck even more reliable and effective in particular in the late game. I will need a bit more time to practice these variants but I am sure it will be ready for when Winterspell Set Championship kicks off on the 4th of April. On that note, make sure you check the Ravensburger Play Hub to find out which events are closer to you. Remember also that Zatu always hosts a Set Championship event every season and we will love to see you joining us on the 11th of April in case you want to catch an opportunity to visit the store and the gaming centre. Remember also that a lot of news and information about the game and upcoming events can be found on the official Disney Lorcana website (Home | Disney Lorcana by Ravensburger) and by following the game on their socials (#DisneyLorcana)
Wish you all a lot of luck!
