First Reign of Jafar Set Championships: Great fun at Disney HQ!
Last weekend marked the end of the very first season of Competitive gameplay for Disney Lorcana with the Worlds finals and Dinh Khang Pham being crowned the First World Champion of this amazing TCG. It was a great event to watch for all the fans and players of this TCG and I am sure I was not the only one excited to hear that a new season will soon start. In fact, Bologna will kick-off the new series of Challenges in October followed by Ghent in Belgium and Dortmund in Germany. No events in UK announced yet, but Ravensburger confirmed also their support to two large events in September and in November in Cardiff and (likely) Birmingham.
Of course, we should not forget that the very next Competitive appointment for all the players will be the Reign of Jafar Set Championship, with the events running for five weeks from the 12th of July to the 10th of August. Reign of Jafar Set Championship will not only be the last event of this kind before Set Rotation but it will also be the first one managed by the new Ravensburger Playhub. This app will supersede Melee as the official tool for Disney Lorcana competitive gameplay and can therefore be used to find events and Set Championship tournaments nearby (https://tcg.ravensburgerplay.com/stores/search). If you haven’t done it yet, it is strongly recommended to sign-up on the app (https://tcg.ravensburgerplay.com/signup) as soon as possible to be ready not only for Set Championship but also for the upcoming Challenges. I did it pretty much as the PlayHub went live (and then I had to re-do as it was a false start….).
Reign of Jafar Set Championship held additional excitement for me as I joined a few other content creators at the Disney HQ in London to kick off this event in style. The event was super fun and extremely well organized as usual and I was quite happy to have a chance to play again against some very talented players. This time, I managed to bring back a copy of the Enchanted Promo card of “Jafar, High Sultan of Lorcana” by ranking 8th!!! How did I managed to get this result? Let’s have a look.
Reign of Jafar Set Championships – Picking a deck
As usual, picking a deck for set championships is one of the most stressful parts of the experience. This time it has been even more challenging as the official Set Championship lasts longer than usual thus there have been just a few weeks from the release of the new set and the start of the tournaments. I also usually love to play a deck that showcases at least some of the new cards of the set. After spending a bit of time thinking which decks I really wanted to play, I narrowed down my options to an Amber-Steel Aggro deck featuring the new “Lady, Family Dog” or an Amethyst-Sapphire deck (Blurple) updated with some of the new cards that came out in Reign of Jafar.
There are a few variants of the Amber-Steel Aggro deck but they all rely on Characters with low cost and high questing (Daisy Duck, Mr Smee etc). The new Lady can bring a Character with a cost of 2 or less to the table for free and “Rapunzel, Gifted with Healing” together with “Doc, Bold Knight” can provide some needed card draw to keep the engine going. The weakness of this strategy is that your deck will not have the strong control of a more standard Amber-Steel filled with song and therefore will be more exposed to the opponent strategy.
Blurple, on the other hand, focuses on ramping up your Inkwell as quickly as possible in order to have a larger board that can keep pressure on your opponent. “Genie, Wish Fullfilled”, “Merlin, Rabbit”, “Friends on the Other side” and tons of other similar cards provide a constant card draw that helps fuelling your engine. The lack of a proper removal and the need to challenge the opponent Characters in order to banish them is the main weakness of this deck.
Considering how much I love playing Amethyst, I decided to go for a Blurple deck as it is one of the type of deck I love the most and that I have been consistently playing for a few sets now. My list included a few new interesting cards like the song “Into the Unknown” that allows to send an exerted Characters into their player Inkwell and the new “Royal Guard, Octopus Soldier” that gains one strength for every card you draw in a turn. In both cases, these cards were added to widen the options of my deck by providing a Character that can benefit from the high drawing potential in the deck to remove targets with strong Willpower and Locations. “Into the Unknown” is a very good option for early removal in particular if you consider that can be sang by the cost 3 “Belle, Apprentice Inventor” that I can play for free on turn one by banishing a Pawpsicle.
Last but not least, I added a copy of “Pinocchio, Strings Attached” as I think this card can be quite interesting considering it offers even more card draw for this deck and it is evasive. I also considered that Pinocchio can be handy against a discard deck as it allows to draw an extra card at the beginning of the turn so that no matter how many cards my opponent forces me to discard, I will always have one more to potentially play.
The deck has been shuffled – Which cards I drew?
The Set Championship at Disney HQ involved 16 players and used the best of 3 format. As expected, we had four rounds plus a top cut of 4 and direct elimination.
Match one started in the worst possible way as I faced a Amber-Emerald Discard deck. The main issue is that Amethyst-Sapphire relies on either sending Characters to the opponent’s Inkwell or exerting, challenging and banishing them. Unfortunately, the key cards of this deck, “The Muses, Proclaimers of Heroes” and “Prince John, Greediest of Them all”, have both ward thus my main strategy does not work against them. In addition, Amber-Emerald is a very interesting variation to the more common Emerald-Steel discard deck as it has less direct damage but more control on the opponent board.
In the first round I was very unluckly as I haven’t draw any of the cards I needed to ramp-up my Inkwell thus I struggled to get enough speed. Moreover, my inability to deal with Ward Characters was pretty obvious and my opponent managed to lock me in a vicious loop using two Muses, an “Ariel, Spectacular singer” and one Price John. Essentially, every turn he will play Ariel, sing a song using either the muses or Prince John and then use the effect of the two Muses to send Ariel back to his hand and one of my Characters to the discard (and of course draw a card).
After losing round one, I managed to get a much better start during round two by ramping up my Inkwell very quickly. I was able to set a very large board but, unfortunately, my Opponent pulled out “Under the Sea” after playing Kida and he was essentially able to remove all my Characters from the board. It was an amazing and very well timed move and I really struggled to get back from it even with 10 cards in the Inkwell. Not a lucky one from my end but I loved the game and I had a lot of fun playing with my opponent.
Filled with a need for revenge, I obviously hit another Emerald deck in the second match. This time, it was paired with Amethyst, therefore it included all the cards with Ward I already faced in the first match plus pretty much all the cards I love in my Amethyst deck. The match-up was not looking great again. I was also very nervous as I lost to a very similar deck in the previous Set Championship at the Disney HQ.
Luckily for me, my opponent was not blessed with the draw and he struggled to get most of his key cards. “Diablo, Devoted Herald” in particular only showed up once in the whole game pretty much preventing my opponent to get a decent level of card draw. On the other hand, I got a bit of luck this time as I managed to get my “Madame Mim, Fox” and “Into the Unknown” every time I needed them to remove his cards. I also managed to play Pinocchio twice during this match and my opponent had to spend a lot of efforts to take down all my Evasive Characters.
Overall, we played very close games and I managed to win the first round while my opponent won the second one showing our decks were quite balanced. With 8 minutes to go, we agreed to try to play the third round and I was lucky enough to hit all my high questers thus getting up to 20 lore before the end of the round.
With a one win and one loss, the tournament was looking much better!
The third match of the Reign of Jafar Set Championship was a very particular one as my opponent decided to bring the Starter deck “Brave and Brazen”. He was very conscious a Starter Deck will very likely struggle against constructed decks but he wanted to see how far a Starter Deck could actually go in the current Meta-game and how it can be improved. The idea was actually quite interesting as I realized that most of the content creators in the room reviewed the Starter Deck and provided suggestions to improve it but I don’t think anyone actually tried to bring it to a real tournament. The match was obviously largely one sided as my deck was able to deal with any threat right away but I managed to spend some time discussing the Starter Deck potential and I strongly recommended adding “Li-Shan, Newly Promoted” to the list in order to challenge ready characters.
Unexpectedly, my tournament was looking much better with 2 wins and 1 loss. Unfortunately, there were a number of players with the same result therefore winning the last game was critical in order to get into the top8 and win the Enchanted Promo card.
The last Match of the game was against a really interesting Amethyst-Ruby deck. With respect to other builds I saw, this list featured a few interesting cards including “Madam Mim, Tiny Adversary”, “Pain, Impudent Imp” and “Panic, High-Strung Imp”. Madam Mim is actually a very clever choice for a 2-cost card as it passively provides Challenger +1 to all characters making the whole deck more efficient. On the other hand, Pain and Panic work in tandem by absorbing damage and moving it to other characters. The strategy with this deck is usually to bounce damaged Characters but moving damages counters is also a very effective strategy that my opponent exploited a lot.
The deck then featured all the cards you would expect from these two Ink colours including “Maui, Half Shark” and “Be prepared”….
As a result of the cleverly designed deck list, the first round was a total annihilation and I lost 20 to 1 even if I went first. The second round, however, was the complete opposite and I managed to control my opponent board much more and I ended up winning 20 to 5.
Both rounds were quite quick although they felt very distinct from one another. The third and last round, however, was completely different and it will go down in history as one of the best matches I ever Played in Lorcana. Both my opponent and I struggled to find any real opening to take advantage and we kept essentially answering each other strategy one card at a time. Every time they played a good Character, I managed to banish it and my opponent pretty much did the same. I faced Be Prepared twice and I removed so many cards that my opponent’s Inkwell topped 11 by the end of the game. At the very end, we were both on 16 lore at the start of my opponent’s turn. They could quest for 2 while I had enough Characters to quest for 5. Obviously the top decked into “A pirate’s Life” gaining the two additional Lore they needed and winning the Match 2 to 1. What a game!!!
Reflection – What went well and what didn’t
My first attempt at the Reign of Jafar Set Championship was a lot of fun and I was super happy I managed to rank 8th in the end. To be fair, I had a lot of luck and there were 5 players with the same points at the end of the four matches thus getting the 8th place was quite surprising.
Looking back at my choices, I think Amethyst-Sapphire was a good choice even if I faced more Emerald decks that I was hoping for. Most of my matches felt quite balanced and I think I put up a good fight overall. Looking back to my matches, I think it would have helped to have “Madam Mim, Tiny Adversary” to make Tipo and other weak Characters more effective. I will also consider to add more copies of Pinocchio as I was surprised by how effective it was in providing more options to my deck. I am definitely confident adding Into the Unknown was a good strategy thus I will likely consider cutting my “Iago, Giant Parrot” and likely “Anna, Ice Brakers”. Both Iago and Anna proved to be quite good overall but they are the only cards I can honestly think of taking out to try Madame Mim and Pinocchio.
Among the choices I made, I am also very happy to have kept my “Elsa, Spirit of Winter” instead of “Monstro, Infamous Whale” that seems to be a more common choice in this set. I think Monstro is a great card but to be efficient it needs to face Exerted Characters that can be challenged. In most of my games, Elsa was much more efficient in particular when I shifted the 5-cost one and then I brought both back to hand with a Madame Mim, Fox. I may change my mind as the meta evolves further but we will see…
Overall, my first Reign of Jafar Set Championship was a great moment of gaming filled with Disney Lorcana and amazing people. I am pretty happy about my ranking and I am sure my Blurple deck will have a good change against the other decks at my locals although we should consider the meta may shift a bit basing on the deck list used during Worlds. I have a feeling Amethyst-Steel will be more represented than before but of course every local community is different. As a remind, Reign of Jafar Set Championship events will be held from the 12th of July to the 10th of August on weekend days only and you can find any participating shops at this link. Make sure you register at the Ravensburger Playhub page to start your matches right on time!!!
