Fabled European Influencer Set Championship at Disney HQ
While many players were planning their decks for the very first DLC and CCQ qualifiers events in Cardiff, I had the great opportunity to meet a lot of content creators from all parts of Europe in the second European Set Championship event at Disney HQ in London.
Last year I was not able to join the event managed by Ravensburger therefore this year I was very excited to attend. Together with the opportunity to meet a lot of fellow players and great content Creators, I was also excited to see the new playmat and the new Set Champ cards featuring “Maleficent, Monstrous Dragon”. Maleficent is not only a very iconic card from The First Chapter but it has also seen a lot of play in Amethyst-Ruby control decks, at least until “Sisu, Empowered Sibling” was released. Moreover, this is the first time a Legendary card is used a promo card for a tournament therefore I was very committed to get the top-cut version of it for my collection.
Fabled Set Championships – Picking a deck
I always think that picking a deck for Set Championship events is both the most and most complex part of the experience. In general, I like planning my strategy ahead to make sure my decks have a good competitive value, but I also ensure my list will be fun to play for both me and my opponents. In my humble experience, Disney Lorcana is a great game were the luck of the draw still has a good weight on the outcome of a match thus there is no point on stressing too much on your list.
Last season I played Amethyst-Sapphire (Blurple) and considering how many Players have been using this Deck recently I decided I wanted to do something different. 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 (Yes, the one with “Tiana, Restaurant Owner”) and a nice Emerald-Sapphire Control Deck. I like changing my deck from one season to another and the introduction of the Set Rotation in Disney Lorcana offers the great opportunity to try something new therefore I decided to go for Emerald-Sapphire as I wanted to play these two Ink colours for a while now.
Once my decision taken, it was time to look at which cards I wanted in my deck and what would be the main strategy of my deck. Obviously, the Sapphire portion of my list needs to focus on generating a good ramp to allow my most expensive cards to come into play as soon as possible. “Tipo, Growing Son” and “Sail to the Azurite sea” are must-to have in this type of deck. The first one allows to Ink any card from your hand once played and it really comes in hand when you have too many uninkable cards. The second one also allows you to put a second card from your hand into your Inkwell although in this case, the card must be Inkable. The advantage of Sail to the Azurite sea is that you can also draw a card and use the second card you placed for the turn right away to play for example a one cost card. In order to support my ramp further I also added “Donald Duck, Focused Flatfoot” and “Tadashi Hamada, Gifted Roboticist”. This last card is not used very frequently but it is a great card to have in play as it quests for two and can increase your Inkwell by two if it is banished during the opponent’s turn.
With a good strategy in place to increase my Inkwell fast, I focused on how to generate enough card draw and how my deck can efficiently control the board. To have enough card draw in this type of deck you have to invest on the Clarabelle shift line. “Clarabelle, light on her hoofs” is the best option to play on turn four after playing Tipo and Sail to Azurite sea as your hand will likely be completely depleted but your Inkwell will have just enough to bring her to the table. Once your hand likely replenished, you can then start your control phase by playing cards like “John Silver, Alien Pirate”, “Basil, Undercover Detective” o “Hades, Infernal Schemer”. “Mother knows Best”, “Under the sea”, and “You’re Welcome” will offer even more options to disrupt your opponent’s strategy. Or at least, that was my plan when the pairing went up…..
Let’s roll the dice: Who goes first?
The Set Championship at Disney HQ involved 32 players across many European countries. As per standard rules, it used the new Ravensburger Playhub to manage pairings and standing for the five planned rounds plus the top cut of 8 with direct elimination.
Match one started in the worst possible way as I faced a mirror deck. Although the list that Jacob, a content creator from Poland, put together was quite different from the one I had, I knew the match would be dominated by who would find their Ink-ramp cards sooner. Obviously, I bricked almost immediately after taking a 5 cards Mulligan and round one started with my deck slowly moving toward the inevitable. To be fair, my opponent played very well and strategized perfectly, in particular when he sang “Under the sea” right after having played “Bend to my Will” leaving me with no cards in hand and no cards in play without triggering any on-banish effect of my cards. It also did not helped that singing “You’re Welcome” on my Tipo got me two 7-cost cards when I only had six cards in the Inkwell…. Round two was a bit better although my opponent was able to use twice “Mother Knows best” on my Scrooge and then “Under the sea” (also twice) slowing me down enough to get to 20 before me. Overall, a very unfortunate start for me but a very enjoyable game against an opponent I never played before.
The second match started in a great way as I met Erica, a super nice content creator from Italy. Erica decided to play Amethyst-Ruby, an interesting combination that I loved playing a lot in the past. I was very curious to what list she prepared considering the set rotation impacted this deck type quite heavily. The first round felt very one sided as it was obvious my opponent was very unlucky with the draw (including having two “Elsa, Spirit of Winter” from the start. On the other hand, Iwas very lucky this time as my cards showed up at the right time to carry out my strategy. Round two was instead completely the opposite as Erica’s Deck pushed forward much faster than mine and she managed to win even if I was able to sing “Under the sea” after getting it from playing “Vision of the future”. With our scored tied at 1-1 and with less than 8 min to play we agreed to try to speed-run the third match. I focused on questing and I was quite pleased that the strategy paid off as I hit 20 lore just at the last of the 5 additional rounds after a very intense third round. One win and one lost was not a bad start for this tournament.
Jan, my opponent in the third match, was also at 1-1 and he was playing a very interesting Ruby-Steel deck. His list included a few staples for this deck like “Naamari, Single-Minded Rival”, “A pirate’s Life”, “Strength of a Raging fire” and the very new “Skar, Finally King” plus a few interesting choices including “Hercules, Beloved Hero”, “Miss Bianca, Unwavering Agent” and “Orville, Albatross Air”. The combination of these two Ink colour was quite effective and Jan piloted the deck very well managing to beat me in both rounds. In both cases, I draft and played not one but two Tadashi Hamada that allowed me to get a lot of lore quite quickly but unfortunately these cards were the only highlight from my deck on these games. I started feeling that my deck was not going to cooperate on that day, in particular when I drew all my copies of “Heads Held High” one after the other. I started feeling all the copies of Tipo and Sail to the Azurite Sea decided to go on holiday from my deck…
My opponent in match four and five were also two Italian players, Vladimiro and Silvia. The first one was playing Amethyst-Steel while Silvia was using Amethyst-Sapphire. I always loved playing Amethyst and I considered strongly bringing one of these two colour combinations to the tournament before settling for Emerald-Sapphire therefore it felt a bit odd facing them in the last rounds. However, I feel the performance of the deck was mainly the result of very unlucky draw more than a wrong colour combination or decklist….
Anyway, the fourth match was largely impacted by not finding any copy of my “Tipo, Growing Son” or “Sail to the Azurite Sea” (again!). Vladimiro’s Deck, on the other hand worked as a perfectly tuned machine and continuously removed all the Characters I played, leaving me stuck at two and four lore in round 1 and 2. Not a great performance to be honest…
With three wins and one loss, the fifth and last match was much more relaxed as both me and my opponent knew we were far from having a shot to finish in the Top-Cut. Silvia put to very good use both her “Mim, Elephant” and “Elsa, Spirit of Winter” to prevent me from using “Under the Sea” in round one while I managed (finally) to play this song in combination with “Heads Held High” in the second one. As expected, the combination of these two cards cleaned completely my opponent board leaving me in full control of the round. The third and last round was surprisingly very balanced with both me and Silvia working to anticipate each other moves. In the end, Silvia strategy paid off and she achieved a very deserved victory leaving me with one win and four losses: not a great performance overall….
Reflection – What went well and what didn’t
Meeting so many good Players and Influencers from all over Europe has been an amazing experience making my first Fabled Set Championship a pure blast. Obviously, I am not very happy on how my luck turned out on the day as I barely saw any of the cards I needed to carry out my strategy. However, this unpredictability is part of this game and one of the aspects I think makes Lorcana a balanced game: you can have the most expensive and well-constructed meta-deck possible, but you will still lose if you do not draw the cards you need. I also had some good discussions about strategy with my opponents and I will put those to good use to improve the deck in order to have my revenge and show how good this deck can be. The Official Fabled Set Championships will run from the 4th to the 26th of October therefore I will have some time to tune my list and practice for the events.
The aim for the next event would be to keep using Emerald-Sapphire. Not surprisingly, a lot of players at the event used my same colour combination although there were less Players than I expected using Amethyst. I think the breakdown came very closer to the one we saw just a few days ago for the CCQ in Cardiff providing that this Ink combination definitely has potential. Interestingly (and without spoiling anything here), the deck-list that won the Influencers event was actually one of the more common meta-decks but a very nice example of how a Player can think outside the box and come up with a very interesting strategy.
Looking back to my matches and to my choices, I think it would have helped a lot to have “Kida, Creative Thinker” to further support my ramp and to keep my Inkwell growing steadily. My main issue in most of my matches was not being able to find Sail to the Azurite sea and/or Tipo quickly enough thus Kida would have helped in getting me an additional card in the Inkwell every turn. Kida effect also allows the Player to pick which card they will draft next making sure you can find out useful cards or at least inkable cards…. I still think adding Tadashi was a good idea as he managed to generate a lot of lore while also supporting my strategy but it was not enough to keep my Inkwell growing, in particular against Emerald and Under the Sea…
Another card that I also regret taking out was my beloved “Louis, Endearing Alligator”. Considering his very good stats and the ability to make an opponent character reckless, it would have been a good way to trigger Tadashi’s ability. While reviewing my matches, I think I could have put to a very good use also “Baymax, Giant Robot” in order to shift him on top of Tipo (assuming I found him of course) to sing Under the Sea quicker. Most of the Players kept an eye the overall card value I had on board to prevent me to sing my beautiful removal song and Baymax could have been a nice surprise for them to face. Looking to ways to tune my deck for my next Set Championship, I would likely consider adding this Baymax instead of the Armoured Companion I had in my list.
One further card I had in my deck that I will actually need to review carefully is “Heads Held High”. This song plays a double role in my deck as it can be combined with Under the Sea in order to remove all my opponent’s cards but it can also remove any Illusion Characters by targeting them with its healing effect. Although this card offers two very distinct advantages, it also proved to be a tricky option to use and I am seriously consider to just take all copies away in favour of something else.
Overall, there are still a few days to play test my deck before my next Set Championship and I hope my deck will perform a bit better in my next event. I hope you enjoyed the reading and you are also looking forward to test your skills in the next Disney Lorcana Fabled Events; If you haven’t done it yet, make sure you look for any event close to you using Ravensburger PlayHub. Remember that Zatu is also holding their Set Championship on the 11th of October thus make sure to check it ourt if you are in the area!
