The Vegas and Birmingham DLCs are fast approaching, but before they arrive, let’s take a walk down memory lane to the Toronto DLC. Toronto was a special pocket meta, where Shimmering Skies wasn’t yet legal, but Bucky was nerfed. Here to walk us through their Continentals qualifying run is Dylan “Edge” Edgar, with a special Toronto DLC meta report!
INTRO
My name is Dylan Edgar and I’m going to Disneyland.
It seems surreal when typed out, because I didn’t even think it was remotely possible, but here we are. I qualified for Lorcana’s NA Continentals. As someone who has done casting and articles for other games in the past, it seemed like it was about time to dust off the old keyboard and type out another tournament report…but this time with a bit of a stronger ending, as most of the time I do it for local tournaments.
But first let’s rewind.
I’ve been playing card games since about 2002 when I (like many others) played Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid. This slowly transitioned into playing Magic, which I was introduced to while in high school. However, my only option to play was kitchen table Magic and well … as someone who was born a very competitive person, this didn’t really scratch the itch. After moving to the city for University and joining the local game store scene, I quickly realized that this was a hobby that would stick around for a long time (and, spoiler alert, it has).
After years of FNM’s and PTQ’s and not really going anywhere, I ended up taking a break from Magic and transitioned into Hearthstone. At the time, my friends and I were running an esport company here in Saskatchewan, and Hearthstone was a good fit for my skillset. I challenged myself to hit Legend the first month I played and was successful, so I decided to stick it out. I ended up being one of the better players in Saskatchewan (albeit not a difficult task) and peaked in top 100 Legend a few times. I even got to cast for Blizzard’s collegiate league once, which was a tonne of fun. I felt strong enough that I decided to travel to Dreamhack Montreal in 2018 to participate in my first major tournament that required significant travel.
And promptly 0-3 dropped.
That was probably one of the lowest points of my TCG career, as it made me realize 2 things. One, it doesn’t matter how much you prepare and how much you practice, sometimes tournaments just don’t stack up the right way. And two, I needed to be much better with losing.
I’m not sure if it was directly because of that tournament, but I slowly stopped playing Hearthstone and got right back into Magic. I found out there was a tournament in Calgary in early 2019, and began preparing for that. Once again, I felt very confident going into this tournament and even was playing a deck I was extremely comfortable with at the time (for you old school magic players, Affinity in Modern). I arrived in Calgary, ready to show that I was finally good enough to break into day 2. Started the tournament 5-0, ready to make Day 2 with only one more win.
And, once again. 0-3 into miss Day 2.
This is what I would consider my absolute lowest point playing games. I had finally gotten the change to prove that I would break into the next step for Magic, only to be dream crushed once again. And so, it was then I decided to give up on my dream of ever going to a Pro Tour and stop playing Magic at that level. My plan was to only travel every once and a while with friends for a fun trip if it was nearby, but no more chasing a pipe dream. I wasn’t good enough.
PREP WORK
Now, let’s fast forward a bit.
When Lorcana first came out, a couple friends of mine introduced me to the game. They had tried introducing me to other card games before, and I had always thought the same thing: it didn’t have the same “hook” that Magic and Hearthstone had. Either the mechanics were weird, or it wasn’t intuitive, or whatever reason/excuse I came up with. But Lorcana was different. After one game with a starter deck I was immediately hooked. Only problem, no tournaments. So, I paid attention to the game, played casually with some friends through set 1 and waited to see what would happen.
Then, the Organized Play announcement came. And with it, Set Champs and Disney Lorcana Championships. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. The game had my curiosity, now it had my attention.
I immediately started digging into the meta. Any resources I could find, any streamers I could watch, any videos I could consume. I dove in, getting an understanding of what was good and what was bad. Pretty early on I settled on Ruby Amethyst and Amber Steel as decks that I could see myself playing. Amber Steel was doing some of the most powerful things in the game (Wheel of Fortune is legal in this game?!), and Ruby Amethyst was consistent. Those colours had some of the strongest removal and card draw, and I treated this game like I treated Magic. Card advantage was king.
After looking at prices and card availability for decks, since I had no real affinity for one over the other, I settled on starting with Ruby Amethyst. My plan was, focus on that deck and if I didn’t like it or it became weak over time, transition into a stronger deck later. What I didn’t realize was how much I would love Ruby Amethyst. After playtesting with friends, playing online, and just watching videos it became very clear to me I understood how to play this deck at a high level. I would find lines or play patterns as fast if not faster than the content I was consuming. I was finding cards that were strong in the deck only to realize that a few days or even weeks later people playing it were finding the same thing. And so, rather than do what I did in the past and try to play every deck at a strong level, I began to do something I never did in card games.
I locked myself in.
See, in most other games I very quickly get bored if I stay playing the same character or class or deck over and over. But this time was different. I wanted to prove to myself this time was different.
And so, after winning both the set champs in Saskatchewan with Ruby Amethyst and securing 2 Stitches, I was locked in on being the top Ruby Amethyst player. I dabbled a bit here and there with Ruby Sapphire going into Set 4 champs, but same thing. Ruby Amethyst was just SO consistent. And having now played it essentially since the end of Set 2, I was very comfortable with the lines. This time, only being able to go to one of the local Set champs and not travel, I ended up only winning 1 more set championship, again with Red Purple.
While this was going on, the DLC Toronto tickets were being announced. After discussions with the wife and looking at dates/times, I managed to secure not only my ticket into the tournament, but also some very cheap flights. After finally securing a decent AirBNB, we locked in the trip to Toronto. As a side note: I brought my wife with the expectation of play the tournament Saturday, see how far I go, and explore the city Sunday. One of the first times ever I went into a tournament just looking to experience the city, experience the food and have a good time with zero expectations. Maybe that was the key, who knows.
After set champs ended, I started focusing on what I’ll call the set 4.5 meta. With the announcement of the Bucky errata, I actually very early on decided I wanted to try Amber Steel. I felt like it was the strongest deck going into Toronto and while it had variance, I wanted to embrace the variance in this type of tournament. Since the tournament was 2 game format, I didn’t want to end up playing a lot of Red Purple mirrors only to split the entire tournament. After seeing the previous tournaments, realizing you could lose only 4 total games made me disillusioned with my tried and true. So, my goal was to borrow the cards for Amber Steel early, spam Amber Steel as much as possible to understand the mulligan and inking decisions and bring it to Toronto.
Sadly, real life got in the way. I was hardly able to play test at all between Set Champs and Toronto, and with each passing week that went by the more I realized my only 2 options were the decks I had the most experience with. Ruby Amethyst and Ruby Sapphire.
So, then I started focusing on Ruby Sapphire. My thought process was I assumed most people would realize that Amber Steel is the best deck, and it would likely be the 2nd most popular deck in the room. If I could get the Ruby Amethyst matchup to be close to 50/50, and just dodge it as much as possible, it would probably be an excellent option. But, once again, real life got in the way. And with the tournament just over a week away, and only 2 playtest sessions in, I finally decided to just go with comfort and locked in Ruby Amethyst (with only one minor hiccup on the train ride to the venue on Friday. But I was very quickly set straight by my teammates).
For those of you that are in the 20 Lore Pro discord, my testing and prep for the 2 weeks before should not be surprising. For those of you that aren’t in the discord, I’ll make a recommendation. Join it. There are so many strong players there that helped with discussion, card choices, and game plans. That discord (as well as NoImNot’s guide, shout out to Kendall) helped me completely change how to play the Green Steel matchup as an example, and I would not be going to continentals without that community.
DECK TECH
But, after many discussions back and forth, this was the list I ended up with:
There’s a lot to unpack here in terms of decision making, so let’s go through the deck.
The core of the deck was extremely easy. 4 Chernabog’s Followers, 4 Snake, 4 Fox, 4 Goat, 4 Rabbit, 4 Sisu, Emboldened Warrior (Hand Sisu), 4 Maui, 3 Medusa, 4 Friends, 4 Brawl, 4 Castle and 4 Be Prepared. 4 Be Prepared might not be considered “core”, but every time I considered going down on copies I realize its just too good not to play 4. Technically, the 3rd Medusa isn’t “core” but to me its core. The card is so good.
So now we get into my individual choices
3 Magic Broom – This takes me up to 7 1 drops, which if I mulligan on average 4 cards (seeing 11 cards total during the mulligan) takes me to just under 80% to see a 1 drop. If we include Flynn in these mulligan decisions as an “early” play, we go up to 93%. For context, with 8 1 drops the numbers go up to 85 and 95% respectively. I was basing most of my mulligan decision based on the 1 drops + Flynn percentages, and since the difference was “only” 2 percent, I went with the 7 1 drops. In hindsight, I should have played 8 for one specific reason. I went into the tournament tuning my deck to beat Amber Steel, and the 1 drops are important against Amber Steel – you don’t want to play Flynn on 2, you want to play Snake, so you want to maximize the chances of opening 1 drop into Snake. If I were to go into Toronto with the same knowledge I had today, I would have cut one of the Be King Undisputed’s for the eighth one drop / fourth Broom.
4 Flynn Rider – what a lot of people consider core, but there was a pretty serious chance I wanted to cut the Flynn’s and instead play Kuzco. My reasoning was Kuzco is better in the mirror and against Amber Steel, and I wanted to target those 2 decks. After playing a bunch of the mirror with Kuzco though, I quickly realized that the play/draw disparity in the mirror becomes even worse when one player has Flynn and the other doesn’t. Because I wanted to increase my chances of 2-0’ing the mirror, I decided to hope variance was on my side and played the Flynn’s. I am EXTREMELY happy with this decision, but I still stand by the fact that Flynn is not as strong and not as core as most Red Purple players think. But, for now, it’s a necessary evil.
2 Merlin Crab – I very early on knew I was playing Crab. Most RP lists leading up to the tournament were running Maleficent Sorceress in this spot, and I will be honest I hate this card. Even in set 3 meta, when everyone was running Maleficent, I was playing Surfer Minnie Mouse. I play RP a lot differently than a lot of people, in that I typically play very aggressive and turn the corner a lot quicker than a lot of other Red Purple players do. Too many times I see Red Purple players bouncing to draw cards instead of bouncing to end the game. In reality, if I have 6 cards in hand vs 1 but I win both of those games, it doesn’t matter. The decision for Crab was simple. I wanted tech for the mirror, and I wanted to be able to kill large creatures such as Cinderella Stouthearted and Chien-Po. Crabs won the silver medal for MVP over the weekend, and there was at least one game I would have lost if I didn’t run Crab. Going into Set 5 meta, its very likely I play 3+ Crab in my deck.
2 Be King Undisputed – This was a card I wasn’t 100% locked in on, but very glad I played at least one. A lot of Red Purple players like Lady Tremaine instead of BKU, because you can bounce Lady Tremaine, or it’s a body to quest with. I disagree on both arguments. For starters, if you get to a point in the game where you are bouncing Lady Tremaine, you are winning the game. It’s almost the same as when you start drawing cards from Castle. I can count on one hand the number of times I lost a game where I drew cards from a Castle sticking around, and it’s typically just Castle sticking around that’s killing them, not the drawing of cards. Its very similar with BKU. Sure, there are times where I wish I could bounce Tremaine. But being able to sing BKU with Rabbit, or Goat, or Maui, or Medusa, or hell even Shift Sisu, was extremely relevant for bringing me BACK into games where I was falling behind or losing. And that was the biggest decision for me. I didn’t want to win the games I was winning faster. I wanted to win the games that were even, or I was currently losing.
2 Sisu, Empowered Sibling – MVP of the weekend. Hands down. This card was INCREDIBLE against Amber Steel, and was the single reason I managed to make it to the top 16. I was actually considering cutting this card until a discussion with another player during testing (shoutout Luca) convinced me to keep it specifically for the Amber Steel matchup. It was clutch all tournament, and was very happy with the 4 Be Prepared / 2 Sisu split.
I talked about most cards I was considering but didn’t play (Tremaine, Maleficent, Kuzco). There were a few cards from other lists in the top 64 that I want to briefly touch on.
Pascal, Rapunzel’s Companion – This was a card that was at times on my radar, but I couldn’t come up with enough reasoning to cut the “cantrip” (replace themselves) one drops. What I never considered was running the full 12 1’s as Tariq did, and after listening to some discussion about it from the Podcana Podcast (shoutout to them, and if you don’t listen to Moyen, Brendan and Kawa, do yourself another favour. Listen) it makes sense, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut the power cards for it. As an answer to Diablo with Crabs, I think this makes a lot of sense. The crazy part to me was playing Pascal without crab, but I heard on the Podcast that Tariq wished he played Crab so that makes sense to me.
Pegasus, Flying Steed – This was a card that I learned about from Dave/AttackforTwo and Ed. Their thought process was the card represents a quester that kills Diablo, as they were scared of the Amber Yellow discard deck. I’ll be honest, I did play a bit with Pegasus but wasn’t impressed with it, but I can definitely see the reasoning, especially as it was in my final Ruby Sapphire list.
Sorcerer’s Spellbook – I dislike this card. A lot. And I think the major reason is because of my Magic background. See, for those of you that don’t know, Magic has 2 major differences from Lorcana that affect how I view this card. Magic has the land system instead of inkable/uninkable cards, and Magic has sideboards. Sorcerer’s Spellbook being an uninkable tech card means I have to actively want to play this card in every matchup. And I do not. Uninkable cards as a whole have to be SO much more powerful than inkable cards because they have to be played every game that they are drawn (except in Sapphire because of Fishbone Quill). Again, since I was prepping for a lot of Amber Steel, the card is awful in that matchup, so I was never considering playing it.
1/3 1 Drops (Olaf, Minnie) + Teeth and Ambitions – I dislike Teeth as a card, as it requires so much setup to actively work. It also meant I didn’t get to draw cards nearly as much, and my 1 drops became a lot weaker to play a card I don’t like. Was never really an option for me, but 1 player did top 16 with it (I assume they played against very few blue decks and mirror decks, and instead more GP / Amber Steel decks).
That was my methodology for my deck choices. As for the tournament itself, before I get into the matchups I have to give a huge shoutout to the judge staff and the event planners. The venue was fantastic, there was more than enough space, the temperature was excellent the entire weekend and the event ran extremely smooth (EVEN WITH A LUNCH BREAK). I will say, I still strongly dislike the 2 game format but that’s a decision Ravensburger will hopefully take some feedback on in the future.
TORONTO
Check-In Friday was uneventful, which is exactly what it should be. I got a little bit of testing done, including a mirror match against who I would later find out was AttackforTwo, someone I looked up to when trying to find Red Purple decklists and content. Leading into Saturday, the player meeting was quick and efficient. One thing I did notice that when the Organized Play Lead asked the room who had been to a DLC before, I was shocked to see how many hands went up. It had to be at least 30-40% of the room.
Immediately after the player meeting, having my first round opponent roll out the DLC Cinderella mat made me realize this was about to be one of the hardest tournaments I had ever been to. Again, I wonder if this was a part of what made the event so successful as I had to be locked, loaded, and ready to go from minute 1.
My matchups for the tourney were as follows:
Amber / Steel Tiana (2-0) – Game 1 was extremely tight and I had to top deck a crab in order to kill a Chernabog that was slammed after I Be Prepared. I won the game with him at 19 lore, and I had to play extremely tight. Game 2 was also extremely close, and I had to make a call to hope he didn’t top deck removal for one of my Sisu’s or Flynn’s to win the game the next turn. He did not, and I started the tournament 2-0.
Amber Amethyst Hyper Aggro (2-0) – Game 1, again my opponent lost while at 19 lore. I had to hope he misplayed and attacked with a Snake before playing Goat which I knew he had from bouncing it the turn before, which allowed me to kill the Snake and then Be King Undisputed the Goat to ensure he didn’t get to quest with it. Thankfully, he didn’t top deck another Goat. Game 2 was extremely uneventful and I controlled the board and won the game.
Ruby Amethyst Mirror (2-0) – I had heard rumours that there were a lot of OnePiece players in the room trying out Lorcana, and my opponent rolled out a OnePiece mat. After a grueling first game that took almost 30 minutes (and required me to play extremely quickly as I was turning the corner), game 2 was a lot less eventful and Flynn carried me. Seeing the cards he was playing, it was pretty obvious he was playing an older version of Red Purple with Peter Pan’s and less 1 drops, and chatting with him after realized he had picked up the game relatively recently. Since I had way more experience in the mirror, his choices made a bit more sense.
Amethyst Steel Wheel (2-0) – My first feature match call! Sadly, just like all my other feature matches, I was either the backup or not even on camera. Was slightly disappointing, and honestly for future tournaments I would suggest not even having that many feature matches called over (they had 4 with only 2 cameras) as it sounded like they had too much footage anyway.
The games were extremely close. My opponent took some (calculated) risks that he later said in hindsight he should have played more patiently and he likely would have won those games. I mistakenly tried to Maui a Big Jafar (whoops) in game 1 and but thankfully it didn’t impact the game too much and I still won.
Starting the tournament 4-0 was huge, but I wasn’t letting myself get even remotely excited. I knew I still needed to win 1 more match, and after being in so many situations in the past where I let myself get excited only to get disappointed, I was very diligent in making sure I maintained what I was doing. Listen to music between rounds, drink water, eat snacks, and play 1 round at a time.
Red Purple Mirror (1-1) – What I would consider the hardest round I played next to my Top 16 match. Game 1 I had to play extremely tight and ensure I set myself up for a next turn lethal, and game 2 unfortunately was not close. He had early Flynn pressure and I didn’t have a 1 or 2 drop on the draw. We were also the last match to finish (since we had extra time due to being a feature match) and we literally ended the match as time was called.
Green Steel Discard (1-1) – After getting pretty much crushed in Game 1, judges came over to do a deck tech. I could feel myself starting to get nervous, so I started doing math on my lifepad to see how many points I would have if I went 6-1-2 (aka, lose this but win the next 2). This helped me calm down a bit, and going into game 2 on the play thankfully my deck was on my side. My opponent drew all 4 of his Diablo’s, including shifting one on turn 2, but I had 3 Brawls and a Medusa to answer all of his Diablo’s and get the win to split again.
Amber Steel Song (2-0) – I don’t remember much about this game other than my Sisu’s were huge in this matchup. I also played a lot of Castles, and remember sitting there and having my opponent shake his head multiple times and mutter “Can’t answer both” when staring down both my board of characters and locations. I got the win, and thankfully, my next 2 opponents were willing to draw going into the next round!
Top Cut
After drawing, and going for supper, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was 3rd in the Swiss. I then realized after looking at where my opponents finished that all but 1 finished in the top 25% of the tournament and my breakers were insane because of it. I was less happy to see that my round 1 opponent was playing Amber Steel, but I was happy to see no flutes. Thankfully, I had practiced the matchup quite a bit and my deck was heavily teched for it.
My travel-mate (shout out to Brian, absolutely amazing travel companion the whole weekend) and I sat for about an hour practicing mulligans and playing out the first 3-4 turns with the hands. I already had a very strong understanding of how I wanted to play the matchup (1 drop into Snake into Sisu into Castle is the best possible draw) but those practice hands were helpful as it reduced how much brain capacity I needed for it in the Top 64, as I just knew instinctively how I wanted my hands to look.
The next morning, after some breakfast and a nice walk in the empty streets of Toronto to the venue, I was ready. After sitting across from my opponent during the player meeting, it was pretty clear he was nervous. I had a very nice chat with him, which seemed to calm him down a bit, and he was an extremely pleasant person to play against. Game 1 was not very close, and I played the game how I always want to play against Amber Steel. Control the board, keep hand count at around 2 cards and don’t draw too much. The game went exactly to script.
We go to game 2. This was also not particularly close, as he went turn 1 Robin hood, into turn 2 double 1 drop, into turn 3 shift and wheel, refilling his hand and exchanging my good hand for a much, MUCH less good one. I couldn’t recover from there, and we move to game 3 where, again, game went to script. I specifically remember in this game though, that he found a Zeus with Ariel. Knowing his decklist, I knew that if I could bait this Zeus into a Castle I could control his board and start preparing for a Sisu late game. That’s exactly what happened, and I moved to top 32.
After finishing my match, Brian had already mapped out the bracket to let me know I was against another Amber Steel opponent. This time with Flutes and 20(!!) uninkables. Castle was “less” good against this matchup due to him running 4 Zeus, but I had to make sure I didn’t let him get lore as much as possible as he was running 4 Flutes and 4 Baloo bodyguards. Game 1 was over in about 5 minutes, with me curving out perfectly and him having an extremely poor hand (he drew all 4 Baloo’s in his opening mulligan which caused him to not play much).
Game 2 was close, and I think I could have won but each time he needed to he found A Whole New World, and caused me to keep falling behind in card advantage. Game 3 I specifically remember trading a broom into a 4/4 Lawrence, and saving a Hand Sisu in my hand to play on Turn 5 to ensure it lived as long as possible. After Shifting Sisu to wipe his board, and deploying multiple Castles after, I won and locked top 16.
It was surreal sitting there, realizing that finally, after so many games and playing in so many tournaments, I was able to do what I never thought I would do. I managed to get the monkey off my back, have a top finish, and prove to myself that I wasn’t just a good local card game player. I was a good player. Period. And while it is dangerous to base your “worth” as a player against your finishes, I will say it is nice finally having at least one on the ol’ resume.
Lorcana is a hell of a game. Overall, I’m very impressed with what Ravensburger has created. Its simple while having a lot of complexity and is a very skill intensive game. The mulligan and ink system also lead to an extremely minimal amount of non-games (compared to Magic, where the land system causes far too many non-games than I care to admit). I plan to try and play a few other decks this set, and broaden my horizons a little bit.
But, lets face it. If Ruby Amethyst is strong going into continentals, I will be hard pressed to play something different now.
