Non-Clickbait Title: I went to an Azurite Sea pre-release, and got 3rd.
I went to an Azurite Sea pre-release just about two weeks ago. I had never played in a Lorcana sealed event before. In fact, I’d never played in any Lorcana event before this one, and I’ve probably played less than 20 games of Lorcana total.
(Okay, that’s not counting grinding first chapter games with a friend about a year and half ago, but again, it’s been a while, and there game has had like 5 expansions since then.)
So why did I decide to spend $45 to play a sealed format for a game I don’t really play, for a set that I’d done no prep for? Well, because I make poor decisions when I’m bored.
Arrival, and Opening Boosters
I was relying on my expertise at Magic to carry me through the event. However, after cracking my boosters, I was hit with a few key realizations.
The first was that I had no sense of how “good” any given card was stat-wise, something that I can do with no effort in Magic. Is a 1/2 for 1 that quests for 1 worth playing? Should I only be running 2/2’s for 1? Something I take for granted (assessing stat values) was completely gone.
The second thing was the deckbuilding structure itself. In a sealed Lorcana event, you can use all colors of cards. This is a bit of a double edged sword, because what it actually means is that deck construction becomes a game of cutting 32 of the of the 72 cards you’ve opened.
Finally, I was confronted by the fact that I didn’t have a good sense of what the Inkable vs Non-Inkable ratio should be.
Faced with this dizzying array of choices, as well as not really knowing how locations worked, I decided to go back to my basics, and reach for my classic strategy.
BREAD
BREAD is a Magic strategy that dictates card value order in limited/sealed formats. It stands for the following:
B- Bombs
These are cards that will win you game if you resolve them, either due to high power, or just a very strong effect.
R – Removal
Cards that get rid of your opponents’ cards. Notably, there are far fewer of these in Lorcana than I’m used to, and they’re much higher costed. I actually only had a single card that could do any direct damage to a character.
E – Evasion
These are cards that get through to your opponent even if they have lots of characters out. Fortunately, Lorcana does have a good example of this: The keyword Evasive. These characters are tricky to remove and can safely build lore turn after turn.
A – Aggro
Cheap cards that can be played early, and apply pressure.
D – Duds
Cards you just don’t want to play.
Deckbuilding
Confronted with an overwhelming number of cards, and 25 minutes to build a deck, I came up with the following plan:
- I would build out a pretty standard curve, prioritizing 1 and 2 cost cards, with a majority of the deck being under 4 cost.
- I’d try to run as many characters as possible, and few locations, but no items.
After building this deck, I made one last big decision, and probably the single decision responsible for my final result: I added in Pooh Pirate Ship.
Now, while this goes completely against everything else above, as it’s an un-inkable, type-specific item, I figured it could be worth it. Something that had become clear to me was that Lorcana had very little direct removal in the lower rarity slots, so I was unlikely to run into those sorts of cards. The second bit was that because Sealed formats for card games in general are at a much lower power level, they often stall out into top-decking.
My thought was that Pooh Pirate Ship would be a siegebreaker sort of card, allowing me to continually challenge with my pirates, and then fetch them back to replay them. And while I only had 8 or so pirates, I had two pretty decent targets for recovery in Mullins and Jim Hawkins, both of which seemed to have decent stats for combat.
With deck construction complete, it was time to play.
The Games
I didn’t take great notes on my individual matches. But I can talk to the effectiveness of the decisions I made.
I finished with a record of 2-1, with most of my matches going to 3 games.
Match 1 wasn’t exactly a stomp, but I managed to pull ahead in the late game. Match 2 was my only loss of the three, and while it was possible I could have pulled out a win, I made some pretty significant misplays around my Vanellope Von Schweetz, choosing to Ink the locations that I would have placed her at.
That said, my game 2 opponent was also significantly better than me at managing the early game tempo, and outran me to the point that even when I had set up my board, I couldn’t clear their characters before they won.
Finally, for match 3, I managed to hit two Sail The Azurite Seas back to back into an early Jim Hawkins. He refilled my hand, giving me the win early, and then I was able to use Pooh Pirate Ship in the second game to grab back my cheaper 2-3 drop pirates for another win.
Overall
The last time I wrote about Lorcana was about a year ago. I predicted that if it could weather the storm, it would be set up to become one of the larger card games in the space. Not the most shocking armchair prediction, but something that seemed unclear at the time, what with the pretty blatant scalping making it impossible for folks to actually buy the game.
As far as I can tell, Lorcana seems to have done that. I’m not really a Disney person on any level, and coming in with no knowledge of the characters or cards, I still had a pretty good time. Games felt tense and plays felt meaningful.
Some of my habits from playing a lot of sealed Magic did carry over (recursion and evasion is good!), while others didn’t (My single damage spell did VERY little work). I think that sealed Lorcana might actually be a more interesting experience than Magic sealed, because it allows combos that can’t be done in the normal game, whereas sealed Magic is pretty much just slower standard Magic.
Overall, it was really fun to see how Lorcana has developed since I last played it, and also to see the design space that’s getting used now. For example, typal is much more of a thing than it used to be. I’ll probably try to play a bit more Lorcana, as I am getting a bit burnt out on Magic, and Foundations didn’t really sell itself on its limited format.
