Disney Lorcana’s first expansion, Rise of the Floodborn, released in local game stores last Friday, and we already have some informative tournament results from one major event. It’s going to take at least a few weeks before we start to figure out the best new decks, and one tournament certainly doesn’t determine the meta, but it’s🌞 interesting to s☂ee which decks came out on top, and more importantly, which decks they were able to beat.
using new cards from RotF. Unlike most Lorcana events that split the top eight prize, we actually know the ranked placements of each finalist, and coming in first place was an Amber/Emerald discard deck made up of more than half new cards. It was able to b🐈eat four Ruby/Amethyst and three Amber/Steel decks - the top ink c🦂ombinations from the previous meta.
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Future Lorcana booster boxes will be shrink꧃-wrapped, which might be a bigger deal than you'd think.
The winning deck uses just about every discard tool in both Amber and Emerald, including Flynn Rider, Charming Rogue; Daisy Duck, Secret Agent; Sudden Chill; You Have Forgotten Me, and Hypnotize - all cards that force your opponent to discard cards from their hand. Prince John, Greediest of All is used to feed you cards when your opponent discards, while Flyyn Ride🥂r, His Own Biggest Fan grows in power the fewer cards your opponent has. Since this is an aggro deck that utilizes low-Strength characters with high lore value, The Queen, Commanding Presence and Grand Duke, Advisor to the King are used to beef up your characters when they need to fight for board control.
I had my doubts about the viability of Discard as its own deck archetype coming into the new expansion. It’s a strategy that has diminishing r🙈eturns, since your opponent can’t discard anything once they’re out of cards. It’s highly dependent on the first three or fo🌜ur turns, as aggro decks often are, and I wasn’t confident that this style of deck would be competitive. While it’s only one tournament, the results at Battle Bear would indicate this deck is going to see play this season, especially when you consider what it was able to beat.
The other seven Top 8 finishers all played some variation of last season’s two best decks: Ruby/Amethyst Control and Amber/Steel, AKA Steelsong.ಌ The Ruby/Amethyst players, still buzzing from their complete dominance of The First Chapter’s meta, all kept the control center of their decks with cards like Maui, Hero to All; Elsa, Spirit of Winter; and Be Prepared, but they modified the deck to include Amethyst’s new Bounce syn♎ergies between Madam Mim, Merlin, and Arthur cards. All but one of these decks also made use of Shere Khan, Menacing Predator to improve their lore-earning potential, but all of them seemingly fell prey to the new and inexpensive discard deck.
The three Steelsong decks also looked a lot like their original versions, with only a few new additions. The Queen, Commanding Presence; Cinderella, Stouthearted; and World's Greatest Criminal Mastermind show up in all three decks along with the new Steel songs Let the Storm Rage On and Swift as a Raging Fire. The best-performing of the three used the tried and true Stitch, Rockstar package, while the other two experimented with cards like Mufasa, Betrayed Leader and Benja, Guardian of the Dragon Gem. All of these decks seem to be as good or better than the top decks in the previous meta, yet the discard deck still came out on top.
While I'm excited to see new archetypes enter the meta, this one in particular is giving me some trepidation. Having a control deck at the top of the meta during Lorcana’s initial season was regrettable, and I’ve 🥂written at length about its anti-fun playstyl✤e that even the designer of the game agrees is oppressive and ought not be as dominant as it was. It will be great if an inexpe🔴nsive discard deck can help keep Ruby/Amethyst Control in check, but that will create its own problems too, as Discard is just as much, 🐠if not more, of an anti-fun archetype as Control.
It's up for debate which deck ended up on top in the previous meta. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pixelborn data indicates Steelsong had the edge online, but it's hard to say which deck was truly dominant since most in-person tournaments ended with the top eight. Another factor is that Ruby/Amethyst games tend to be long and grueling, so while it may be the best, many found they don't prefer to play it - especially in mirror matches.
By that I mean, the Control deck can be miserable to play against because every card you play gets countered before you can do anything, but the Discard deck can be even more miserable to play against because you don’t even have cards to play in the first place. If your opponent can force you to top deck early enough, there may be no c✤oming back at that point no matter what you manage to draw. Nobody enjoys playing Lorcana with an empty hand, but that’s exactly what this deck archetype is designed to make you do. With Discard, Magic: The Gathering’s infamous Stax archetype has come to Lorcana, and I’m nervous about it.
I’m fine with Discard having a place in the meta among high-risk, high-reward aggro decks, but just like Control, it becomes a problem if it’s the best deck. One tournament doesn’t tell us much, but it’s our first in🔯dication of what’s working in the new meta. Draw-focused decks will likely be the answer to Discard, and there’s a lot of new tools for card draw in Sapphire - an ink color that isn’t represented in this Top 8 at all.
My guess is that we’ll find that a little Discard goes a long way, and you won’t need to build an entire deck around it in order to get good value. Amber/Sapphire also has a lot of potential for decks that build really healthy hands that don’t ne🍒ed to worry about Discard as much. And much like Ruby/Amethyst Control, the Amber/Emerald mirror matches might be so frustrating to play that a lot of people will move away from it, even if it does turn out to be the top deck. There’s a lot more to discover about Rise of the Floodborn, so don’t discard hope just yet.
