No need to bury the lead now that you’re here: Hiram Flaversham - yes, the Hiram Flaversham - is currently making a mess of the Disney Lorcana meta. If you’re anywhere near a card shop over the holidays and you see a kid crying his eyes out, it’s probab🌟ly because he just got the brakes beat off of ‘em by a bespeckled middle-aged mouse man with a Scottish accent.
Hiram Flaversham, as you surely don’t remember, is a side character from Disney’s often-forgotten 1986 Sherlock Holmes proxy, The Great Mouse Detective. In the film, Hiram is a widower, a clock shop owner, and the father of Olivia Flaversham, who is kidnapped by a peg-legged bat named Fid♚get at the beginning of the film. I might sound like I’m making this up if you haven’t heard of The Great Mouse Detective, but it’s an underappreciated Disney classic that’s worth checking out.
Hiram, alo💙ng with Fidget, protagonist Basil, and villain Professor Ratigan, are all featured predominantly in Disney Lorcana’s first expansion, Rise of the Floodborn. Despite there being multiple versions of both Ratigan and Basil, the only card from the film that has made much of an impact in the game so far is good ‘ol Hiram. Papa Flaversh. The Flav.
The Flaversham combo is pretty disgusting. Sometime on your first three turns you play Pawpsicle, a one-cost item that draws you a card. On turn four you play Hiram Flaversham. His ability, Artificer, allows you to banish one of your own items to draw 2 cards when you play him, and every time he quests. You banish t𝓀he Pawpsicle and draw two cards. On turn five, you play Nick Wi🧔lde, who has the ability to return a Pawpsicle from the discard to your hand. You then play the Pawpsicle, draw a card, quest with Hiram, banish the Pawpsicle again, and draw two more cards. You now have at least six more cards in your hand than your opponent, and it’s only turn five.
The Pawpsicle combo gives you so much to work with using only three cards, but Hiram can use any item to draw cards, not just Pawpsicles. Decks using Hiram are also running Fishbone Quill, Eye of the Fates, Shield of Virtue, and several other items to help Hiram generate lots of extra♈ cards. By turn seven - or sooner with a little ramp power Hiram’s Sapphire ink gives you access to - the deck shifts into control mode, using cards like Be Prepared, Hades, Infernal Schemer; and Lady Tremaine, Imperious Queen to lockdown the board and stop the opponent from being able to play anything. It’s a mean, mean deck, led by a very fatherly, unassuming mouse.
What can be done? Discard decks have entered Lorcana in a big way this season, but in my experience there’s no amount of discard that can drain this deck. It just has too much draw power. Its big weakness is hyper aggro decks, like Amber/Amethyst Bounce and Emerald/Sapphire &😼ldquo;High Five”, but aggro decks are highly vulnerable to all things Steel, and guess what? Amber/Steel “Steelsong” is stronger than ever.
Teching against this deck might be the best option at the moment. Item removal like Benja, Guardian of the Dragon Gem can remove the Pawpsicle before the opponent gets a chance to start their draw engine, but Nick Wilde can still get the Pawpsicle back. Removing Hiram on sight with a Dragon Fire, Ring the Bell, or Last Stand is almost 𝔉mandatory, but because he has an on-play effect, he&rsqu📖o;s already gotten value for your opponent before you can do anything about it.
Don't get too discouraged by the seemingly oppressive decks. There's plenty of time left to experiment and strategies left to be discovered.
The answer, as boring as it may seem, might just be overcoming its late game with even stronger control. Amethyst/Ruby Control, the bane of The First Chapter, is better than ever in the new expansion, and it already has ample card draw thanks to Friends on the Other Side and new cards like Merlin, Rabbit and Dinner Bell. Ruby/Sapphire decks are the big new entry to the meta, and it's easy to see why people are so enamored with it right now, but the best decks from The First Chapter are likely to continue being the best decks going forward.
Still, one of Lorcana’s biggest charms is its ability to spotlig♓ht unexpected characters, and Hiram Flaversham is the best example of that. Who would have thought the fifth-billed character in a movie from the ‘80s that almost no one remembers would be the center of a new archetype, the subject of so much ire at LGSs across the world, and the thumbnail on countless YouTube videos? Not me, and I love that movie. Very much looking forward to a guy called Fflewddur Fflam making me want to tear my hair out next season.
