Guest Article: A Reflection on my Disney Lorcana Season 2

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My Season One was terrible. Three DLCs, zero day twos, zero Let It Gos, and a whole lot of disappointment. I thought I was really good at Lorcana, but the results showed otherwise. Flash forward to Season Two: Five DLCs, a top 64, top 32, top 16 and top 8 and then a top 8 at the North American Championship- cementing a trip to worlds! I love to joke that the only difference in performance was the switch from Two Game Format (2GF) to Best of Three (Bo3), but I did make some actionable changes that likely had a big impact on my success. If you are where I was in Season One, maybe this will help you.

The first thing I want to talk about is lightening the load- both mentally and physically. I carried a lot of negative mental energy in season one. Imposter syndrome. I had the desire to prove I'm good enough to hang with the games elite, the need to succeed at these events to show my wife and family that it was worth it to take time away. Dwelling on those thoughts was wasted time and energy that only served to make me worse at the game.

I had lost the plot and forgot why I played card games. I've played cards since I was 10 years old. One of my earliest memories is of my mom taking me to Target to get base set packs of Pokemon (late 1999?), and I have been playing cards ever since. I've not been particularly good at any of them until Lorcana. Being good was never the point, I just loved playing.

When Season Two was announced with only three spaced out NA DLCs, I think most people were pretty frustrated (I shared some of that), but I was also relieved because I didn't have to find a way to justify traveling every month. They were also relatively close to me geographically, which meant little time away from the family. A big relief honestly. My self confidence was in toilet, so I vowed to have fun first, make and stick to a process second, and think about results third.

The other thing I did that literally lightened the load was ditch the backpack and play mat. I'm fairly minimal in my daily life. I don't own a lot of stuff on purpose. Physical clutter turns into mental clutter for me. More stuff to worry about, organize, keep track of. Since Milwaukee, my set up has been:

• Deck box (the Gamegenic bastion 50)

• Pad

• Pen

• 6 dice from a trove

• All the above in a sling

In addition, I stopped bringing every card I owned to the DLCs. In Season One, I burnt myself out trying to keep up with every deck so I could pivot at a moments notice. It was exhausting. I also tried to bring every card to the DLCs, so I had the option to play whatever I thought was best. Too much to lug around in a carry on. It wasn't who I was (I spent a decade traveling 1 or 2 times per month for work out of a single backpack). It's freeing. So now the process was simple. At the start of the format I would dabble with all the decks, but would focus on only practicing two. Plan A and Plan B. For every DLC and the Championships, I brought two decks and a box of playables for those decks and that's it.

Milwaukee was the start of something great. I made top 64 with a record 9-3 playing Blue Steel, my first DLC day 2 and earned a Simba - Pride Protector. My best Lorcana finish ever! But the most important thing wasn't the event, it was the prep and building of a really great testing group. Three weeks before the DLC my good friend Justin (JakxShadows) was streaming in discord when I joined, he was lamenting that he didn't like the format, didn't know what to play, etc. I said let's fire up Blue Steel (which was not a deck in the meta at the time). After sharing a laugh, he opened the deck builder and we made a deck that I'm almost certain ended up being 59 of the 60 cards we played at the DLC. Justin and I really bonded over the deck, we met in the middle at a set champs to play it together and both finished top 4. As the days went on we tried many different combinations of cards before ultimately reverting back. The interest in the deck in our testing group grew each day, and by the time the DLC arrived, 10 people were on the list. To the best I can recall, 6/10 made day 2, 4/10 made top 64, and 1 person (Botsu) finished top 32. We were a few bad beats away from having the deck of the tournament.

I cannot express my gratitude to my testing group enough. They are incredible people and great friends first, and top tier Lorcana players second. Working with people you genuinely enjoy being around makes all the difference. Lorcana is too deep to test everything on your own. You need to share ideas and get feedback. Many of my favorite Lorcana moments have come from a bunch of people yelling and laughing over a game of Lorcana in a Discord Voice chat. The process is fun, not work and that's why I can engage with the game every day now without getting burnt out.

Richmond solidified an amazing friendship and working relationship with Shane Downey (ShanersEdict). We are both older guys who have a history with MTG. I knew of Shane and watched him play on the SCG Tour a few times over the years. It is an honor and a pleasure to work with him. This would be the only event of this season where we didn't play the same deck. He played and I played . Blurple was probably the better deck, but I am Sail the Azurite Sea's biggest hater and wanted to crush the other purple decks even if I knew it made the dogs match up unplayable. I went 1-13 in Bo3 testing in the week leading up to the event. In the Friday Competitive side event I played a science experiment deck created by Rob Serpe (Plus) that was aimed at having a better match up into dogs, but it ultimately made the deck too bad in the purple mirrors and didn't beat dogs anyway. I was getting nervous and felt a spiral coming on. At dinner I listened to Shane talk Blurple strategy with the rest of the group and applied what he said to YP, they are very similar decks anyway. Instead of spiraling i decided to stick with the plan. I went 10-1-1 in swiss, locking up an NAC invite and finishing top 16, losing the Mickey match to DKP. Shane picked up a passdown invite to NAC. I went 4-0 against dogs. I still can't explain that. My best Lorcana finish ever! Shane and I were on our way to the NAC!

I picked up a top 32 in the first DLC in Brazil with dogs. The event was pretty uneventful, but I really honed in my preparation routine ahead of this event. I need to practice two separate ways:

1. I need to be a volume gamer. What I mean by that is I need to play a lot of games to feel out the decks, play instinctively, and let my instincts make the mistakes so I can make note of them. I'm not good enough to look at a deck and intuit the lines in every match up. I need play the games and live the mistakes before I can commit to correcting them.

2. After doing that, I start playing less, but with more intention and thought. My brain doesn't have the stamina for hours and days of really intense practice. Step 1 will find my deck's lines in most of the match ups. This step we are working out the problems.

I also learned it's important to tell my testing group which of those two stages I'm in. It can be counter productive to try to lock in on a game that I had otherwise been playing on autopilot. A challenge I have is that I'm not very good at verbalizing why I am taking a particular line. It's all background processes that got me there and it can throw off my groove to attempt an explanation mid game.

In this time period I hit number 1 on ladder. That's the first time I've ever done that in my card playing career. I held the spot for 14 minutes.

I took a side quest on a family vacation to go to DLC Dortmund. This was really bad. I had locked in on the snowfort dogs deck before I went on vacation knowing I wouldn't be able to test the week leading up. Then team Slab Sharks put the deck on the map when Josh (Shadawx) won the ETB CCQ with the deck, adding Elinor - Renowned Diplomat. So I played the DLC with last week's best deck and got the expected result of going 4-4.

Indy was the first event I'd ever played where I felt like the pressure was off. Richmond qualified me for Continentals, so that weight was lifted off my shoulders. In this event I acquired the skill of watching really good players in the Friday side event and taking notes on what they are doing. I was feeling down about dogs because of Dortmund and I didn't love the Under the Sea race. I played in the Friday side event and it didn't go well. I'm a pretty fast player, so my matches were always done in 20 minutes and I got to watch the top tables. I watched Eddie Caudill (who just made top8 in Richmond with dogs) every round just beat the snot out of people with the Kida - Protector of Atlantis /Under the Sea version of dogs. I knew at this point I wasn't playing Amber Steel in the main event and was looking for any reason to go back to dogs. I noted all 16 unique cards I saw from Eddie's deck and set out to recreate it. Shane also played in the Friday event with dogs, and got blasted in the mirror by the Kida - Protector of Atlantis/Under the Sea version. We went to dinner with the same idea, to recreate that deck. Talking it out, we felt the versions we saw were too high on uninkables, so we decided to go with Rapunzel - Gifted with Healing as a 59th and 60th card. Turns out it was a deck posted by Zan on his metafy, but he maxed out Lady - Miss Park Avenue and we played the two Rapunzel - Gifted with Healing instead. I finished top 8, losing to Sploosh. I won my first golden Mickey! Shane won his first golden Mickey! My best Lorcana finish ever!

This solidified my opinion that I get more value out of watching games on Friday than playing. Richmond's Friday event sent me spiraling, and my Indy event was saved because my Friday deck was bad and I had plenty of time to look around. I'm not saying you shouldn't play in the Friday events, but I am saying you should find what works best for you and do that.

Friday spectating saved the day again at NAC. I boarded my flights to Disneyland with a super low to the ground, max evasive version of that played the max copies of Pegasus - Gift for Hercules, White Rabbit - Late Again, Mushu - Stealthy Dragon and Tod & Copper - Best of Friends. I fit it all in by cutting all the high end stuff like Broadway - Sturdy and Strong. The intention was to forgo the mirror and cheese out the YP decks that I expected to be popular. As the LCQs progressed, I noticed that the people having success with were all playing some copies of Hamish, Hubert & Harris - Troublemaking Triplets, Lexington - Small in Stature, Dr. Hamsterviel - Evil Observer. There was no way my evasive cheese deck was going to work if was going to be popular and people had that type of mirror hate. I had a conversation with Ed (Ed) who told me i was crazy for cutting Broadway - Sturdy and Strong. I didn't like inking to five in because the deck was only playing 3-4 five cost cards, to which Ed offered the advice "well play more five drops." He wanted me to play McHorn - Ice-Cold Officer. While thinking this over, I walked past a match between Derek (Mr Enchanted) vs and he had Jasmine - Fearless Princess in play. The lightbulb went off. It was another five drop that solved my inking problems, and she was a way to go even bigger than the other decks. I needed some validation, so I called an emergency meeting of the guys in our testing group (Josh, Matt, Shane, Rob) and we went to the pack rush room to retool the deck. I expected to get talked off of Jasmine but everyone liked the idea as much as I did. we discussed the tech options and locked in the deck. 4/5 of the people in that meeting made top 16 (sorry Josh).

I managed to win my top 16 match OTD against . After winning the first two games OTD, I lost the next two. Thoughts of getting reverse swept were racing through my head. It was time to lock in. Ash Ketchum hat turn. I got the hand I needed, was able to get six characters and two Strength of a Raging Fires to take out two Mrs. Incredible - Super Stretchys. Broadway - Sturdy and Strong to protect my board. Despite having the best start I could draw up, the game still came down to a lone Vixey - Forest Friend on board when I was at 18 against a purple army and two cards in hand. Fortunately their two cards and a draw for turn couldn't answer the Vixey - Forest Friend and I secured Mickey #2 and a trip to worlds. Shane finished 9th and collected the passdown from Dillon LeDuc (Molestar). My best Lorcana Finish ever!

My match against Luke (vVonderland) was great. I lost in 5. Got blown out in game 5 by a Strength of a Raging Fire off the top right after Ursula - Deceiver showed me the coast was clear.

This season has been a dream come true for me. My season 2 has one more event, and I hope it continues the trend I've had so far. Thank you for reading!

-Dave