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After a very long weekend spent playing Disney Lorcana in Birmingham, I was planning to relax a bit and rest my TCG brain. Instead, I went immediately back to the drawing board to improve my deck and I also played a few mock games against myself to see how my new deck behaves. It was quite fun to find I was not yet tired enough to stop playing and I think my passion for Disney Lorcana comes from both the gameplay and the amazing community you find when you start playing this great TCG. As a seasoned TCG player, I always considered this last aspect as important as the gameplay itself and I think Ravensburger has put an amazing effort in nurturing and supporting all the players. After one year of exciting games, I thought to have a comprehensive look into how Disney Lorcana Organized play grown and what any player can find in this game.
Where the magic comes from?
As you may know, Lorcana is the name of a realm where the power of imagination reigns supreme. At the centre of this realm, there is a large structure, the Great Illuminary, that is able to harness the power of stories allowing the Illumineers, people gifted with a powerful imagination, to use magical Ink to summon Characters and items from the Disney stories in the form of glimmers. Once you start playing Disney Lorcana, you take the role of one of these Illumineers and your mission is to keep improving your skills in order to protect the Realm from any danger.
It was pretty obvious since the release of the First Chapter in August 2023, that Disney Lorcana was not just a game featuring some nice Disney art on some cards. There is a complex background lore behind the game and a story that players discover one set at the time. That is the reason why, for example, the first Lorcana set was called “First Chapter”. Most important, the illustrators and the designers of the game went a long way to add hints and clues about the story in the arts and in the text of the cards. You may probably remember some major ones like the purple algae Mickey was investigating in the first chapter but there are also more subtle ones like the two references to the new set, Azurite sea, hidden in the cards of Shimmering Skies. And when you start realizing that all your cards may actually tell a portion of a larger story, you just stop looking at their stats to see if they are “good” enough for your deck or not. That's where the real fun begins as you just want to play with cards you like even if they will never be the most meta-relevant. Ravensburger strongly supported this approach and that's why the created the Disney Lorcana League.
Disney Lorcana League: Casual Play but with exclusive prizes.
Since the release of the First Chapter, Ravensburger spent a lot of efforts in creating a welcoming community players can join to have fun playing Disney Lorcana. As a result, venues were encouraged to organize and maintain casual gaming events under the “Disney Lorcana League” format. In this model, players can attend weekly local events and play as many games as they want without any obligation. Points are provided for any played games and can be redeemed at the end of a 4-weeks period (a Season) for a Disney Lorcana pin or a Promo card kindly provided by Ravensburger. There is also a possibility to gain more points by completing some special challenges including helping other people to learn the game but it is also to be noted that nobody can collect more than 10 points every week.
The design of this format is overall quite simple but very engaging in particular as it allows every player to always receive some nice prizes disregarding their age or level of expertise. Taking away the pressure of competing for a prize, the league promoted a relaxed environment enjoyable for both new and experienced players. I also believe the model is perfect to allow young players to join the game and spend quality time with their families. As a result, there is an impressive amount of young players that actually enjoy playing Lorcana and if you have been in Birmingham you also know that
they can be tough opponents to face. I know this first hand as there are three very talented kids in our local community including my own son and they all did great in Birmingham even after playing for more than 9 hours!
The heat is on: Set Championships!
Although the League format is a great way to enjoy Disney Lorcana in a casual/semi-competitive format, it is just natural for players to also be interested in finding more competitive opportunities. Being a Trading Card Game, Disney Lorcana can be fun and enjoyable to play but it also requires skills and concentration that players may want to grow and test against other skilled players. It is true that some venues planned some competitive events (for example to celebrate the launch of a new set) in the first few months since Chapter one was released but we had to wait until the release of set three to see the first competitive events promoted by Ravensburger.
If you were already playing the game, you likely remember that as the Illumineers embarked themselves in new journey “Into the Inklands”, the players were also able to start their competitive journey with the first “Set Championship”. These type of tournaments require each player to have their own Constructed deck and they are usually scheduled in the last month before a new set is released. Together with this one-every-three month cadence, the main peculiarity of these events is that all the prizes are provided by Ravensburger and they include an Alternate art Promo Enchanted card and a playmat for the champion and the runner-up.
The first promo Enchanted released for this format, “Stitch, RockStar”, was an amazing card and everyone was looking to have at least one. As a result, people travelled a lot to have multiple opportunities to win the prizes expanding the community and allowing lot of players to realize how large the Lorcana community was and how many people were actually already playing the game. After the success of the first and second Set Championship, Ravensburger also decided to grant the promo Enchanted card to the first eight players and not just to the first four making these events even more interesting.
As done for the league, I think it is clear that the Set championship were designed to promote the community and to reward the players with meaningful prizes. The Set-Championships also managed to create a nice routine in the game that starts with the release of a new set. Players can collect and test the new cards in the League events to build-up the experience and knowledge of their decks in order to challenge themselves in the Set Championship. And once the Championship is over, there will be a new set and a new Championship so players can quest for a new Enchanted promo.
There can be only 64: Regional Challenges
Once the competitive scene kicked off with the Set Championships, there was obviously a need to created also bigger event for the community to meet and larger challenges for the Illumineers to face. Ravensburger as usual was on top of this and created a number of regional Challenges designed to culminate with the World Championship finals. The first Challenge was in May 2024 in Lille (France) and, after that, there have been a total of 4 events in Europe and 6 in North America. UK players were quite lucky as one of these was held in Birmingham just at the end of September and it saw 2017 player competing against each other. My son and I were two of them and it was awesome!!!
As a great testimony of the hard work done to create a large community, all challenges have been massive successes to the point that Ravensburger had to increase the player cap to 2000 players for each of them once the tickets for the first event sold out in just a few minutes.
There were many things to enjoy at the Challenges. The star of the show was obviously the main tournament as those ranking on the top 64 spots will be granted a place in the World Championship Finals. However there were also a lot of side events to play from a couple of large constructed tournaments to a quick Pack-rush challenges. This last one is a new format to play Lorcana by opening just 2 packs and using all the cards in there blindly. Not only it is very fun but you may experience the excitement of drawing one card for your turn to find an Enchanted. I was not this lucky but one of my friends did and they are still over the moon for it.
The best part of the side events was of course the fun of playing with your friends or with all other players in the community but we should also not forget that every game give you some tickets to pick up prizes from the prize wall. I took a picture of some of the most sought after cards and I was very happy I managed to get a copy of Cinderella and a copy of Rapunzel as they were the two cards I wanted more.
What to expect next?
Now that (almost) all Challenges are completed, the players will start looking to the World Championship. There are still a few details to be revealed on the structure of these events and how the tournament will actually be managed but I am pretty sure it will be epic.
Moreover, it will not be the last of the surprise Ravensburger has in store for all Disney Lorcana fans. We already heard about the Disney Quests that will take place in the Disney Parks across the globe but I am sure this will not be the only initiative we will see in 2025. I am also expecting more promo cards distributed in Disney Games and perhaps alongside the tickets to next Disney movie? With such a great and nice community of players behind and so many good initiatives to enjoy, I am pretty sure Disney Lorcana will grow more and more in its second year and I cannot wait to be here in one year to celebrate its second anniversary.
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