Disney Lorcana Challenge North American Championship - Everything You Missed in Anaheim
Check out all the decks from the action in Anaheim and make your conclusions for EU Champs in Paris with us!
Disney Lorcana Challenge NA Championship
The North American Championship has wrapped up in Anaheim, and it left the Disney Lorcana metagame with plenty to talk about. Emerald/Steel dominated the top tables, Dillon LeDuc’s Amber/Amethyst found a way through the field to take the title, and a number of other decks showed they still have a place in the current format.
With the European Championship just around the corner, those results could have a big influence on what players bring to Paris. If you missed the action in Anaheim, here’s everything you need to know, from the decks that shaped the event to the strategies that could help decide the Disney Lorcana Challenge European Championship.
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What Happened in Anaheim?
There was a lot to keep an eye on across the weekend, so let’s break down exactly what happened, which decks rose to the top, and what it could all mean for the European Championship.
The North American Championship brought 136 players to the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, with the weekend beginning with a huge Last Chance Qualifier. 1,024 players were split into two 512-player pods. After six single-elimination rounds, the top players from each pod qualified for the NA Champs Main Event. The Main Event then got underway with nine rounds of Best-of-Three Swiss. From there, the Top 16 returned on Sunday for Best-of-Five single elimination, with the Top 8 earning invitations to the Season 2 World Championship.
However, the Championship wasn’t just about the main tournament. Illumineers had Side Events running throughout the weekend, a prize wall, Collection Quest activities, artist signings, Disney character meet-and-greets, and plenty of opportunities to meet other players. Competitors brought their families and friends, and people travelled all across the world to be here in Anaheim for the Disney Lorcana Challenge North American Championship.
NA Champs Metagame Breakdown
One of the biggest questions as a result of this tournament isn’t just “who won?”. It really is: what do these results tell us about the upcoming European Championship meta? Aggressive Amber/Emerald decks, mid-range Amber/Amethyst decks, and Emerald/Steel with its utility, and answers to general game plans were very popular decks we knew we would see.
Emerald/Steel ended up being the most played deck in the room at 24.4% of the Day 1 field. Amethyst/Emerald followed at 19.3%, with Amber/Emerald at 18.5% and Amber/Amethyst at 14.8%. If that wasn’t data enough, eleven of the sixteen players who made it into the Top 16 were on the “Detective” deck, which led to three of the four top four being Emerald/Steel. Despite all of these amazing numbers it put up, it still didn’t win – something we are sure all players participating in the European Continentals are thinking about.
Dillon LeDuc brought Amber/Amethyst into a field where Emerald/Steel was the most represented deck and eventually beat Sky Duntz in the final. Suddenly, the results from Anaheim don’t give a solid answer to what people should play or choose. Do you play Emerald/Steel because it clearly put up the numbers? Do you build specifically to beat it? Or do you expect everyone else to try and build the “Detective Killer”, and go a step further and try and play that? Try to punish the decks that are going out of their way to punish the popular game plans, and go one level deeper into the metagame.
Dillon LeDuc’s Winning Deck
Dillon LeDuc’s Amber/Amethyst deck might look fairly straightforward when you first glance at the list. There are loads of characters, very few actions, and no items or locations. But the deck isn’t simply trying to flood the board and hope for the best.
The real plan is to build a board cheaply, use Hamm – Piggy Bank and Grandmother Willow – Ancient Advisor to make your bigger characters even cheaper, and then turn that advantage into a board your opponent can’t keep up with. Instead of going all in on being aggressive and scoring as much lore as possible, you can opt to slow the game, fight for board control and card advantage, and take the wheel in any game.
The first few turns are just about setting up the board with characters with potential to trade up into bigger characters. Luisa Madrigal – Pushing Through and Rafiki – Mystical Fighter are excellent early plays. Luisa Madrigal can even shift later on into a bigger threat.
In games where you’re unlucky enough to not have played Hamm or Willow on turn two, Cheshire Cat – Inexplicable and Dumbo – The Flying Elephant are great tools for dealing with smaller characters and evasive characters. Additionally, the theme of moving damage around already pops up here.
If you’re able to make use of the discounts, however, that’s where this deck really shines. Sven – Leaping Reindeer, Tigger – Bouncing All The Way, and Isis Vanderchill – Ice Queen of St. Canard paired with a challenger are great tempo plays to already establish an early lead on board.
Demona – Scourge of the Wyvern Clan can efficiently exert challenge targets. Luisa Madrigal – Confident Climber can efficiently move damage onto characters that would normally be harder to remove, and Gaston – Superior Archer can take out some opposing big bodies.
One of the biggest mistakes with this deck is constantly trying to keep the board clean. Sometimes you can take a commanding lead and charge ahead in lore, forcing your opponents to take care of your own characters for a change. Your goal is to control the board enough to stop your opponent from getting ahead while your own board continues to grow.
Besties, Assemble can help you dig for the perfect answer, and The Horseman Strikes is a great way to deal with larger evasive characters for cheap. All in all, we have a beautiful toolbox deck that can deal with threats as they come up, and take advantage of playing powerful characters above curve to starve your opponents of resources.From here on out, you’ll want to take advantage of being able to play above curve with high cost characters that can swing tempo, remove characters, and draw cards.
Sky Duntz’s Emerald/Steel Deck
Sky Duntz’s Emerald/Steel deck might look familiar at first glance, but there are a few important differences that make this list stand out. With some great songs for removal options as well as many cheap and evasive characters, the deck has the ability to quickly win games against the unprepared. All the tech that we’ve seen in Leduc’s deck to deal with evasive characters quickly makes itself relevant and shows just how prepared he was for the North American Championship meta-game. That aside, however, Sky’s deck is nothing to scoff at. The makeup of this Emerald/Steel deck sits somewhere between an aggressive and mid-range deck, able to get on the board quickly but still having plenty of ways to fight for control later in the game.
The main plan is to get cheap characters onto the board early, start building Lore and force your opponent to spend resources dealing with them. Tod – All Alone, Darkwing Duck – Crime Fighter, and Flynn Rider – Spectral Scoundrel give you plenty of one-cost options. While Ursula – Deceiver and Launchpad – Trusty Sidekick start the card advantage game early by either helping you gain extra cards or removing key pieces of interaction from your opponent’s hand.
Launchpad is particularly important here. The Darkwing Duck package normally has access to The Terror That Flaps in the Night, but Sky chose not to include it. Instead, the Darkwing characters are primarily there to enable Launchpad’s ability. The Terror That Flaps in the Night not being a song like Strength of a Raging Fire and He Hurled His Thunderbolt could have been a reason to cut it from the deck. And looking at other decks in the top 8, it seems to have made quite the difference.
Once you have a few characters established, Vixey – Forest Friend, The Huntsman – On the Queen’s Orders and Mushu – Stealthy Dragon give you plenty of ways to keep the pressure on.
The midgame is where the Steel half of the deck starts doing some serious work. Angela – Night Warrior and Darkwing Duck – Shadowy Superhero can turn your characters into much better challengers and start pinging damage at some pesky targets. The top end of Broadway – Sturdy and Strong makes it hard for other decks to challenge your more vulnerable and already difficult-to-challenge characters. Angel – Experiment 624 and Elinor – Renowned Diplomat also start chipping away at characters’ health as well, doing their best to keep your characters alive and questing.
From Anaheim to Paris - The Next Chapter
The North American Championship has left European players with quite the interesting problem. On one hand, Emerald/Steel clearly works. It was the most popular deck in Anaheim, put 11 players into the Top 16 and occupied three of the four semifinal spots. On the other hand, the event also showed that blindly following the most popular deck isn’t necessarily the best approach. Dillon LeDuc brought Amber/Amethyst into a field packed with Emerald/Steel and went on to win the entire tournament. And what a run it was: he qualified through the Friday LCQ to go all the way to win the entire Championship.
If you would like to see other tournament decks, check them out here.
This entire trip was a fantastic weekend for Disney Lorcana, both, on and off the tournament tables. From the action-packed Main Event and exciting side events to the artists, guests, and everything happening around the venue, Anaheim felt like a proper celebration of the game. And when it came to the competition, we got exactly the kind of tournament you want from a Championship. Strong favourites, unexpected choices, and a final that showed there was more than one way to approach the current meta-game.
Now the focus shifts to Paris. European players now have the results, deck-lists, and strategies from North America to work with, but that also means everyone has the same information. Will Emerald/Steel remain on top, will players find the next answer to it, or will an entirely different deck emerge? The Disney Lorcana Challenge European Championship is just around the corner, and after what we saw in Anaheim, the next chapter of the Disney Lorcana meta-game is looking very interesting.
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