First ever Disney Lorcana card bans come into effect!
With every TCG, there's expected to be some balancing of cards needed. This includes reworks, errata's and eventually some bans. Take Magic the Gathering for example, the folks over at WOTC probably have a ban list as long as their legal card list! It's an incredibly important process to ensure the longevity of a TCG and make sure the players are having fun or be challenged when creating decks. Which leads us to the title of this blog, for the first time since its release Lorcana has implemented two card bans.
Effective from the 8th of April, Hiram Flaversham - Toymaker and Fortisphere are banned for competitive play. But what does this mean?
Essentially, you can still play these cards in personal games amongst friends and family, but if you're wanting to compete in any events by your Local Game Store or Disney Lorcana TCG then you must remove these cards from your decks otherwise they will not be accepted. The decision comes from Hiram Flaversham - Toymaker and Foritsphere dominating the playfield and resulting in one-sided outcomes which meant the game was no longer aligned with Disney Lorcana's goals. In a statement, Steve Warner from Disney Lorcana said the following:
Our primary goal with Disney Lorcana is to create a fun and engaging experience for all players. After extensive observation and feedback from the community, it became clear that Hiram Flaversham – Toymaker, and Fortisphere were consistently leading to gameplay scenarios that were not conducive to this goal.
Specifically, the inability for opposing players to interact with Hiram Flaversham – Toymaker felt less enjoyable than we want in a game of Disney Lorcana. Items such as Fortisphere that Hiram's ability banished before opponents could interact with the combo, gained a large advantage that was virtually unstoppable. Fortisphere was banned because we feel it placed too much emphasis on players using items in Steel, which is not aligned with the Ink's core strengths. Rather than fostering strategic depth and diverse gameplay, playing these cards together often led to predictable and one-sided outcomes.
There was also a consideration to ban Pawpsicle, as this card combined with the two aforementioned created an essentially unbeatable scenario, but Lorcana believes that with the ban Pawpsicle can still be valuable to decks going forward. Our resident Lorcana player had some thoughts on the bans, and we'll outline them below.
The Flaversham is the biggest one, because it kills the core consistency engine of so many Sapphire item decks. This card allowed you to get quick card draw, and combined with cards such as Pawpsicle, essentially let you play cards for free. Furthermore, because Flaversham had 6 strength, it was super hard to interact with unless you had some seriously hard removal for it. This isn't going to kill Sapphire entirely, as that is not the purpose of the ban. The idea is that Lorcana are trying to slow down, or balance, the amount of card draw you're generating as well as the Lore you generate when questing.
Sapphire/Ruby decks are likely to pivot more towards items holding a stronger position on the board, similar to Artifact or Counter decks in Magic the Gathering. Items ideally will become less of a throwaway card, and hold more status in the decks you play.
Fortisphere is an unusual ban, as it targets one deck in particular - Sapphire/Steel decks that play a lot of chaff, drop Ariel, then win the game - or race way too quickly with the items package. It's interesting that they've started banning 2 years on from the first release, we're already 7 sets deep into Lorcana and we've only had an errata so far. This feels more purposeful and says a lot about the development mindset behind the game. They seem to be developing from a healthier point of view, and it would be interesting to see what cards they plan to ban next. We expect to see that 3 Cost Diablo get the ban hammer pretty soon, but that's just our predictions.
What are your thoughts on the bans? Let us know in the comments below!
