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 Fresh off of almost causing a riot at GenCon and following that up with immediately selling out everywhere it went on sale, it's Disney's first CCG: Lorcana! What is Lorcana? You are an Illumineer, wielding magical ink to create "glimmers" -- copies of your favorite Disney characters in forms both familiar and new, identical in all respects to the real ones, but not actually the real ones, which is why it's okay for Elsa to team up with Hades and murk Minnie Mouse. With your deck full of Disney Magic™, you'll quest for forgotten lore to, um... do something. It's not really clear. Just keep singing "Hakuna Matata" until you stop worrying about it. No, really, you should sing that. It's a pretty good card. Oh, I like Disney characters. Who can I add to my deck? Lorcana currently contains elements from the following films/franchises:
 How do I play? As a game meant to appeal to a pretty young age, the rules of Lorcana are simple and fit on only two pages. Here they are so you can read them for yourself. There are only three card types and no interaction during your opponent's turn, so learning the game is painless and the games themselves are quick and easy. Each turn, you can choose to convert one eligible card in your hand to ink. A lack of dedicated resource cards is Lorcana's core gimmick; instead, most cards in your deck can be turned into your casting resource. (Ideally, this means you can't draw dead, because a card that's useless to you in your current situation can become valuable by being inked.) You then use your ink to cast any cards you want to play from your hand. Characters who've been on the board since the start of your turn can challenge opposing characters or quest to gain lore, but be careful -- doing either exerts (Lorcana's term for tapping) them, leaving them vulnerable to enemy challenges in turn! Turns do not have phases, so you can do any combination of legal actions you like in whatever order you want. First player to 20 lore wins. As a game that currently only has its starter set released and no meta to speak of yet due to the whole nobody-can-buy-any situation, there are currently no complicated mechanics or specific synergies to learn. Heck, the colors don't really have strongly defined identities yet, so pick whatever you like best and make a deck out of it. Is this game any good, or is it just coasting on the Disney license? It's simple, by design, but it's fun. Your characters are safe when doing nothing and vulnerable while questing, but if you don't quest, you can't win. You have to balance risk vs. reward, choosing moments when it's worth it to send them out and when it's smarter to stand back and dare your opponent to expose themselves to danger in turn. Also, the ink system is neat and has real potential. Right now it has some issues -- it tends to drain your entire hand and leave you topdecking for the latter half of the game -- but nothing that an expansion or two can't fix. That said, will your experience be enhanced if you find gameplay leading to sentences like "I was winning until he kept singing Be Prepared" or "Captain Hook is not a Princess" inherently amusing? Yes, it absolutely will be. That sounds nice, but I'm a more competitive sort. Got anything for me? Sure do! Ravensburger, the publisher of the game, has announced plans to provide support for a Lorcana Organized Play League. It's not meant to be super competitive, just a way to encourage people to come out and play, so the prizes on offer are pins and promo reprints of already existing cards, but it's still something. Currently, Ravensburger has been silent on the topics of more serious tournament-level support or Regional/National/Worlds championships. They might be announced later, or they might not. However, Ravensburger has posted the official tournament rules, and they seem built to encompass major events, so it seems more likely than not that they're coming in the future. In the mean time, you can contact your local game store to see if they have plans to participate in Organized Play, but nobody's actually running their leagues yet, as nobody has any product to sell and most players don't actually have any cards to build a deck.  Okay, I'm sold. How do I get started? Ha ha, memes are fun. No, but really, haven't you been paying attention? I mentioned that it's sold out everywhere three times. It's sold out everywhere. You can't get any unless you're willing to pay scalpers their exorbitant rates. Don't be willing to do that. More product is coming. Assuming you're reading this in October when another wave gets shipped out, or in First Quarter 2024 and beyond when a (hopefully) massive reprint of The First Chapter is coming, you can purchase starter decks and booster packs at your local gaming store, any big box retailer you can think of, and at shopDisney, Disney's official online store. To get started, all you need is a deck comprised of at least 60 cards and no more than 2 colors. A starter deck will provide that along with a paper playmat with a lore counter and some damage tokens, but nothing besides the cards is required. There's a free Lorcana app that will track your lore (or you could use a d20 or anything else you have that counts to 20), and any sort of token will do to mark damage, even ripped up pieces of paper. I'm not really a physical kind of player anyway. What about a digital option? Officially, there isn't one, and Ravensburger has made no mention of having one in development. Unofficially, there's Pixelborn. It's a Unity app created by a small team led by a Bulgarian developer which, technically, is not a Lorcana client. It just lets you play a card game with identical mechanics on your computer with enabled online play, and if some users are downloading copyrighted images to overwrite the default card images in the game, well, they didn't tell them to do that and can't be held responsible for it. If you too want to get into the exciting world of downloading unsigned code off a Google Drive link to install on your personal computer, you can find the relevant links here, as well as a link to the Pixelborn Discord. And if, on that Discord, you might find instructions on how to download all the Lorcana card images and add them to your Pixelborn client, well... I can't be held responsible for that either. Legal tapdancing aside, maybe the Pixelborn team gets squashed by a C&D, maybe they're ignored, maybe Ravensburger does the smart thing and hires them, who knows? For now, unless you got extremely lucky or caved to the scalpers, it's the only way to get any games in. And while I had my fun joking about the extremely shady install process, it actually is a safe, stable game client that does the only things it needs to do -- lets you build decks and then play those decks online, either via random matchmaking or in custom games against friends. What about long-term support? I don't want to buy into a flash in the pan. No worries there. Lorcana's first expansion, the creatively titled The Second Chapter, hits shelves on November 17th. We don't know much about it yet, but it will add Raya and the Last Dragon to the list of represented franchises, along with more Mulan and Winnie the Pooh representation. (And, hopefully, Ravensburger will have learned their lesson about print run sizes.) Ravensburger claims to already have a 10 year plan for expanding the game going forward, and the game couldn't have possibly launched any hotter. It ought to stick around.  Get in, loser! We're giving swords to princesses. CapnAndy fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Sep 11, 2023 |
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Sep 7, 2023 00:22
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Hi! This is the Lorcana thread. I'm saving this post in case I need it later, but in the mean time, please have fun posting about how singing Be Our Guest is a sub-optimal play when you could be dropping another copy of Lilo for less ink.
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Sep 7, 2023 00:22
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I intend to look into this as soon as I can pay not scalper prices for it. MTG is already my big money TCG, I don't need more than one. So what are good archetypes to look into? I saw that there was a giant Tinker Bell, and stomping on people sounds fun. But is it good?
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Sep 7, 2023 00:36
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Here's a good overview of the top five meta decks at the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDgTxIU11UE And an in-depth look at the Amber/Steel deck which is challenging the Ruby/Amethyst control deck for the #1 spot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaqHvSWMavM
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Sep 7, 2023 01:32
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Framboise posted:I intend to look into this as soon as I can pay not scalper prices for it. MTG is already my big money TCG, I don't need more than one.
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Sep 7, 2023 02:00
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So just because I thought it was a very clever and insightful prediction, here's a guess on how Lorcana might tackle Star Wars and Marvel, courtesy of Discord. Forceborn and such.
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Sep 7, 2023 04:10
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CapnAndy posted:I don't know if Giant Tink is in any meta decks right now, but she's good. She works well in Steel's nascent identity of doing a lot of direct damage without needing to challenge. She's in the Amber/Steel deck that won the big tournament in Denver, and she's arguably one of the best plays against any Amber-based rush deck when combined with Grab Your Swords. Essentially, you play Tink, Tiny Tactician on 3, on 4 you can Shift her into Giant Tink and use her to sing GYS, dealing 3 total damage to all opposing characters. I'm hoping to build a budget-friendly Ruby/Emerald or Emerald/Amethyst, personally. The idea behind Emerald's "Oh, no, you gotta come to me" characters is very fun, IMO.
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Sep 7, 2023 04:10
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quote:Winnie The Pooh to the list of represented franchises  Framboise posted:So what are good archetypes to look into? I saw that there was a giant Tinker Bell, and stomping on people sounds fun. But is it good? Ruby/Steel control seems pretty effective, with target stuff like Dragonfire,. Smash! and Break and more spread out grab your sword. Saphire/steel item decks I've seen work well with infinite looping collector Ariels questing, playing an item (at a discount from Maurice) and then questing again all with bonuses from the eyes of fate. I've had some success with Amber/Emerald stitch zoo against non-control decks somewhat as well. Just lots of 1-2 drops with a rockstar stitch piling up cards to build up a huge wide line. (usually though when I win it's without stitch honestly.) Foolster41 fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Sep 7, 2023 |
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Sep 7, 2023 05:01
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CitizenKeen posted:So just because I thought it was a very clever and insightful prediction, here's a guess on how Lorcana might tackle Star Wars and Marvel, courtesy of Discord. Yeah, if they bring sw/marvel/other stuff like that into it, I hope it is costumes for the disney characters and not actual characters. Vader goofy, spiderman stitch, etc.
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Sep 7, 2023 18:27
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Foolster41 posted:How could you forget tigger? goodness posted:Yeah, if they bring sw/marvel/other stuff like that into it, I hope it is costumes for the disney characters and not actual characters. Vader goofy, spiderman stitch, etc.
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Sep 7, 2023 19:33
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This game is already set up to be somewhat multiversal, like a mega-license game like UniVersus or something. The difference is that they own everything they've touched so far so no need to worry about something going out of print due to licensing issues specifically. Also, Kingdom Hearts already exists. So, for a lot of reasons it wouldn't be nearly as weird as trying to bolt it onto your game after the fact. Probably save that type of stuff for when the game slumps in the future. Dorks going to go bananas over Mickey in Han Solo's vest and Goofy in an Iron Man suit except he's falling off a mountain going ahh--hoo-hoo-hooo-ey.
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Sep 7, 2023 20:03
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So one little fun thing about being on the ground floor of a new game is seeing people discover rules go a bit deeper than originally thought. Turns out characters that can give someone evasive and if it’s worded any character can be picked, you can pick the other players characters not just your own. I watched someone use a Tinker Bell to basically nullify a bodyguard setup by making the bodyguard evasive so their characters couldn’t challenge them, lacking the evasive ability, allowing them complete sidestep it to go after the high lore gathering, low defense characters the other player put out Also is there an explanation of what like dreamborn or floodborn on cards represent yet?
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Sep 7, 2023 20:13
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Magnetic North posted:Probably save that type of stuff for when the game slumps in the future. Dorks going to go bananas over Mickey in Han Solo's vest and Goofy in an Iron Man suit except he's falling off a mountain going ahh--hoo-hoo-hooo-ey. I think you mean Goofy in a Han solo vest falling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBeF8BfW4PA Honestly, there's so many marvel and star wars games, I feel like i'd rather keep it to purely Disney. the crossover of costumed Disney characters are SW/marvel characters is cute, and I'm a little more open to that (Hell, Goofy as Han Solo and Max as Kylo as a refrence to his comic/video would be great), but it feels weird to just include pure marvel/sw characters in a game where the main lore is drawing with ink. Dr. VooDoo posted:So one little fun thing about being on the ground floor of a new game is seeing people discover rules go a bit deeper than originally thought. Turns out characters that can give someone evasive and if it’s worded any character can be picked, you can pick the other players characters not just your own. I watched someone use a Tinker Bell to basically nullify a bodyguard setup by making the bodyguard evasive so their characters couldn’t challenge them, lacking the evasive ability, allowing them complete sidestep it to go after the high lore gathering, low defense characters the other player put out I don't think they have, but have promised they will with a sort of meta narrative eventually, possibly starting with set 2 maybe. Foolster41 fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Sep 7, 2023 |
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Sep 7, 2023 23:40
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Framboise posted:I intend to look into this as soon as I can pay not scalper prices for it. MTG is already my big money TCG, I don't need more than one. Same. Mostly as something to play with the kiddo. But not interested in picking up or starting anything they wouldn't like and paying scalper prices for it. Or even worse, what if the kid likes it and product is always prohibitively expensive. Woof.
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Sep 8, 2023 00:46
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Me: Considering the barrier to entry, I think I can safely ignore this one. Even if they do crossovers. My Brain: Disney owns the Muppets. ... 
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Sep 8, 2023 21:52
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Well apparently everybody knew that bit about GameStop getting their stock today. There are six stores local to me; my brother was able to get 8 packs at one of them. Everywhere else was sold out within an hour or never got any. (Also, the one store with product didn't have much, because apparently someone stole a bunch of it off the FedEx truck.) Whatever print run Ravensburger is thinking about for the future, I think maybe add another zero onto the end of it. Also there are six GameStops within 10 miles of my house, no wonder the fuckers are going out of business.
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Sep 8, 2023 22:47
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Someone wake me up when I can walk into a store and buy a pack. Something tells me it will be a while.
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Sep 8, 2023 23:14
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game is fun. local store is doing a sealed league - buy 6 packs, jam 40ish of any color into a deck. play games, leave your deck at the store, and then each week you can buy another pack to tinker with your deck. It’s fun and a decent way to get people playing on even footing with all the supply issues. Lots of new players, even many who don’t really play other CCG type games at all. after ~10ish games I’m enjoying it, but not sure it will be a forever game for me personally.
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Sep 9, 2023 11:32
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It seems unlikely, but I would love a high school musical pack. And as long as I’m daydreaming, a high school musical the musical the series pack, so I can have Olivia Rodrigo and Andy’s toys take on Phineas, Uma, and Pepper-Ann. Or an Eisner/Remy Paris rush deck to beat the Kim Possible/Figment meta. Edit: deck builds that should be possible assuming a 20 year content plan: Webby/Flynn Rider heroism loop Kermit/Loki all green everything Mulan/Gus from Recess “Sun Tzu’s kindergardeners” Chip/Dale/Indiana Dueling Fedoras Boy Meets Strange World Movie Silver Surfers “Just characters voiced by Cree Summers” Golden Bee fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Sep 10, 2023 |
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Sep 10, 2023 06:52
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I wanted to get this to enjoy with my Mickey-loving son but the best we can do is get a booster every time we're at the FLGS which is limiting them to one per day per household. I will not reward scalpers and hope the October wave and 2024 reprint leave them holding a colossal bag. Right now I'm pondering either seeing if there's viable "pauper" decks that can be made out of commons/UCs for cheap, or just doing print and play for the home. Kind of a bummer supply is so throttled when enthusiasm is at its highest.
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Sep 10, 2023 13:28
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I think the shortage must be much worse in the USA than in Europe. Prices on tcgplayer are higher than the cardmarket equivalent.
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Sep 11, 2023 17:55
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Tournament rules got posted even though they're still listed as "Coming Soon" on the website. It does seem to answer the "will there be more serious tournaments" question, as these are clearly built to encompass major events. Tournament matches are 2 out of 3 games, but more interesting to note is that for sealed events, the two color restriction falls off, and you can build a deck with anything you pull. Makes Sealed more flexible, and for Draft it means you can't read any signals in what colors you're being passed; if you see a lot of Ruby it doesn't mean nobody else is in Ruby, it means nobody's seen any Ruby cards they like yet. CapnAndy fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Sep 11, 2023 |
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Sep 11, 2023 18:39
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Sealed and Draft are probably the only way to make that work, but it does feel a bit dull that most decks will end up as goodstuff.dek.
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Sep 11, 2023 19:28
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Having a look through the cards and I really like the Amber/Amethyst Hades, King of Olympus Villain deck I brewed up. It also costs 130+ USD so I'm never actually buying it. Is posting snipped screenshots of decklists okay or nah in this thread? But the general idea is deep-drawing and using Hades and Facilier's Floodborn forms as curve toppers, basically planning to get Hades, King of Olympus out and then empty my hand of villains the turn after to beef his ability up without my opponent having time to react. Combined with most of the villains being tap for 2 minimum in the deck, and Facilier's Floodborn version returning anything that dies to hand and I think it's got potential.
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Sep 12, 2023 05:06
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Big reveals this morning for The second chapter. Hunny Wizard is amazing art  
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Sep 12, 2023 13:44
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Holy cow those Floodborn Belle and Cinderella look very strong.
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Sep 12, 2023 13:55
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That Mickey is insane 
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Sep 12, 2023 15:31
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FewtureMD posted:That Mickey is insane Yeah holy poo poo.  Kinda makes me want to try Amber/Amethyst.
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Sep 12, 2023 15:38
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By the time you get a six cost body on the field, isn't the game close to being over anyway? Probably more of a win-more card?
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Sep 12, 2023 15:41
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idk about that mickey, with so little card draw in the game I regularly am playing my one and only card each turn by the time i’ve played a 6 ink card, making a discount not that thrilling.
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Sep 12, 2023 15:44
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Magnetic North posted:Holy cow those Floodborn Belle and Cinderella look very strong. Resist is a pretty potent keyword, so if there's a deck for them to bully aggro, she's gonna be in it I bet. Also, I don't know if the Gaston shift is good or not, since Gaston is more of a live fast/die young removal spell on legs than actual creature, but lol at brainy Gaston. I'm calling that Zero to Hero is gonna be busted, though.
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Sep 12, 2023 15:58
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The queen seems perticularly powerful, being able to add -4 AND +4 every time she quests and not just on play, for basicly only 1.5 points of her cost is insane. I love the agro lore generation as well, and resist keywords, being able to force your opponent discard your hand on attack are wild. E:I wonder if self-bouncing with Merlin would be worth it. for example targeting yourself with Cruella. Just having sorcerer mickey and brooms could be neat, attacking with them, having them bounce to your hand giving merlin +1 Lore each time. Foolster41 fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Sep 12, 2023 |
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Sep 12, 2023 16:44
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That Disney 100 collector's box says it has Rise of the Floodborn boosters inside, so I initially thought The Second Chapter was getting renamed, but the preview cards still have a 2 in their collector's info and not RoF or anything. Anyone know what's up? Third set name or TSC getting a rename? Pretty good cards in that preview, and I'm extremely amused by the expansion of the "Maurice's inventions actually worked and everyone is steampunk" Beauty and the Beast alternate universe. Smart Gaston isn't very good, but he is very funny. Zero to Hero encouraging Amber's already present zoo tendencies with a card that basically reads "your next character is free" coming in at uncommon is loving insane. We will need to goose-step with many more hyenas to answer this.
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Sep 12, 2023 17:03
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CapnAndy posted:Smart Gaston isn't very good, but he is very funny. I dunno, a 4/4/3 for 4 with a Ponder attached sounds pretty loving great imo. E: Assuming you can Shift him, obviously. I'm not sure I'd be as jazzed paying six. Kyrosiris fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Sep 12, 2023 |
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Sep 12, 2023 17:20
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Kyrosiris posted:I dunno, a 4/4/3 for 4 with a Ponder attached sounds pretty loving great imo. Yeah, but unless there's another Gaston in the set, he doesn't fit the play style that Smar-ton wants, right? And he likely won't even be alive to shift if you play regular Gaston on turn two, since he has to challenge and only has two health.
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Sep 12, 2023 18:07
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Capfalcon posted:Yeah, but unless there's another Gaston in the set, he doesn't fit the play style that Smar-ton wants, right? And he likely won't even be alive to shift if you play regular Gaston on turn two, since he has to challenge and only has two health. Well, the starter deck that he's headlining is Amber/Sapphire, so that makes me think there's another Gaston in the set. We'll see!
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Sep 12, 2023 18:20
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Kyrosiris posted:Well, the starter deck that he's headlining is Amber/Sapphire, so that makes me think there's another Gaston in the set. We'll see! Good point. Guess we'll see. Maybe he'll have a fatter butt to survive a challenge?
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Sep 12, 2023 18:43
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Singles market is already dropping significantly. L Elsa is down $20
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Sep 13, 2023 18:05
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goodness posted:Singles market is already dropping significantly. L Elsa is down $20 They're still $45 per, and even basic rares like Lilo are $15. Still loving exorbitant.
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Sep 13, 2023 18:17
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I'm really enjoying this game, this is the first game my wife wanted to join an actual league for (as opposed to our makeshift at-home leagues for going through booster boxes) and even though it's just thr first set, there is a decent amount of thematic decks you can do for the color pairings. Also just fun dumb gimmicky decks. I'll get my Amethyst/Steel Broom.dec to work one of these days! Especially once Merlin comes out. Edit: Kyrosiris posted:They're still $45 per, and even basic rares like Lilo are $15. Still loving exorbitant. Isn't Lilo the exception to the rule for prices on rares though? Aren't most sub-$10, if not sub-$5?
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Sep 13, 2023 18:20
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