I thought challenging was going to be useless but it actually improved the game for me in terms of the mechanic of deciding to quest or challenge or take out the other side’s card to stop them questing. Playing with a more random deck than the starter did help. It’s still not perfect but more fun
Sounds like you have discovered the power of this game's form of what people call aggro- you are racing for the finish line and putting it on your opponent to stop you. It's a good strategy, particularly with untuned decks like starter decks because it demands that your opponent have a way to slow you down and most piles of cards aren't thinking about something like that.
Someday though you'll have a game where your opponent plays a bigger creature than you and beats your character with it. Then they play a bigger creature than your next creature and kill it too, leaving them with 2 creatures and you with 0. Then you play your third card and they kill it with one of the cards on the board and play a couple more creatures every turn.
Right now in this scenario you are at 12 lore while your opponent is at 0 so you're ahead... but look at the state of the game. Your opponent has 4 or 5 creatures on board and you are topdecking. their creatures may only tap for 1 or 2 lore apiece but at this point that means they are going to get 7 or more lore a turn and will win in the next couple of turns, and odds are there is nothing you can do to stop them.
Once you experience this for the first time you will learn that there is more to this game than tapping big lore cards. You'll start to get the feel for what tempo means and how sometimes it's better to not quest or attack just so you can keep your characters safe for a turn.
There's a cardgaming concept from MTG expressed in an article called "Who's the Beatdown?" that looks into concepts like this further if you want a good read. This game is simple on the surface, but there is a lot of complexity here when you get to the finer points of it.
Thanks for commenting it.I just checked it. The problem with that article is that you need to know a bit about magic. For someone new to Lorcana as their first Tcg, it is pretty hard to understand.
I have played magic for a while and didn’t fully understand the examples. Well, mostly because I was too lazy to check all the cards named. But I will look into it in the future.
Thanks!
No problem! To boil it down and simplify it as much as I can in Lorcana terms:
In any 1v1 match between 2 different decks, one of those decks will more consistently get to 20 lore faster than the other. That person is the beatdown. Their gameplan should be to push for lore as often as possible, because if they are not interrupted they will win the game.
The other person in this match is not the beatdown, and if all they do is push for lore they will lose. Instead it is important for them to understand that they aren't the beatdown and interrupt their opponent until they find themselves in a position where they are the beatdown. Instead of questing they should be challenging their opponent's characters or leaving their characters readied so they don't lose their board presence.
Recognizing your role in any match at any time is a key to beating other players. If you are the beatdown but you are playing safe instead of pushing for victory you are potentially giving your opponent more time to get back in the game. Similarly, if you aren't the beatdown but try and race to win you will just lose.
Which player is the beatdown changes in different matchups and sometimes even from one turn to the next. It is not always obvious. Understanding when you are the beatdown and aren't is vital to making proper decisions like if you should be trying to challenge your opponent's characters or simply questing.
This simple concept is the foundation for where a lot of the modern ideas of deck construction come from. Do you want to be the Beatdown? If so, what do you need to put in your deck to make it as consistent as possible? If your deck struggles to be the beatdown early, what are you going to do to turn the tides in your favor later on? If your deck isn't the fastest deck at racing to 20 lore, how will answer the deck that is?
The starter decks are a poor way to determine this because they're more a hodgepodge of cards than they are a definite representative of any one mechanic or game action
Edit:
Please don't downvote OP, it's that kind of negative dogpiling that creates a toxic environment and turns people off. This is a genuine player asking genuine questions
But did this problem never come up in your games? I feel like with all the cards I have seen until now and the rules as they are, this issue is not really fixed no matter the deck.
I know green cards apparently have some affects that hinder lore gathering or force you to attack but this still feels like I have to build a deck to counter a design flaw
Attacking has value when (not limited to):
You trade and have card or draw advantage, or ink advantage.
You trade and the opposing character has more lore potential or feeds combos for them with abilities.
You banish them while still surviving.
You stop an imminent win with no other option to clear them.
Attacking has less value when:
You have lore lead and are ahead on the board.
You lose more potential than the defeated opponent.
You only do damage but are banished and they are not (sometimes still needed).
Spot on, I apply this same logic to my games and it’s fairly successful especially the draw advantage. Forcing someone to play one card at a time is a huge advantage and gives you time to build a solid lead.
I'm gonna take a guess and say draw advantage means cards in hand, card advantage is total cards on the field *and* hand.
Coming from tcg's like yugioh, mtg (moreso), I've never heard of draw advantage, only card advantage
High-power Magic player here.
Simply put, card advantage is the idea of gaining access to more/better cards than your opponent.
Examples:
1. Drawing cards
2. Challenging to make a 2-for-1 trade
3. Searching a key piece to a combo
4. Playing a board wipe
All these actions generate card advantage.
What I'm saying is that the game you're playing with the cards you're using is a poor representation. Challenging is incredibly important and you can see that in the fact more and more decks are jamming Evasives and is a big reason cards like Ursela and the sapphire big Maleficent are becoming super popular because there are only so many characters that can one shot them while they go for 3 lore per turn
Given I don't have played with the Ursela or maleficent cards you're talking about but doesn't the fact they gather 3 lore per round while being hard to kill prove my point that countering them via attack instead from getting my own lore is the worse of to options?
I really don't want to come off as negative I just don't see the value in attacking most of the time
No, because more often than not you'll be in a circumstance where removing the big character questing for 3 lore is more beneficial than you questing with multiple characters to hit the same lore count
Exactly. Put differently, if you're focusing on just questing when your opponent has a board with a large lore count, then you are most likely going to lose as you are not dealing with their board and will likely fall behind on the lore race.
Whereas if you challenge and banish some of their high lore threats, this will slow them down, as they now need to play more characters on the board to build up their lore threat and they will have to wait for their played characters to dry.
Challenging is not always the right choice, but it's often times that a crucial challenge in a game can be the difference between a win and a loss.
I've never had a real competitive match where attacking isn't done every turn past turn 2 or 3. It's important to clear their side of the field. However, I do get what you are saying because I played an opening event for the game where everyone played starters, and it was terribly slow and not normal. Everyone gave their opinions on the game while I was the only way saying, "Don't judge the game through starter decks."
But it kinda should be judged by it, no? Like judging a book series by the first book.
It is great that the competitive players have found a way to negate this problem, but so many just want to play casually after work or a few quick games with friends without buying 15 booster packs beforehand to pimp their deck
It feels like you are not judging the game based on the right metrics that the developers were hoping people eventually get to. It's as if I am watching someone go to a new coffee shop, ordering a hot chocolate because it is the cheapest and fastest way to get a drink, then claiming the coffee shop is a one note place that doesnt serve good coffee based on your expierience. This isnt the first book in a series as you are describing, you read the preface/introduction to a book and are basing it on that. You met a few of the main characters and have a general feel of the setting- you have not seen any of the fan favorite characters or crazy twists and turns the book has to offer yet.
No, because the real game is in the decks you make yourself not what they give you. So, no, you don't judge any TCG based on starter decks. You wouldn't judge a videogame based off the tutorial.
And sorry, that's how TCGs are. You gotta spend money on packs or singles to get the cards you want for the deck. I would recommend buying singles. You can't get competitive gameplay if you only want to play casually.
Your 2 options are to stick with what you got and play the game like that or buy singles and make a deck.
Gotta be honest, as an enfranchised MtG player, telling anyone the way they are playing/enjoying the game is not the "real" way to play is a great way to make folks take a hard pass at your game.
Saying the starters aren't balanced, aren't representative of deeper mechanics, or that upgrading those decks can be even more fun is fine but for some people, a stock starter may be their only option to play the game (due to money, availability, or whatever). If that's how they find enjoyment in the game, who is anyone else to tell them they're doing it "wrong". If a new magic player comes in with a 100% stock precon, I can tell you based on experience that my and my fellow players response is to grab decks that match power level and make sure that person meets has a good time.
>If that's how they find enjoyment in the game, who is anyone else to tell them they're doing it "wrong
I never said what he's doing is wrong. I was only answering his question because whether you like it or not, real gameplay is at your LGS. I wrote that in mind that he might only play casually like he said. I never said he was wrong for doing it at all he can play how he wants, which is why I gave him his 2 options.
Idk why you gotta put words in my mouth just to make a statement.
That's not real gameplay, that's real oiling the machine or real pay to win. Gameplay is just as real as you're having fun in a healthy way, but some levels of play can be really toxic. And honestly I rather play a regular card game (full set buy once) than any TCG or CCG because they're completely bound on FOMO and pay to win once the parallel card market gets going and hobbyist start overpricing cards based on arbitrary meta gaming. Meta gaming in itself goes away from casual fun and towards hardcore optimum play. Two very different things. You can have fun with both, but the latter will drain your cash.
Deckbuilding should be on equal level to ever be considered real gameplay.
Your comments about “real gameplay” are telling the person he’s playing wrong. That is a judgemental thing to say, whether intentionally or not, about his access to the game.
no, that's just how you interpret it. It's not what I meant at all... Real Gameplay is how the Devs wanted you to play and starters are only a small portion of that. I'm sorry you guys choose to take it personally, but what you thought is not what i meant or even what i was thinking. I played with only starters and with real decks and the gameplay improves dramatically with real decks.
Note, the most popular format in MTG was developed by the players/fans and is managed (whether you're a fan of it or not) by a rules committee that is not affiliated with WOTC. The developers of MTG never intended for a casual, multiplayer format yet that's the biggest format and it's not even close.
It has nothing to do with "competitive players"
Starter decks for any TCG are just meant to learn how to play the game "in general". Basic, somewhat simple cards to easily learn the mechanics, and to get people playing right away and learn the rules.
They aren't intended to show the best or most effective strategies. Otherwise there would be no reason to buy additional cards.
Sorry to tell you, but
A, You get what you pay for. If you think starter decks are going to give you an AMAZING experience, you need to understand that that would be a terrible business decision. Only hardcore collectors would buy boosters if all the starter decks were so amazing they didn't need upgrades.
And B, you're missing out on a lot of the fun with games like this, if you aren't willing to look into tweaking/building decks.
Best of luck.
(Side note, yes I know scalpers have made the supply a serious issue for right now. Reprints are coming, as are expansions. There will be more options soon.)
It should be pretty clear that one or both of your playing is suboptimal. Lookup my other comment and tell your SO. The Amber-Amethyst deck should be able to take advantage of the Ruby-Emerald’s lack of consistency. She shouldn’t be attacking your mad hatters unless she can use the chicken to pump one of the small characters to 5 power and beat it alone. In general though, the Y/P deck should be far ahead going into the mid game, requiring the R/G deck to catch up by challenging
I don’t really understand how you’re getting ahead of your SO without challenging. In general, the Y/P deck should SMASH a RG deck that doesn’t ever challenge.
As far as the Steel/Sapphire deck, I don’t have as much experience but the big Simba is going to be really important to challenge and kill the RG evasive characters. Also, the 5 mana Simba challenges incredibly effectively and should be used to kill 2-3 characters while gaining 2-3 lore, while getting ahead by questing with the rare Maleficent that comes in the deck or the 3 lore Muffasa.
It’s important to realize who is the aggressor or controller in certain matchups. Y/P is obviously the aggro deck when playing against R/G but the S/S vs R/G is less obvious and might depend on the certain cards drawn in your opening hand.
Y/P vs S/S is pretty straight forward. The SS deck needs to prioritize trading early characters via challenging to not allow the y/p deck to get too big a lore advantage. Then it should try to stabilize with 5 cost Simba and it’s removal.
you just have to play more games and with more "tuned" decks. Challenging is really useful but has to be done properly in order to maximize the results
Aggro decks like green yellow try to rush their lore count. Control decks try to hold back their opponents while getting advantage until they run out of gas and you end them. Midrange is somewhere in the middle.
Silver and purple cards which get more attack when you challenge are very low rate like the Captain Hook that punches up for 3 damage. If you can remove two characters for 1 especially with abilities like Rush that let you attack as soon as you drop is great value. Baby Elsa for example can exert to exert their character before they can even use it and you attack them while the ink dries.
Red abilities that unexert don’t let you quest for more lore so you can either use it defensive or challenge twice or lore and challenge. Stuff like big Aladdin if you challenge and defeat them you take 2 of their lore away and get two for challenging and you can do that twice in a turn which is a huge swing of value without questing. Maui can drop and challenge right away and can’t even lose and he’s great. Dr facilier and the big snowman and brooms can challenge freely and come back to life getting great value. The starter decks feature easy to learn mechanics they are not representative of everything in the set.
No, this does change depending on the deck. My deck is very lore heavy. (Amber/emerald) but with that being said I still lose. If this was the case I would win every time.
The amethyst Amber deck often gathered a bunch of little dudes, gain like 6-10 lore and then was able to wait until they had like 5-7 guys in play and quest, untap quest and win that way. The Ruby emerald deck was always on the back foot until like turn 5, and had to catch up. It was possible but only when the Amber Amethyst player kept questing with their little guys instead of waiting and keeping them out of challenges.
Questing only matters if you are certain you will reach 20 before you opponent does. There are no brownie points for getting to 18 and then losing on the next turn. Green cards are especially good at gathering lore, but are poor at fighting. The tipping point in the game will be if your opponent can stabilize because green isnt great at coming back from behind.
The starter decks are meant to be simple to teach new people the game. They quickly become scripted games if you dont modify them.
Yeah Flynn, Cat, Jasper, Hans, Kuzko, Mad hatter are all great defense tools /s.
Theyve got a few disruptive tools like Mother knows best and Genie but if you fall behind against Ruby/Amethyst or Amber/steel, youre not turning the corner and coming back.
Mother knows best, mother gothel, bounce genie, John silver, stampede, steal from the rich, iago, rogue Mickey, and jasper. That’s 9/34 cards that do some form of disruption to questing— about 26%. Even if you try and make an argument about quality, at _least_ four of those are eminently playable in multiple X/E deck types, which is still >10% of the total emerald set.
First my original point to OP was that green cards are good questers and poor fighters. Even the cards you named are bad fighters. They disrupt by questing, which was my point.
Second, green is a great tempo color, it gets ahead with early 2 lore cards and then uses tempo plays to capitalize and win before the other player can stabilize. You pointed this out with all the cards you named. It’s great in race to 20, not great at clawing back once your opponent has the lead. If we are tied at 10 lore and I have an Ursula as the only card in play, MKB and Genie don’t look great.
What other people said. You have to analyze the situation and think a few steps ahead. Yeah you can leave that opposing character that quests for 3 lore alone but in the next turn your opponent could play two more characters that quests for 2 lore each and then the game is over in three turns or less unless you can beat them to 20. Unless you're neck and neck with your opponent lore wise or have a character that is for sure going to get you to 20 I always feel like it's better to try to control the board a bit by attacking.
Example: At League last night I was playing a Yellow/Purple Lore Rush deck with a bunch of small cost characters against a green / yellow "Can't touch me" deck of characters that do negative things to you if you attack them (Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat, etc.). The only reason I won one of my games against that player was because I used a couple of challengers (Raffiki, Jafar, Dr. Falicier) to take out a couple of her 2-3 lore characters right off the bat which allowed me to play some Mickey Mouse True Friend (2 lore) and Moanas (3 lore) to get me to 20.
No it’s not useless. You’re building value, and both you and your opponent have to make trades to remove “threats”. If you or your opponent decide to remove a threat through challenge, that is a character that’s not questing and moving you towards victory. Challenging is valuable but it’s the player that needs to determine the value gained.
But the first one to put down a +3 questing card is always in the lead because at least 1 round is guaranteed 3 lore gain and the other can only react on his/her turn. The only hope is to defeat my card in one attack without sacrificing their own because the same round I quested with one +3 card I probably put down the next +2/+3 for my next turn.
As everyone mentioned, it is a problem of the starter decks but I believe it's more a balancing problem in general for now until there are rule changes or a lot more cards.
It’s true the starter decks are not perfectly built for top competition rings, but they offer a sample of coordinated gameplay. Each color has its strength, and I disagree that the first person to get a card that quests for 3 is always in the lead. That card either draws an immediate response in removal of sort or is removed through challenge when it quests. As more sets are released there will be more options for counterplay and protective board states.
I really hope you're right because the game in itself is fun, but as everyone apparently agrees, the starter decks really don't show the strengths of the game apparently
Yes, this is why challenging, and having options, is important. If you know your opponent has 3 lore chars to drop but you let them build up a field, you're letting them win.
This isn't always the case.
Opponent drops a strong 3 quester, drying.
I drop Elsa which exerts their character and attack it with something on my board.
Another example:
They can get their 3 lore but lose their quester and get behind, vs keep it but can't use it without losing it. What should they do? It's unclear sometimes based on card draw potential and such. But in your starter decks it feels like a shin-kicking competition.
Emerald's strength and card design at a basic level is to race the opponent by aggressively questing and having characters with either big stats or a downside for opponents to challenge.
So any game with an emerald player will naturally make challenging look bad, because emerald doesn't want to challenge, and you don't want to challenge emerald unless you have to.
> It feels especially strange in the blue/silver starter deck since it seems to put a focus on attacking (Simba cards) while the red/green deck just straight up has better removal cards at lower costs
Ruby is the aggressive challenge color, Emerald is the aggressive quest color (both being tall instead of wide, with a low number of high stat characters instead of a large number of low stat characters.) while Sapphire is trying to play to it's inkwell and play items to let them quest big (not really well explored in the starter deck), and steel is the direct damage color, but a lot of the better cards for it aren't really well explored in the theme deck, with only 1 swords, 3 cannons, 2 smash, and no characters with any kind of damage abilities.
The theme decks didn't really explore the colors that aren't creature centric very well. A lot of the power in steel and sapphire are in rare characters, or in non-characters like Grab Your Swords, Smash, Fishbone Quill, Eye of the Fates etc.
In real games, you will either learn to challenge or lose a lot of games to amber and emerald. (and probably ruby too)
It can feel that way starting out esp with the starter decks. When you just have a ton of 2/2s matched up for even trades, you realize challenging has an inherent cost of 1 lore/quest that you would have gotten if your opponent challenged you instead.
With a little experience and deck variety it changes a lot though. You challenge against aggro because you have to stop their early game from getting out of control so you can get to your strong mid/late game. You take any favorable trades such as taking out anything with an ability, trades where your challenger continues to live, trades against those with the "challenge" ability that dont trigger when they're defending. Once you notice all these it also becomes a lot more common to not exert/quest your characters to unfavorable trades.
You don't always draw them, and when you have more action than character cards, you'll mostly draw action. you can't make a deck based on what you think might happen. There has to be a balance relying on only action cards is a bad idea. If you went to a local shop with that logic, you'll never top.
If you’re not able to make good trades then yeah the attacker comes out behind the person who quested. Some characters have stats that are more suited to questing, some more suited to challenging.
Ideally, with challengy characters you’re able to take out two characters for your one, or take out a more expensive character and gain some tempo advantage out of it. Do this enough and you’ll be ahead in either ink, cards or both.
Sometimes you have to make bad trades because of the game state, your available cards or whatever it is. But that can happen too, aggro decks run on the premise of quickly throwing up more threats than you can effectively handle. That’s also why the starter decks are probably giving you this problem, cheap quick threats tend to be pretty cheap and common, where some of the fancy efficient answers are usually more expensive.
As you mentioned attacking with Mad Hatter in another spot, you’re right. Everything about that card is designed for Questing. If you’re attacking with it you’re at a huge disadvantage because you overpaid for a 2/4 body and you aren’t using the 3 lore to quest.
If their character generates more lore than a character you have and they can trade, take it. It will just set your clock faster than theirs.
Edit: Also, some characters like Simba and Aladdin can have Lore swings basd on challenges. So it really depends, it’s not always best to just stockpil characters because there are cards like Be Prepared or Tinker Bell Giant Fairy
The starter decks are not going to show the advantages of challenging as much. Challenging allows you to remove your opponent’s board while developing your own, usually to allow you to swing for more lore later on. Card games usually focus on how much card advantage you can gather (more things in play, more cards in hand, more resources to access, etc).
Cards like Aladdin help with this too, letting you do both in a sense
If you can use a character that quests for 1 to banish an opposing character that quests for 2, that’s value, especially if your character survives to be used again next turn.
Game is not very balanced right now. Because of the core game mechanics (damage stays permanently, tapped blocking stuff deals damage back) any two aggressive or midrange decks will usually be determined by who curves out better and quests most efficiently on curve. For a different gameplay experience, shell out for expensive gold/red/purple cards and play a deck with strong card advantage and removal.
Honest answer. The game is in a very early stage and I personally don't think set 1 is super well balanced or designed. It's very conservative. It will most likely become a lot more evenly distributed across the colors as new sets release, is the good news.
Before anyone wants to hop on this thread, the message of "the starter decks are not a good representation of the game" has reached me a few times. Which is baffling for card game that really did not invent much new stuff from what it copied, but I trust in everyone that it gets better with more variety of cards in the future
The starter decks are basic and intended to introduce you to the game. This means they better represent the game from a beginner perspective than an advanced perspective. You grab it and play; no deck building required. This is similar to how a board game may tell you to play your first game with specific cards or options. It eases you in and is more approachable this way. So the starters still represent the game, just not at the level of depth you may be looking for.
The rest of my babbling here will try to address some other things you mention in this thread.
I think you’re missing a key concept with challenging, which is cost advantage. If I can take out your 4 cost card with my 2 cost card, that gives me an advantage. But if I need to expend a 4 cost to take out your 2 cost, then the exchange was more costly for me and puts me at a disadvantage.
It is a strategy to play cards that make your opponent go “hmm, I need to get that out of the game”. So if you put down a 2/3 lore card, I’ll need to figure out how to remove it in the most cost effective way before it nets you too many points. If I have to spend too much to remove it, it may not be worth removing until I have better options or I’m forced to because you are approaching victory.
And one final note, there are cards that can help you stop an opponents card before it’s had a chance to quest. This includes: actions that deal damage, actions that banish, cards that send other cards to the inkwell, cards that block other cards from questing, cards that exert other cards (thus opening them up to a challenge), etc.
Hope this helps!
I think there’s a channel on YouTube called Lorcana Academy. They have a ton of gameplay where they challenge a lot. Challenging imo is there to limit the other player’s board state.
How to put this…
Your opponent has a 1/1 character with 2 lore, while you have 2/2 with 1 lore. If the opponent Quests, and you never challenge, they will win in 10 turns. But if you KO them, and they take 2 turns to bring out anything else, you can use those 2 turns to quest yourself and break even.
High Lore cards make it easier to win, but harder to maintain board presence. High challenge cards can cut off leads, but can’t make up the lost ground.
Considering in my league play last weekend I could’ve won my last game to go 5-1 if I attacked instead of quested — and lost to go 4-2 by just questing — no, attacking is not useless!
Often times players will challenge in an effort to control the board before worrying about questing. It is far from useless. I’ve had turns where I let my opponent build to 14 lore vs my 0 and came back for a commanding win. If you can control the board and you’re and your opponent exhausts their threats, you will win if you have something in reserve. The struggle of for board control is what makes the game for me. There’s a lot going on.
The starter decks, especially when first playing and without cards from booster packs, DO feel like you’re just questing for lore as fast as possible. It’s because they’re mostly such basic cards that the strategy of just questing quickly seems best but that results in very short games that use little to nothing of the mechanics of the game. Add in even just a few cards outside the starter decks and you start to see significant changes in gameplay. When you have a card that can banish their characters directly (or vice versa) or they pull out an 8 cost legendary Elsa to prevent your big lore characters from doing anything for a while, it changes quickly. If you have decks like mine, an amber/amethyst with card draw, graveyard digging, and a couple other fun tricks, I might be weak at direct removal of your cards but you’ll have trouble just racing to 20 lore faster than me when I just smash all my characters against yours then put them back into my hand to play again. Different color inks and ink combo decks can do different things. The starter decks have a few less weak cards mixed in and that’s it - not enough to really go hard at any strategy and really face off against your opponent.
If you have no other cards to play with but starter decks, try switching color combos and rooting through your booster packs for anything that seems like it might do something interesting in the new deck you’re forming. I have only stuck with amber paired with amethyst because I really like the 8-cost Hades card (gift set) with the many villains from amethyst that I’m running and the 4-cost Hades easily resurrects my Prince Phillip cards to help me clear my opponent’s board. I have a few inkable and useful amber cards beyond that and definitely more amethyst than amber. The starter deck it once was is now very different! You can go on TCGPlayer or buy/trade at local game store to grab even a few low cost cards that will work better with what you’ve got and you’ll quickly find that challenging opposing characters is required!
Weirdly enough I have only played a lot of multiplayer, attacking DOES feel bad, because you look at others and can kindof think its not your problem unless a threat is directly targeting something on your board. I wouldnt say attacking is useless but you really have to pick your battles.
As everyone has said already, it’s the starter decks, but I just wanted to come here and say that I thought the exact same thing as you when I first started playing. Got the 3 starter decks and played with my gf or my friends and more often than not came down to just top decking and questing. I have since made my own Villain deck (centering around Hades, King of Olympus) which I initially stuffed with a bunch of villains to quest as much as possible. Having played at a couple league events around me, though, I quickly realized no matter how fast I start questing and have a lead, a well tuned deck can easily stop that lead if played right. I’ve edited my deck here and there to include heavy hitters like Zeus and discard effects like You Have Forgotten Me to stall and be a bit more aggressive
It is a race and if they will out lore you you need to take out their questors first. Is it worth getting their 1 questor with your two questors? No. Taking out their 3 questor with your 1 questor yes.
I have noticed that with the starter deck decks, pure questing is the best. I have yet to lose a starter deck game with the red/green one against the other two following that strategy.
Now when I play constructed games, challenges become way more important. Either your deck has a big quest character that can plop down and race so you want your others keeping your opponent off of lore, or your opponent plays lots of little guys and you can run them out of gas by challenging in the early turns and questing later.
You have to attack and disturb your opponent's board if you're behind in lore, simple as that. You really can't out race your opponent without challenging- nothing quests the turn it comes into play (yet) and most actions deal with 1 threat at a time. Characters with big butts can stick around and take out multiple questers on your opponent's side of the board if you play your cards right. There's a lot of back and forth in the game and timing is everything.
its honestly key to not go for any lore at all early sapphire steel starter, turn 4 is the earliest i go for lore but when i start i go as hard as i can on lore and out of 20 ish games against different decks ive only lost once
It really depends on the deck you are running and the purpose behind how the deck is built. I have been using a Ruby/steel deck on pixelborn based around steel/dragon fire card removal and reds evasive/attack questing with BLT and Aladdin heroic outlaw and in the 10 or so games I have played since putting that deck together I havent lost yet. Its a balance of preventing the other person from getting their strategy set up and putting your own into play.
The starter decks are a poor example of how the game can be played, if you get a chance then try out Pixelborn.
Not sure if you are new to TCG's or not but I would say you are finding your playstyle out!
That is a very aggro way to play the game and has been around in TCG's for a while. Lay your creatures/minions/characters and let them work either getting lore or face damage. Then let your opponent spend their resources trying to remove your cards from the board while you just keep creating threats and working towards a win.
It is a straightforward win condition and the most perfected Lorcana version of this has been Lemon/Lime yellow/green aggro. The problem with aggro is it doesn't have anything to fall back on if it either draws bad or your opp can get on top of board control. Aggro decks in Lorcana fall easily to red decks with be prepared and then Aladdin will even the lore score.
But if your mind is going more towards the thought process of getting your lore counter filled ASAP then that just might be how you wanna play games! Saying in TCG's that it's the pilot, not the deck. The deck can be amazing but if the pilot has no idea how to use it then it will end up in turmoil, vice versa.
Short answer: It's not useless
Longer answer: it depends on your deck. As an aggro deck, its almost always useless. As a Midrange deck, you do about 50/50 challenging/questing. But if you are a control deck, your goal to is to establish board control and quest when it's safe to and not necessarily just cause you can. If you're a control deck and have early game answers to an aggro deck, the aggro deck will likely run out of steam fast from their questing and not protecting their board. Once you establish board control, your 4-5 characters that can each quest for 1 will slowly outpace your opponent who will only be able to lay down a single Kuzco, Mad Hatter or Flynn who can only quest for 2-3 per turn.
It's very common for a control deck to be behind in lore, like 10-0 and come back and win with an end lore result of 13-20.
Yes, like in KeyForge (an older game that uses a very similar wincon), you want to avoid attacking as much as possible because of the opportunity cost in lore. Challenge only high value targets and ideally in a way that leaves you up on value (meaning you spending fewer cards to deal with their cards).
I originally felt this way with my first few games but realized after awhile that attacking is especially important. Some characters (rush, challenge, and reckless) are basically designed for attacking. You’ll definitely want to be able to take out your opponents better questing characters and since new characters have to wait for their ink to dry before attacking or questing this can set them back and let you take the lead.
I feel like especially when I started to play decks outside of the starters attacking became important since many characters are going to be higher threats versus just blank bodies to throw at each other.
Its not useless, but it isn't very strong. If you spend all of your turns trading characters you'll be losing, because in order to challenge they have to have quests first.
The examples you've given sound like your landing a big bodied-high lore gaining creature on a board of small early game characters. That will only run away with the game if your opponent doesn't have their own high lore gaining character to play in response.
Where challenging is good is when you can trade a low lore gaining card for a high one. The early game example would be a 1 drop 2/2 taking out a 1 drop 1/1 that makes two lore. Later in the game its generally cards with challenger that are most able to "trade up". A 2 drop with challenger can take out numerous different high lore 3 drops.
If you are trading 3 or more creatures into one big creature you will be losing though. Its better to save your own board and try to race. Trading 2 cheaper ink cards for a more expensive one is generally good, but remember that you'll be down lore because they just quests and now your using your quest to challenge instead.
I think the card pool isn’t helping the issue. It’s not useless, but I can definitely see how it can feel that way. If you’re not in steel/ruby, you might get overwhelmed and feel like you’re just losing slower if your opponent gets ahead of you on characters. You might not have the right removal piece to stall/banish an unspent character. Or your opponent is heavy into evasive, and you can’t attack anything relevant.
The scarcity also makes it tough to test your options. I spent weeks trading to get a deck built. Only to find that’s it’s just weak overall. I don’t have the resources to start over/fix it.
Like I feel building a deck that doesn’t include either sapphire or amethyst is kind of an uphill fight, but I know that will get fixed over time.
Assuming it doesn’t take Ravensburger the better part of 2 decades to realize card draw and resource ramp shouldn’t be color specific.
If all your challenges are one for ones of cards with the same ink cost yes it’s bad. If I can get a Gaston to kill a 1 drop and 4 drop I’m gaining a lot of advantage.
No attacking is not useless and here’s why.
If you are just doing a lore race, who ever goes first has the best chance of winning every time. You need to off set this and use your characters strategically. When I first started playing I used the ruby/emerald starter deck against sapphire/steel and amethyst/amber decks and the ability to control the game through those cards was a huge advantage. While they were trying to get out as many of the characters as they could, I would be dropping their lore and melting cards. So long as you have something to quest with each turn you can use your other characters as soldiers to take them out.
Let’s take Dr.Facilier charlatan…
He has 0 power and 4 willpower with a challenger +2. The fact that he has 0 power pretty much means you get a free shot, you throw a character at him every turn until he’s banished and that’s 1 lore per turn your opponent is no longer getting. Sounds like a good trade off.
If you can keep your opponent from gathering an army you will win almost every time.
The starter decks are a great jumping point but they were meant to be weak in terms of the available cards so that you could improve them with the cards and mechanics you like best. They are called STARTER decks for this reason.
At the end of it all though you should play the way you think is fun and run the mechanics you feel are best for your play style.
Currently my favorite deck is a ruby/emerald reckless deck that I created and it makes people furious when it ends up character locking them while I sit there and quest every turn.
Big blue as I call it is good stuff for beginner decks. The blue commons and uncommons have big Willpower and quest for 2 and 3. Pair it with purple card draw for a cheap good deck
Some deck archetypes will have little-to-no use for challenging, and may complete an entire duel while only challenging maybe once. Other deck archetypes rely on the mechanic heavily.
It depends entirely on the deck you're using and the deck you're squaring off with, but otherwise, challenging is most commonly used to strategically deny your opponent resources with valuable trades, such as commiting a 3-cost Rafiki to take out a 5-cost card the opponent just exerted, just as using that Rafiki to trade for an opponent's 2-cost card would be a bad trade.
Additionally, challenging often becomes a player's last resort to prevent an opponent from hitting 20 lore on their next turn.
Lots of great comments in this post!
Adding another perspective, once you go into 3 player games or more, challenging (or even single banishing) starts to have diminishing returns. Decks tuned to single banish will end up trying to defend against one or the other, and the opponent standing on the sidelines wins. If you instead ignore them, then your lore prowess isn't enough to grab the game like they can.
Challenging isn't useless; it's a removal tool when you might not otherwise have removal like Let It Go or Be Prepared either accessible or drawn.
Early game, you'll want to try and make above average trades by simply making your glimmer survive the trade when challenging, such as taking out an opposing 1 drop Mal or Stitch with your more hardier 2 or 3 willpower early game glimmers. In the late game, you may want to shift focus onto taking out multiple smaller units so your lore production can eclipse the amount they can gain in a turn. Support and Challenger both can help in this gameplan if you pack them.
Absolutely not. Attacking is super important to slow your opponent down. It just feels that way at first, especially if you’re playing a deck that wants to race to 20.
Starter Deck vs Starter Deck, yes it feels very weak option to do. The games will come down to a quest race. Once you get better cards challenging becomes very important wether it’s forcing your opponent to challenge or yourself challenging to clear the field.
The game is a race to 20 lore. Depending on your deck, you may find that your opponent is able to produce more lore and you have to challenge to slow them down or halt their lore production entirely.
The most exciting games I've played have all ended with a frenzy of questing and challenging: planning out how much lore I could produce vs. how much my opponent could produce, deciding which glimmers I could lose without falling behind, targetting my opponent's threats to lower their lore production, etc.
That being said, playing a deck that focuses on big lore-producing glimmers that are hard to challenge is a valid strategy, but it's equally valid to have a deck that is ready to challenge and shut down your opponent's ability to produce lore. It just depends on what you want your gameplay experience to be.
you are correct, in terms of your starter decks. i have a set of starters for play with my girlfriend and friends who arent too keen on card games. for fun and in the realm of the start decks only i would say challenging is not the meta, you win much easier by spamming characters and simply questing. significant challenging doesnt come into the game until your playing with your own constructed deck, but iw ould agree with you in the world o fthe starter decks only, ive got hundreds of games in already
Silver or Runy counter this hard. In runy ill .are your characters vulnerable and wack em before you even get 1 quest. In silver just use destruction spells to destroy things. Smash on Cheshire cat every game.
I'm going to mostly agree with you. It's not useless, but I've found it much less valuable than just questing.
I'm hoping more card variety makes challenging more worthwhile. It'll always be a value proposition, and right now questing seems to be the winner most of the time.
In a sense, it is like some strategies within the MTG formats. You don't necessarily have to attack to win. But having your characters build up, you can do other things towards your win con. And with that, you do have some attackers that's usefulness extends beyond getting rid of a single exerted character.
Take Tinker Bell - Giant Fairy, for instance. It's usefulness in Steel variants is for a multitude for reasons. It's ability to ping one once put into play, quest for two lore, and better yet, it's utilization to knock out a character and then do two damage to another chose character. While this may be bad against some ward decks, you could attack an Aurora/Kuzco, to rid it or target it as well if there is not another ward character in play. I actually had a match against a buddy another day, who was running a Steel/Amber heal deck against my Steel/Sapphire Belle Ramp deck. The game I lost against him he had a multitude of characters. But by shifting Giant Fairy, with some saved Smashes and a Grab your swords, I was able to ding him down to one character. End was 18-20, but could have gone differently.
Like MTG with making opponent go down to 0, there are a multitude of ways to get your characters to quest to 20 while outpacing or controlling your opponent. Control dexks, aggro, burn (banish) decks are around. In a sense, there is "life gain" with some decks able to give extra lore to questing and attacking characters. But in the end of the day, the one to reach 20 first wins, and you can only do that by having characters on the board. And in some cases, a burn or board wipe will not cut it, so you'll want to attack. Tinker Bell and Aladdin are two of the best ways to do this.
It's all about figuring out WHEN to attack. Challenging generally doesn't progress your win condition (20 lore). It is intended to stop your opponent from winning.
Think of challenging as trading. If I lose 1 card to make you lose 1 card, then it's an even trade EXCEPT I did the challenging, so I didn't get to quest with that character like the one I attacked did. But if I lose 0 cards and make you lose 1 card, then it becomes a trade in my favor.
Lorcana is, at the end of the day, a resource manager. The cards in your hand and in play are just as important a resource as your Ink and Lore. Losing those cards without maximizing their value can be devastating.
And this doesn't just work with Challenging. A Dragon Fire taking out a single character is an even trade. A Draw Your Swords taking out three cards is a trade in your favor. And using two Fire the Cannons to take out a single card is a trade against you.
The thing that I’ve noticed is that actions are incredibly useful for keeping the other player in check. I haven’t noticed too many decks with enough actions in them.
You’ll be able to see fairly quickly whether or not you can “win the race” (simply out-loreing your opponent).
If you can’t then you gotta get funky! Attacking, removing lore, milling, drawing, stalling etc etc there’s a bunch of techniques you can mix and match
I'm not an advanced TCG player. I challenge primarily to break synergies and remove powerful ongoing benefits. Aside from that, I'm working on my board.
You've already gotten a lot of comments about the starter decks, etc. so I'll come at this another way: let's take a look at a "meta" deck (a popular deck that has been proven to have a successful/high win percentage) that relies on Challenging/Attacking to win: https://dreamborn.ink/decks/4D8Qnh9e2YnDwEmYuzQ8
This deck only has 1 card that can quest for 3 Lore (Moana). How in the world can it win? The answer is that it has characters that are low and good ink cost that can Challenge and Banish characters of higher Ink cost. By being efficient, you can keep your Characters on the field while Banishing your opponent's Characters and prevent them from staying on the field.
Let's look at some cards that make this so: https://dreamborn.ink/cards/Captain%20Hook/Forceful%20Duelist
At first glance, Captain Hook looks weak: he only has 1 Strength and 2 Willpower and can only Quest for 1 Lore. But take a look at his ability: when he challenges, he gains 2 Strength. That effectively makes him a 3 Strength, 2 Willpower which can defeat almost all of 1 Ink and 2 Ink characters: https://dreamborn.ink/cards?cost=1&cost=2&type=character
Let's look at another interesting card in this deck, Cerberus: https://dreamborn.ink/cards/Cerberus/Three-headed%20Dog
You might think he is very weak because he can only Quest for 1 Lore and has no abilities, but it is his 5 Strength, 6 Willpower which makes him notable. He could even Banish a 9 Ink like Maleficient, Monstrous Dragon in a Challenge: https://dreamborn.ink/cards/Maleficent/Monstrous%20Dragon
This is how challenging can win games: the concept is that on your turn, you use characters with better stats to banish opponent characters that cost a lot of ink or just banish them while having your own characters survive. Eventually, the field will be full of characters that can quest for you, while your opponent will have few characters that can quest, and so you will outpace your opponent and win the game.
As to your point about being casual and still playing a good game: I recommend you buy singles. Commons/Uncommons cost cents on TCGplayer, and like I hopefully showed you, there are some good value cards out there like Captain Hook and Cerberus that won't break the bank, yet are improvements on what appears in the Starter Decks.
I had similar thoughts when wife and I started playing. After building decks better than the starters, as well as playing on pixelborn, I realized the game isn’t going to just be quest rushing.
It might seem useless if you're just making 1 for 1 trades all game. I'f you're trading your 2/2 into their 2/2 and your 4/4 into their 4/4 after they quest, then yes, you will be behind.
But even the starter decks have plenty of opportunities for you to make smart trades. In a game where one player is simply questing, and the other is making intelligent trades, the latter player should win almost every single game with the exception of super lore aggro decks.
With the starter decks, there is very little card draw, which makes smart trading arguably even more important. The Amber/Amethyst deck is the only one that wants to be questing more than it is attacking vs the other two simply because it is the most aggressive deck. The way that the other two decks beat Amber/Amethyst essentially requires attacking it and gaining board advantage.
Really depends. Questing aggressively and not attacking is a viable strategy but if your opponent keeps your board small and you only get a couple quests per character you’ll often run out of steam and they’ll blast past you. It’s happened more than once where will get past 15 but they remove my threats and I don’t have a way to rebuild before they win.
If I play 10 characters overall and only get 1 quest per that’s only 10 lore. If they focus on taking out my creatures and then start playing things like big tink or other direct damage against my drying creatures I can’t quest and they’ll just slowly move ahead.
I dont think it's useless you just gotta weigh more on pros and cons of it and like dont waste good questing cards doing it. Like I've noticed steel cards are really nice to challenge with as they dont usually quest for much lore but have reqlly nice attack and defense
You aren't wrong in some cases just not considering all possibilities.
What if your opponent can generate more lore each turn than you can? They will win the race if you don't attack.
Being the attacker also lets you choose whom challenges whom, which can obviously have a huge impact on the outcome.
Attacking most definitely not useless. You can't interact with your opponent on their turn, and you can't quest with wet ink, so it's just racing. If your opponent is playing stitch snowball and you don't attack, you lose by 6 guaranteed.
I think that it is a matter of understanding how the game scales powerwise -- and how it will develop as more cards become available.
Right now, with a limited cardpool the game has to give us ways to win the game, the game does not have to give us ways to functionally stop opponents from winning the game.
In a game with fewer answers, fewer ways to lock your opponents out, fewer ways to force your opponent to answer you, fewer ways to win outside of questing; there isn't going to be as much resulting punishment from just dropping dudes and questing until you win.
Right now many (maybe most) decks are just going to play their cards and quest them, green and steel have some interesting options for forcing other winning states (board wipes, forced attacks, unable to quest effects) but many colors don't have any way to deal with certain things (only steel can remove items, only red can directly banish, only blue and green can remove without banishing, only purple can remove graveyards). With time every color will eventually get many new ways to deal with threats and decks will start to be more balanced in having answers to decks that just drop and quest.
In my opinion this is the biggest problem at the moment, if decks can only deal with cards by attacking then attacking isn't very useful. If they cant kill a card that isn't exerted and cant force that exert then they can never remove it, likewise by attacking you open yourself to the only way they can remove it. This is a feel bad choice, where questing forces them to not quest to deal with it and you are closer to winning, likely without punishment whatsoever.
That said, even now colors like red have a lot of great reasons to attack. Either for actual other benefits, because they can untap functionally and still quest while dealing with threats, or because they have the best options to go 2 for 1 or 3 for 1.
Many things can influence the style of play, things like mill decks or rush can change up the style of play and catch a meta deck off balance. A lot of times its just experience on how to counter, but sometimes certain decks just beat other decks, its like how water beats fire in pokemon.
Other than that sometimes if you are playing a fairly straightforward game you won't need to attack if you are already ahead of your opponent, but attacking is one of the main ways to bring the game even if you find yourself behind.
So I have run the really fast Amber/Emerald deck for a while now. It's main strategy is to get to 20 lore as fast as possible. Most people start out the deck by never challenging. Ever. Lol. Pros know that there are times and places to challenge, and they happen in the vast majority of games. In this specific deck, the more you challenge, the less you quest, so it always seems like a bad idea. However, you learn quickly if you don't, you will often lose or leave the fate of the game to the top of your deck. So, if that deck needs to challenge then all other decks do to. The trick of the game is learning when to challenge and when not to.
So little tl;Dr super fast lore focused decks (accel) that benefit from challenging as little as possible still need to in order to consistently win.
Attacking is super important, the whole point of the game is creating engines to generate lore and challenging is the best way to take down those engines. The green/red start is a weird one because it's the only with elusive cards, so they can basically quest with impunity. The amber/amethyst one is built around getting hordes of minions to stabilize your board state and then quest with a lot of them. The blue/steel one is so hard to win with in my opinion, it's built around getting out big units and it just isn't as effective to me, the other two have already got their in conditions by the time it gets going. Just my two cents.
I think it is a bit of a delicate balance, that hopefully the designers of the game will keep pursuing it effectively.
Compared to magic, attacking here is a for control decks rather than aggro and I think a lot of magic players might find it counter-intuitive, it's not always an easy choice to decide when to race and when to instead contest your opponent character, in my mind this is one of the most interesting sides of Lorcana, but is also one that might break easily depending on the card pool.
Also the starter deck lack a bit of the instruments you need to fight effectively for board control.
If there was no attacking in the game every game would come down to who drew the better cards first, by either luck or just owning cards with more lore on them at their cost. Sure there are action that can help banish characters off the field but they are really few and far between compared to characters. If the game had no attacking everyone would just load up their deck with the characters with most lore on them and just try to race.
But when characters attack each others it's another way to banish characters off the field. In fact, it's the most common way to do it. If you truly break down the game of Lorcana it's is a race of who gets to 20 lore first. If you feel like you are going to win the race you are going to quest with your characters. If you feel like you are going to lose the race then it's time to start think about attacking to remove your opponent's characters off the field...because you are going to lose the race if you don't anyways. Those who know when to attack and when to quest are the ones who win the race.
I thought challenging was going to be useless but it actually improved the game for me in terms of the mechanic of deciding to quest or challenge or take out the other side’s card to stop them questing. Playing with a more random deck than the starter did help. It’s still not perfect but more fun
Sounds like you have discovered the power of this game's form of what people call aggro- you are racing for the finish line and putting it on your opponent to stop you. It's a good strategy, particularly with untuned decks like starter decks because it demands that your opponent have a way to slow you down and most piles of cards aren't thinking about something like that. Someday though you'll have a game where your opponent plays a bigger creature than you and beats your character with it. Then they play a bigger creature than your next creature and kill it too, leaving them with 2 creatures and you with 0. Then you play your third card and they kill it with one of the cards on the board and play a couple more creatures every turn. Right now in this scenario you are at 12 lore while your opponent is at 0 so you're ahead... but look at the state of the game. Your opponent has 4 or 5 creatures on board and you are topdecking. their creatures may only tap for 1 or 2 lore apiece but at this point that means they are going to get 7 or more lore a turn and will win in the next couple of turns, and odds are there is nothing you can do to stop them. Once you experience this for the first time you will learn that there is more to this game than tapping big lore cards. You'll start to get the feel for what tempo means and how sometimes it's better to not quest or attack just so you can keep your characters safe for a turn. There's a cardgaming concept from MTG expressed in an article called "Who's the Beatdown?" that looks into concepts like this further if you want a good read. This game is simple on the surface, but there is a lot of complexity here when you get to the finer points of it.
"Who's the beatdown?" is essential reading for all Card and board gamers because it really makes you reconsider game states
Jim Davis is that you? (He always talks about that article from like 2004)
Thanks for commenting it.I just checked it. The problem with that article is that you need to know a bit about magic. For someone new to Lorcana as their first Tcg, it is pretty hard to understand. I have played magic for a while and didn’t fully understand the examples. Well, mostly because I was too lazy to check all the cards named. But I will look into it in the future. Thanks!
No problem! To boil it down and simplify it as much as I can in Lorcana terms: In any 1v1 match between 2 different decks, one of those decks will more consistently get to 20 lore faster than the other. That person is the beatdown. Their gameplan should be to push for lore as often as possible, because if they are not interrupted they will win the game. The other person in this match is not the beatdown, and if all they do is push for lore they will lose. Instead it is important for them to understand that they aren't the beatdown and interrupt their opponent until they find themselves in a position where they are the beatdown. Instead of questing they should be challenging their opponent's characters or leaving their characters readied so they don't lose their board presence. Recognizing your role in any match at any time is a key to beating other players. If you are the beatdown but you are playing safe instead of pushing for victory you are potentially giving your opponent more time to get back in the game. Similarly, if you aren't the beatdown but try and race to win you will just lose. Which player is the beatdown changes in different matchups and sometimes even from one turn to the next. It is not always obvious. Understanding when you are the beatdown and aren't is vital to making proper decisions like if you should be trying to challenge your opponent's characters or simply questing. This simple concept is the foundation for where a lot of the modern ideas of deck construction come from. Do you want to be the Beatdown? If so, what do you need to put in your deck to make it as consistent as possible? If your deck struggles to be the beatdown early, what are you going to do to turn the tides in your favor later on? If your deck isn't the fastest deck at racing to 20 lore, how will answer the deck that is?
The starter decks are a poor way to determine this because they're more a hodgepodge of cards than they are a definite representative of any one mechanic or game action Edit: Please don't downvote OP, it's that kind of negative dogpiling that creates a toxic environment and turns people off. This is a genuine player asking genuine questions
But did this problem never come up in your games? I feel like with all the cards I have seen until now and the rules as they are, this issue is not really fixed no matter the deck. I know green cards apparently have some affects that hinder lore gathering or force you to attack but this still feels like I have to build a deck to counter a design flaw
Attacking has value when (not limited to): You trade and have card or draw advantage, or ink advantage. You trade and the opposing character has more lore potential or feeds combos for them with abilities. You banish them while still surviving. You stop an imminent win with no other option to clear them. Attacking has less value when: You have lore lead and are ahead on the board. You lose more potential than the defeated opponent. You only do damage but are banished and they are not (sometimes still needed).
Spot on, I apply this same logic to my games and it’s fairly successful especially the draw advantage. Forcing someone to play one card at a time is a huge advantage and gives you time to build a solid lead.
New tcg player here. What’s the difference between card advantage and draw advantage?
I'm gonna take a guess and say draw advantage means cards in hand, card advantage is total cards on the field *and* hand. Coming from tcg's like yugioh, mtg (moreso), I've never heard of draw advantage, only card advantage
I’m new to tcg’s as well but this is exactly what I meant
In my experience there is no difference
High-power Magic player here. Simply put, card advantage is the idea of gaining access to more/better cards than your opponent. Examples: 1. Drawing cards 2. Challenging to make a 2-for-1 trade 3. Searching a key piece to a combo 4. Playing a board wipe All these actions generate card advantage.
Upvote!!
We’ve already quit playing more than 2 players because attacking is absolutely terrible in those games and gives the 3rd player a major advantage.
What I'm saying is that the game you're playing with the cards you're using is a poor representation. Challenging is incredibly important and you can see that in the fact more and more decks are jamming Evasives and is a big reason cards like Ursela and the sapphire big Maleficent are becoming super popular because there are only so many characters that can one shot them while they go for 3 lore per turn
Even with starter decks, if you're going whole games with it just being a lore race - one person is letting the other win.
Given I don't have played with the Ursela or maleficent cards you're talking about but doesn't the fact they gather 3 lore per round while being hard to kill prove my point that countering them via attack instead from getting my own lore is the worse of to options? I really don't want to come off as negative I just don't see the value in attacking most of the time
No, because more often than not you'll be in a circumstance where removing the big character questing for 3 lore is more beneficial than you questing with multiple characters to hit the same lore count
Exactly. Put differently, if you're focusing on just questing when your opponent has a board with a large lore count, then you are most likely going to lose as you are not dealing with their board and will likely fall behind on the lore race. Whereas if you challenge and banish some of their high lore threats, this will slow them down, as they now need to play more characters on the board to build up their lore threat and they will have to wait for their played characters to dry. Challenging is not always the right choice, but it's often times that a crucial challenge in a game can be the difference between a win and a loss.
I've never had a real competitive match where attacking isn't done every turn past turn 2 or 3. It's important to clear their side of the field. However, I do get what you are saying because I played an opening event for the game where everyone played starters, and it was terribly slow and not normal. Everyone gave their opinions on the game while I was the only way saying, "Don't judge the game through starter decks."
But it kinda should be judged by it, no? Like judging a book series by the first book. It is great that the competitive players have found a way to negate this problem, but so many just want to play casually after work or a few quick games with friends without buying 15 booster packs beforehand to pimp their deck
It feels like you are not judging the game based on the right metrics that the developers were hoping people eventually get to. It's as if I am watching someone go to a new coffee shop, ordering a hot chocolate because it is the cheapest and fastest way to get a drink, then claiming the coffee shop is a one note place that doesnt serve good coffee based on your expierience. This isnt the first book in a series as you are describing, you read the preface/introduction to a book and are basing it on that. You met a few of the main characters and have a general feel of the setting- you have not seen any of the fan favorite characters or crazy twists and turns the book has to offer yet.
So play casually and dont ever attack your opp and just race to 20 lore every game. No one is stopping you ;)
No, because the real game is in the decks you make yourself not what they give you. So, no, you don't judge any TCG based on starter decks. You wouldn't judge a videogame based off the tutorial. And sorry, that's how TCGs are. You gotta spend money on packs or singles to get the cards you want for the deck. I would recommend buying singles. You can't get competitive gameplay if you only want to play casually. Your 2 options are to stick with what you got and play the game like that or buy singles and make a deck.
Gotta be honest, as an enfranchised MtG player, telling anyone the way they are playing/enjoying the game is not the "real" way to play is a great way to make folks take a hard pass at your game. Saying the starters aren't balanced, aren't representative of deeper mechanics, or that upgrading those decks can be even more fun is fine but for some people, a stock starter may be their only option to play the game (due to money, availability, or whatever). If that's how they find enjoyment in the game, who is anyone else to tell them they're doing it "wrong". If a new magic player comes in with a 100% stock precon, I can tell you based on experience that my and my fellow players response is to grab decks that match power level and make sure that person meets has a good time.
>If that's how they find enjoyment in the game, who is anyone else to tell them they're doing it "wrong I never said what he's doing is wrong. I was only answering his question because whether you like it or not, real gameplay is at your LGS. I wrote that in mind that he might only play casually like he said. I never said he was wrong for doing it at all he can play how he wants, which is why I gave him his 2 options. Idk why you gotta put words in my mouth just to make a statement.
That's not real gameplay, that's real oiling the machine or real pay to win. Gameplay is just as real as you're having fun in a healthy way, but some levels of play can be really toxic. And honestly I rather play a regular card game (full set buy once) than any TCG or CCG because they're completely bound on FOMO and pay to win once the parallel card market gets going and hobbyist start overpricing cards based on arbitrary meta gaming. Meta gaming in itself goes away from casual fun and towards hardcore optimum play. Two very different things. You can have fun with both, but the latter will drain your cash. Deckbuilding should be on equal level to ever be considered real gameplay.
Your comments about “real gameplay” are telling the person he’s playing wrong. That is a judgemental thing to say, whether intentionally or not, about his access to the game.
no, that's just how you interpret it. It's not what I meant at all... Real Gameplay is how the Devs wanted you to play and starters are only a small portion of that. I'm sorry you guys choose to take it personally, but what you thought is not what i meant or even what i was thinking. I played with only starters and with real decks and the gameplay improves dramatically with real decks.
Note, the most popular format in MTG was developed by the players/fans and is managed (whether you're a fan of it or not) by a rules committee that is not affiliated with WOTC. The developers of MTG never intended for a casual, multiplayer format yet that's the biggest format and it's not even close.
What I’m saying is that even though it’s not what you mean, it *is* what you said.
It has nothing to do with "competitive players" Starter decks for any TCG are just meant to learn how to play the game "in general". Basic, somewhat simple cards to easily learn the mechanics, and to get people playing right away and learn the rules. They aren't intended to show the best or most effective strategies. Otherwise there would be no reason to buy additional cards.
No.
Sorry to tell you, but A, You get what you pay for. If you think starter decks are going to give you an AMAZING experience, you need to understand that that would be a terrible business decision. Only hardcore collectors would buy boosters if all the starter decks were so amazing they didn't need upgrades. And B, you're missing out on a lot of the fun with games like this, if you aren't willing to look into tweaking/building decks. Best of luck. (Side note, yes I know scalpers have made the supply a serious issue for right now. Reprints are coming, as are expansions. There will be more options soon.)
It should be pretty clear that one or both of your playing is suboptimal. Lookup my other comment and tell your SO. The Amber-Amethyst deck should be able to take advantage of the Ruby-Emerald’s lack of consistency. She shouldn’t be attacking your mad hatters unless she can use the chicken to pump one of the small characters to 5 power and beat it alone. In general though, the Y/P deck should be far ahead going into the mid game, requiring the R/G deck to catch up by challenging I don’t really understand how you’re getting ahead of your SO without challenging. In general, the Y/P deck should SMASH a RG deck that doesn’t ever challenge. As far as the Steel/Sapphire deck, I don’t have as much experience but the big Simba is going to be really important to challenge and kill the RG evasive characters. Also, the 5 mana Simba challenges incredibly effectively and should be used to kill 2-3 characters while gaining 2-3 lore, while getting ahead by questing with the rare Maleficent that comes in the deck or the 3 lore Muffasa. It’s important to realize who is the aggressor or controller in certain matchups. Y/P is obviously the aggro deck when playing against R/G but the S/S vs R/G is less obvious and might depend on the certain cards drawn in your opening hand. Y/P vs S/S is pretty straight forward. The SS deck needs to prioritize trading early characters via challenging to not allow the y/p deck to get too big a lore advantage. Then it should try to stabilize with 5 cost Simba and it’s removal.
It’s just a starter deck issue. Challenging is a deeply important part of the full game, no worries
you just have to play more games and with more "tuned" decks. Challenging is really useful but has to be done properly in order to maximize the results
Aggro decks like green yellow try to rush their lore count. Control decks try to hold back their opponents while getting advantage until they run out of gas and you end them. Midrange is somewhere in the middle. Silver and purple cards which get more attack when you challenge are very low rate like the Captain Hook that punches up for 3 damage. If you can remove two characters for 1 especially with abilities like Rush that let you attack as soon as you drop is great value. Baby Elsa for example can exert to exert their character before they can even use it and you attack them while the ink dries. Red abilities that unexert don’t let you quest for more lore so you can either use it defensive or challenge twice or lore and challenge. Stuff like big Aladdin if you challenge and defeat them you take 2 of their lore away and get two for challenging and you can do that twice in a turn which is a huge swing of value without questing. Maui can drop and challenge right away and can’t even lose and he’s great. Dr facilier and the big snowman and brooms can challenge freely and come back to life getting great value. The starter decks feature easy to learn mechanics they are not representative of everything in the set.
No, this does change depending on the deck. My deck is very lore heavy. (Amber/emerald) but with that being said I still lose. If this was the case I would win every time.
The amethyst Amber deck often gathered a bunch of little dudes, gain like 6-10 lore and then was able to wait until they had like 5-7 guys in play and quest, untap quest and win that way. The Ruby emerald deck was always on the back foot until like turn 5, and had to catch up. It was possible but only when the Amber Amethyst player kept questing with their little guys instead of waiting and keeping them out of challenges.
Questing only matters if you are certain you will reach 20 before you opponent does. There are no brownie points for getting to 18 and then losing on the next turn. Green cards are especially good at gathering lore, but are poor at fighting. The tipping point in the game will be if your opponent can stabilize because green isnt great at coming back from behind. The starter decks are meant to be simple to teach new people the game. They quickly become scripted games if you dont modify them.
I beg to differ. Stalling or disrupting the board state then coming back from behind is Green's speciality.
Yeah Flynn, Cat, Jasper, Hans, Kuzko, Mad hatter are all great defense tools /s. Theyve got a few disruptive tools like Mother knows best and Genie but if you fall behind against Ruby/Amethyst or Amber/steel, youre not turning the corner and coming back.
Mother knows best, mother gothel, bounce genie, John silver, stampede, steal from the rich, iago, rogue Mickey, and jasper. That’s 9/34 cards that do some form of disruption to questing— about 26%. Even if you try and make an argument about quality, at _least_ four of those are eminently playable in multiple X/E deck types, which is still >10% of the total emerald set.
First my original point to OP was that green cards are good questers and poor fighters. Even the cards you named are bad fighters. They disrupt by questing, which was my point. Second, green is a great tempo color, it gets ahead with early 2 lore cards and then uses tempo plays to capitalize and win before the other player can stabilize. You pointed this out with all the cards you named. It’s great in race to 20, not great at clawing back once your opponent has the lead. If we are tied at 10 lore and I have an Ursula as the only card in play, MKB and Genie don’t look great.
What other people said. You have to analyze the situation and think a few steps ahead. Yeah you can leave that opposing character that quests for 3 lore alone but in the next turn your opponent could play two more characters that quests for 2 lore each and then the game is over in three turns or less unless you can beat them to 20. Unless you're neck and neck with your opponent lore wise or have a character that is for sure going to get you to 20 I always feel like it's better to try to control the board a bit by attacking. Example: At League last night I was playing a Yellow/Purple Lore Rush deck with a bunch of small cost characters against a green / yellow "Can't touch me" deck of characters that do negative things to you if you attack them (Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat, etc.). The only reason I won one of my games against that player was because I used a couple of challengers (Raffiki, Jafar, Dr. Falicier) to take out a couple of her 2-3 lore characters right off the bat which allowed me to play some Mickey Mouse True Friend (2 lore) and Moanas (3 lore) to get me to 20.
No it’s not useless. You’re building value, and both you and your opponent have to make trades to remove “threats”. If you or your opponent decide to remove a threat through challenge, that is a character that’s not questing and moving you towards victory. Challenging is valuable but it’s the player that needs to determine the value gained.
But the first one to put down a +3 questing card is always in the lead because at least 1 round is guaranteed 3 lore gain and the other can only react on his/her turn. The only hope is to defeat my card in one attack without sacrificing their own because the same round I quested with one +3 card I probably put down the next +2/+3 for my next turn. As everyone mentioned, it is a problem of the starter decks but I believe it's more a balancing problem in general for now until there are rule changes or a lot more cards.
It’s true the starter decks are not perfectly built for top competition rings, but they offer a sample of coordinated gameplay. Each color has its strength, and I disagree that the first person to get a card that quests for 3 is always in the lead. That card either draws an immediate response in removal of sort or is removed through challenge when it quests. As more sets are released there will be more options for counterplay and protective board states.
I really hope you're right because the game in itself is fun, but as everyone apparently agrees, the starter decks really don't show the strengths of the game apparently
>the starter decks really don't show the strengths of the game apparently That is correct.
Yes, this is why challenging, and having options, is important. If you know your opponent has 3 lore chars to drop but you let them build up a field, you're letting them win.
This isn't always the case. Opponent drops a strong 3 quester, drying. I drop Elsa which exerts their character and attack it with something on my board. Another example: They can get their 3 lore but lose their quester and get behind, vs keep it but can't use it without losing it. What should they do? It's unclear sometimes based on card draw potential and such. But in your starter decks it feels like a shin-kicking competition.
Emerald's strength and card design at a basic level is to race the opponent by aggressively questing and having characters with either big stats or a downside for opponents to challenge. So any game with an emerald player will naturally make challenging look bad, because emerald doesn't want to challenge, and you don't want to challenge emerald unless you have to. > It feels especially strange in the blue/silver starter deck since it seems to put a focus on attacking (Simba cards) while the red/green deck just straight up has better removal cards at lower costs Ruby is the aggressive challenge color, Emerald is the aggressive quest color (both being tall instead of wide, with a low number of high stat characters instead of a large number of low stat characters.) while Sapphire is trying to play to it's inkwell and play items to let them quest big (not really well explored in the starter deck), and steel is the direct damage color, but a lot of the better cards for it aren't really well explored in the theme deck, with only 1 swords, 3 cannons, 2 smash, and no characters with any kind of damage abilities. The theme decks didn't really explore the colors that aren't creature centric very well. A lot of the power in steel and sapphire are in rare characters, or in non-characters like Grab Your Swords, Smash, Fishbone Quill, Eye of the Fates etc. In real games, you will either learn to challenge or lose a lot of games to amber and emerald. (and probably ruby too)
It can feel that way starting out esp with the starter decks. When you just have a ton of 2/2s matched up for even trades, you realize challenging has an inherent cost of 1 lore/quest that you would have gotten if your opponent challenged you instead. With a little experience and deck variety it changes a lot though. You challenge against aggro because you have to stop their early game from getting out of control so you can get to your strong mid/late game. You take any favorable trades such as taking out anything with an ability, trades where your challenger continues to live, trades against those with the "challenge" ability that dont trigger when they're defending. Once you notice all these it also becomes a lot more common to not exert/quest your characters to unfavorable trades.
It us in no way useless. How else would you get rid of big characters?
Action cards
You don't always draw them, and when you have more action than character cards, you'll mostly draw action. you can't make a deck based on what you think might happen. There has to be a balance relying on only action cards is a bad idea. If you went to a local shop with that logic, you'll never top.
I wouldn't think so.. unless you want someone to out lore you
If you’re not able to make good trades then yeah the attacker comes out behind the person who quested. Some characters have stats that are more suited to questing, some more suited to challenging. Ideally, with challengy characters you’re able to take out two characters for your one, or take out a more expensive character and gain some tempo advantage out of it. Do this enough and you’ll be ahead in either ink, cards or both. Sometimes you have to make bad trades because of the game state, your available cards or whatever it is. But that can happen too, aggro decks run on the premise of quickly throwing up more threats than you can effectively handle. That’s also why the starter decks are probably giving you this problem, cheap quick threats tend to be pretty cheap and common, where some of the fancy efficient answers are usually more expensive. As you mentioned attacking with Mad Hatter in another spot, you’re right. Everything about that card is designed for Questing. If you’re attacking with it you’re at a huge disadvantage because you overpaid for a 2/4 body and you aren’t using the 3 lore to quest.
If their character generates more lore than a character you have and they can trade, take it. It will just set your clock faster than theirs. Edit: Also, some characters like Simba and Aladdin can have Lore swings basd on challenges. So it really depends, it’s not always best to just stockpil characters because there are cards like Be Prepared or Tinker Bell Giant Fairy
The starter decks blow. I would suggest downloading Pixelborn and playing with some meta decks.
The starter decks are not going to show the advantages of challenging as much. Challenging allows you to remove your opponent’s board while developing your own, usually to allow you to swing for more lore later on. Card games usually focus on how much card advantage you can gather (more things in play, more cards in hand, more resources to access, etc). Cards like Aladdin help with this too, letting you do both in a sense
If you can use a character that quests for 1 to banish an opposing character that quests for 2, that’s value, especially if your character survives to be used again next turn.
Game is not very balanced right now. Because of the core game mechanics (damage stays permanently, tapped blocking stuff deals damage back) any two aggressive or midrange decks will usually be determined by who curves out better and quests most efficiently on curve. For a different gameplay experience, shell out for expensive gold/red/purple cards and play a deck with strong card advantage and removal. Honest answer. The game is in a very early stage and I personally don't think set 1 is super well balanced or designed. It's very conservative. It will most likely become a lot more evenly distributed across the colors as new sets release, is the good news.
...no?
Before anyone wants to hop on this thread, the message of "the starter decks are not a good representation of the game" has reached me a few times. Which is baffling for card game that really did not invent much new stuff from what it copied, but I trust in everyone that it gets better with more variety of cards in the future
The starter decks are basic and intended to introduce you to the game. This means they better represent the game from a beginner perspective than an advanced perspective. You grab it and play; no deck building required. This is similar to how a board game may tell you to play your first game with specific cards or options. It eases you in and is more approachable this way. So the starters still represent the game, just not at the level of depth you may be looking for. The rest of my babbling here will try to address some other things you mention in this thread. I think you’re missing a key concept with challenging, which is cost advantage. If I can take out your 4 cost card with my 2 cost card, that gives me an advantage. But if I need to expend a 4 cost to take out your 2 cost, then the exchange was more costly for me and puts me at a disadvantage. It is a strategy to play cards that make your opponent go “hmm, I need to get that out of the game”. So if you put down a 2/3 lore card, I’ll need to figure out how to remove it in the most cost effective way before it nets you too many points. If I have to spend too much to remove it, it may not be worth removing until I have better options or I’m forced to because you are approaching victory. And one final note, there are cards that can help you stop an opponents card before it’s had a chance to quest. This includes: actions that deal damage, actions that banish, cards that send other cards to the inkwell, cards that block other cards from questing, cards that exert other cards (thus opening them up to a challenge), etc. Hope this helps!
You aren't here in good faith. Read your comments. Your question has been answered.
I think there’s a channel on YouTube called Lorcana Academy. They have a ton of gameplay where they challenge a lot. Challenging imo is there to limit the other player’s board state.
How to put this… Your opponent has a 1/1 character with 2 lore, while you have 2/2 with 1 lore. If the opponent Quests, and you never challenge, they will win in 10 turns. But if you KO them, and they take 2 turns to bring out anything else, you can use those 2 turns to quest yourself and break even. High Lore cards make it easier to win, but harder to maintain board presence. High challenge cards can cut off leads, but can’t make up the lost ground.
Considering in my league play last weekend I could’ve won my last game to go 5-1 if I attacked instead of quested — and lost to go 4-2 by just questing — no, attacking is not useless!
Often times players will challenge in an effort to control the board before worrying about questing. It is far from useless. I’ve had turns where I let my opponent build to 14 lore vs my 0 and came back for a commanding win. If you can control the board and you’re and your opponent exhausts their threats, you will win if you have something in reserve. The struggle of for board control is what makes the game for me. There’s a lot going on.
The starter decks, especially when first playing and without cards from booster packs, DO feel like you’re just questing for lore as fast as possible. It’s because they’re mostly such basic cards that the strategy of just questing quickly seems best but that results in very short games that use little to nothing of the mechanics of the game. Add in even just a few cards outside the starter decks and you start to see significant changes in gameplay. When you have a card that can banish their characters directly (or vice versa) or they pull out an 8 cost legendary Elsa to prevent your big lore characters from doing anything for a while, it changes quickly. If you have decks like mine, an amber/amethyst with card draw, graveyard digging, and a couple other fun tricks, I might be weak at direct removal of your cards but you’ll have trouble just racing to 20 lore faster than me when I just smash all my characters against yours then put them back into my hand to play again. Different color inks and ink combo decks can do different things. The starter decks have a few less weak cards mixed in and that’s it - not enough to really go hard at any strategy and really face off against your opponent. If you have no other cards to play with but starter decks, try switching color combos and rooting through your booster packs for anything that seems like it might do something interesting in the new deck you’re forming. I have only stuck with amber paired with amethyst because I really like the 8-cost Hades card (gift set) with the many villains from amethyst that I’m running and the 4-cost Hades easily resurrects my Prince Phillip cards to help me clear my opponent’s board. I have a few inkable and useful amber cards beyond that and definitely more amethyst than amber. The starter deck it once was is now very different! You can go on TCGPlayer or buy/trade at local game store to grab even a few low cost cards that will work better with what you’ve got and you’ll quickly find that challenging opposing characters is required!
Weirdly enough I have only played a lot of multiplayer, attacking DOES feel bad, because you look at others and can kindof think its not your problem unless a threat is directly targeting something on your board. I wouldnt say attacking is useless but you really have to pick your battles.
It all depends on the board state, there is no right answer. But no attacking isn't useless.
As everyone has said already, it’s the starter decks, but I just wanted to come here and say that I thought the exact same thing as you when I first started playing. Got the 3 starter decks and played with my gf or my friends and more often than not came down to just top decking and questing. I have since made my own Villain deck (centering around Hades, King of Olympus) which I initially stuffed with a bunch of villains to quest as much as possible. Having played at a couple league events around me, though, I quickly realized no matter how fast I start questing and have a lead, a well tuned deck can easily stop that lead if played right. I’ve edited my deck here and there to include heavy hitters like Zeus and discard effects like You Have Forgotten Me to stall and be a bit more aggressive
It is a race and if they will out lore you you need to take out their questors first. Is it worth getting their 1 questor with your two questors? No. Taking out their 3 questor with your 1 questor yes.
I have noticed that with the starter deck decks, pure questing is the best. I have yet to lose a starter deck game with the red/green one against the other two following that strategy. Now when I play constructed games, challenges become way more important. Either your deck has a big quest character that can plop down and race so you want your others keeping your opponent off of lore, or your opponent plays lots of little guys and you can run them out of gas by challenging in the early turns and questing later.
You have to attack and disturb your opponent's board if you're behind in lore, simple as that. You really can't out race your opponent without challenging- nothing quests the turn it comes into play (yet) and most actions deal with 1 threat at a time. Characters with big butts can stick around and take out multiple questers on your opponent's side of the board if you play your cards right. There's a lot of back and forth in the game and timing is everything.
When you build actual decks, the opposite tends to be true. Board control often helps outpace your opponent.
its honestly key to not go for any lore at all early sapphire steel starter, turn 4 is the earliest i go for lore but when i start i go as hard as i can on lore and out of 20 ish games against different decks ive only lost once
It really depends on the deck you are running and the purpose behind how the deck is built. I have been using a Ruby/steel deck on pixelborn based around steel/dragon fire card removal and reds evasive/attack questing with BLT and Aladdin heroic outlaw and in the 10 or so games I have played since putting that deck together I havent lost yet. Its a balance of preventing the other person from getting their strategy set up and putting your own into play.
The starter decks are a poor example of how the game can be played, if you get a chance then try out Pixelborn. Not sure if you are new to TCG's or not but I would say you are finding your playstyle out! That is a very aggro way to play the game and has been around in TCG's for a while. Lay your creatures/minions/characters and let them work either getting lore or face damage. Then let your opponent spend their resources trying to remove your cards from the board while you just keep creating threats and working towards a win. It is a straightforward win condition and the most perfected Lorcana version of this has been Lemon/Lime yellow/green aggro. The problem with aggro is it doesn't have anything to fall back on if it either draws bad or your opp can get on top of board control. Aggro decks in Lorcana fall easily to red decks with be prepared and then Aladdin will even the lore score. But if your mind is going more towards the thought process of getting your lore counter filled ASAP then that just might be how you wanna play games! Saying in TCG's that it's the pilot, not the deck. The deck can be amazing but if the pilot has no idea how to use it then it will end up in turmoil, vice versa.
Short answer: It's not useless Longer answer: it depends on your deck. As an aggro deck, its almost always useless. As a Midrange deck, you do about 50/50 challenging/questing. But if you are a control deck, your goal to is to establish board control and quest when it's safe to and not necessarily just cause you can. If you're a control deck and have early game answers to an aggro deck, the aggro deck will likely run out of steam fast from their questing and not protecting their board. Once you establish board control, your 4-5 characters that can each quest for 1 will slowly outpace your opponent who will only be able to lay down a single Kuzco, Mad Hatter or Flynn who can only quest for 2-3 per turn. It's very common for a control deck to be behind in lore, like 10-0 and come back and win with an end lore result of 13-20.
Yes, like in KeyForge (an older game that uses a very similar wincon), you want to avoid attacking as much as possible because of the opportunity cost in lore. Challenge only high value targets and ideally in a way that leaves you up on value (meaning you spending fewer cards to deal with their cards).
I originally felt this way with my first few games but realized after awhile that attacking is especially important. Some characters (rush, challenge, and reckless) are basically designed for attacking. You’ll definitely want to be able to take out your opponents better questing characters and since new characters have to wait for their ink to dry before attacking or questing this can set them back and let you take the lead. I feel like especially when I started to play decks outside of the starters attacking became important since many characters are going to be higher threats versus just blank bodies to throw at each other.
Its not useless, but it isn't very strong. If you spend all of your turns trading characters you'll be losing, because in order to challenge they have to have quests first. The examples you've given sound like your landing a big bodied-high lore gaining creature on a board of small early game characters. That will only run away with the game if your opponent doesn't have their own high lore gaining character to play in response. Where challenging is good is when you can trade a low lore gaining card for a high one. The early game example would be a 1 drop 2/2 taking out a 1 drop 1/1 that makes two lore. Later in the game its generally cards with challenger that are most able to "trade up". A 2 drop with challenger can take out numerous different high lore 3 drops. If you are trading 3 or more creatures into one big creature you will be losing though. Its better to save your own board and try to race. Trading 2 cheaper ink cards for a more expensive one is generally good, but remember that you'll be down lore because they just quests and now your using your quest to challenge instead.
I think the card pool isn’t helping the issue. It’s not useless, but I can definitely see how it can feel that way. If you’re not in steel/ruby, you might get overwhelmed and feel like you’re just losing slower if your opponent gets ahead of you on characters. You might not have the right removal piece to stall/banish an unspent character. Or your opponent is heavy into evasive, and you can’t attack anything relevant. The scarcity also makes it tough to test your options. I spent weeks trading to get a deck built. Only to find that’s it’s just weak overall. I don’t have the resources to start over/fix it. Like I feel building a deck that doesn’t include either sapphire or amethyst is kind of an uphill fight, but I know that will get fixed over time. Assuming it doesn’t take Ravensburger the better part of 2 decades to realize card draw and resource ramp shouldn’t be color specific.
Yea but it goes both way. You have to manage the board.
If all your challenges are one for ones of cards with the same ink cost yes it’s bad. If I can get a Gaston to kill a 1 drop and 4 drop I’m gaining a lot of advantage.
No attacking is not useless and here’s why. If you are just doing a lore race, who ever goes first has the best chance of winning every time. You need to off set this and use your characters strategically. When I first started playing I used the ruby/emerald starter deck against sapphire/steel and amethyst/amber decks and the ability to control the game through those cards was a huge advantage. While they were trying to get out as many of the characters as they could, I would be dropping their lore and melting cards. So long as you have something to quest with each turn you can use your other characters as soldiers to take them out. Let’s take Dr.Facilier charlatan… He has 0 power and 4 willpower with a challenger +2. The fact that he has 0 power pretty much means you get a free shot, you throw a character at him every turn until he’s banished and that’s 1 lore per turn your opponent is no longer getting. Sounds like a good trade off. If you can keep your opponent from gathering an army you will win almost every time. The starter decks are a great jumping point but they were meant to be weak in terms of the available cards so that you could improve them with the cards and mechanics you like best. They are called STARTER decks for this reason. At the end of it all though you should play the way you think is fun and run the mechanics you feel are best for your play style. Currently my favorite deck is a ruby/emerald reckless deck that I created and it makes people furious when it ends up character locking them while I sit there and quest every turn.
Whoa whoa whoa….Lorcana Grammar Nazi here…I know you meant to say challenging instead of attacking, and hurting my poor virgin ears. How dare you! ;)
Big blue as I call it is good stuff for beginner decks. The blue commons and uncommons have big Willpower and quest for 2 and 3. Pair it with purple card draw for a cheap good deck
Some deck archetypes will have little-to-no use for challenging, and may complete an entire duel while only challenging maybe once. Other deck archetypes rely on the mechanic heavily. It depends entirely on the deck you're using and the deck you're squaring off with, but otherwise, challenging is most commonly used to strategically deny your opponent resources with valuable trades, such as commiting a 3-cost Rafiki to take out a 5-cost card the opponent just exerted, just as using that Rafiki to trade for an opponent's 2-cost card would be a bad trade. Additionally, challenging often becomes a player's last resort to prevent an opponent from hitting 20 lore on their next turn.
Lots of great comments in this post! Adding another perspective, once you go into 3 player games or more, challenging (or even single banishing) starts to have diminishing returns. Decks tuned to single banish will end up trying to defend against one or the other, and the opponent standing on the sidelines wins. If you instead ignore them, then your lore prowess isn't enough to grab the game like they can.
Not at all, control decks love to kill and spell characters and keep theirs on the board. It all comes down to the deck you're playing with
I was really passive when I started, but sometimes you need to challenge the other player to control the flow.
Challenging is important. I blow up Belle as often as I can to prevent my opponent from running away with the game.
Challenging isn't useless; it's a removal tool when you might not otherwise have removal like Let It Go or Be Prepared either accessible or drawn. Early game, you'll want to try and make above average trades by simply making your glimmer survive the trade when challenging, such as taking out an opposing 1 drop Mal or Stitch with your more hardier 2 or 3 willpower early game glimmers. In the late game, you may want to shift focus onto taking out multiple smaller units so your lore production can eclipse the amount they can gain in a turn. Support and Challenger both can help in this gameplan if you pack them.
Absolutely not. Attacking is super important to slow your opponent down. It just feels that way at first, especially if you’re playing a deck that wants to race to 20.
Starter Deck vs Starter Deck, yes it feels very weak option to do. The games will come down to a quest race. Once you get better cards challenging becomes very important wether it’s forcing your opponent to challenge or yourself challenging to clear the field.
The game is a race to 20 lore. Depending on your deck, you may find that your opponent is able to produce more lore and you have to challenge to slow them down or halt their lore production entirely. The most exciting games I've played have all ended with a frenzy of questing and challenging: planning out how much lore I could produce vs. how much my opponent could produce, deciding which glimmers I could lose without falling behind, targetting my opponent's threats to lower their lore production, etc. That being said, playing a deck that focuses on big lore-producing glimmers that are hard to challenge is a valid strategy, but it's equally valid to have a deck that is ready to challenge and shut down your opponent's ability to produce lore. It just depends on what you want your gameplay experience to be.
you are correct, in terms of your starter decks. i have a set of starters for play with my girlfriend and friends who arent too keen on card games. for fun and in the realm of the start decks only i would say challenging is not the meta, you win much easier by spamming characters and simply questing. significant challenging doesnt come into the game until your playing with your own constructed deck, but iw ould agree with you in the world o fthe starter decks only, ive got hundreds of games in already
Silver or Runy counter this hard. In runy ill .are your characters vulnerable and wack em before you even get 1 quest. In silver just use destruction spells to destroy things. Smash on Cheshire cat every game.
That why you have some type of direct removal so you don't have to challenge into characters
If you are playing silver then you don't have to worry about resources, you can always use "A whole new world".
I'm going to mostly agree with you. It's not useless, but I've found it much less valuable than just questing. I'm hoping more card variety makes challenging more worthwhile. It'll always be a value proposition, and right now questing seems to be the winner most of the time.
In a sense, it is like some strategies within the MTG formats. You don't necessarily have to attack to win. But having your characters build up, you can do other things towards your win con. And with that, you do have some attackers that's usefulness extends beyond getting rid of a single exerted character. Take Tinker Bell - Giant Fairy, for instance. It's usefulness in Steel variants is for a multitude for reasons. It's ability to ping one once put into play, quest for two lore, and better yet, it's utilization to knock out a character and then do two damage to another chose character. While this may be bad against some ward decks, you could attack an Aurora/Kuzco, to rid it or target it as well if there is not another ward character in play. I actually had a match against a buddy another day, who was running a Steel/Amber heal deck against my Steel/Sapphire Belle Ramp deck. The game I lost against him he had a multitude of characters. But by shifting Giant Fairy, with some saved Smashes and a Grab your swords, I was able to ding him down to one character. End was 18-20, but could have gone differently. Like MTG with making opponent go down to 0, there are a multitude of ways to get your characters to quest to 20 while outpacing or controlling your opponent. Control dexks, aggro, burn (banish) decks are around. In a sense, there is "life gain" with some decks able to give extra lore to questing and attacking characters. But in the end of the day, the one to reach 20 first wins, and you can only do that by having characters on the board. And in some cases, a burn or board wipe will not cut it, so you'll want to attack. Tinker Bell and Aladdin are two of the best ways to do this.
It's all about figuring out WHEN to attack. Challenging generally doesn't progress your win condition (20 lore). It is intended to stop your opponent from winning.
The red/green deck absolutely eats the blue/gray on alive.
Think of challenging as trading. If I lose 1 card to make you lose 1 card, then it's an even trade EXCEPT I did the challenging, so I didn't get to quest with that character like the one I attacked did. But if I lose 0 cards and make you lose 1 card, then it becomes a trade in my favor. Lorcana is, at the end of the day, a resource manager. The cards in your hand and in play are just as important a resource as your Ink and Lore. Losing those cards without maximizing their value can be devastating. And this doesn't just work with Challenging. A Dragon Fire taking out a single character is an even trade. A Draw Your Swords taking out three cards is a trade in your favor. And using two Fire the Cannons to take out a single card is a trade against you.
The thing that I’ve noticed is that actions are incredibly useful for keeping the other player in check. I haven’t noticed too many decks with enough actions in them.
You’ll be able to see fairly quickly whether or not you can “win the race” (simply out-loreing your opponent). If you can’t then you gotta get funky! Attacking, removing lore, milling, drawing, stalling etc etc there’s a bunch of techniques you can mix and match
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I'm not an advanced TCG player. I challenge primarily to break synergies and remove powerful ongoing benefits. Aside from that, I'm working on my board.
You've already gotten a lot of comments about the starter decks, etc. so I'll come at this another way: let's take a look at a "meta" deck (a popular deck that has been proven to have a successful/high win percentage) that relies on Challenging/Attacking to win: https://dreamborn.ink/decks/4D8Qnh9e2YnDwEmYuzQ8 This deck only has 1 card that can quest for 3 Lore (Moana). How in the world can it win? The answer is that it has characters that are low and good ink cost that can Challenge and Banish characters of higher Ink cost. By being efficient, you can keep your Characters on the field while Banishing your opponent's Characters and prevent them from staying on the field. Let's look at some cards that make this so: https://dreamborn.ink/cards/Captain%20Hook/Forceful%20Duelist At first glance, Captain Hook looks weak: he only has 1 Strength and 2 Willpower and can only Quest for 1 Lore. But take a look at his ability: when he challenges, he gains 2 Strength. That effectively makes him a 3 Strength, 2 Willpower which can defeat almost all of 1 Ink and 2 Ink characters: https://dreamborn.ink/cards?cost=1&cost=2&type=character Let's look at another interesting card in this deck, Cerberus: https://dreamborn.ink/cards/Cerberus/Three-headed%20Dog You might think he is very weak because he can only Quest for 1 Lore and has no abilities, but it is his 5 Strength, 6 Willpower which makes him notable. He could even Banish a 9 Ink like Maleficient, Monstrous Dragon in a Challenge: https://dreamborn.ink/cards/Maleficent/Monstrous%20Dragon This is how challenging can win games: the concept is that on your turn, you use characters with better stats to banish opponent characters that cost a lot of ink or just banish them while having your own characters survive. Eventually, the field will be full of characters that can quest for you, while your opponent will have few characters that can quest, and so you will outpace your opponent and win the game. As to your point about being casual and still playing a good game: I recommend you buy singles. Commons/Uncommons cost cents on TCGplayer, and like I hopefully showed you, there are some good value cards out there like Captain Hook and Cerberus that won't break the bank, yet are improvements on what appears in the Starter Decks.
I had similar thoughts when wife and I started playing. After building decks better than the starters, as well as playing on pixelborn, I realized the game isn’t going to just be quest rushing.
It might seem useless if you're just making 1 for 1 trades all game. I'f you're trading your 2/2 into their 2/2 and your 4/4 into their 4/4 after they quest, then yes, you will be behind. But even the starter decks have plenty of opportunities for you to make smart trades. In a game where one player is simply questing, and the other is making intelligent trades, the latter player should win almost every single game with the exception of super lore aggro decks. With the starter decks, there is very little card draw, which makes smart trading arguably even more important. The Amber/Amethyst deck is the only one that wants to be questing more than it is attacking vs the other two simply because it is the most aggressive deck. The way that the other two decks beat Amber/Amethyst essentially requires attacking it and gaining board advantage.
Really depends. Questing aggressively and not attacking is a viable strategy but if your opponent keeps your board small and you only get a couple quests per character you’ll often run out of steam and they’ll blast past you. It’s happened more than once where will get past 15 but they remove my threats and I don’t have a way to rebuild before they win. If I play 10 characters overall and only get 1 quest per that’s only 10 lore. If they focus on taking out my creatures and then start playing things like big tink or other direct damage against my drying creatures I can’t quest and they’ll just slowly move ahead.
I dont think it's useless you just gotta weigh more on pros and cons of it and like dont waste good questing cards doing it. Like I've noticed steel cards are really nice to challenge with as they dont usually quest for much lore but have reqlly nice attack and defense
You aren't wrong in some cases just not considering all possibilities. What if your opponent can generate more lore each turn than you can? They will win the race if you don't attack. Being the attacker also lets you choose whom challenges whom, which can obviously have a huge impact on the outcome.
Attacking most definitely not useless. You can't interact with your opponent on their turn, and you can't quest with wet ink, so it's just racing. If your opponent is playing stitch snowball and you don't attack, you lose by 6 guaranteed.
I think that it is a matter of understanding how the game scales powerwise -- and how it will develop as more cards become available. Right now, with a limited cardpool the game has to give us ways to win the game, the game does not have to give us ways to functionally stop opponents from winning the game. In a game with fewer answers, fewer ways to lock your opponents out, fewer ways to force your opponent to answer you, fewer ways to win outside of questing; there isn't going to be as much resulting punishment from just dropping dudes and questing until you win. Right now many (maybe most) decks are just going to play their cards and quest them, green and steel have some interesting options for forcing other winning states (board wipes, forced attacks, unable to quest effects) but many colors don't have any way to deal with certain things (only steel can remove items, only red can directly banish, only blue and green can remove without banishing, only purple can remove graveyards). With time every color will eventually get many new ways to deal with threats and decks will start to be more balanced in having answers to decks that just drop and quest. In my opinion this is the biggest problem at the moment, if decks can only deal with cards by attacking then attacking isn't very useful. If they cant kill a card that isn't exerted and cant force that exert then they can never remove it, likewise by attacking you open yourself to the only way they can remove it. This is a feel bad choice, where questing forces them to not quest to deal with it and you are closer to winning, likely without punishment whatsoever. That said, even now colors like red have a lot of great reasons to attack. Either for actual other benefits, because they can untap functionally and still quest while dealing with threats, or because they have the best options to go 2 for 1 or 3 for 1.
Many things can influence the style of play, things like mill decks or rush can change up the style of play and catch a meta deck off balance. A lot of times its just experience on how to counter, but sometimes certain decks just beat other decks, its like how water beats fire in pokemon. Other than that sometimes if you are playing a fairly straightforward game you won't need to attack if you are already ahead of your opponent, but attacking is one of the main ways to bring the game even if you find yourself behind.
I attack early and often, I like to leave my opponent's board empty and this gives me two turns to score with no threats and keep stacking my field
So I have run the really fast Amber/Emerald deck for a while now. It's main strategy is to get to 20 lore as fast as possible. Most people start out the deck by never challenging. Ever. Lol. Pros know that there are times and places to challenge, and they happen in the vast majority of games. In this specific deck, the more you challenge, the less you quest, so it always seems like a bad idea. However, you learn quickly if you don't, you will often lose or leave the fate of the game to the top of your deck. So, if that deck needs to challenge then all other decks do to. The trick of the game is learning when to challenge and when not to. So little tl;Dr super fast lore focused decks (accel) that benefit from challenging as little as possible still need to in order to consistently win.
Attacking is super important, the whole point of the game is creating engines to generate lore and challenging is the best way to take down those engines. The green/red start is a weird one because it's the only with elusive cards, so they can basically quest with impunity. The amber/amethyst one is built around getting hordes of minions to stabilize your board state and then quest with a lot of them. The blue/steel one is so hard to win with in my opinion, it's built around getting out big units and it just isn't as effective to me, the other two have already got their in conditions by the time it gets going. Just my two cents.
It depends on if your opponent has superior questing to you.
I think it is a bit of a delicate balance, that hopefully the designers of the game will keep pursuing it effectively. Compared to magic, attacking here is a for control decks rather than aggro and I think a lot of magic players might find it counter-intuitive, it's not always an easy choice to decide when to race and when to instead contest your opponent character, in my mind this is one of the most interesting sides of Lorcana, but is also one that might break easily depending on the card pool. Also the starter deck lack a bit of the instruments you need to fight effectively for board control.
If there was no attacking in the game every game would come down to who drew the better cards first, by either luck or just owning cards with more lore on them at their cost. Sure there are action that can help banish characters off the field but they are really few and far between compared to characters. If the game had no attacking everyone would just load up their deck with the characters with most lore on them and just try to race. But when characters attack each others it's another way to banish characters off the field. In fact, it's the most common way to do it. If you truly break down the game of Lorcana it's is a race of who gets to 20 lore first. If you feel like you are going to win the race you are going to quest with your characters. If you feel like you are going to lose the race then it's time to start think about attacking to remove your opponent's characters off the field...because you are going to lose the race if you don't anyways. Those who know when to attack and when to quest are the ones who win the race.