Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Lorkana podcast. My name is Max. I'm Sam. Cliff. Cliff's here. And Ellie's here. So we have some news that is rather upsetting to Cliff and Ellie.
And that is two cards as of this very day, that would be the 8th of April 2025, have received a... ban in core constructed what does that mean it means the card is no longer allowed to be played in core constructed this is a little bit different from what we saw with bucky where the card was revised and an errata card was created that will not happen with these two cards what will happen is they're simply not allowed to be played in core constructed until deemed otherwise
the two cards in question one is fortisphere the other is hyrum flaversham toy maker that is the four cost one when it enters or quests. You can banish an item. If you banish an item, you get to draw two. cards. So we're bringing you a rather unfiltered episode here. It probably won't have the most use other than just letting you all know our thoughts, trying to think of where do we go from here in the immediate future?
How does this impact us in the long term? And just allowing you hopefully to feel like you're not alone in your thoughts. You're either maybe you're a little happier, maybe you're a little bit more aggravated, or maybe you're just seeing past the cards themselves that were dealt with. and you're more worried about the impacts of the idea of a ban. So let's get right into it. We're talking bans this time. How do we feel about ban versus errata in this particular case?
Are we happier with a ban than an errata of these two cards? Yes. Oh, I see. Why? A ban means that the cards can come back in the future. That is very true. Cliff, how do you feel? 100 % support banning over eroding. Eroding should only be used to clean up text boxes, print errors in grammar or whatever. making something more clear and concise. Eroting is the worst option for physical media. Yeah, I totally agree. We saw some of that particular cleanup in first chapter
cards, right? Like support was mislabeled and I think Pacha was misspelled on work together and Befuddle had an error because it got around having a chosen in the text box. So everything
you said, I fully agree with. Totally cogent when it comes to cleaning up a... grammatical or mechanical issue simply changing an entire card with physical media is much much more difficult right like you have to figure out a way to get a card to everyone explain to people who open it read it and see it as printed that is not you are seeing it wrong that is not how it actually is is a much more difficult experience than going oh by the way that card you opened it's a little
too good you can't actually play it in the game right now Right, yeah. The banning, it allows them to bring it back at some point in the future if they believe the game has progressed to a point where the cards may no longer be an issue, which is a much better version of routing it. Because now if they want to, for the example of Bucky, bring Bucky back, they'd have to then
print more versions. of the original one and tell people the promos that they all handed out that were the eroded fixed versions are the ones that are no longer illegal, which makes it way more complicated and confusing. Right, so we can safely say Bucky's never coming back in his Rise of the Flood -born form. I would argue that he'd be fine right now. Yeah, I agree with you there, too. Sam, anything to add to the concept
of ban versus errata? no more to add no more to add all right then how do we feel about this versus one of the other big topics that was being discussed a rotation meaning that certain sets as they progress to a certain age would no longer be playable in the format we know is core constructed you see this in other games where it would maybe make a core constructed format and then like a I don't know, ancient core constructed format where you could play with everything versus playing
with only the newest sets of cards in order to breathe some freshness into the game. Cliff, I'll start with you. So I think rotating sets currently in Lorkana would be a bad thing as there's not enough cards. I think for the longevity of the game and the health of the game, they
will have to institute it at some point. For R &D, it's easier because if they take the Yu -Gi -Oh route you're always worried about, is the card that I printed today going to interact weirdly with a card that got printed 25 years ago, right? So you save yourself from that. While it can still pop up in like ancient, we'll call it like their extended legacy vintage, ancient Lorkana, you worry about those things less and that's when you handle bans of things in those
cases. Like, hey, we didn't think this card from set two could ever do this thing, but these years the cards allow it. So I think right now rotating bad. In the future, it will have to be done just for the health of the game. That's fair. Sam, what do you think? Yeah, I agree. I think it's too soon for a ban. I don't think we have enough cards that if we were only allowed to play, say, sets four to current, we don't have enough cards that it would make sense, I don't think. That's
fair. I think that there are a lot of... issues if you don't rotate eventually because there's only going to be a small percentage of cards that are good enough to be played and it's going to be much much harder for cards to join that coveted spot because it just doesn't change enough of the game that like, Oh, a set came out and two cards are playable and core constructed.
It starts to get to that level. Right. You also don't need to keep the power creep, like the pedal to metal as hard on power creep to push out the older cards. Right. Cause like a couple of times, at least in magic, they've printed inherently weaker sets to reign the power creep back in of their standard or core thing to reign in where their R and D had gone. Absolutely. So I think that good positives there. I think they did, if they were going to make this choice,
I think that they did it the right way. Counter to that is the way that this was done seemed extraordinarily abrupt. And the ban is effective as of the day it was announced. As of time of recording, that's again the 8th of April 2025, there is no announced DLCs. World still has not gotten a firm date yet. So there's nothing going on at a higher level until our set championships
start in the very beginning of May. So I'm not really sure why we banned a card and made it effective that very day as opposed to waiting
a little bit to give us a chance to finish. up tournaments players are already obligated to at their local store level and be able to use their cards that they had just gotten i mean this isn't too many this is what two weeks after big box release big store release so we haven't had a lot of time to really play with the cards yet so maybe i just finally got my fourth tamatoa and uh yep got here in the mail and now i can put it right into my trade binder because i can't
play with it really or at least not yet till i figure out what what to play it in because the decks it was popular and now all kind of got shot pretty hard by the banning of these cards. Or you're a newer player that saw somebody playing like a Blue Red or a Blue Steel and was like, oh, that looks really cool. I've played other card games. I like how that deck operates and went online and ordered their Hirams to put this deck together and now they don't even have
a chance to play with those cards. Yep. Exactly. I can't finish it out at the tournament. I can't play it at my locals for at least the next couple of weeks to kind of give Hiram his... His send -off. His send -off, a proper kind of burial at sea. Now it's just abruptly like, take it out of your deck because you can't play with it at all. Because even Bucky's errata wasn't effective immediately. No, it was not. We got
to run out. As a longtime Blue -Red, Blue Steel player, I would like to have another week of
playing with my Hirams. draw my last couple of cards off of them and then hope that they come back one day in the future yeah exactly i think there's just a little bit more of an elegant way to do it i think that communication in general we've talked about in the past needs an upgrade pretty dramatically especially from the game design team and the organized play folks i think that having that idea of hey there are cards we're aware of what this new tamatoa has created
in terms of a play pattern that's very oppressive we're keeping an eye on it there are other cards we're watching watching closely as well. So we will let you guys know if we feel like we need to move towards this decision would be at least encouraging to know like, okay, I need to be careful about how much of my time and money I'm investing in certain strategies that might not be viable in a couple of weeks, but just to go, hey, all right, I got my cards. I can't use them
now. is pretty rough especially something like Hiram like if I just wanted to finish up foiling my cool new deck now all of a sudden that spikes the price right like Hiram's down to an all -time low so if you picked up the foils when it spiked you're gonna lose a lot of money and that's tough I mean I understand that it's a risk you take with a luxury hobby like trading cards but it still just creates a feels bad that could have been mitigated at least partially by letting
this breathe a little bit more you also run the risk of losing a bunch of like your player base if they're newer to the game that liked a thing it's like oh i just got into the game i spent this money i liked this thing i can't do this thing anymore how often do they do this right it creates a lot of especially in a new game it's just like oh this is our first set of bands it's not the first time a card's kind of been taken out of the game but if this is happening
this much happening Every was a set seven that just came out. So we've had it happen twice now in seven sets. So, I mean, that's not ridiculous by any stretch traded bands are, I want to go on record and say, I do think bands can be healthy to keep a game fun and interesting. Absolutely. But I think that while they, I think made the best choice possible here, it feels like they made it in the worst possible fashion by just putting out a lack of explanatory text in the
article. There are also other websites covering this news that knew about this ahead of time. So it just feels like we kind of – us as the players, the ones keeping the game alive, we're the last ones to know. And that also creates a little bit of a feels bad. Like we're just all stuck left going, what? Yeah. Right. Yeah, I think – This could have been, even if they announced it today and said this is going to be effective starting store champs. Because some
people, we have a tournament this weekend. It's in four days. And we have to figure out what we're playing now. Right. A lot of us have already invested. Like if you're in an event in the next week or two, you've paid the entry fee to get in most likely. Because a lot of times stores will give you a little bit of a discount for registering ahead of time. But now you're invested. So you can't just be like, well, I'll just lose out on that money. And some people only have
one deck. We are fortunate enough that we can put together another deck, but some people can't, so what are they going to do for the four days that they have to gather something? We're also fortunate that we have a team, so we got to test and hone what deck we wanted and cater it, whereas if you're just by yourself and you only play blue, red, or blue steel... You're in a world of trouble trying to figure out what you want to do for the event that you now have in four
days to figure out what to do. Yeah, and you better hope you have the cards for it. Right. It really puts people in a difficult pinch for, again, no real reason with zero DLCs and zero large events announced. Again, the next one being Store Champs, which is multiple weeks away. So it's like, why not just wait a little bit and then have at it? Right. This is very, very strange.
Also, to kind of dovetail from the lack of explanatory text in the announcement article, they kind of offset that with a live Q &A with Steve Warner, which I think is a really cool idea. Why not speak directly to one of the game designers? I think that's an amazing thing, and I do sincerely hope that they keep doing those kinds of things.
But I think part of the issue is... When you're doing this live back and forth right now, they're holding it over Discord, and it's kind of a textual back and forth where people are throwing up questions. They're cherry -picking what questions they want to answer and then answering it. Because we're seeing this in real time, the questions they're picking and the answers in some cases end up being a little cryptic, and it can leave more than the intended response as the actual answer.
You can read into it, and I'm sure that's not the goal. They're trying to provide a surface -level bit of comfort to the player base. But when you're saying things like, we're pretty sure, we're not being able to back up a lot of what you're saying with actual data because we haven't run a DLC since last year, there are a lot of concerns when it's players like myself who go, okay, well, what percentage of the people were playing this deck? What percentage was this
deck converting? What is your major concern and what are you basing it on? And otherwise, we're hearing things like, we're pretty sure. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't want people to lose out on being able to enjoy the hobby because you are pretty sure. You also have the issue with it being in text of if your opinions are one way about something, how you read something.
may be different than how sam reads it or how you read it right somebody else like oh i read it this way it's like oh this is great or like well i read it as this so there's like a lot of ambiguousness to their vague answers to things which is just like doubling down on like the messy can like the messy communication absolutely again i will second you that i want them to keep doing stuff like this because they need some kind of outreach and communication on stuff which
has been effectively none yes through The majority of the lifespan of the game. Correct. So even like, while this is like a messy, odd feeling, like approach to it, I appreciate that they're trying something. Agreed. Sam, anything you want to add about this? No, I agree. Awesome. So let's kind of look at how we're, where are we moving to from here? Like, what are we going to do? The cards are now band effective today. For me, in terms of the cards themselves, it impacts
me personally very little. I was not the best blue player. I was not a blue enjoyer. It's just not my style in this game, which is weird because very much controlling decks are my style in Magic. But in this game, there's no counterspell. So I just feel like I'm out of control in my control deck. But for me, I do think that this takes away a huge pillar of the format. So aggro decks often are going to get checked by the midrange decks, and the midrange decks are going to get
checked by the control decks. So... now the two best control decks in the current meta have gone away. So we're missing a pillar of the gaming experience to keep the game in check. So it becomes a, oh crap, what do I do now? And is the deck that I was currently playing still worth playing because it was designed with these two control decks existing very much in mind? Or should I swap things around? How should it work? So we're
missing this huge segment of the metagame. So for me, it becomes a question of what then becomes the best deck. But now, in absence of that, I think that we end up seeing something like Ruby Amethyst come back to the forefront as the controlling deck, right? It was the other B prep deck, so it makes sense that it is kind of the other controlling deck. I think we'll start to see that reemerge. I don't know in what form or fashion. I do think they have to be cognizant of the amount of discard
that's going to be running around. Because, again, without the controlling decks to really have a powerful card to counteract the discard decks. They can run a little bit more rough shot across the format than they were. And I think that the aggro decks might be in a little bit of trouble because the mid -range decks are going to be able to unquestionably pick them apart without
anything to really control them. So it feels like it's going to be very much a mid -range kind of meta, at least in the very immediate future. Cliff, what do you think? I think specifically the Ruby Amethyst deck, how it plays in this
game, it's the biggest mid -range deck. That due to purple's inherent just incidental lore gain and card draw advantage, and then all the locations that draw cards and getting the removal of red, it can easily transition into the, okay, I'll just play one turn slower than I would normally
play, and now I'm control deck. So I think where Lurkana's a little bit different than Magic with the aggro midrange control is I don't think there's truly control in the sense that you're just stopping your opponent from doing everything because there's
no cross -turn interaction. exactly you can't sit there and legitimately do nothing like where the control decks your opponent would just in magic would in general concede when they've lost lorcano there's no reason to concede because there's nothing to do on your opponent's turn so if you're at 19 you just need to draw that one cost guy that quests for one and you you win because you're not trying to attack through something or into something or being stopped
with that so the control deck mid -range deck is kind of like muddy waters but like ruby i don't see how it's not just the best deck again That's fair. Because red, blue, and blue steel have gotten so fast with some of the tools they've gotten to where they could compete on the raw card advantage that purple -red had to make those matchups closer to 50. Because a couple sets ago, what, blue -red was 10%, 15 % to beat red -purple? Yeah. You know, it's probably closer
to 50 -50 or blue -red favored. So with that gone, like, what is there to stop it? Right. Yeah. Steel Song was definitely held in check by the blue -red decks. They completely, like it was one of the most, in any trading card game, one of the most imbalanced matches I've ever played was when I was playing Steel Song and I had to play against the Ruby Sapphire decks.
It's just like, how do I even, like it just feels like, like the strategy we were taking was either dump my hand immediately and not wheel and hope that the red -blue deck didn't have it or wheel. to the perfect ability to mill the red -blue player out. Yeah, you needed your wheel to never hit a wheel. Exactly. And you needed your blue -red opponent to not realize that you were on the I'm -going -to -deck -you plan and draw one or two too many cards off whatever they were
drawing cards off of. Exactly. Sam, what do you think is going to come to prevalence now that we're lacking the big, slower at least, or the mid -rangiest of mid -range? Yeah, I think what you said, it's going to completely change the whole meta. Like even people who don't play these cards, it's going to change a lot because different decks are going to be better and other decks are going to be worse. And I think like us as a whole, we just have to figure out what's the
best deck now. I think the first week that there's a tournament anywhere, you'll see five or six different decks being played. They'll probably be all about 20 -ish percent of the field. And then by week two or three, like store champs, there will be one deck that is 50 % of the field again. I mean, my guess is that we're going to
see the discard decks running. wild again sure and that'll end up being 50 67 percent of the field again and then we'd end up just back where we are yesterday what do we ban next or yeah we go exactly what i think i think sam's correct in the immediate future i think close correct in the like four weeks ban is where the discard decks become really good they check all of the aggro decks and then the ruby amethyst decks come to prevalence because they play so well
against the discard decks because you can just ignore what they're doing and just play maleficent on three rabbit on four pick up my rabbit and you just you can't run them out of cards it's extremely difficult to run them out of cards in the discard decks and then they just become the the tour de force for the slowest most controlling version of the deck possible and they have library which is unkillable yes and endless card draw
yeah It's very good. And we could even see the resurgence of things like Queen's Castle because you're not forcing Maui down ahead of schedule anymore, right? Like, it is legitimately hard for me to imagine a world without Hiram Flaversham. Like, legitimately. I don't remember that. Before Hiram Flaversham, we were magic mirroring at each other because it was first chapter. So that was what we were doing. Blue Red, I don't even
think was a deck. Blue Red was not a deck. You were trying very hard to play Blue Red in first chapter. I was. Trying really hard to play Bell into Maleficent Dragon. Yep. But it just wasn't a deck until set two. And then Hiram and Popsicle came out. And Nick Wilde. And Nick Wilde. And defined what the meta really became. And that deck stuck. But I mean, Red Purple stuck in there for a while too, right? Because it got mini. And we've seen this evolution of the game over
time. And Hiram decks have always been a pillar because they were A. Synergy and card draw engine in one color. Every color pretty much has access to a card draw engine. Are they as potent as Hiram? Yes, until Tamatoa 6, Happy as a Clam came out and then created the ability to be hyper Nick Wilde. Right. And in a turn sequence that
just slotted right in. Like, okay, I played Hiram on three, something else, and then I played Tamatella on five, get back two Popsicles, which turn immediately into multiple more draw threes because of Hiram. It's just crazy. Even if you only got one Popsicle back, it was very good. Yes. It was just so good. If Hiram was sitting there ready to eat a Popsicle... it is crazy hard to come back from how powerful that play pattern is. It just was, and I think
that's what kicked it over the edge. Do I think that it's kind of unfair that the banhammer fell on Hiram? Yeah, a little bit. I wouldn't have necessarily pegged that myself as the card that was creating the problem, but I do think that... They realize that this play pattern is oppressive, and it is. Is it oppressive enough to ban? I just don't think we've had enough time with the six -drop Tamatoa yet to really indicate if there's a way to play around this or not. The deck lacks
discard pile interaction. Could that have helped answer the question? Of course. Could there have been a character that came in and then did something with the discard pile? Of course. Did we see Hiram in existence with Tamatoa long enough for that to become something? No. Right, if they printed a card that was put an item from your opponent's, put an item from a discard pile into somebody's deck or on the bottom of the deck.
On the bottom. Ooh, we've seen on the bottom technology with Under the Sea, so that exists. We were talking about this last night, like being able to more easily take cards out of the discard pile to help combat the strength of Tamantoa. If they don't want to create like an exile or like entirely gone from the game zone, this game does not have enough search your deck for a thing. To where putting stuff on the bottom doesn't effectively make it disappear forever. That's
right. So I do think that there are ways to print cards in the future to help mitigate this. Or other, just other very strong engines in the game that will inevitably come up. I just think we need a little bit of time to play with them to find out. This feels very... pandering to people who don't want to come up with an answer. They just want the problem answered. And the simplest way is to kind of go tell mom and dad that this mouse is being very unfair to me. Yeah.
So I'm going to call it there for this episode. However, we are going to release a bonus episode because there's a lot to talk about. Cliff has still got a lot of things to shake his fist at, and there's still a ton of. talking points within this topic to really dive into. But we wanted to bring you something that fit into the episode format and kind of let you know you're not alone. If you're happy to an extent, I guess you have me as your proxy. If you're really ticked off
about this, you have Cliff as your proxy. And if you're just kind of generally disheartened overall, you have Sam as your proxy. And we're all kind of coming at this from different angles, but we're all impacted by it the same way. It all is going to make an impact on the game we've been enjoying. And I just truly, truly hope that it is in fact a positive one and that no matter what they do, no matter how many changes they make, we get to still keep questing.