Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Larkana podcast. My name is Max. I'm Sam. And we have a guest. Cliff. Cliff got back in. I did. He snuck back in. Back door. He was hanging out with us and he just stayed. I did. We didn't notice. But he is here and we are excited because there's a bunch of new information coming out. of the world's broadcast that just happened this past weekend at time of recordings at the very end of June here. And we are talking all about
it. First and foremost, thank you for listening. And a big congratulations to the first ever Lorkana champion, DKP himself. The hardest working individual in the Lorkana space. Just constantly grinding, grinding, grinding. You'll never see more grinding
on a Maui half shark in your entire life. hot it is this is a children's game this is a children's game what did i say that wasn't child appropriate sam grinding oh i see all right no more grinding but dkp way to grind moving on from the world's coverage we have news and that's what we're really excited about right we're news we're not world champions we are not none of us are dkp correct but we would like to be dkp in as much as we want to win a championship correct So new information
was announced about all of the Disney Lurkana challenges, with many of them including dates and specific locations, which is particularly exciting. I'm going to run through a quick list. Obviously, this information is available, which in and of itself is good news. Yes. And we're having three of these in North America, three in the EU, two in Brazil, two in Japan, three in China, one in Australia, along with a challenge qualifier event. two, we believe, in Southeast
Asia. Pretty exciting. That is a lot. 16 Disney Larkana Challenge events across the world and some places that have never had them before. Yes. So more people getting more access to this really, really fun game. So we're excited about that. Some other changes that came up and feel free to jump in because I only have a few listed here. One of the big ones is possibly one of the most exciting is the format has changed for
all the Disney Larkana. challenges it is now best of three matches thank god and the finals i think is it from the 32 cut up or is it higher than that where we go five just finals just finals just the last two is best of five yeah And he can appreciate that, I think, more than us since he's had to experience it. Playing best of five for the finals, I think, is the best way because then you don't lose because you had one bad draw. Right. Luck becomes less of a factor. Correct.
Which is really awesome. And the fact that we don't have to deal with the much maligned two game format. Which was horrendous. It just created so much in my very, very little experience with it. Left me with a feeling of emptiness. Like I just. don't know. Like a lot of one ones where I just wasn't sure. It's not satisfying. There's no gratification of I won, and then there's no really letdown that I lost. I know both of you helped me test for Vegas doing the two games.
It feels really bad that at the end of round two, you have two points and are effectively dead for the day. Yes. You didn't lose a round, but you're out. But yeah, you didn't do enough because that winning two with the extra points was so big in determining if you could proceed into the top cut. Three points for the 1 -1. Yeah, it's nuts. And seeing that change, knowing that Ravensburger has been listening to the community is a heartening thing. So I'm really happy that
that change was made. Yes. We are now a two -day format. So we are going to finish up our rounds, last four of the rounds, I believe. Eight rounds day one, four rounds day two with a top 32 cut. Correct. After that. That's a lot of Lorkana. Yes. So we're not missing out on any of the games because they really want us to play the Lorkana
games. Well, guess what? A lot of Lorkana. kind of games we played yeah feasibly you'll have to be 1002 yeah or 912 to like really be in like better standing yeah that's fair you want to win which hasn't changed right like that's still top 32 we don't yet know the size cap for these events at time of recording but obviously if we're talking about like something like a 5k and only 32 of those people can make it that's a very small percentage right so you've got to
be playing your best there's just no doubt about it and with it being 12 rounds before the top cut we can assume more than a 2000 player cap right we don't know that for fact no but Just from a previous gaming experience, we can assume that if you're playing 12 rounds, it's more than 2 ,000 players. Working on some calculations, right? Grinding them numbers. We can kind of figure out that this is approximately the world
we're living in, which is good. I mean, we've seen that at the size they were during season one, they were easy sellouts. Easy sellouts. So I'm hoping personally for something like a 5K main event. That would be lovely. Now we're questioning, can we sell that out? Sure. Less DLCs overall is kind of the downside to that, but it also means that there's a higher chance that these things will sell out at a much larger cap. Right. But we, on the bright side, we know
more than 40 days in advance. One of the biggest difficulties in terms of season one was short notice to make a lot of very important adult decisions on deciding travel, lodging. Being able to take the time off from work. Being able to take the time away from family. Transporting the entire family. Things that are very difficult, not easy to do on a 40 -ish day notice. Even saving up money for it. Right. Like just things that you can't do when you just have limited.
A month and a half. Yeah. I mean, I talked about it, I think, when we did my Vegas recap. I had everything booked for Vegas before I even knew I was in. Yes. Flight, hotel, everything. Sam and I did not get tickets, but we had a hotel.
hotel before we found out we weren't getting tickets yeah like just because you wanted to be able to get things before theoretically they went up because of the extra couple thousand people buying in right and know that you're able to go i think we kept the hotel room for a month because you were on the waiting list yeah yes we were hopes that we would get there absolutely for One of the events, I mean, I'm going to jump a little out of order. I apologize. We know an
event in June of next year. You're on actually in order that we have dates for many of these events. EU, NA have event dates. Some of the other places are still TBD, but they're getting their first ever ones. And I'm hoping that they're continue to give them as much notice as possible. Right. Because we're going to have different groups, right? Different companies handling a lot of the tournament organization. And Ravensburger's never done that in those countries. So I'm not
trying to defend them. too, too much. Goodness knows I give them guff from time to time when they need it. But I think that the fact that they're talking about these, they're planning these, they've laid them all out. We know approximately what the season's going to look like. Be a little bit mushed this time because of how late things got pushed from season one. We're working our
way through. It feels like season two very much is a, if we can hold through this year, we're going to see what in season three Ravensburger really has planned for the scope and the breadth of their organized play. The real idea. Yep. We're going to see what the full beast is right now. It seems like we're getting pieces of it and we're getting a lot of decisions that are
made because there's so much. pressure in terms of time and lack of resources which is okay hey we're getting something it's better than nothing i'm hoping i can do one this season which is more than we got to do last season because of the weird lottery style admission so i'm just hoping that even if i can't play in the main event i'm still allowed to go connect with other enjoyers of this game and experience a dlc for the first time it does look like it'll be like
that just knowing how past times which is the to for north america runs things they've already posted that badges will be coming on sale so it's not like a main event ticket right so there'll be different badges and in general like a badges system for magic it's like your baseline badge gets you into the main event and allows you to be in the venue generally different tiers to give you Maybe a couple extra prize wall tickets or access to some side events or like a special
lanyard or like random. Playmat, water bottle. Yeah, some tchotchke of some sort to help justify the extra cost. Yes, I love when they offer the VIP room as one of my favorites. It's usually just a room with a couch in it. It's a couch room with water cooler in it so you can fill your tchotchke and that's it. And that's it. Yeah. Love that. Yeah. I'm happy to see that Eventbrite is probably no longer in the picture.
sure it does seem like that yes yeah yeah time of recording it seems like past times past times like cliff said handles a lot of different card games including match the gathering so they are no stranger to events of this size and making sure that and i'm sure ravensburg are still feeling the sting from the community over how season one went in terms of the amount of people that wanted to go to a dlc versus the amount of people who actually were able to attend a dlc and like
i know there's a lot of current fan outrage online like about where the locations of the dlcs and the black of total amount of DLCs. But we have to remember that Ravensburger just hired a whole new team to help handle this stuff, what, two months ago? Three -ish, like two to three months ago. They haven't been in place that long. I'm generally a very cynical person. Max can attest to this, but I think in this case, we have to give them a little bit of leeway just to see
how this plays out. They've been more transparent than they ever were about anything. And we know about an event a year away. It's not that bad
to plan for an event 300 and... 60 days away as opposed to 40 ish yes it's a big change and also just in terms of last in season one we had six in north america but the largest one was a little over 2 000 people where if these caps are much larger 5 000 people for just the main event you're just about as many people who are allowed to participate in a dlc obviously that strongly diminishes your chances of performing at a high level at a because luck's a huge factor
you'd be the best player in the room but when there's that many players in the room you're going to draw bad every now and occasionally right you're going to make a suboptimal decision every now and again and it's going to get punished and that further punishes you when there's that many other illumineers in the room but at least everybody gets to register and play in a large volume which is exciting one of the other changes is how the prize cards are given out Yes. Per
win right now. Well, no, it's for participating. You get the Pegasus. The Pegasus. Prior to you had to wait until round three to get the Dragonfire. Right. And then it was top 128 got the Let It Go. Top 64 got one. 32. Yep. Stout hearted Rapunzel. Yeah. And the Playmat. And then. Yes. And then the Mickey. Yeah. But now it's after playing in round five, you get the Mulan. Yes. And then if you make top 32, you get the Simba. Yes. A
big deal, too. I think we're going to see the value of the Mulan be a lot less than the Letico was, but we're also going to see that Simba worth probably a little bit more than the Cinderella Stout -Hearted would have been, closer probably to something like a Rapunzel. And my other hope would be, since they're sticking with the prize wall, is... the amount of prize wall tickets you can earn for the main event. Yes. It was
a little frustrating. If you had to get to 30 points in the tournament to get 20 prize wall tickets, and that equated to just one of the promos. Right. You spent effectively an entire day to get less prizes than if you just ground out side events. Exactly. Like Olivia and I played in three side events, got first and second in each one, and in less than two hours got 1751 prize wall tickets in two hours. Right. I played an entire day for $20, and that was the most
tickets you could get. Right, exactly. Huge difference, and obviously the price difference. And also, that was at Vegas, when if you kind of roll back time to Atlanta, it was even worse. Where the really awesome Cinderella Stout -Hearted playmat was just basically unachievable without some shady dealings for other people's prize tickets. People going in together for it. Yeah, the thing that they said not to do. For all of the shortcomings, and a little bit of the ones we alluded to, I
will say that my hat is off to... Ravensburger for addressing so many of the previous issues already and we still have more information yet to come about some of these events and we're also in exciting news getting an infinity format DLC as one of these usually it's going to be the last one in the grouping if there's three if there's three the third if you have one will be an infinity format DLC which is really cool to see they've all pull back the previous we're
not sure but we think maybe we're gonna continue the band list from Core constructed into Infinity. We see that's kind of evaporated. Obviously, Bucky is the unfortunate receiver of all of the punishment, as that poor squirrel always will be. R .I .P. And now we do see that Hiram, Flabbersome, Toymaker, and Fortisphere are unbanned or will not be put on a banned list for Infinity at the start of the format. Obviously, data will change
things. From their conversation about it, it feels like they do have their crosshairs pointed firmly at Hiram. Yes. I feel like Fortisphere just was an unfair bystander to be banning. That blue steel deck was just operating on such a different axis than anything could answer that it just was, yeah, it was collateral damage. But it's at least nice to know that they're going
to have their own ban list. They've pointed out that they will remove things from a ban list because Hiram's not just starting on a ban list. Correct. Yeah, I think keeping your ban lists evergreen is a great thing to do because as games evolve, power level changes. So even though... Hiram is extremely powerful now. There might be a time far flung from now, a couple years from now, if they do end up adding him to the
banlist for infinity. Maybe he's not that bad and maybe he just is too expensive and too clunky for the game anymore. So he's very safe to unban or at least test unban. Right. Yeah. You pull him off the ban list and you see, oh, literally people are trying and it's actively bad. Yes. He's 100 % A -OK. Yep. Totally safe to do. So yeah, that's exciting that they're supporting the Infinity format and not just saying, hey, there's this other thing that you can do. It's
for side events. Yeah. Yeah. It's really nice that they're actually supporting it and you're seeing it in a large scale event and not just a side event. Yes. My fear was strongly because of the way they're rolling out the whole new world promos, the non -foils, that they were like, oh, we encourage the stores to do an infinity format, but we're not offering any additional prizing for it. It's like, oh, okay, this is just going to be hardcore swept under the rug.
But again, this is people, I can't emphasize this enough, one takeaway from this podcast episode, be patient. Wait and see before you start making leaps and assumptions and start. pouring out all of your strong guttural reactions on the internet for everybody else to see. Take a moment, compose yourself, think about what it is. Think about can this change over time or will this possibly change? And let me just take a breath,
take a night, take a sleep and figure out. how bad or good this is or what potential or maybe why this decision was made or what potential could come of it. We need to come together and try to work together to enact change. And I think we have done that effectively. And I think Ravensburger has been insanely receptive to it. But I think you need to conduct yourself in a manner that is respectful of Ravensburger the way they've respected our opinions. So just be patient. Let
them work. They have people now to help do these things. We're getting very quick responses, even
if the response is we are working on. it we have no further news at this time you're being acknowledged it's a lot more than proof before right it's light years better than it has been which means that they've been trying and that's at the end of the day the best thing they can be doing for us in the health of the game right like i can like even say like after doing vegas they asked everyone for like a recap or like thoughts and opinions on it like i got an email i filled out
a very very long and detailed issues things i was happy about and what does he change if when past times it announces milwaukee which is the first one as having a 5 000 player cap at a Right, exactly. We don't know how all of the tournament organizing went. We don't know how contracts were laid out. We don't know what obligations were made. We just don't know. So be thankful in a way that we have something at least to grab
onto in season two. And I do think that we're going to see more of what the The entirety is for their plan for organized play come the next season. Because like a worse thing could have been, hey, we're going to work on this, but season two is not happening until next year. You're going to have nine months of nothing continuing, like another nine months, and then we'll roll it out. We at least have like a stopgap kind of feeling. And that's sort of what this feels
like. Absolutely. It's an attempt, right? And there are other things we can see moving forward. We've been talking a lot about this since the announcement is the concept. of something like an event that will feed into a DLC or a way to gain points on your newly added Ravensburger Playhub account so that it can help you with things like maybe early round buys. Or we've seen now that challenge related events that are
happening. Ravensburger supported events. Are going to include, it seems like, compensation for travel and lodging, which is amazing. What is effectively an invite to the DLC. Yes. Travel and lodging. Crazy, right? Right. Even if it doesn't cover your whole flight and hotel, that's a massive weight off of somebody's back. Yes. That makes what was impossible likely to happen,
which is amazing. So seeing things like that happen at certain point levels, even if they don't want to buy into the system of buys, which I know the community is not always a fan of, I think that comes with over time you learn why buys are important and what buys can do. And I think that there is a value that can be added to events like locals or store champs that can echo. and push people to try to make these attempts
at a higher competitive level. And I think that any way you can encourage that amongst people who may be too nervous to want to do that otherwise is something to be encouraged. So I'd like to see what understructure can support this DLC moving forward. Are they just going to do more
of them? Or are they going to keep it to a smaller number, maybe a quarterly number or something in every region, but also create somewhat smaller events, something along the lines of what we see at the store level, at Charlie's Collectibles,
Southside, some of these great stores. supporting 100 to 200 player large scale events exactly stores are fronting all the prizes yes it costs ravensburger next to nothing to be like hey you can add an invite to upcoming dlcx yep and the winner gets a ticket in exactly it's free almost ostensibly for them to do this right so i'm hoping they do something like that because why not use the community that's been supporting the game these i will say every single time they bring
up the game they wholeheartedly thank these hobby stores and game stores that are supporting and keeping the game alive. They recognize that they truly are the heartbeat of Lurkana and they absolutely are. I want to believe that they will be supported in that way because it's such a small lift from Ravensburger because these stores are already doing a great job. World Class Cards, Charlie's Collectibles, Southside, all these places are just doing an insane job. Close to us, Safari
Zone definitely gets a shout out for this. Encounter Games, all these places just do a killer job already and being able to back them more and say, hey, we appreciate what you're doing here's a way we hope we can get more people into your store buying more off your shelves as a thank you man that's killer and that's what it's all about truly right i think it it would be cool to have an event slightly more competitive too than a store champs yes but still not the like
dlc level i feel like the store champs they rolled back the hyper competitiveness a little bit yes with the non -foil promos going to and that's fine everyone gets a cool looking card yep awesome like that is 100 needed so it's less feels bad if you're not top aiding or feeling like you have to top eight to get the thing you really want but i think the community also really wants a little bit more competitive because then maybe you have less people traveling for the store
champs yes so your store champs can stay a little more local And now you just have people more like, now I'm only really interested in traveling for these events that give me a invite to the huge event. Absolutely. There's great conversations to be had at the top tables at a store champs. If there's a point system, right? Where it's like, oh man, I need a few more points and I can get my travel for the next DLC. The other person goes, I have no intention of going to
DLC, but I need that play mat. So if you, I'll take the mat if you take the points. Right. Awesome. Yeah, let's do it. That's great. Everybody's walking away happy. There's no further. It's not like we're demanding more product. There's less cutting. up of top play mats because everybody truly is getting something they want. And that just really helps. And I can't imagine the lift
is too big from a tech side for a card .io to add a little section for points for us to track for all these events that we're playing and add something to locals. It just, it makes the people who are grinding and want to get better, who are investing time to do so, get something out
of it, which is huge. I think the other neat thing that like the buys or as we would refer to them, sleep in specials can get you is if somebody pro where like you're excited to see this person show up and start playing where like you showed up you you don't have the sleep and special but you three owed you're starting around three and you get paired against this pro that like you now you really want to see so it gives you a better opportunity like they don't have
to worry so much about losing around one or two because of bad draws or whatever so like it establishes the pro is like somebody to look up to and to chase yes as like a something that the game can provide absolutely you can be the professional right it helps so much in terms of making all of your games matter. but it helps promote getting out and playing the game more. It gets more people into game stores. If you want the game stores to support your game, support the game stores.
I think something like an understructure in a point system with a slightly larger style, regional, whatever you want to call it, that can help really feed into the DLCs, which feed into Nationals, which feed into Worlds, is such an elegant system. It's time -tested. We know other games have done this. It just works really well, and it does
look to me like Lorkana is moving. in that direction they tried to do something very different initially realized that's like you know what probably is a time -honored tradition amongst many games for a reason let's try to take our cool ideas and innovations but also let's try to be a little bit more traditional at the same time Yeah. So I'm excited. I think this was insane news. I couldn't have come away more positive about it. Do I wish there were other things as well? Absolutely.
Do I wish I had to look farther beyond the veil? Of course I do. Will I be patient and just continue to hope for the best and prepare for the worst? Yeah, I will. I'm no fool. It does feel like, and I think we talked about it a little bit yesterday, it feels like they're trying to move how the seasons line up. Yes. To where it feels like Worlds is going to end up ultimately being somewhere in November, December. Right. And then whatever
the next season is, we'll start in January. Like they want it to be just on the normal yearly calendar. Absolutely. Which makes sense. Yeah. And it's just easier for everyone. Right. You're home for the holidays. You're doing all that kind of stuff. So you get to just relax and watch people play the game, which is really cool. You can assume season three will start January of 27. Pretty exciting. Sam, what do you think as
a newer player to all this? It's the Cliff and I understand all this stuff and we kind of see the picture forming. How does this make you feel looking at it from a new player perspective? I'm excited. I'm excited at the chance that it seems like we'll actually be able to get into one of these DLCs. At least that's, you know, our hopes. So that's exciting. I wish there was a couple more in the North America that we could try to get to. But I'm happy with what we have.
And like you guys said, we'll wait and see and be hopeful. And you have time. Oh, yeah, definitely. It's nice. It's nice to be able to be like, oh, well, we're going to just try to go to Richmond in January. And we have six months to save up and plan and put in our PTO. Yeah, like I don't
have to. worry about it i can save up vacation time like i know i really want to play in the infinity one so i know i'm saving for indie really deep look behind the illumination veil is as soon as the news was announced on sunday sunday night all of us had our hotel booked right yeah so we were already ready for richmond ahead of that it's easy we paid a slight fee to be able to refund the make it refundable yeah make the hotel rooms refundable so it was a very small
cost if we don't end up being able to get tickets once we get tickets our plan will be making sure we affirm all our travel and put in our pto at work plenty of time and even like the shorter side like for myself i'm theoretically trying to get to milwaukee by the end of world i had flights a train from the airport to the place and a hotel already sorted out and was telling everyone how much it would cost to do what i was doing We're all really, really excited, which
I think, if nothing else, is an indicator that at least what they're doing is working for some of the player base, right? We're some of it. A very, very small percentage, but we're some of it. So I think that they're making a lot of positive decisions. They're making mistakes, but they're willing to go, hey, we recognize this mistake, and we don't intend to repeat that
mistake, which is the hallmark. And I know it's a little off topic, and I apologize for the moment on this, but they announced that they know they're going to be trying better for set champs cards. Yes. Making them ones that they assume the player. base will want more absolutely not just random card in set that's the first time i've heard you excited to jam a set champs i'm so ready for fabled yeah well yeah that maleficent matt i don't even know what the this one is This is
Jafar. Yeah, it is. It's the Jafar, you know, the High Lord of Lurkana. Sure, whatever. Is it High Lord? Is it Grand Illusionist? I don't know. Something like that. I don't know. I don't know. Who cares? I'm sorry, I'm a bad Lurkana player. I've literally, I don't even think, no, I didn't have it in any limited pool, so I've never played that card. I don't even know what it is. It costs five and it's uninkable. And a quest for three. High Sultan of Lurkana? High
Sultan of Lurkana. Okay. I'm the best of us. I just want Maleficent, the Grand Poobah of Lurkana. So I can stack four of them up to establish dominance. For myself, it's the first time I felt like happy or optimistic about where the game's going. They've had to take some steps back with things and it felt terrible, but it feels like they're actually trying to do the right thing by the player base. We just have to see it through. Could not agree more. Yep. So there's only one thing left to
do with all of these cards. We need to win a lot of these big events. Not deck out. We need to win a lot of these. Not deck out, but more importantly, we need to... Keep questing.