Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Lorkana podcast. My name's Max. And I'm Sam. For this episode, episode 40, Sam, I have bad news. What is it? We lost the die roll. Oh no. We are going to have to go second in this game. This is our on the draw episode. We are going to talk over some things that change when you are not the one going first during a game of
Disney Lurkana. So we're going to start off by talking about ways to randomize this, how you should be altering your hand, talking about what cards get worse when you're going second and what cards get better when you're going second and help get you back into a game when you are behind on tempo. going to go over all of that on this episode. Talking about ways to randomize going first, typically you're going to roll 2d6 and usually... the high roll will go first. Some
people do not like this. There is some contention around rolling dice for high or low roll. Sam, have you had to do anything differently than high or low roll yet while you've been playing Lurkana? I haven't had to do anything differently, but I did hear somebody joking around last weekend, do rock, paper, scissors. Rock, paper, scissors. In other games, there are cards that they've
printed that kind of let you like pick one. There's like magic has paper tiger, scissors lizard, and rock lobster, and you can pick one and then whatever one wins. can go first. Very common amongst people, if you're not going to high roll or low roll, is one person will roll the dice, the other person will call odds or evens. If you call it correctly, you go first. If you call it wrong, the player who rolled the dice gets to go first. This is generally used for a couple
of reasons. One, it prevents re -rolling, which is a minimal thing, but it can eat up a little bit of time. If you're both on slower matches and you both chit -chat for a minute, be polite, then you both roll, oh, both got a seven. re -roll again. Oh, both got a nine. And now all of a sudden between our pleasantries and the die roll, we've eaten up a minute or two of our time clock, which can be the difference between winning and drawing a game. So important thing
to think about. The odd even helps prevent that. It also is just one set of dice that are being rolled and the person rolling them cannot predict what you're going to call. So it prevents the concept of a quote loaded dice. Much cleaner, much easier. It cleans things up. pretty nicely. I've done an Otter even, I think, twice playing Lurkana, but much more playing Magic just because I've played much more Magic. The important thing
is, is that it's fair and it's random. Moving on to altering your hand when it comes to being on the draw. Sam, what do you think about when you're altering your hand? Especially depending on what deck I'm playing. I think there are decks that you definitely need some specific cards when you're on the play versus on the draw. So I think... I look for more cards that we'll discuss later that do better on the draws to help you get back into the game, to help alleviate that
play -draw discrepancy. That makes sense. So what you're saying is cards that help you come back from behind, cards that add tempo or add... board presence are generally cards in a very general sense that you want to keep. You'll have two different game plans. One will be a sacrificing a little bit of your deck's quote -unquote game plan to keep cards that will stop your opponent from enacting their game plan. So that's really important. A good example of this can be found
in the Emerald color. There's a significant difference between on the play wanting a Cursed Merfolk and on the draw electing to either skip your one drop altogether or play something like the one drop diablo obedient raven so that when it gets banished you draw a card so bare minimum you're not losing too much also people do elect sometimes on the draw to play something like little baby pegasus so that it's evasive and it's more of a chance it doesn't get knocked
out by the opponent's first character play of the game so those are things that definitely both only quest for one they're far less powerful than something like curse merfolk but if your opponent is playing amber steel for example and They lead on Cinderella and you just lose your
merfolk. That's a huge tempo loss versus where if you at least are losing Diablo, you're drawing a card or you're skipping your one drop altogether, conceding the fact that you're not going to be the aggressive player this game and you are going to instead elect to play two one drops maybe on turn two. That's one of my favorite things to do is play two one drops on turn two when I'm on the draw. Absolutely. Or you can scan their hand with an Ursula, see what's going on.
And then your follow -up could be something like
Flynn. rider charming rogue plus that curse merfolk plus that diablo there are a lot of options for changing your game plan around right certain cards definitely become better certain cards definitely become worse other decks don't have a great way to navigate they're not as fluid amethyst you'll see a lot of fluidity in emerald decks tend to see that fluidity as well where you're kind of changing your game plan completely cards like ursula deceiver cards like we mentioned
a moment ago curse merfolk versus something a little bit more flexible tend to make your game plan a little bit less proactive and more reactive some decks don't have that ability some decks like that are more hyper aggressively strategizing will lean into you know what i'm just going to maximize pressure so that same amber steel deck while it might want cinderella on the play for example might lean on something like daisy duck donald's date on the draw because it's just a
more aggressive card I'm just going to make my opponent figure it out. So there's kind of two general ways to play that, right? Like some decks just can't eschew their really good opening line. Their opening lines are just some of the strongest in the game. We see this a lot with the Sapphire decks. They want to ramp on two, whether they're on the play or on the draw. I would dare say maybe a smidge more on the draw because they
definitely want to stay in the game. Sometimes you're on a deck where you just can't afford to mitigate those things. You could just have to go for the best possible assemblage of cards that you can play. Like these are the strongest cards. This is the best opening line. I just want it as close to 100 % of the time as possible, irrespective of if I'm on the play or on the draw. So it's really about practicing, right? We talk about this constantly testing on the
podcast. You have to figure out what the heck of the deck is supposed to be doing. It's taken a lot of people a lot of time and testing to understand when you're playing on the draw, you want this. grouping of cards or you want to go with this particular curve versus when you're on the play, you want to do something maybe a little bit more ideal or a little bit more proactive.
Depends on the deck. So you really have to think it through and also kind of snowballs if you know what your opponent's playing or not when you're on the draw. If you don't know and you're just in the blind, I have no idea what they are doing. You can make a guess. You can try to double down. I have definitely taken the I'm going to guess what my opponent is on and been so far
from correct and punished because of it. I will rarely lean heavily into my intuition or just like basing it on what I've seen this person play in the past. But sometimes when you see the local crew and you're like, okay, this person's a blue red player. I'm going to try to keep as if they're playing blue red and they're like, no, never mind. I'm actually on like purple,
amber, hyper aggro. And you're just like, oh no, things have gone terribly for me because I have kept cards that are better in a late game.
It can happen. trying to make your best guess and this is these are all reasons why when you add it all up we tend to see that what sam described earlier is that play draw discrepancy when you get percentage points for being on the play because lorikana is so predicated on your opening moves in a similar fashion to chess the opening stages of the game are very critical to trying to set up the mid and late games so not knowing what's going on it forces you to do the most either
thin spinning or kind of diluting your hand, where it's like, I'll keep a couple of things that are good and hope that I draw more of those things as the game progresses, but I'll keep one or two things that help me early, one or two things that if they're a slower deck I can play, and I'll just ink appropriately. Essentially like keeping five real cards and conceding the fact that I'll be inking two of these cards in whatever direction my opponent is playing. That's
a strategy as well. There's a lot of thought that goes into it, and I think the more mid -range your strategy is, the more you're stuck trying to figure out how the heck do I mulligan for the best chance of winning when I am on the draw. So let's talk a little bit about that. Some cards in each ink identity that lose a little bit of advantage when you're on the draw. We'll start with Amber. We already mentioned one of them
at Cinderella. Ballroom Sensation. Cinderella is almost, if not one of the best singular cards, not counting a Diablo shift, not counting a bell off of a powerful opening cards you can play. Just one singular cardboard rectangle. She represents a litany of disastrous things that can happen to you. You either have to call your opponent and hope that they were bluffing, but if you're
wrong, you're in trouble. Or if you're too scared to put something on the board, they just get to quest and you eventually know you're going to have to call them. But you'd like to do it maybe in a spot that's a little bit more advantageous for you to kind of pick that battle. Either like we said earlier, you skip your turn one play
or you play cards that will survive. her singing a three cost song right sometimes you'll elect to build your deck in such a way that you're playing a heavier amount of one threes for one because you want to survive that first initial let the storm rage on shot so you'll see this when emerald steel or amber steel are heavier players in the meta card like cinderella definitely has the hallmarks of that and similarly i guess on the other side of the amber coin is something
like lilo making a wish insanely powerful because you know you're going to get a quest off most of the time before Lilo gets answered. And if your opponent doesn't have that one drop, you might even be able to get two quests off with that Lilo, which is backbreaking. The odds of you being able to quest more than once with that
Lilo, you may not be able to quest at all. If that Lilo comes out, if the only one drop in your hand and your opponent plays Cinderella and passes, you're like, oh no, oh no. What do I do now? It's not even inkable. Right. It's not inkable. Like you just throw it down and close your eyes and just hope that you're not just wasting an entire card for essentially half of a card, right? Because let the storm rage
on. will replace itself so that's kind of a disaster put you way behind both in terms of cards in hand the opponents evened out cards with you being on the play and you haven't gotten to leverage those cards using the best advantage of the extra card you were drawn so That's a disaster. Amethyst. We see kind of two cards that are very similar on this list. Chernabog's Followers and, of course,
the Magic Broom. They both, again, suffer from the same problem where if they get put down, they may not get to do their cantrip where you don't get to replace them with a card, which can be really rough sometimes on the draw. However, you can leverage these cards a little bit because you're not leaning as hard on them to draw you a card. Sometimes you can just be like, you know
what? I'm going to smash with my Chernabog. followers because I don't care I'm already up a card my opponent's down a card so I'm willing to go one for one trade because remember if I'm in eight cards because I went second my opponent's on seven cards because they went first and we trade one for one I'm still up a card in the scenario where let the storm rage on comes down I'm no longer up that card I've now conceded that card to my opponent they not only got to resource
and add to the board first they also are now at card parity with me and that is a disaster I need to do everything I can to make that card count, right? I need that card to help get me back into the game. That's why you draw typically in trading card games when you go second. Emerald, we talked a lot about these already. Curse Merfolk and Ursula, Deceiver of All, both cards that when you play it on time behind, you risk your opponent having a card that can just immediately
answer them and let them do nothing. And that, again, is the hallmark of a disaster. And you'll note a lot of these cards have the similar problem of they come down and don't do anything. Flynn Rider, frenemy. We don't even see Flynn Rider getting played right now because it's such a disaster against the steal strategies. I play Cinderella, pass. I play Flynn Rider, pass. Sing the song, damn. I've lost all kinds of advantage.
We see this in Sapphire with McDuck Manor. This card, oftentimes, you're not going to be able to just slam it down on four if your opponent is a little slower because they're, again, they've got an add to the board. first. You can use it certainly to buy yourself a turn or two to try to get back into the game and force them to exchange essentially some quests and give up lore advantage to try to take out your manor. So I'm not saying it's awful. I just think it is a slight step
worse on the draw. And then in steel, we have good old one drop captain hook forceful duelist. Looks great when you're on the play, but on the draw, sometimes just like goodie, my opponent can answer this and still quest or they can just set up to it. ignore it, or respond to it, where if they lose the unit, they can immediately just take it out very easily with something like a
Calhoun, for example. So these cards tend to lose you that advantage, giving the opponent the chance to take down an entire card from you without necessarily giving up a card on their own, which means that, again, you've lost the advantage of drawing an extra card. And when that happens, your opponent is now entirely advantaged because they got to ink and play cards first.
They always are wanting. up on you. Obviously, towards the mid and late game, they might not be inking every turn, but in the early stages of the game in Lurkan, at least the first three turns, typically, we're going to see a player inking in order to play cards. It's bad if they don't. Right. Something's gone disastrously wrong, or I don't know what kind of strategy they're playing, if that's intentional there, but you
never know. So let's flip the script a little bit and talk about cards that get us back into the game in these colors. So let's talk first about Amber. Amber has seen an uptick recently, right? Got a couple new cards. In the set eight.
meta it's definitely seen more popularity especially the non whole new world variants than we've ever seen before and it's no surprise that two of the best cards for amber on the play are on the draw to get back into the game something like rhino we've seen rhino now just define the on the draw line of playing the 116th wolf into the power hamster crazy just crazy powerful and then lady family dog being able to just dump your hand before they can start to leverage discard
just forcing you to add more units to the board quickly than your opponent can answer. So you get to respond very quickly and kind of lessen that tempo advantage. And of course, we have Daisy Duck, one of the best cards for Amber on the draw because of those stats. Even giving your opponent extra cards, right? Again, we talked about how bad it is to give up card advantage. Daisy's so powerful that it's like, yeah, I'll give up card advantage for 6 -8 lore. No problem.
Amethyst has some cards that all look very similar. I can tell you they all cost three. You probably have already thought of them. We have Madam M. Fox, of course. And she wouldn't be complete without her best buddy in crime. Merlin Crabbe. And adding to the menagerie on terrible things you can see out of Amethyst on three has become Peter Pan, Shadowfinder. The blight of anyone who does not play many evasives in their deck, where this card can just shoot you from the skies.
Meanwhile, just singing friends on the other side, thumbing their nose at you. Easily take out a Diablo. Takes out Diablos. It gives gigantic four drops the ability to come rushing in and
answer. board it just it so cleanly answers so many things and in concert with things like crab it just gets even worse even quicker emerald we have wrong lever of course this card has become the blight of many people who want to answer things with non -rush evasive characters if you're playing diabolos we've seen this in a lot of the emerald amethyst strategies whether you're playing tempo or you're playing the diablo style discard deck the new comer to the party as well
lewis our favorite crocodile buddy, coming in, giving something reckless and usually just devouring it in the process or making them jump through hoops to not lose that and then taking more time, which gives you more setup. And then, of course, we have everybody's favorite two -dropping in Emerald, which is Ursula Deceiver. Just happy taking cards out of an opponent's hand who has less cards to begin with is always really nice. So there's some strong ones there. Ruby, of course,
the three -drop Sisu that comes down. is evasive and can take care of something with one or less strength. That's a great way to take care of something. The following turn, hit something in the air with like a pump from a vitalosphere or in two turns or less shift into the empowered sibling and just wipe the opponent's board completely. Since the beginning of the game, the very first chapter, we of course have Maui, hero to all. This card just comes down and can usually take
two to three cards with it. No problem. And of course, not too dissimilar, the Blight of everybody who has an opponent at 18. Super Goof coming down and challenging and gaining two lore. These are ways to get back into a game effectively and keep a body on board. Drop your opponent down one. So all very strong. In Sapphire, we talked about this earlier. We have Teepo and Sail being the two drop rampers that help you
get ahead going from two to four. Powerful. The context that Blurple is founded on is going from two to four. It's just the strength. of that strategy. A newcomer to the party, Bell, Apprentice Inventor, just a blight to anybody who has small characters acting like a giant roadblock or a fine singer. So both of those very, very good on the draw to help get you back into a game. And Steel, no slouch when it comes to these cards either. We of course have the Deadly Calhoun.
We've talked about that card already. We have kind of related in the Amethyst Steel world, we have the Giant Cobra that can really help. Gigantic. body that comes down ahead of schedule and puts you ahead on lore. Oof. And takes advantage
of the extra card you have in hand. Yes. And I think the card, and I saved this to the end intentionally, is kind of a card that ties the whole discussion together is underplayed right now but might see a tick up in play because i do believe it doesn't rotate is steel action twin fire so this is a two cost unankable action that deals two damage to a chosen character or if you also choose to discard a card it deals two damage to a different chosen character. So
on the play, you can shoot one thing. Likely that would be the case, right? You're just only
going to need to shoot one thing. But on the draw, you can take your opponent's board from two characters to none through utilizing that gasp extra card that we got for going second so that is a really huge benefit that twin fire gets and i think that this card is kind of a good way to think about a card that helps you on the draw and it's most stripped down sense it really just lets you leverage a card that you have that's extra so it puts you at parity
and can put your opponent down two cards on board so now you've gone down two cards to make your opponent go down cards and now they have lost as strong of a board advantage and you maybe discarded a card that was irrelevant in the matchup or wasn't going to be an impact until much later in the game. Just an uninkable that was clogging up your hand. We've all had those double dock
hands, right? Just lets you leverage and get through some of the chuff in your deck in a really effective way and can help you again turn what is an overwhelming board early into a parity state just off the back of one card leveraging that card. Definitely all awesome cards. I just want to give a shout out to our awesome community on Discord who gave us a lot of these suggestions. We really appreciate it. Honorable mentions are
the beloved Sticky Mickey, hard to remove. Everybody's favorite Bumbling Mate, Mr. Smee, just one of the best two drops of all time. Any 1 -3 we haven't previously called out. And Kit Cloudkicker, tough guy. So those cards all feel pretty good on the draw. Cloudkicker is insane on the play. if you're playing Amethyst, Emerald Tempo, but is fine
enough. on the draw, right? Delay that Diablo long enough, you can get a genie down and then answer the Diablo permanently is a great strategy to deal with something in a color combination that doesn't have direct answers, I guess up until wrong lever, because goodness, that's a
real card. So these cards get your opponent to slow the game down a little bit while you generally can add to the board and keep things on board or leverage the cards to keep your opponent down or controlled on resources and then allow you to kind of ratchet. momentum back and start to take over the game which will allow you to win the game by this simple premise. Keep questing.