Hello and welcome back to Illumination, the Disney Lorcanah podcast. My name is Max and I'm Sam and we are here to talk to you this episode about tournaments. Now that Lorcanah has gotten the store championships, we're starting signups for challenger events. There's all kinds of things coming down the pipeline for Lorcanah in terms of a competitive scene. So we're actually getting some information directly from Ravensburger about it.
We're seeing tournament rules, comprehensive rules, we're seeing actual things start to gel and come together. We figure now would be a good time to talk through the concept of a tournament because it can be overwhelming. If you've never done a tournament, it's been a while since you've done a tournament, or if you just faced down another tournament right away. It's always daunting. It's always overwhelming. It's a big hurdle to climb. So it's probably worth talking about.
So what can you do to ready yourself for a tournament? I think it kind of breaks down to two steps. It's know the meta, right? That's step one. What are people playing? Even if you don't want to play an established meta deck, that's okay, but you should know what you're up against, right? If you have the secret sauce that beats the decks in the meta, awesome. That's terrific. That's exactly a mentality you should have. However, you also need to know that deck inside and out.
You need to have the understanding of fine tuning. What are the optimal plays within a turn? The optimal sequencing for you to use dependent upon what the opponent's doing. So obviously practice is really important.
Even if you're just practicing on your own and pretending they have out some number of random ghost characters, just to make sure you sequence things in the right order, like, oh, I could have gotten more information if I did that first or, oh, this actually ended up being a little suboptimal because I could have gained a lore there that I didn't this way. I could have done something instead of actually just paying for it. And I had enough left over at the end of my turn.
I could have just paid for it instead of exerting my character and putting it at risk. A lot of things that you have to know about your deck and understand about the lines of play and the play patterns that your deck presents to you. So what I'm trying to say in a nutshell is try not to audible at the very last second. And if you're a tournament player and you've been playing TCGs for a long time, you have done this. I have done this a lot.
You think there's some new deck or something flashy or something really cool. And you're just like, you know what? I'm going to abandon it. That's the other thing I've been practicing with. I'm just going to go for this new flashy good stuff. Try to avoid that. Give yourself time to practice. Make sure you understand what you're doing. Try to keep yourself ready to go for the tournament. That's truly the two big steps for the tournament. What do you think, Sam? You agree? I do agree.
I think you said it well. You know, you want to know your deck and you also want to know what decks the opponents are going to be playing. Absolutely. So obviously in tandem with this, you can watch a hundred thousand videos. You can read a hundred thousand articles about this next topic. I want to breeze right through it. Get plenty of rest. Make sure you're drinking something. Stay hydrated and make sure you stay fueled. Pretty obvious, right? Try and get some sleep.
All of your practice should not come the very night before the tournament. You're going to have trouble sleeping because you're going to be excited. You're going to be nervous. That's okay. That's understandable. Put yourself in the best position to get rest. You're going to need to drink water or whatever beverage you have available, hydration drinks, whatever you may have on hand. Drink something.
Keep the fluid flowing through your body so that you can operate and make sure to try and pack some kind of snacks so you can grab a quick bite. Rounds go long and by the time you're done, you have to jump right into another round. You're not going to have time to go grab some food outside the venue most likely. So make sure you are prepared for that inevitability that you're going to be hungry and you're going to be thirsty by keeping some fluid, keeping some fuel for your body with you.
Easy, simple, but can't be said enough. Now the next part of this, you know your deck, you know the meta, you're rested, you're fueled. What do you need to know next? Well, what is the goal of the tournament? Is it a cut to top eight? Is it a cut to top 16? Is it an event that's multiple days like these challenge events and there's a day two component? You need to understand what a cut is and then you need to understand how do you make that cut?
What kind of record do you need ideally to make that cut? You can Google this information. You can ask an experienced friend. You can certainly speak to a judge and go in this event, how many points do I need to continue or if it's a best of three tournament, which should my record look like at this point?
I wouldn't ever rely on your opponent specifically for information because as the rounds go on, if you have a decent record, they may tell you, you can just both draw that round and you'll both be able to move on. They're not looking out for you. They're looking out for them. So they may not be a hundred percent correct based on that information. So you need to think things through and make sure you understand what the goal is. So that's kind of what is required of you, right?
Like I have to win a tournament is a huge thing. So I think the best thing you can do, and this kind of moves us into the mentality part of this, right? Like we've done everything for our body to get us to the state. Now we've got to get our mind sharp and focused at the tournament and that's understanding what is your first goal, right? Sam, what's the first goal at a tournament? You want to win a tournament. What's the first thing you got to do? Play. We got to play, right?
You got to win some rounds. Yeah, win. How many rounds? Well, it depends on the size of the tournament. It depends on the cut. It depends on how everything goes. You need to know that and then you need to actually play and you need to be able to go compartmentalize one step at a time, right? It's really easy to say that. It is much harder to execute on it, but it is a hundred percent the truth. The old adage of how do you eat an elephant? Sam, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Yeah, she'll eat an elephant one bite at a time. Sam just learned this little turn of phrase, riddle, whatever you want to call it, but it is true. Like you look at an entire elephant, you go, I have to do what now? But if you just go, okay, I just got to take a bite and then I got to take a bite and then I got to take a bite. That's a very simple goal to achieve. I got to win a game. Okay. Now I have to convert that into a winning a match.
Now I have to convert that into doing the same thing again. All right. I've done that. Now I got to convert that into the same thing again a few more times and now I need to convert it into a record. That's good enough to break into the day two, top 16, top 32, top eight, whatever it may be. That's your goal. Keep it simple. Keep it realistic and keep it singularly focused. You look at an entire track covered in hurdles, that looks daunting. Worry about the hurdle that's coming up.
Don't worry about the hurdle that's five away. Don't worry about what are you going to do if you make the top four and you have to play against the person in the room who's really, really good and you're scared of playing them. Don't worry about that. You're playing your round opponent. You lost a game. You have to come back and win two. Worry about it. Worry about that. Focus on that problem.
Not well, if I only get one point in this two game set that I'm going to maybe not have enough points over the course of the day. Don't worry about that yet. Worry about the obstacle that is in front of you and that's the person that's across from you. That's what you need to focus on. Focus on each individual turn. Focus on your lines of play. You can zoom in and zoom in and zoom in as much as your mind will let you. So try to keep your mind from wandering. Again, sounds like a duh.
Yeah, no kidding. But try doing it in a tournament when there's something on the line, when there's cards you want. Worry about the match you don't want to play that you're going to run into. It's really easy to make this whole process more intimidating, the very best thing you can do is you can begin to remove the things that are overwhelming about it and focus on the next goal. What am I doing? I'm playing somebody and I'm going to have to win two games most likely and that's my goal.
I'm going to try that. How do I do that? I win one game at a time. That's my goal. Sit down with this person, win a game, try to win another game. That's what I'm aiming for. Whether it's a two game set, whether it's best of three, you need to win those two games. So focus on that. And it's again, a lot harder to do, especially then you have to focus on the game state. What are you inking? How are you mulligining? What are you playing? What are you exerting? What are you singing?
You can see why knowing your deck and knowing the meta helps take some of that burden away from you on the day of the tournament. You go, okay, cool. They're playing red purple. I know how to play red purple. I know how to play against it. What cards I want to see. I know what cards I want to play in what order. I know how to at least make a good game out of this. So you not being ready. Now that's one more thing stacked onto the pile, right? You don't know your deck.
You don't really know the meta too well. It's making it hard. Is it impossible? Absolutely not. You can walk into the store with a deck that you've played a couple of times just by yourself or flipped hands out. So you kind of know what it's supposed to be doing. You can certainly win. Anything is possible. Is it going to be a lot harder to? Yes. Also, yes, you're not doing yourself any favors by stacking the deck against you in that regard. So be really careful.
You want to also be able to learn. You lost a game. Why did you lose the game? Because they did this. Okay. Is there a way you can avoid them doing that again? Can you avoid getting the game into a place where that card matters as much? Those are things to briefly think about as analytically as you can. Try to remove your emotions from the, you feel bad. You're so close. You don't want to lose now. Again, focus on what you have to do at hand.
Okay. I need to make sure that in order to win this game, I need to avoid this situation. I'm going to do my best to navigate the game in such a way to make that less impactful during the next game, because that's your goal. Win the next game. So make sure you're thinking about it like that. It's really the whole thing. A couple other things that are related. Do not be afraid to call a judge. This I know for newer players is very intimidating.
Some people may have anxiety about having somebody come over. You may feel anxious about how that makes your opponent feel. You are allowed to and encouraged to call a judge. Ask them a question. If you're not sure, don't lean on your opponent. Don't lean on your brain. You're thinking about too much. You're already overwhelmed. Trying to remember a rules interaction is exactly why a judge is at the event.
Whether it's the tournament organizer acting in that role or they have a judge on staff for the day for the event. That is what they are there for. Let me tell you, as a former Magic judge, I would rather get a question than have to sort out a messy game state because one wasn't asked when it should have been. So don't be afraid to ask a clarifying question. If your opponent does something you're not sure of, go, hang on one second. I just want to double check with a judge real quick.
That's okay. If an opponent ever makes you feel belittled about calling a judge, you can always have the judge talk to you away from the table, away from your opponent. The judge will give you a little bit of a time extension in a lot of cases so you can finish your match at a good playable pace so you can put a lot of intention and thought and you can have a conversation with the judge about your opponent if need be. It doesn't have to be, it can be about something in your hand.
It can be also at the table and go, hey, this happened. Is this the right way that this happens? Simple as that. Be ready to call a judge as needed to help you. Sam, have you had to call a judge yet for any Lorcona questions? No. Haven't either. I've asked theory questions to people in a judge role, but I haven't had to call them over for a rules interaction. There's nothing wrong with it. Again, judge is happy to come over and answer our questions. They're really what they're there for.
A lot of times they're just like kind of pushing in chairs and cleaning up, walking around. It's just kind of like you're passing the day a little bit, time's going by, but if people ask you questions like, oh, okay, let me come over. They're excited to come help you. That's really, I'm not even kidding. You're like, oh, okay, a question. Maybe I can help the situation out. I've heard judges called a couple of times, but I've not myself had to. Right.
And like that, in that vein, you want to make sure that you avoid cascading errors. If you make a play mistake and you know it and you're like, oh, I shouldn't have done that. But now you're afraid like you may look foolish or have to do something a little inefficiently. If it's still the right thing to do, even though it's done out of order, still do it. Don't let it avalanche on you because you'll back foot yourself a ton. I'm sure you're familiar with this.
Or even missing a trigger or something like that. Tell yourself, do it again because you're upset that you missed it the first time. Absolutely. It's really important to not let those things cascade out of control. It's like, oh no, I was supposed to do this and then do this. Will you miss the first part? Maybe still do the second thing. If it's the right thing to do, take a moment, reevaluate. Is this still the correct thing? I'm going to do it.
You may look a little foolish or you may joke with your opponent like, yeah, I kind of screwed that one up. That's okay. We all have. That's part of why these games are hard and part of why there's a fun aspect to it because we're all humans trying to do it. It's not going to be a perfect play every time. We're not robots who are programmed to do it right in the correct sequence every time. I have a question for you about miss trigger or a judge question.
If you miss a must trigger, how far back does that go? If you missed it at the beginning of your turn, say a location, lore, when is it too late to get that? Do you call a judge? What's the answer? Do you know? The answer is absolutely call a judge. It depends on what's happened and how hard that situation is to rectify. Or something as trivial as missing lore, my guess, and please do not be like, I learned this on the illumination podcast is how it works.
This is not a judge giving you this information. It should be easy enough to go, okay, I will add to your lore total. They'll ask the opponent, is that true? Did they miss it? Do you have that written down? They'll look at both of your lore totals and go, okay, let's go ahead and add that number on.
We both understand that the new total is this and they will probably give you what is either a warning, which usually it's, I haven't parsed through all of the floor rules yet for Lurkana if they've all been put out there. So many warnings will result in some kind of a penalty, which is typically something like a game loss on like the third or fourth time it happens, which is extremely rare.
So it gets more difficult if it's like, oh, I was supposed to put this card on the bottom of my deck with Ursula a few turns ago, but now it's in my discard pile still. And I wanted to do this kind of thing. It can get a little tricky because it's like this should have been put on the bottom already or it's rare in Lurkana, but if a deck is shuffled and things should have been a certain way and they weren't, it becomes very hard to rewind those situations.
So what the judge will typically do is try to walk the state, the game state back as far as they can to a point where it makes sense. But if it irreparably damages what's happened since it generally will be treated as something that was missed. And again, they'll explain the situation to both players and the player who missed it will be given a warning. So that's pretty much how it goes. Why do I bring all this up? Why does all this matter?
Because I want you to feel like you have a chance during the tournament. Sam and I both went to our local store champs on Sunday and Sam and I both lost round one. What'd I tell you after round one? Not to give up. We could still make it. Cut to top eight. We're good. There was 20 people. We are cutting to top eight. A lot of opportunity in there, right? Like you can do the rough math. That's a little over a 33% chance that you can still get in. So I again lost round two.
So did I. And I still same thing. Don't worry. There's still a chance. It's a lesser chance. Every round loss is eliminating opportunity, but there's still a chance. You went on to win the following game, I believe. And then did you lose the next one after that? Yes. And then you won the one after that. Yes. And I ended up winning out the next three matches. So I was started with two losses, got three wins at the end of five rounds when the tournament was ready to cut to the top eight.
I managed to get in at eighth place. And then I managed to get one of the stitch promos by getting fourth place because I beat the top seed, which is difficult, right? They were the best ranked player in the room. I got lucky. It was a good matchup for what I was playing and I managed to eke out the promo, which is really cool. And I was happier still that it proved my point of you can still get in. Just keep trying. Remember, it's that next. What's the next step?
And the next step is always win the next match. Even if you get knocked out, especially if you're going to go to multiple different tournaments or you're planning on playing side events at a larger tournament, you might want to stay in for another round or two. Just you've already paid.
You can get a little bit of experience with the deck, maybe that you didn't have before and try to learn and apply that to the next goal, which is the next thing you're going to do, which is to then start the whole process over again. I also don't want anybody to walk away thinking that because you didn't get into the top, whatever you didn't win the tournament, you set an expectation for yourself and didn't mean it. Doesn't mean you're a bad player. Doesn't mean that you're a good player.
If you manage to win. There's a huge factor of luck, right? We get a new card every single turn of a game in a card game and that's totally randomized. That's shuffled up and there's only so many that are allowed to be drawn. So many that are to be put in the deck. So don't feel like your result is a direct reflection of you as a player of this game. You're going to have crazy good days. You're going to have horrible days. Even if you're playing the same deck, it doesn't matter.
I have lost at my locals with like four people showing up and on the other side of it, I've won in other card games, much larger tournaments than that. It doesn't mean that I'm bad or good at the game. It just means that I did well that day. And what I'll do, I'll sleeve up another set of cards or take that same set of cards and I'll go play the next day and try to have a good result. That's just a result. It's one factor in how good of a player you are.
So do not kind of undersell the other things that come with this. If you get to go places, you're going to meet new people. You're going to make friends. You're going to build memories. You may find a new spot that you want to go play when you go to a store you've never been to before. There's so, so, so much value that you're going to gain experience everything outside of just a tournament result. When you go to a game tournament is very different from a lot of other social things.
If you've never been in a trading card game tournament, it's tense, but everybody's in it together. So there's a lot of nervous excitement, a lot of nervous energy, a lot of relief. Everybody's comes together. It's a nice piece of camaraderie. We had 20 people that showed up to our local store champs. I was in one the day before 23 and it's just fun how it brings people together. You laugh, you tell stories, you got to share your bad beats stories.
You got to talk about the amazing top deck that won you the game. It's fun. It really is exciting. It's nerve wracking and everybody's in that same exact boat. So please do not let one singular piece of data define you and how you think of yourself. You're great. There's only one thing left to do. Keep questioning.