Christopher: Welcome to another Lorcana League Night. Tonight, and I are going to talk about other Lorcana YouTubers. Roy's Ladder Climb and DLC? CCQ? What does that mean? We're going to go into the tournament scene. Going from zero to tournament player. My name's Christopher. This is Roy and welcome to League Night. So ⁓ all good YouTubers and ⁓ ⁓ other ⁓ Spotify podcasts would say, don't forget, we're new, like and subscribe. So for this league night, let's go and start talking about the other people who are talking about Lorcanah. I can think of dozens off the top of my head. And this is a space that's really been growing and people have started out and found new feet for themselves. One example is ⁓ Inkwell gaming. ⁓ They have a ⁓ squid for an icon. were one of the first people I watched when figuring out how to play Lorcanah. They're over in, I believe like the UK. very thick English accent so I would assume that's their native home or where they're currently at. I've seen a lot of people ⁓ coming out of the US as well. Some people who are dedicated to drafting YouTube channels, other people who've like Lorcanagoon's been talking about the purchasing and the worth of cards ⁓ as well as covering decklist. ⁓ They have a very large breath of what they're talking about. And I think some of the other areas is people who dedicated to particular Lorcana strategies. So I've seen more and more people not just going into the YouTube space, but actually dedicating their full time to it. How much of YouTube have you gone into Roy for figuring out how to play Lorcana

Roy: ⁓ I've been checking out a couple of ⁓ just it's kinda in between finance and play though. So for fine finance, I mostly go into ⁓ cardboard kingdom though. He's got some exciting live streams and on top of that, he's like he's probably kinda as big as Hype Man as far as like on the collector scene though. So he's like always updating people on big price bikes on slabs, ⁓ just basically and also teaching responsible investment, which is ⁓ a breath of fresh air, especially in this environment. If I know if you if you you and me know anything about as far as like investments go though, things could go really bad. So having that caution is really great.

Christopher: No, absolutely. And I would suggest if you like that as well, ⁓ go for Lorcana Goons. They're an older channel. They've been around for a while and they have ⁓ every Monday they release a video on the current state ⁓ card values as well. So I'm curious if they overlap in a lot of content or if they have some unique differences on how they cover. I Goons I've only seen talk a lot more about speculative. what they think trends are going to be. ⁓ Not more as a meta of if you want to be a monetary collector versus a game player, ⁓ what you want to probably target. guess card kingdom may be better for that ⁓ element instead. What about some other people that you listen to for like how to play and some of your top ⁓ YouTubers for like rules?

Roy: ⁓ I personally have been watching this YouTuber, ⁓ Malferon though. ⁓ he is like a big proponent of ⁓ sapphire steel. So that's like, you know, one of the main colors I tried to force ⁓ when I went to my first ⁓ pre release with you. Remember when I was talking about like robots and stuff like that, so cause all the synergies and he's been a really good proponent of that, basically running Moretta and three arrows and any sort of particular deck whatsoever, and breakdowns, pros and cons. On top of everything else though, he's very, very easy to watch.

Christopher: Sounds like a really, really fun one. I just looked up Lorcana Kingdom. So when a couple of people that have used to see a lot more ⁓ on my timeline, and I think they probably slow down from ⁓ videos, which I'm sure is exhausting to more weekly as ⁓ the Illumineers. ⁓ I know that he's been streaming for Ravenburger quite a bit, and he really talks about ⁓ Lorcana as an ecosystem. But it has some great tutorials as well, but doesn't kind of go into like ⁓ up to date meta. Another one that I think has been kind of big is like the Forbidden Mountain where he actually has a Metafy, which is a dashboard where can go in and like he'll teach classes on like, Hey, this is, this is the current way to play this, this deck currently. So, ⁓ I've been watching a bit of those ⁓ streamers as well. YouTubers as well. And of course they, they stream a bit as, as, ⁓ think forbidden mountain will actually goes to tournaments and streams their, their tournament plays. ⁓ kind of Academy is someone who I used to watch, but I don't think that they stream and they, they make any more videos. ⁓ yeah, the last video was a year ago and. ⁓ Two of the people from Lorcana Academy broke off into a brand new channel that ⁓ you know, what was it called? ⁓ It was play in Lurkana, ⁓ which is an interesting one. ⁓ Have you, it's not often I've seen ⁓ people rebrand. So if I guess a group of people were doing a channel, ⁓ they break it down into a, they do a new channel launch. ⁓ Have you seen much of that for other game YouTubes ⁓ or is this something that's kind of unique to just kind of how ⁓ social media is kind of running with Forkana?

Roy: ⁓ I mean just like any channels that they're basically human though. ⁓ MTG ya channels have been fairly consistent throughout the last ten years though. So these have been either staying together or just ⁓ or basically just shut down completely. But you know, the main ones like, you know, just basically like ⁓ the the the people who create MTG Goldfish like that website though, the they have a lot of good they have like a lot of good material under the umbrella for the game of magic. But as far as something creating something like that. I I don't know if like if there's gonna be something similar to MTG Goldfish, but right now dual dual stot Inc and ⁓ those ⁓ the Ink decks ⁓ websites though, they seem to be doing pr pretty well as far as tracking the meta and everything else. So I ⁓ go ahead.

Christopher: Something that ⁓ I also like in duals.inc that you can, a type of what play and one I've seen for Lurkana does this called the mad drafter where they talk about ⁓ draft play. mean, that's my favorite mode to play in Lorcana ⁓ versus constructed. And you can, you can go on to duals.inc and join ⁓ others a draft tournament.

Roy: I I do investing on the side. So like watching all the collector stuff though, you know, seeing them getting emotional or basically reacting to certain things and turns in the market though, that that appeals to me as far as like I like to read the tea leaves when it comes to that because seeing the collector's market though, as much as I as much as I don't like scalpers or, you know, of any of that sort of negativity towards the game though.

Christopher: ⁓ yeah.

Roy: It is it is one of those necessary evils though, because you gotta get people interested financially in the game though, because who's gonna buy the boxes? Like the ⁓ who's gonna buy everything? But then that runs into the problem, of course, that we talk about ⁓ product scarcity. Yeah. Shortages are actually good for good for a game, in my honest opinion, though. You could you could you can shoot me later about it though. But when you increase like the desirability of a product though, you just keep get people ⁓ more excited about like

Christopher: Shortages. Yeah.

Roy: product, opening it up, going to the pre-release, attending all the events, and then supporting the LGS though. I mean, what do you think runs an L L G S though? It's not it's not just basically hopes and dreams though. It's literally money. So it is a business.

Christopher: Right. No, totally. And I absolutely agree that, ⁓ product it is better to sell out of a product versus have too much of a product for a community because it'll disincentivize for that company to keep stocking that product. So I agree with that sentiment. ⁓ so yeah, no, ⁓ for me, I would, I'm kind of split. So it comes down to like one or two things of what I'm in the mood for. I like like lore chronicles. They have great a YouTube channel where they go over a really neat combos, really neat, like, you know, how to, how to do deck stuff, how to, how to play, how to put stuff together. ⁓ and I always love to just see like, ⁓ that's a, I hadn't think about that combo. should, ⁓ I'm making that mistake. So, you know, just to improve my gameplay, you know, time after time, but I've been watching a lot of, ⁓ lore gains and lore gains streams games, live games against other people. ⁓ And he ⁓ talks quite a bit. He talks through his hand, talks to the chat as well. So he's a good player, of course. It would be very boring to watch a bad player just lose all the time and not have useful things. But yeah.

Roy: Are you kidding me? I actually I would kill to actually watch that. To be perfectly honest though. Like in in a s in a sea full of content creators though, I would like to see somebody start from the exact blank slate from beginning to watching his stumbles though and then seeing him develop as a player though. That would be one piece of content that I would do. Unfortunately, I don't think I don't think either either of us could be qualified for that though, because we have like heavy experience in the game though. But like just grab somebody off the street though, and you know, basically

Christopher: Yeah. Yeah.

Roy: I wanna see what you could do. It's like, ⁓ what's a cards? What's this and stuff like that? And then just going from there to there to there as they progress.

Christopher: You know what, maybe we'll figure something out. I could think of a couple of people who might be ⁓ perfect specimens to watch their gameplay and ⁓ hear how they do and talk about it. So anyways, so ⁓ content, yeah, a lot out there and we can always ⁓ have fun watching, ⁓ finding new stuff. So I hear though, as far as people playing, you've come up with a

Roy: Look at ya. All right.

Christopher: Spicy deck on today's meta chat. What spiciness have you pulled out today?

Roy: ⁓ it's not spiciness. It's actually like a very old archetype. ⁓ but it's one that's not played that often actually. So what I selected for my latter run ⁓ last week is I hate to say it though because this is the deck that's killed me in the past. Amber Blue Control. Now for a lot of you that ⁓ that have been playing either you know young and old or past or anything like that, this is the standard fair to where you build up everything to a certain point, wait for your opponent to fill up their board, wipe it out, slap a big E and then finish the c ⁓ creature like that, or finish finish the match just like that. So I wanted to take the most basic concept of control and see how hard I I could actually push it. Well

Christopher: I love that concept. So what does your deck list look like?

Roy: Yeah. My deck list is and I'll I'll I'll do an auto audio of this though. So starting from the top, ⁓ four copies of the develop develop your brain to one CMC, look at the top two, put one in your hand, the other bottom deck, sell the high sell the azard C. It's a card ramper, card drawer, tepo. Teepo I specifically use if I have ⁓ too many uneakables in my hand or if I draw into them where Nine times out of ten, there's sweepers I don't need. So I love ⁓ using Tipo to basically put any card in into my inkwall as part of my ramp strategy. Vision and future, two cmc, look at the top five, put one in your hand. And then these are the ⁓ this is kind of the deck tech here. So Ohana meets family. This this card is simply amazing to me, though, and I understand why it's a rare. So it's a three CMC inkable, remove. All damage from chosen character yours and draw one card for each damage from this way. So this is a card that you would either use as ink or you would actually use as a way to draw and fill up your hand, especially in in turn seven or eight. Example. ⁓ my opponent had three creatures on the board and I had Hades after taking out one of him, ⁓ one of his creatures and put it into his ink well. Then I started started challenging his ⁓ his creatures, and he I noticed it's like, ⁓ looks like they're gonna gain all on it. didn't give up on him. He had four damage counters on him after I got done after a certain element though. I popped Ohana meets family, draw four cards, and I was like, okay, now I got the cards I need. ⁓ but yeah it's it's I actually like that card. It's one of my top three in this deck. So ⁓ Horseman Strikes. I mean that's pretty obvious because we we live in a evasive ⁓ metagame and and it grants you a card so it fulfills itself. ⁓ location Casa Madrigal. This is where where yeah, so the element or the justification for this card is where you whatever a creature quests while here you may remove it.

Christopher: ⁓ that's an interesting one.

Roy: Two damage from them. And you can remove two damage from his location. So four one seven is very decent for a location because you're basically

Christopher: I guess it's really good too for if you have a lot of wipes that only target characters, it would survive those wipes too.

Roy: Yes. Most definitely. ⁓ standard fare Cinderella dream come true. ⁓ it's basically a very excellent like staple card in the meta. Merryweather feisty fairy, which is a brand new one that came into the fray with the last set though. It's a four or five ward, four CMC incable.

Christopher: So tough. Yeah, that's a hard one for a lot of decks to deal with. That five toughness of willpower is just enough to that. So many things have four attack and it's just like, well, I just don't have enough on board to deal with it with a clean trade.

Roy: Yeah. Yeah. I used Ohana ⁓ means family on her a couple times too. If you start to see the trends and synergies. ⁓ course the standard four four piece of let it go. Everybody loves that one. ⁓ Bowana Curse Explorer. My common play is to get her get to turn five, drop her, and then start inking stuff from my discard if I don't have inkables in my hand.

Christopher: ⁓ yeah. She's a great ramp card. Well, I guess she's a resource ⁓ card. You don't see her a lot, but she synergizes with Cinderella as well. So you're never able to double ink with her and then just that card you draw, you don't have to ink from your hand because of Cinderella. You can just ink from your disc card. So you get that double synergy. If things stay alive that long, totally. It's a nasty combo.

Roy: Yeah. It's crazy though. And then we followed up with Pete, which is your standard card draw, with ⁓ basically putting cards ⁓ into your hand equal to the number of boosts, the cards that put under him as as the game progresses.

Christopher: And that filter too. mean, people under us, ⁓ I'll just, you you, you, you boost them once. And then you just start questing. You just draw one extra car, but being able look at like four cards and picking that one out that you need is great. know, especially if you just are looking for a control deck, you just need that one car to, clear the board.

Roy: There was one incident where I had about seven or eight cards in my hand though and I'm trying to remember the name of the card. It was like basically sh ⁓ the my opponent forced me to discard my whole hand. It's that it's that one villain card from ⁓ Emperor's New Groove though. What's her name? I'm trying to remember. Yeah.

Christopher: Ooh, yeah. Yzma? So, uh, yeah, back to Pete. Yeah. So yeah, you've that, that Pete's able to, you know, find that right card. if you, uh, uh, drop in, end up dropping a bunch of, uh, uh, nasty, you know, things that you have to worry about and you just like, Oh man, I really need a Hades or, you know, AOE removal. Yeah. Pete's going to help you.

Roy: Pete.

Christopher: filter down and find that one card or to bring, know, to fill up your field with the board as well as, ⁓ you know, if you need to draw cards after dumping your hand, you know, you could find that Ohana means family. You're not discarding the rest of the and then get some damage stuff and heal up. Yeah. Great, great ability. People underestimated Pete when he came out during winter spell. And I think that, he's really shown his strength.

Roy: Yeah, my opponent keeps on killing him. That's crazy. He's he's kill on sight. Okay. ⁓

Christopher: Gotta. You have to. And then of course you have to have, guess the most important control card in this deck is ⁓ white out.

Roy: Raging storm.

Christopher: ⁓ raging storm. That's what it was. Yeah. Raging storm. It's, it, it frustrates me. That is in yellow Amber, not Ruby because as a Ruby card, if I've ever seen one, but I mean that symmetrical destruction, it doesn't necessarily care about, you know, doing damage to someone's health and stuff like that. So, but you know what? It's a good card. And I'm, I'm glad to that they printed a new.

Roy: Yeah.

Christopher: ⁓ Be prepared that can't be sung by a big creature. That's an action instead an inkable to

Roy: That's just too powerful now. No, it's so powerful. Like, be prepared though. I was looking at it compared to this card. I'm like, ⁓ okay, this is the reason why this rotated out though, because you could sing with this and actually banish all characters for less CMC. So I'm like I I would have switched to red. Which everybody has ⁓ apparently. ⁓ in Infinity. But that's that's for another time. Yeah, the other sweeper that I put in there was

Christopher: That is. Yep.

Roy: ⁓ the other sweeper was spooky site. It's the six CMC one. Yeah.

Christopher: Like that. Yep. People are underestimated that, ⁓ especially with a lot of the dogs, ⁓ out there. brought a blur pole with spooky site because I mean, blur pole doesn't have the ramp, again, you, there's smaller things. Aren't that important. And when I dropped down like, ⁓ okay, cool. I'm ready for the next phase. And you are now to the, ⁓ genie part of the, match to start dropping down spooky sites, ⁓ even though it's uninkable. you get that mana as well as you get that ink as well as your opponent. you get to, to ramp up, ⁓ kind of in a fun way as, ⁓ clearing the board and you choose when that happens versus, ⁓ you know, something like Katie's where you go like, well, I can only do choose with that one character. That's a threat. Yeah. It's an AOE clear. It's a good sweep against diagram. So I, I love that, ⁓ tech card in there.

Roy: Yeah, it saved me a on a couple of occasions though when the board was flooded with four or five. The best way the best time to actually do it is on turn four, if you could ramp that hard. To be perfectly honest though. Because unless they got cards to replace all the ones I wiped, then they're basically gonna be way behind. another card I wanted to actually talk about was ⁓ Stitch, Carefree Surfer. So this one is

Christopher: Totally.

Roy: I would say fifty fifty, I would actually ink him if I get him my opening hand or if I draw into him though. But as a like a late game card to refill your hand, he's great. And a four eight for two quests, very, very good.

Christopher: So there's Carefree Surfer and Carefree Snowboarder. Which one do you find? So what are the situations where you choose Snowboarder or Surfer? One is where you have two characters in play and you play Stitch, you get to draw a card. The other one is you have two characters in play when you quest and you get to draw a card.

Roy: You know what? That's fair that's a very good question. ⁓ the reason why I picked seven CMCs ⁓ st is because I just need the cart draw. It's too much of a premium in this deck. You need to have your handful. And a fo

Christopher: So you think the situation where you have all these AOEs, you think the, ⁓ just doing it when you play them to get the card draw versus, ⁓ expecting to have enough characters out to quest each time.

Roy: Yeah, I'm not trying to fill my board though. I'm basically trying to slam the next thing which I'm we're about to talk about is ⁓ the big bad is Mufasa in this deck.

Christopher: Ooh, that's a good one. That was my first legendary I ever pulled. I always have a soft spot for Mufasa. I'm going to be sad when he rotates out. I even put him in my Blurple deck like a madman, which gave me a lot of really good refills. So I think that's a great card for any control deck.

Roy: This card has single handedly won me so many games though due to the fact that after I wipe the board and I bring it back into play, ⁓ my inkwell will will shrink by two, but I get two cards back though. So I try to shove as many like ⁓ board wipes early on though so that way, you know, I could ⁓ return by random like either an extra board wipe or anything for that matter. It's great. And then you you connect with them on a quest though, you basically could cast everything in your hand. So, like for instance, average average ⁓ ink I'll be at is probably at ten by the time I I attack with them one more time because I'm ramping back up.

Christopher: With his eight willpower, you, I mean, if you get him to, you know, if they can't finish him off and you just, or condo means family. that's, that's good game over at that point.

Roy: Yeah. Yeah. There was a time I think I drew seven cards off him one time though. I filled my hand up due to that fact. So Ohana and me family, boom, just seven cards and it's like he couldn't catch up after that.

Christopher: Absolutely not.

Roy: Okay. So the other thing I wanna talk about is the the weaknesses obviously for this deck. It does pretty bad against Burple. I'll just tell you that straight up. And let me tell you why. Because this this these are the games that I lost. Okay? Because I'm not gonna talk about the games I won because it's fairly obvious because of the one condition. But the games that I lost mostly against is Burple. And the other deck that got me was that ⁓ Wanna say it wasn't dogs. Dogs were not the issue actually, because I was able to stave off everything as much as possible. But there was this person run yeah, it it wa it was a dill deck. So it was Dill and Blurple, two of the most like mo mostly played ⁓ decks out there. So that that's the reason why it's probably in the tier three according to the website. So I'm like, okay. It kills toys. It kills the hyper aggro decks though. Does fairly well ⁓ against other control decks though, but mid range it really falls.

Christopher: Was it the deal deck? I bet it. Yeah. Yep.

Roy: short in my opinion. Because mid range decks though, they're able to recover after like board wipes, whether it be the small one or the big one. Clearing out a board is probably one of the most satisfying things I've discovered after ⁓ playing card games though because I used to be that hyper aggressive guy that used get mad every time the board got wiped. It's like, ⁓ that's not fair. You just I just build up my board and then I started thinking, maybe if I I don't want I I don't want to actually just be pegged into w ⁓ one type of ⁓ player though, so I started playing control and then I started knowing the elements of control and then when I started playing aggro again, that's when I would learn how to play around stuff though.

Christopher: Yeah. Yeah. When to dump hand and when to just put on just enough pressure to make the control player go, all right, if I don't have this board wipe this turn, that's game over. So I guess, yeah, that's, that's always the, ⁓ tough element of, ⁓ or Kana because we have your deck has very, ⁓ specific scenario draw. ⁓ so you can't just be guaranteed like, I'm just going to draw three cards, you know, this turn. You don't have friends on the other side or you don't have a amethyst to, you know, give you that consistent, very easy draw. You have to kind of rely on the situational draw scenario. So I can definitely see like, Oh man, how am I going to make sure I get that card? And Pete comes out on five, though you ramp up and usually we can go into a turn to ramp to turn four, turn four, you know, maybe you get Cindy out there ramp and you know, You can play Pete and boost them at the same turn, but that's, that's still like situational to say the best. yeah, no, I could, I could see how, uh, that matchup for the mid range turns into a big problem of cause unlike, you know, aggro where they flood and you have to deal with threat after threat after threat. So you would just run out of, uh, it using a weak clears against those threats are a little bit more wasteful. They come out slower, but they're just steadily bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger threats that just makes it very difficult to deal with. And Dale is a whole nother basket of problems, which I have a whole rant. That's the reason why it's my favorite deck of the moment. I love the synergy and it makes fair cards unfair. I love that about the Dale deck and it turns it into, well, can be aggro, I could be control. I've got a lot of options and ⁓ it's with the amethyst component has surprising a lot of draw as well. So you're going to have a pretty wide board for people to deal with. And there's a HANA means families rough time.

Roy: Mm-hmm. I I totally agree with that. The one thing I discovered about Playing Through the Ladder, which was different from other times playing through the ladder, is just the amount of variety of ⁓ variations of the either the most popular decks though or just flat out like just new concepts though. It just boggled my mind. Getting

Christopher: We're seeing a lot of people be willing to experiment ⁓ because, hey, rotation's right around the corner. ⁓ even other games I've played, people are like, well, you know what? I'm going to really grind hard on the cards I know right before rotation. And it doesn't seem to be that type of community here. So I'm very excited to see what's going to happen in the next DLC and CCQ.

Roy: Yeah. ⁓ As far as like experiences ⁓ going through the ladder, have you have you actually ran through a ladder for placement yet?

Christopher: Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, I, I, am deck ADD. So I've not consistently played the same deck, uh, all through to get through those 10 games, get ranking, uh, for context, what we're talking about is in duel links, um, you, to get your initial rank, you have to play 10 games at the beginning of the season. And then they'll determine, okay. This is where you land. And this is, um, who, what starting rank you should end up with. Um, I'm usually about. 60%. ⁓ so I usually win six out of the 10 games required. ⁓ I like to play fun things and come up with interesting ideas, but my go-to deck, think I'm about 68 % on my, on my playing Dale, ⁓ which is, know, statistically above average, you expect any good deck, any good player with good, ⁓ with a good deck, will be able to probably run around. ⁓ 62, 63 % anything above that you run into the mirror match. Of course you're going to, you have a coin flip on the mirror match unless you play particularly well because of my mediocre ladder placement. I probably placed a little low for my skill level just because I'm playing some fun stuff. So I get a, I get some easier matches. I have a little bit higher win percentage with that deck.

Roy: I did a lot better than I expected actually, just going into a blind with one deck, but ⁓

Christopher: Nice. Do you do best of one or best of three?

Roy: I did both both ⁓ cues. So I ran twenty twenty matches with this deck. Well, let me see if you count yeah. Ten in B O one and ten in BO three. So but that would be a total of ⁓ depending on that though, best of three playing three games on average though. I think we're ⁓ sitting about maybe twenty three, twenty four total games. So

Christopher: It's nice. Okay, what is your favorite? Do you prefer best of three versus best of one or any particular reason to usually choose one over the other?

Roy: ⁓ I like best of three. That's just that's that's the ⁓ where where I cut my teeth out. You have to know and that's the that's the standard fair wherever you go. It's gonna it's always gonna be best of three though. BO one's never gonna be real life or anything for that matter, though. BO1's good for testing out initial concepts for decks, my in my experience. But if you want to get r actual tournament experience, getting in the flow of things, ⁓ BO3 is pretty pretty awesome. It as far as it goes. And the best thing I love about this game war con itself, though, I don't have to deal with no stinking sideboard. ⁓ my god. Do you know how much anxiety ⁓ sideboarding anxiety I get ⁓ that I used to get back in the day? I was like, ⁓ gosh, ⁓ I know all these people are playing this specific one and I need to get the silver bullet out and everything. No, you just play your decks. That's it. It's it's it it's the purest form of combat. It really is, though. There's no silver bullets, there's no trickies.

Christopher: Yes. Nope, absolutely. Yeah.

Roy: Or tricks that you gotta pull out out of your out of your hat. And on top of everything else, I enjoyed the fact that people ⁓ I noticed I noticed when I was playing the sealed ⁓ gameplay was a lot faster. Like as far as like running tournaments, it's gotta be awesome because people are not taking the extra time to sideboarding cards or anything for that matter, though. It's just shuffle up and play. So that's supposed be the whole entire concept behind BO3. So I love it. It's very streamlined.

Christopher: Well, I guess, you know, now we kind of talked about all these concepts of, you know, getting ready for tournament play. We can talk a little bit more about what does it mean to do tournament play? What is, you know, league night? You know, there's a concept. We assume that people are well versed of, ⁓ you know, a league night is, but let's go into kind of the growth of ⁓ where a player can go from. ⁓ You know, just hopping on dual links, just to play a bunch of random people to, you know, ending up at a world championship in the ⁓ DLC or CCQ or, you know, ⁓ going from there. So I guess to start off with, you know, everyone's can play at a local game store. You go to a shop and you can start off first off with usually pre-release events. ⁓ I know that we recently played a the pre-release event for Wild Unknowns and that was a lot of fun. Usually these are usually casual, beginner friendly fun. you know, people are just kind of excited to get the cards more than anything. Next one up is League Knights. I know the League Knights ⁓ at my local game store are people really, really focused on getting into the tournaments. and people who are trying to, you know, fine tune their decks. So you can't go into environments. I, by previous game store, I went to the environment for league night was actually usually very casual. ⁓ Even on, you know, days that people are prepping for tournaments. ⁓ They realize that not everyone's there to prep tournaments. So they may have a very tough deck, but again, they're very forgiving, very casual. ⁓ And they get, you get. From League Nights, points. Points are most important thing. ⁓ What about in Magic? Do you have kind of the same beginning steps for, you know, pre getting into the actual like ranked tournaments during League Nights and casual plays?

Roy: I have a very interesting perspective on this though, 'cause I've seen it from both ends. ⁓ I used to work at a card shop though, so I used to watch all the pros actually start from the very beginning, ⁓ just drafting and then going into constructive events and slowly working their way up into locals though. But then as a as a competitor, I did already have a base knowledge of everything though. And the best thing to do is actually when you get into this game or into any T CG The number one thing you have to keep in mind is that you gotta keep your community ⁓ close to you though, wherever you go in in this entire like world of the TCGs though. That is probably ninety nine percent of the reason why I go I play TCGs just to be around people, living, breathing people, playing the same game that you're doing day in and day out. And depending on what's available, they either they ask you for advice or you end up asking another person for advice and exchange the information though. That's the number one key thing that It's important though, whether you're going competitive or not. Because you will eventually fall into the crowd of whatever direction you decide to go. If you want to keep it casual, kick ⁓ kitchen tabletop, completely fine though. That's how you make your friends though, and then you start sitting up nights maybe at home like they're when you guys, you know, ⁓ start celebrating your kids' birthday or anything like that. You know, it's it's a real, really great way to build a community and get to know people, especially in this digital age though, where we're all supposed to be connected but yet we don't we don't see each other on. on a daily basis though. People barely speak to their neighbors though, so if you want to get some social interaction going out there, go out there and play a couple of games. Now on the competitive side, you're gonna have to learn how to drown on the more on the more frequent side. You gotta you gotta be beaten. You have to you have to go into into the mentality that you will be beaten and you will be severely like embarrassed left and right. You'll miss a drop. ⁓ you'll you'll not properly sequence correctly though. you'll overfill the board, you overcommit, you undercommit. And then you start looking at certain things like, okay, what am I doing wrong? And then that's when you start talking to members of the community though. A lot of competitive players I ran into that they're very nice, very good with advice. And ⁓ a good portion of them are blunt, which is actually refreshing when it comes to when you when it comes to like brush up on your skills though. Sometimes you need a little bit of tough love. I got a lot of it. So

Christopher: Set championships is a, if you, once you get really, really comfortable at your league nights and say like, okay, I know what I'm doing. This is a deck I love. I'm going to bring and I have the cards to actually play set championships. Now you can go to set championships just to support your local game store. Go to set championships just to, ⁓ you know, play a fun game with a bunch of competitive people, but that is a competition. You know, it's beyond. League Night where, you know, even though people might be preparing, they have to understand, know, you're, you're getting some points. Sure. But you're, you're there to have fun. You know, League Night is what keep game stores supporting a, a ⁓ game system set championships. I, you know, are the, the cherry on top for those who really want to take their gameplay to the next level. would say that set championships is something that. It is more important for you to be comfortable with what you're playing at a set championship than for you to have the most powerful deck going to a set championship. What do you think, Roy?

Roy: One hundred percent agree. Because if you look at ⁓ even even the deck lists that are showing for the set championships on different regions though, all the decks lists are completely different. I was amazed. I was like, okay, there's no consistency out here. This is wonderful. So these are beast basically people that developed all these decks from the ground up though, and they actually went like all the way through though. That to me is mo is the most respectful play in the world though. You deserve your play, Matt. You deserve your promo. You deserve everything that comes to you. ⁓ Yeah, there's there's controversy about people net decking, you know, in and TCGs like this though, but I feel like this game is in a really good spot right now as far as like building creativity and just hype all around it though. But winning on your own terms though is probably the most satisfying ⁓ way to basically just clear out a whole meta. It all starts from your local meta, one hundred percent.

Christopher: Then the next level up. So you, at this point, if you're going beyond set championships, that means that not only are you comfortable with your deck, you have a good deck. I hate to say that too, ⁓ because you know, more caught, we're playing a card game. This isn't super serious, but it's still once you get to regional level and you're doing the DLC, the Disney, Lorcona challenges and the CC cues. challenged championship qualifiers. These are people, some people who will entire jobs are now saying like, will professionally play a card game. ⁓ not many people can do that and it's the top of the top, you will run into those people. Sometimes those people come out of your local league night. ⁓ and it's always great to play them, but the winners of these will be going to the world championships. They earn seats to play against the top of the top. So when you go in there, the DLC, which is, you know, regional. have a bunch in each area of the country and area of the world as well. So there's more likely you could be able to drive to one in, your local area to do a DLC. And of course the CCQs where if you miss out on a DLC and you still want to try and qualify, you miss that opportunity to qualify from a, a DLS champion challenge, then ⁓ go for the qualifiers. And this is your last chance to try to make, get into nationals. So inside of these two, you're going to be facing, it's a, have to be able to make it into it. You have, you know, there's a thousand people, there's a lot of people who can usually go in and these tournaments lately haven't been selling out, but there is a fixed number of seats and that, and they cut off after a certain amount and you go in there and. expect to play against people who are going to be very serious. And, ⁓ unfortunately I hate saying this. has a history of people who try to cheat as well. So you need to be cognizant of when they say that, well, my, ⁓ Maryweather has evasive ⁓ and able to attack that. That person may be lying. They may not be telling the truth. So this is important for you to ⁓ be to run across that those levels of. people and also to know the game to that well enough to say like, he's, he's, he's not that person I'm playing against is not playing fairly against me.

Roy: Whatever level of play that you decide to actually go into, especially in the competitive scene though, never be afraid to call a judge though. The judges are there to be impartial and to assist the players, what one hundred percent though. They're not standing around for nothing. Okay, so yeah. ⁓

Christopher: Absolutely. I think that's something where someone, very much don't like to be, you know, argue with people. I don't like that. That even in card games, if like, you know, someone doesn't, you know, you might call someone out. was like, Hey, I think you have five copies of a card in your, in your deck. You don't have to, you don't have to actually, you know, challenge them yourself. You can say, Hey, Hey judge, you know, just, I have a quick question.

Roy: Yep. Yep.

Christopher: You know, have you checked this deck list real quick? Can you just, you know, double check it, just make sure everything's solid. Don't, don't be the confrontational one. Judges will be happy to do that for you. Well, not happy. It's their job there to do it for you. So, and, ⁓ a lot of the times that, ⁓ if, you have a concern, you know, again, this is a great community and, ⁓ judges have, have, are known to, to really help out the last last circle. Is, ⁓ suppose you win your CCQs or DLCs in your area. You get to go to nationals and the top national players will go to, ⁓ championships. ⁓ of course, winners of DLCs and CCQs also do have some price support of actual money. I think like the DLC Woody's right now is going for 300 bucks. So, you know, the CCQs and DLC get a little bit, but like the nationals, they get tens of thousands of dollars, world championships, you know, ⁓ pretty hefty pots as well, it's always great to see.

Roy: mean it's pr yeah, but you gotta understand like the sweetest prize of all though. You literally get to go to Disneyland to play this game. Like I'm like, okay, so even if you have a bad day, I mean you're still in Disneyland.

Christopher: Yes, no, absolutely. Yep, all expense paid to Disneyland. It's a good time. Yep.

Roy: That's crazy.

Christopher: Well, do you have any, ⁓ any, any things that you've seen from running a store in terms of, ⁓ tournaments that you like say, this is, this is, this is what you should come in for, but this is what you should come to expect for, ⁓ Disney, or Kana or magic, the gathering.

Roy: I wanna say per ⁓ per se, yeah. My ⁓ my primary experience is Imagine the Gathering though, but what I observed in my short time inside the Larcana community, there's a lot of improvements out there. Number one, this the sheer vibe of the place though when I was playing pre release though, very nice, very excellent. Everyone's open on top of everything else. ⁓ it's a very welcoming environment though. I mean that's why the game store that we actually went to for a pre release though got featured.

Christopher: ⁓ yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. Game castle got featured by Ravensburger. ⁓ and that was, you know, very exciting to see because, ⁓ I know all the people who are in that article are talking great things about it. So I'm glad that they were recognized for all the hard work they do to put in a, ⁓ really competitive, but get friendly environment. So they have, very dedicated group of players. who come in there and are able to be welcoming while they're coming in there for a purpose. They're coming in there to go to that next DLC and hopefully win one. And actually, think that ⁓ we've had three players from Gamecastle actually get ⁓ in the top five, though I know a couple of people lost to dogs. I've been hearing about that on the Discord. Their frustration there.

Roy: That's fine. Rotation's coming up soon though, so we'll be we'll we'll see a lot of shake ups though. That's something in a whole new world. ⁓ another thing that I've noticed in the cabet scene though, it's like ⁓ the one thing you have to prepare for, and I hate to say this every single time. Stay hydrated. Please. For the love of God. I've seen so many people like pass out because they haven't drink water for like eleven hours at the day though. These tournaments are long.

Christopher: whole new world.

Roy: And make sure if you do eat something, make sure you that if you're you're anxious or anything like that or if you got a bad stomach though, don't eat anything the whole day. Just ⁓ it it's embarrassing because then you'll have yourself an episode and then that's gonna be like, you know, either it'll be a funny story or a bad story, but either way it's it's still gonna be kinda gross though.

Christopher: That's a great point. People forget, you know, you're still a human. You're not a robot. You need to take care of your body in one, whichever way you need to. So hydration, I think, you know, if your brain sizzles up from not enough water, you will be having trouble making those decisions and anything you can do to ink out, ⁓ on like a, ⁓ tournament day to give you a little bit more edge. And if that other person slowly burning out and go, well, I still have my bottle of water. That's keeping me hydrated, keeping me going. Then, ⁓ that's a, that's a smart thing. Too much caffeine or sugar. might get a crash at the end of the day. So if you go, I'll just pound sodas. Maybe you want to wait that for the last match of the day or nice reward as a something sweeter, you know, something caffeinated to go, okay, you know what? Had a long day. This is where I am. I I'll just enjoy something for my last game.

Roy: Yeah, and another thing I I I reiterate though is make sure you keep all your belongings close to yourself though, because you know, death is a thing. Like I know I know this game is still kinda fresh though, but the same rules should apply though, regardless.

Christopher: ⁓ totally. Yeah. Well, I think we just solved another league night and it is time to open our packs. Roy, do you have your pack? Do you want to go first this time? All right.

Roy: Yeah, I'll go first this time. Last time it was like it was a total dud though, but let's check this out. We got another Wild's Unknown. So there we go.

Christopher: Hey, you know what? Having that pack is not a dud at all. So I'm sure that there's something great coming out of there with how they've disappeared from shelves completely. Can't even get it at Target. I went to Barnes and Noble. They didn't have any.

Roy: You it ⁓ my gosh. Okay, so let's take a look here. Excellent. Okay. All right, starting from here. Got sabotage. Dangerous plan. Yes. Mirage Doctor Serebellum. When Eternal hand in the box. Yeah, we're getting to the uncomments here. Well, for the rare. That is a rare, right? Yeah, that is a rare. Yes. ⁓ That should be it, right there. There is my foil. Eleanor. Alright, no Yeah. No hits. Just gorilla.

Christopher: A rare. No hits. Okay, so For me. Got the snowball. Mother knows best. ⁓ wait, no. This is mother will protect you, right? ⁓ Darkwinged Duck. An o Oduna and then we have a Cena Stitch. Wisdom of the willow. Okay, not bad. Some Mother's Necklace. Ayy Scrooge's counting house. Graveyard. Okay, so this is actually a pretty popular one. Glad to see something if I ever won't want to run ⁓ the ⁓ Wreck it Ralph with him. ⁓ and then we have the Pocahontas. That's a nice legendary and alright, shiny common. Yow. Well, thank you for joining us and ⁓ don't forget to like and subscribe. if you enjoyed what you saw today at League Knight, we'll love to s hope you come back and have another night with us and Roy, any wise wisdom for what you plan on bringing this week for League Knight.

Roy: ⁓ I think I'll go for another run this week though. I'll s I'll see on B on one though and I'll I'll come back and report my findings though. I'll try I'll try something mid range though most definitely.

Christopher: I'm sticking with Dale. Nothing has convinced me to move off of Dale. I've had the most fun with that and it's it's it's it's kind of the a bully deck and I'm just I I I have a short amount of time to play, so just here going to bully some people and call it a day. So I love that. Alright. Thank you everyone for joining us and ⁓ I will see you next week.

Roy: I love it.