By james art 
As usual, I dug into the list of the top 64 decks from this past weekend’s Disney Lorcana Challenge, and while I have a lot of insight to share about the best decks, meta shifts, and the overall shape of the tournament, the first thing I need to address, is this totally weird 28 location Amber/Steel aggro deck. Alvaro Jirau climbed all the way to the Top 32, just one game away from an invitation to the NA Championship, with a deck no one has seen before.
I got to watch Jirau play his Top 32 matchup against Alvin Hernandez’s offbeat Amber/Steel “Steelfasa” deck, and while Jirau couldn’t close out the third game, his location aggro deck was really great, which is much easier to understand , once you’ve actually seen the deck in action.
Connected
It starts with a lot of the standard aggro pieces that we know and hate this set. Daisy Duck, Donald’s Duck really broke into the meta and, just as I predicted, made aggro viable for the first time in Lorcana history. Okay, maybe not simple as I predicted, but the aggressiveness is stronger than ever in Shimmering Skies.
An aggro deck unlike any other
Like my other favorite aggro deck, TFM’s Amethyst/Steel “Doc” deck, Jirau’s list uses Fire the Cannons! to protect his side of the board in the early game (and deal with pesky Diablos) and Doc, Bold Knight to fill his empty hand. Mr. Smee is a fantastic aggro card that trades well with more expensive threats, especially with Captain Hook, Forceful Duelist on board to protect him.
After that, things get really weird, really fast. The deck has eight one-cost locations, 16 two-cost locations, and if that’s not enough, a full set of three-cost Pride Lands, Jungle Oasis. The idea is to flood the board with cheap locations behind your valuable questers to increase your general knowledge from two angles and force your opponent to split their attention. Apparently, this strategy worked for Jirau a lot on day one and nearly earned him an invitation to the championship on day two.
It’s genius in its simplicity. Instead of trying to combo characters with locations for powerful effects, this deck tries to play locations off the curve as an additional source of lore gain and opponent distraction. Most of the time, location capability, if any, never matters. You’ll be too busy playing your hand and searching to worry about moving characters. But when you eventually slow down, as aggro decks tend to do, ability slots give you away something to do with your ink. If used wisely, as Jirau often demonstrates, these often-overlooked places can be game-changers.
Few decks are prepared for a flood of locations
In his matchup against Hernandez, we saw Jirau move a character to The Bayou before searching just to see if the card on top of his deck gave him a better out than the one in his hand. John Silver with multiple locations in play can complete the game while Doc or Fix-It Felix, Jr. (a card I’ve never seen played in another deck) can help you find the extra cards you need to keep the pressure going. If you draw dead, moving a character to The Underworld gives you a chance to draw another card, which might be all you need to seal the deal with a deck like this.
More often than not though, these places just sit there, gaining knowledge every turn. This has proven to be an incredibly effective tactic in the current metagame. Popular steel decks like Amber/Steel “Steelsong” and Emerald/Steel Discard are good at dealing with wide boards, while Ruby/Amethyst and Ruby/Sapphire can take out one big threat at a time or hit the panic button and clear all characters in play with Be Prepared. But what do you do when the opponent has four locations in play? Sapphire decks might run a copy or two of Hide Away or Kuzco, Selfish Emperor to deal with the troubled Queen’s Castle or McDuck Manor, but absolutely no one is set up to handle four locations at once.
Playing against Jirau’s deck is like a game of whack-a-mole. Every small threat you remove is replaced by two more on the next turn, and if you can take control quickly enough, this location deck is sure to run away with the game. It’s one of those decks that is well positioned simply because no one else is playing it, so no one else is willing to play against it.
We saw another location-focused deck find success in Las Vegas last month. Phillip Quiett’s Ruby Steel deck featured only eight locations, but had a similar full-aggro approach that puts the opponent in a difficult position. I like decks like this, not because I think they’re particularly meta-shattering, but because they inspire people to think outside the box and try new things. Who ever thought we’d see Nottingham and Fix-It Felix, Jr. in top 32 decks? No matter how well-established the meta, Lorcana is never fully figured out, and players like Jirau and Quiett encourage us to keep looking in bold new directions.
Disney Lorcan
Lorcana is a trading card game developed by Disney and published by Ravensburger featuring iconic characters, settings and more from the studio’s long history. As an Illumineer, you must build your deck and help protect Lorcana.