The Disney Lorcana Challenge in Ghent, Belgium, has just wrapped up, and players are somewhat disenfranchised by a specific deck archetype not just dominating the top eight but creating a mirror match final that wasn’t all too exciting to watch.
It’s similar to what happened at the Magic: The Gathering World Championships last year with the Izzet Lessons deck; fortunately, in this case, it wasn’t the biggest tournament of the year.
This dog domination has stirred up some concern over how the meta will shift in the lead-up to the Regional Championships and the World Championships, but there’s plenty of time for new decks to come to the forefront.
Who Let The Dogs Out?
It’s hard to ignore when a deck starts to dominate the meta in any TCG, and the Emerald/Amber Dogs decks were known to be a threat before this tournament, but we didn’t expect to see it become quite so prominent. The Emerald/Amber ink combo was the third most popular deck during the first day of the event, holding a 14.5% share of the meta, with Amethyst/Steel and Amethyst/Sapphire coming in at 25.8% and 22.9% respectively.
However, the Emerald/Amber ink decks held a 22% win rate on Friday, which was a sign of things to come. By the time we reached the top eight players, five of them were using Emerald/Amber decks, and the final of the event saw two nearly identical Emerald/Amber Dogs decks face off for the title. This match was ultimately won by American Zan Syed, who now claims their entry to the World Championships later this year.
The Mirror Match Conundrum
Mirror matches are a viewer’s worst enemy, as they can often become stalemates or worse, predictable. Unfortunately, the final of the DLC Ghent was definitely the latter.
As noted on the commentary a few times during the game, this match effectively boiled down to whichever player could get a copy of Under the Sea into their hands and cast it unanswered against their opponent. For what is seen as an aggressive deck, this match ended up being played with extreme caution, and the excitement levels were very low.
One commenter on Reddit sarcastically brought up how exciting it was to see which player could draw Under the Sea first, with a reply branding the game a “snooze fest.”
The possibility of a ban was also brought up, but players seem to be expecting that it will take another set rotation for this deck to be dealt with; however, there is every chance that new sets bring cards that are effective counters to the Dogs meta.
- Original Release Date
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September 1, 2023
- Publisher
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Ravensburger
- Designer
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Ryan Miller, Steve Warner
