When Edmond Chiu showed up for the Disney Lorcana North American Continental Championship at the Disneyland Hotel last Friday, he wasn’t even planning on playing the deck that he eventually became the champion with. Chiu is an accomplished Ruby/Amethyst player, known best for winning Disney Lorcana Challenge (DLC) Fort Worth last July. But when preparing for the NACC, he spent most of his time practicing Ruby/Sapphire.
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The Disney Lorcana North American Continental Championship took over the Disneyland Hotel for an unforgettable weekend.
“To be honest, I played Ruby/Sapphire for about the last month,” Chiu tells me, just minutes after winning the Championship. “It was touted as the best deck of the format, so I kinda wanted to see what it was about. At the end of the day, I decided I felt that I was more comfortable with Ruby/Amethyst.”
Chiu has played a lot of Ruby/Amethyst decks throughout his competitive career, but never one like this. Archetype staples like Madame Medusa, The Boss; Elsa, The Fifth Spirit; and Genie, Wish Fulfilled are conspicuously missing from his winning list. After scoping out the competition during Friday’s Last Chance Qualifier event, Chiu decided to make some big changes to the typical build.
“On Friday I looked around the LCQs and saw a lot of people playing The Library, [A Gift For Belle], and I saw a lot of Ruby/Sapphire,” he says. “I think my predictions were that over 30 percent of the field was going to be Ruby/Sapphire, so I took out a lot of the cards that I thought were not good into that matchup, for example Genie [Wish Fulfilled], Maui [Hero To All], and Elsa [The Fifth Spirit].” Chiu says a lot of people thought the way he built the deck was strange, but, that at the end of the day, what matters is how your cards line up with your opponents’.
Chiu had never played The Library in Ruby/Amethyst before this tournament. “It wasn’t incredibly difficult to pick up,” he says. “The play patterns definitely had some kind of learning curve that I kinda picked up over the tournament.”
By dropping Genie, Maui, Elsa, and Madame Medusa, and adding a full set of Lady Tremaine, Imperious Queen and The Library, Chiu transformed his signature deck into the ultimate Ruby/Sapphire predator. And while his prediction was correct and Ruby/Sapphire did end up being about 30 percent of the field (32 percent with 40 registered decks), Chiu only faced one of them throughout the first day’s seven rounds of Swiss.
“I ran through the gauntlet,” he explains. “I faced Emerald/Steel, I faced Sapphire/Steel, and then I finally got to play the Ruby/Sapphire match. I was like ‘Yes! That’s one down, I can take this one.’” Chiu also beat another Ruby/Amethyst player 2-0 in a mirror match. His biggest concerns throughout Day 1 were Amber/Steel and Emerald/Amethyst, and indeed, he lost a match 0-2 against Kurt Spies playing the Amber/Steel Dwarf’s Mine deck.
He also matched up with DLC Seattle winner Luke ‘vVonderland’ Goodwin playing Emerald/Steel. “I was very fortunate to 2-0 him. I think he just had unfortunate hands that game, I would say I’m not favored into that matchup.” His last match of the day was against another Emerald/Steel player, DLC Las Vegas Winner Zan Syed. The two split the match 1-1.
Chiu finished Day 1 with a record of four 2-0, one 0-2, and two 1-1 splits, securing the fifth seed in the top 16.
Top 16 To Victory
At the start of Day 2, only four matches stood between Chiu and the NA Champion trophy. His first game was against content creator and team Labyrinth TCG member Ryan ‘R_M_B’ Beaupre playing Amethyst/Sapphire. Chiu says being on the play really helped him in this matchup, since Amethyst/Sapphire does well against other Amethyst decks. Chiu won the match 2-1.
In the quarter-finals, Chui faced another LAB team member, Pierre-Marc ‘s4iler’ Duguay, a prominent Ruby/Sapphire player. Chiu’s plan to target Ruby/Sapphire players was finally paying off. “I 2-0’d him in about 15 minutes,” he says. “No knock on him, that’s just how the matchup goes.”
Chiu’s semi-final match was a rematch against Syed. “That was probably one of the toughest matches in my life,” he admits. “He got the best of me when we first met back in March at a big tournament. Ever since then, I had to get my revenge.” Chiu laughs and explains it’s a friendly rivalry. The two have become friends from attending the DLCs, and they hang out and strategize about the game together. “It was really nice to be able to play with one of the best and showcase my skills.” Chiu won 2-1 and advanced to the championship finals.
Chiu’s final match was against second-seed player Scott Markeson piloting Ruby/Sapphire – a dream scenario for Chiu. “I was licking my chops at that point,” he says. The higher seed Markeson was on the play, but Chiu managed to take down the first game rather decisively by maintaining a larger hand and controlling the board.
Again on the play, Markeson succeeded in out-questing Chiu in Game 2, tying up the match 1-1. “He was able to go under me and quest out really quickly, and I just wasn’t able to respond.” Chiu explains that though Ruby/Sapphire is traditionally the control deck, he constructed his version of Ruby/Amethyst to out-control it. “You can assemble a huge hand and remove your opponent’s cards one turn at a time until they’re down to nothing, then you just do whatever you need to do to get to the finish line.”
On the play for the first time, Chiu stayed ahead on lore total throughout the entire game, eventually winning by playing a Merlin, Goat and banishing it with Be Prepared for an instant two-lore gain. Play returned to Markeson for the fourth match, leaving Chiu just one win away from becoming North America’s champion.
Game 4 was a nail-biter, and an incredible demonstration of both players’ skill. Markeson aggressively pushed his lore total up to 17 while Chiu sat at just six, leading the audience to believe that he was going to tie up the series once again and force a fifth and final round. Instead, Chiu, with 11 cards in hand, managed to keep Markeson’s side of the board clear while quickly closing the gap with three copies of The Library in play. Chiu’s Friday night meta call ended up making all the difference in the final match of the championship.
“My gameplan when he got to 17 was ‘okay, that is the last lore he’ll get for the rest of the game,” Chiu explains. “I’m going to control the board and set up in a way that I have a response to everything he does.”
Here on the biggest stage for competitive Disney Lorcana yet, with his opponent just three lore away from forcing Game 5, Chiu looked calm, cool, and collected. “To be honest, I wasn’t really that nervous,” he says. “Sometimes you get to those just hanging by a thread moments, but you know you’ve got it at the end of the day.”
Through expert deck building and masterful piloting, Chiu has become the first North American Continental Champion, and will be competing for the title of World Champion in Orlando later this year. Despite facing the best of the best all weekend long, Chiu succeeded by preparing for the matchups he expected to face. In the end, it paid off massively.
Disney Lorcana
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.