Oceania’s first-ever Disney Lorcana Challenge (DLC) was held in Melbourne, Australia this past weekend, and it turned out to be an incredible showcase for both new and established talent. Despite the game having only been available in the region since last June, it’s clear there’s no shortage of high-level players eager to make a name for themselves in the global Lorcana community, and win some extraordinarily valuable prizes while they’re at it, including a Golden Mickey and an invitation to the World Championship.
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The biggest story of the weekend should have been about tournament winner Dinh Khang Pham, a fan-favorite player and the only person to qualify for continental championships in both Europe and North America. Despite several strong finishes, Pham had not yet managed to secure an invite to this year’s World Championship. In Melbourne, Pham finished first in Swiss, then went on to win it all while piloting a unique take on Ruby/Sapphire. It was a triumphant finish and well-deserved World Championship qualification, but it was heavily overshadowed.
The Blunder Down Under
Unfortunately, much of the attention from the event has been focused on Pham’s opponent in the finals and the second-place finisher, Clement “Raclem” Fusade. Fusade, an accomplished player with several of his own Day 2 DLC finishes, has been scrutinized for challenging a play made during his quarter-final match by Australian player Jesse Lentini.
The situation unfolded during game three of Fusade and Lentini’s best-of-three match, with the scores tied at 1-1. During Lentini’s turn, he quested with his Magic Broom, Luminary Keeper and played Merlin, Goat; a card that gains you one lore when played. Lentini reached over to his notepad to record the lore gain. Then, Lentini picked up his Magic Broom and moved it to his discard. Magic Broom’s ability allows you to banish it to draw a card when you play another character so, having just played a Goat, Lentini chose to activate the Broom’s ability.
But just as he moved the Magic Broom to his discard, Fusade stopped him. Fusade pointed at the Magic Broom, Lentini pointed back and forth between the Magic Broom and the Goat, and the two had a short conversation before looking off-camera to speak with the judge. The broadcast cuts away to the casters, and when it returns to the match around two minutes later, the Magic Broom is back in play on Lentini’s side of the board, exerted. With the Broom on board, Fusade started his turn by challenging with his Maui, Half-Shark to retrieve Develop Your Brain from his discard. With some momentum from additional card draw, Fusade beat Lentini a few turns later and moved on to the Top 4, securing a Golden Mickey for himself and knocking Lentini out of the tournament.
That’s everything we saw happen. We can’t hear the conversations between players and the judge, and we didn’t see what happened once the judge got involved. Everything else we know, or think we know, about the situation has to be inferred. The most logical explanation seems to be that Fusade challenged Lentini’s attempt to banish the Magic Broom after having played the Goat and gained a lore, claiming that because the Broom trigger isn’t mandatory, Lentini missed the trigger by fully resolving the action of playing the Goat. Given that the Broom remained in play after, it seems that the judge ruled in Fusade’s favor. In an interview with Lorcana caster and content creator Joe “Speci’ Curley, Lentini confirmed this was the series of events. The problem is that what Lentini wanted to do is perfectly legal.
Conflicting Rules
If everything transpired as Lentini claims, then this is by far the biggest scandal in competitive Lorcana history. By challenging Lentini’s play, Fusade gave himself an advantage that may have helped him unfairly win the match, secure a prize card worth tens of thousands of dollars, and later go on to earn an invitation to the World Championship. Given the reviled reputation cheaters have in the TCG hobby, you can imagine how outraged the community is over this, and how much abuse Fusade has been subject to online.
Cheating is totally unacceptable and cheaters should be completely and entirely ostracized from competitive Lorcana – full stop. Many feel Lorcana has been far too lax on cheaters so far by only disqualifying them after multiple warnings and not outright banning them from competing, and what happened in Melbourne erodes trust between players and tournament organizers. But what Fusade did would not have been possible without multiple systemic failures that have plagued Disney Lorcana Challenge from its inception.
While the rules for resolving multiple simultaneous triggers, known as “The Bag”, are well-known and favor Lentini’s play, there is a conflicting rule in the official tournament rules that states the player needs to announce the order of resolution before beginning to resolve the first one. This is an antiquated rule that’s due to be removed from the document, but it currently exists. These two conflicting rules give Fusade the grounds to challenge Lentini’s play, even though this is a perfectly common play line that every Lorcana player has used many times.
As the Pete controversy taught us, a trigger doesn’t need to be announced until the point it would actually matter to game state. Because both the Goat’s ability and the Broom’s ability were in the bag, Lentini is allowed to resolve both abilities in either order, without first announcing all of the triggers he intends to resolve.
The bottom line is we don’t know what Fusade knows or what his intentions were. Without a confession, we have to believe we know Fusade’s intent – something none of us can ever really know. While the community is rightly distressed over this situation, it’s important to direct that energy in the direction it can be most productive. Ravensbuger hasn’t updated the Tournament rules since before the first Challenge event, and what’s more, it hasn’t made the necessary effort to train judges correctly for such high-stakes events.
The Consequences Of Forgoing A Judge Program
After nearly a year of high-stakes competitive events, Lorcana still doesn’t have an official judge program. At the end of the day, it’s the judge’s job to ensure both players are playing correctly when someone asks for help. We wouldn’t have to try to figure out what Fusade’s intentions were if the judge had made the correct call, and the judge would have made the right call if he was properly trained on Lorcana’s rules via a structured judge program. Players rely on judges to be experts, and while no one is perfect, this is a pretty unacceptable miscall on a straightforward rule that already occurred in the match. With stakes this high and the world watching on Twitch, there’s no excuse for an error like this.
If something like this were to happen at the World Championship, it could do irrevocable damage to the integrity of the game. Players expect that Ravensburger and the tournament organizers are taking these events as seriously as we do, but the lack of an official judge program says otherwise. What happened in Melbourne is a direct consequence of having poor support for judges and I hope something like this never happens again. I don’t know how the competitive scene can survive if it does.
Disney Lorcana
- 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
- Player Count
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2-6 (suggested)
- Age Recommendation
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8+