For the last few years, the thing that has drawn most, if not all of my waking thoughts, has been the trading card game Disney Lorcana. As a former Magic the Gathering (MTG) player, when I heard that Disney was going to be putting out their own TCG I immediately jumped ship, swam across the bay to the new one. I was exhausted by the constant set releases and the toxicity (literally and metaphorically) from the players of MTG. Plus, the fact that I am the quintessential cringe “Disney adult” made the most sense for the change. It had everything I wanted, strategy gameplay and Disney characters.

The goal of the game is to use resources to pay for cards that help you gain “lore.” The first person to get to 20 wins the game. Its very similar to magic but in the opposite direction.

The community surrounding this game have become some very good friends. Even me and my husband have hosted our own events with a select few players at our house.

In addition to hosting our own, we have traveled out of state to compete in organized tournaments. This is where I learned that I may be a “good player” at home but when it comes to the big leagues I was severely lacking. Even in our local set champs I was getting annihilated by former “professional” MTG players turned Lorcana questers. They were so good and knew the gameplay inside and out that I simultaneously hated and looked up to them. At first I was very frustrated. Being used as a mop in a “kids” card game is quite humbling. I even contemplated quitting because the fun had kind of left the game for me. Instead, I chose to get better.

I started researching “meta” decks (a word by the way that I would roll my eyes so hard at that that they nearly fell out of my head) and playing them at weekly league play. I saw a drastic improvement and started finding myself in top 8 in set champs, something I never even came close to getting when I was running my own “home-brewed” deck. Even my husband, who was even more resistant to turn to the “dark side,” found himself hitting second place in set champs once he chose the more competitive path.

Competing in set champs around my area, I have come to know a handful of really good players. One of them I even started to look up to and model my own gameplay after him. Even going so far as stealing one of the decks he had played against me in a prior tournament. Which is unfortunate that this past weekend he cheated in a game he played against me in the top 4.

I had gone up against this dude twice in a row. I was exhausted. He is a fierce competitor and in the final games of our back-to-back rounds I was mentally drained. In the last turn of the final game, I pulled a card that could have possibly won me the round, but because it wasn’t THE CARD that I needed in that moment I mentally checked out. It was weird. My subconscious saw the card I pulled and was excited but my active thought was bummed and I threw in the towel, majorly misplaying what could have easily have been a win for me.

I kept beating myself up after, realizing how much I really did screw my chances. It just didn’t make sense. So all night I kept running through our games trying to see where I went wrong and what I could have done and do better in the future.

While playing back one of the rounds my thoughts recalled a move where he played this “John Silver” card. The card gave one of my characters a status called “reckless” where they can’t quest, the whole point of winning the game. I remember thinking “damn this deck runs John Silver too?!” I looked at my hand and tried to come up with an answer to this play. I had two cards that could have worked to remove him. But I also had to worry about another card called “Demona” that was also on board. At the start of my next turn I pulled THE CARD I needed in the moment and wiped the board of all of his cards resetting everything. I thought nothing else of that John Silver.

What was wrong with this play is that he should not have had that card anywhere near him, let alone in his deck and playing it.

In Lorcana each deck is made up of two colors. He was running Amber/Amethyst (aka yellow and purple or colloquially “Yurple.”) John Silver is “Emerald” or green card.

This move is super bold in many ways, let alone for playing it against someone in the top 4. But no one was watching, and I was so mentally exhausted that I didn’t even catch that the play was 100% illegal and should have gotten him disqualified the moment he pulled it. Had there been other people overseeing the game he would have.

I’m genuinely more annoyed that he played it because it just shows how little he thought of me, but in his defense, he was right. It was a huge gamble and it paid off. I didn’t catch it at all. Only did I realize how illegal it was until it was 1 in the morning, hours after he took first place.

This wasn’t the only misplay he made. There were two others in my and my buddy’s games that he should have known for being the level of “competitive” he currently sits.

I posted this story on both reddit and our local discord server. My buddies at home didn’t doubt me for a split second. Even the leader of the team, THIS DUDE is on, reached out to ask me about it. (My post on discord had deliberately been vague on who had made this play. I’m not about to make enemies in this community I genuinely treasure.)

Reddit though was an entirely different beast. Every comment on my post called me an out-right liar. Every single response, with the exception of one. Someone accused me of “being manic” and suggested I “go watch some tv” which was super insulting. What would I have had to gain by posting a “lie” on reddit? It’s not like it would make the outcome any different. I couldn’t ask for a rematch. There is absolutely no point for me to post such a brazen lie. I didn’t realize how vile reddit threads can get until I got to see it in all of this vicious glory.

In the end I deleted the post because fuck those douche bags. It genuinely made me realize why most people never speak up about something so outlandish. Most don’t believe you and some will work to completely discredit you when they, personally, have no skin in the fight.

Even if the dude ends up lying to the guys on his team, I know what I know and I have decided that should we compete in the future I will immediately have a judge do a deck check, before we even play. I came to this conslusion not only because of this, but because of a prior tournament he and I had gone up against each other and he had been in the bathroom for nearly half the round. As he was someone I had looked up to, I didn’t think anything of it other than it being really weird.

Instead of being mad at the whole thing I am using it as a learning tool to make myself more competitive.

In addition to it changing how I play, it made me realize how unaware I am. I move through my life on “autopilot” not being present on what’s happening right now, in front of me. It’s funny because as I go over it, my subconscious saw that John Silver (iun the moment) and tried to tell me “hey, fucker, wake up he shouldn’t be playing that.”

I was talking it out with my husband and I realized that this must be a learned coping mechanism after having gone through the loss of my dad, my mother’s Alzheimer’s and ultimate demise, and then caring for my dying husband and processing his death. Things have been really shitty, personally and globally, since 2019 and I think I just mentally checked out. Now I have to relearn how to be in the here and now so I don’t have someone else take advantage of my lack of awareness.