Understanding the Four Main Lorcana Tournament Deck Types
When you sit across the table from an opponent, what is your go-to deck for claiming victory? Like other trading card games, Lorcana allows players to build decks around different strategies. These deck archetypes are broken down into four main categories: aggro, midrange, ramp, and control decks.
Each archetype excels at a different style of gameplay, but all are designed to help you win the game as quickly as possible. In Lorcana, that means reaching the goal of accumulating 20 Lore points before the other players.
Not sure where to get started? Don’t worry; we’re going to break down each of these four basic decks into its component parts so you can better understand how to build one for yourself.
Aggro Deck
An aggro deck is an aggressive deck. These decks usually make use of low-cost characters to generate a large amount of Lore quickly, keeping opponents on the defensive and preventing them from laying out more effective strategies.
Aggro decks benefit from cards like Lilo, Making a Wish and Cursed Merfolk, Urusla’s Handiwork. Both cards cost only one ink to put on the field, but quest for two Lore each. Even if they’re taken out in battle, you can have up to four per deck. There are plenty of other cards that fit the bill too, and that makes aggro decks some of the easiest to build for new players.
Control Decks
As their name implies, control decks focus on controlling the battlefield. These decks are built around slow, deliberate strategies that often don’t see a payoff until later in the game. Control decks tend to focus on powerful cards that are tough to beat but also have a variety of responses to different situations.
One card you might see a lot in control decks is Be Prepared, which allows the player to banish all characters on the field. This makes it easy to reset the board state and reclaim control if your opponent gets a leg up. Control decks can be tougher to play but reward players who know the ins and outs of the game and who like to think four steps ahead.
Midrange Decks
Midrange decks are best described as “jacks of all trades, masters of none”. These decks strike a balance between aggro and control decks, focusing on maintaining enough variety and versatility to respond to numerous scenarios while utilizing cheap cards that allow for quick, rapid-fire plays.
A good example of a card you might find in a midrange deck is Bruno Madrigal, Undetected Uncle. While he costs four ink to play, Bruno boasts three Strength and three Willpower, Evasive, and the ability to generate three Lore by correctly guessing the top card of your deck.
Ramp Deck
The final type of Lorcana deck you might see is called a ramp deck. Again, its name is somewhat self-explanatory. These decks focus on bringing powerhouse cards to the field quickly, often through the use of special effects. A well-built ramp deck can field a high-cost card while your opponent is struggling to get the basics out, but there are downsides. Luck plays a substantial role, and if you have a poor hand, you might not be able to build up resources in time.
A card you might see in use in a ramp deck is One Jump Ahead. This song lets you put the top card of your deck into your inkwell face down and exerted, but it’s an easy way to bring even high-cost cards onto the field without spending the necessary resources.
There are other types of decks out there, but these four are the most likely culprits you’ll see in a tournament. There are a few so-called combo decks floating around, but these are few and far between. They’re too unreliable to be a viable threat at the moment and are more likely to be fielded as meme decks.
