The Enlightened Illumineers - A Disney Lorcana Podcast
Ep 3 - Pen vs Book Theory and Current Emerald & Ruby Cards
Mar 15, 2023Episode 3
Trey 'Cabled'
Welcome to the second episode of The Enlightened Illumineers - A Disney Lorcana podcast. In this episode, I will go over a few corrections about my previous thoughts on some cards, the Pen vs Book theory, what are all the current Emerald (green) & Ruby (red), the latest news, and finally the Glimmer Gallery segment going over Stitch.
If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe! Also, leave a review to let other listeners know what you enjoy about the show, and I welcome any and all feedback (good or bad). Thank you for all your support! Greatly appreciate everyone who listens to the podcast.
Welcome to the second episode of The Enlightened Illumineers - A Disney Lorcana podcast. In this episode, I will go over a few corrections about my previous thoughts on some cards, the Pen vs Book theory, what are all the current Emerald (green) & Ruby (red), the latest news, and finally the Glimmer Gallery segment going over Stitch.
If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe! Also, leave a review to let other listeners know what you enjoy about the show, and I welcome any and all feedback (good or bad). Thank you for all your support! Greatly appreciate everyone who listens to the podcast.
Hello and welcome! This is the 3rd episode of The Enlightened Illumineers podcast. If you'd like to learn the finer details about the new trading card game called Disney Lorcana, be up to date with the latest news and meta, eventually when we get there, this is the podcast for you. I am your host, Trey. Online you might also know me as Cabled. In this episode, I'll go over a few corrections or updates about previous thoughts on some cards, the pen vs book theory, all Emerald and Ruby cards, the latest news that we've gotten from the past two weeks, and the Glimmer Gallery section going over Stitch. One minor correction on a card I want to go back on is actually Stitch. And at first I said this might be an aggro card, but more thought in talking with people, it might actually be a combo card. With any kind of combo deck, you want all your combo pieces in your hand, and then you lay down everything all at once. With Stitch building up its hand, putting a bunch of smaller little guys out on the field, it might actually go towards a combo deck that will either give you some kind of great payoff later on, having all your pieces in your hand. We're definitely not sure what kind of combos there will be out there in this game. The only one I could really think of right now are either Hades or Mulan, but even then, I don't think those are actually going to be combo and just more very synergistic cards. Additionally, with the news that there will be some kind of summoning sickness, and we'll get to that later on in the actual news section. When you do tap or exert your smaller creatures, we don't know exactly what that means yet, but my theory is that if one of your creatures or characters is tapped or exerted, then your opponent can challenge it. That would be very counterintuitive for a zoo type deck, being you tap or exert your characters and then they just get challenged right away by your opponent. Instead of the opposite, what you want to do is challenge your opponent and you won't be able to do that with Stitch. Those are the two main reasons why I think Stitch is actually more combo card instead of a zoo card. Now next up is, I think, a really neat thing that I found out this past week was the pen vs book theory, for the separation line between the character's abilities and the flavor text. This was originally thought up of by parkerob in the Disney Lorcana HQ Discord. And their theory, which I'm a thousand percent convinced this is correct, is if it's a pen, then it's a brand new quote from out of thin air, someone made it up. But if you have the book separation line, that quote is directly from a movie or TV show or whatever, the form of media that the cards from. I just thought that was a great find by parkerob. And so far, anything that has the book separation line has actually have a quote. Like I said, I'm thousand percent convinced that that is what that means and it doesn't actually have any kind of mechanical gameplay aspect to it. Now let's talk about all the Emerald and Ruby cards. I'll first be starting with all the Emerald cards, and the first one will be Cruella De Vil. She is a two cost with the flourish. Her full name is Corella Devil - Miserable As Usual. She has one attack and three defense. This Cruella is Storyborn and a Villain. Has the ability You'll Be Sorry! The ability says when this character is challenged and banished, you may return chosen character to their player's hand. It has the regular pen flavor text divider. The flavor text says, "When she stops by, misery as company." Cruella has one Lore Pip on the right side. The artist is Nicholas Cole, set number 72 out of 204. And it looks like it has the Rare Rarity symbol, which is the triangle bronze. I like Cruella De Vil for two couple of reasons. One is if you get Cruella down early in the game, you can start collecting lore pretty easily. Has the inherent built in ability where your opponent doesn't want to challenge your Cruella De Vil because if they do, you can return a chosen character to a player's hand. So if someone takes out this Cruella De Vil with, let's say, a Mickey, then you can return that Mickey back to the player's hand, or you can do it in super advantageous ways where you return your own character to your hand. For example, you can return back a Scar or the Dragon Maleficent and you can reuse those enter the battlefield abilities. I'm not 100% sure what type of deck Cruella will be in. I like the idea that she's with Maleficent and eventually whenever she gets challenged, you can bounce back that Maleficent and you can get another trigger off of Maleficent's ability to banish another character. Another thing could actually see Cruella being a tempo card or in some kind of mid range tempo deck. Tempo meaning that whenever it's time to play down a one cost, a two cost, a three cost, you play it down on that exact turn. You're going through your deck very purposely, very efficiently, and you're throwing down all the cards at the right time in the right moments, which could outpace any other type of deck if you get things at the right time. That's not the best example of what a mid range or tempo deck is. I can kind of see Cruella being in one of those types of deck just because with Cruella's ability. You can ruin your opponent's tempo.
I don't know a card in any other game that's a 1:
1 with Cruella De Vil, but I do know Magic has a similar mechanic, although I know it's not exact, that they have Death touch. And anytime that character, that creature, does damage to any other character or creature, it will completely destroy it. Even if your Death Touch's character has one attack and the defending other character has 20 HP, you will kill off that character. It's pretty close, but it's not 100% accurate. Next card is Jumba Jookiba, which is a vanilla card. It has five cost with the flourish. The full name is Jumba Jookiba - Renegade scientist. Has four attack and five defense. There is no ability, hence the vanilla. It has two Lore Pips on the side. It has the book flavor text separation line and that reads, "Created something? Ha! But that would be irresponsible and unethical. I would never ever make more than one." Since this card was released on the Disney Lorcana social media, we do not have the artist or the set number. Not much more to say for Jumbo Jookiba. It's nice knowing more vanilla cards so that you can base value all of the other cards to see if the ability that a card has has a good inherent value or not. Because if you do compare this Jumba Jookiba, which is a five cost, you can compare this to Mulan, which is also a five cost. Has the same four attack, five defense. It has one Lore Pip, although the ability that Mulan has can give you way more than one Lore Pip. That makes up for the one less Lore Pip, but it has a crazy ability. The last emerald card is Aladdin, which is emerald or green. It's a two cost with the flourish. Its name is Aladdin - Prince Ali. It has two attack and two defense. Aladdin is Storyborn, Hero and Prince for the attributes. He has one ability, which is Ward and Ward opponents cannot choose this character except to challenge. Its flavor text reads, "Fabulously wealthy. Practically untouchable, genuinely inauthentic." This flavor text is also very key to how Aladdin actually is. Like all these new cards, Ravensburger logo was covering up the Lore Pip section. So we don't know how many this is on Aladdin. My guess would be one, and if it did have two, it would make this early two cost Aladdin very strong. We don't know the artist, and we don't know the set number as well. What's nice about seeing this two cost Aladdin card is we can make a bigger assumption that this Aladdin card will be inside the Emerald and Ruby starter deck, since we can see that Aladdin is ruby on the starter deck image. So this could be the lower costed Aladdin to the Floodborn Aladdin, that would be a red color. In my card game experience, I don't know much about Ward itself. It seems mostly like a magic thing. And for example, I have been seeing a lot of people saying that this Aladdin card reminds them of Boggle deck for magic. And that deck is usually filled with Hex proof cards, and you start buffing all of those hexproof cards, or, for example, it would be the Ward cards in Lorcana. If you can have this Aladdin being a 2/2 with Ward, so it can't be ever targeted except for challenges. And if you keep buffing this Aladdin to a 3/3 or a 4/4 could start getting out of hand. Now, that's all the Emerald cards we can get to the Ruby cards. This first Ruby card is actually the OG first card that we've seen. And I say it's the OG card just because it has the 1 out of P1 for the D23 cards, and that is Mickey Mouse. This Mickey Mouse has an eight cost with the flourish. Its full name is Mickey Mouse - Brave Little Taylor. It's a Dreamborn, Hero. Has five attack and five defense. It has the ability Evasive, which is only characters with Evasive can challenge this character. This Mickey has four Lore Pips off to the right, which is the most of any card so far. It has the pen flavor text divider which says,"When defeated looms and victory hangs by a thread, a hero bolts to the rescue, patching things up through sheer determination. The artist is Nicholas Cole, and we don't actually have the full set number from this just because it's only been shown once with the D23 cards and it has not been re released to show an actual set number outside of the 7 D23 cards. At a quick glance, you might assume this eight cost for five attack and five defense is very high, but it does have Evasive, and it does have four Lore Pips. I do believe that more Lore Pips gives a bigger inherent value to a card. And then in addition to having Evasive, that means your big monster of Dragon Maleficent can not kill this because it cannot challenge it due to not having evasive. Having a bunch of evasive cards on your side of the field gives you a really big inherent value on trying to go super aggro with a deck. And Mickey might actually be an aggro card even though it has a very high cost, being able to keep doing a bunch of quests to gain four Lore at a time. And if your opponent cannot challenge it, then that's a very easy win. If going to ten is the actual win and con, you can do two and you're already 80% of the way there. Next card is Maleficent. The full name is Maleficent - Monstrous Dragon. She's a nine cost with the flourish, seven attack and five defense. She is Storyborn, Villain and Dragon for the attributes. The ability on maleficent is Dragonfire. When you play this character, you may banish chosen character. It has the pen flavor text separation line,
and the flavor text reads, "The ninth Rule of Villainy:
When all else fails, turn into a dragon." Maleficent has two Lore Pips off to the side. The artist is Luis Herta. It has set number 113 out of 204. Has the Rarity, Legend, which is the Gold pentagon. With the original D23 cards. This Maleficent used to read you may banish opposing chosen character. And with the new release from the teaser trailer that they posted in mid January, it got updated to say, you may banish chosen character. This is pretty insightful in two different ways. One meaning you can banish your own characters for whatever reason, and then in addition to that, it might indicate that there is a built in multiplayer for this game. So you can banish one of your teammate's chosen character if for whatever reason you wanted to do that. You might initially think that this nine cost is really high, which I do agree with, but it also has an inherent five cost built into the card. And I mean that by there is another card called Dragonfire, which is an action card, and that's five costs. You may banish a chosen character. If you take that inherent value from the action card Dragonfire and you plug it into this Maleficent, you can kind of say that this Maleficent is a four cost 7/5 card with two lore pips. Obviously, that's not full correct way to value a card, but it does show you that the ability on Maleficent has a very high initial cost, which shows why this is such a high nine cost Maleficent card. I'm not sure what kind of card Maleficent will be. It is in the ruby color, and in my eyes, ruby is starting to lean more towards Aggro, but a lot of Aggro decks don't like high costed cards unless it's a finisher card, which this doesn't look like a finisher card compared to Mickey when you can quest and gain that last four lore to win the game. Next card is Dragonfire. It's an action card with the five cost and no flourish and the ability is banish chosen character. So this is that card I was talking about earlier. That's basically what is on Maleficent. I like the idea that there are other action cards, maybe item cards or song cards, that are the same exact abilities on a Storyborn character, a Dreamborn character, or a Floodborn character. For example, if we look at Elsa, she has the ability to Freeze, tap and exert chosen opposing character. What if there is a Freeze action card that's a one or two cost, and you can do the same exact ability? You can exert one of your other opposing chosen characters so you can challenge them or whatever happens in the game when something is exerted or tapped. I don't think all characters or Glimmers will have their own ability as a separate card just because some of them will not be an easy direct transition between an ability and a card. But I do like the idea of them. Next card is Mulan. The full name is Mulan - Imperial soldier. She's a five cost with the flourish, with four attack and five defense. Her attributes are Storyborn, Hero, and Princess. Her ability is Lead By Example. During your turn, whenever this character banishes another character in a challenge, your other characters get plus one lore this turn. Mulan has one lore pip off to the side. Her artist is Mel Milton and set number 118 out of 204. I really like this card for the main reason that it looks like an Aggro or a zoo card. If you have a bunch of your characters out and you challenge with this Mulan and all your other characters get plus one lore. With those characters having an additional lore and they go on quest, you could easily win a game in one turn if for whatever reason, the win condition is ten lore. Obviously, this is all just speculation on this card and any of all the other cards I've been talking about, but this one really looks like fun. And this probably might be my second deck I make other than some kind of control deck. Last card for Ruby is Aladdin. We don't know anything about this Aladdin, just like the previous episode of Sorcerer Mickey and Moana. However, this does seem like it's going to be a Floodborn Aladdin, being King of Thieves. This Aladdin is on the Emerald and Ruby starter deck, which would pair perfectly with the previous Emerald Aladdin that was shown a few weeks ago. Now that I've gone over all the Emerald and Ruby cards, we can go to the news section. There's been quite a few new different news pieces in the past two weeks, but nothing very in depth and I'll start going over those now. There was an article on boardspealer, NL, I believe, a Netherlands card game shop, they have article about launch dates, and this was not confirmed or denied by Disney Lorcana themselves. But they have sets two through five official launch dates. Nothing is really crazy in this article that they posted. All they really did was take September 1st date and then fast forward three months, and that will be set two, set three, set four, set five, which makes 100% sense. But only Disney Lorcana is confirming set one for September 1st release date for everywhere at big box stores and local game stores. It's hard to tell if this website or this card game shop actually has insider information from distributors. It's hard to deny that this is what's going to happen. And it just makes sense, because if there's going to be four sets in a year, that's just every three months. Next piece of news is actually a brand new card that was released by Disney Lorcana two weeks ago, roughly. And that is White Rabbit's Pocket Watch. It's a three cost Amethyst card with the flourish at the top. It's an item. The ability name is I'm late! It has the exert symbol and then pay one resource. It says chosen character gains rush this turn,(They can challenge the turn they're played.) It has a book flavor text separation line, and it says,"No wonder you're late. Why, this watches exactly two days slow." Since this was a normal reveal, we do not have the artist or the set number. And luckily, this is an item card, so there was no Lore pips being blocked because item cards do not have Lore pips. This was such a good card reveal that we got last week. This pocket watch did give us some gameplay rules that we can splice from what this card says. Obviously, nothing's very official yet until Ravensburger or the Disney Lorcana team tells us, but this does show that there is some kind of summoning sickness in the game. And summoning sickness meaning that once you play down a character, you cannot attack, defend, or use any of its tap abilities. So, for example, this pocket watch may or may not be able to use its ability once they put it down. However, my theory right now is when you play down a pocket watch or any other character, you can use their ability, their exert ability, the same turn, but you can't attack or challenge just because right now, this pocket watch only says Rush. It only talks about challenge, and it doesn't talk about abilities. The Disney Lorcana team actually said something pretty amazing during their reveal and replying to people on Twitter. Someone asked, Is this summoning sickness? Or is this some form of summoning sickness? And Disney Lorcana team replied, saying,"The ink needs to dry first." It's such a perfect saying for Disney, it just it's Chef's Kiss. Unfortunately, I'm probably still going keep saying summoning sickness. We're not 100% sure if Disney Lorcana team is using their own term, or they just want to say Ink is drying. Or there's someone in the community, Nive, who has coined the term Inked (meant Penned). I like this card for two reasons. One, I'm going to sound like a broken record player, but it's an Amethyst card, and I like Amethyst. As it is leaning towards a control color. That being said, I don't 100% know if this is going to be an actual control card or not, but it will be nice having this Pocket Watch as an item and possibly staying on the board the whole game. As a control player, you want to have agency on what will or will not get challenged. The second main reason why I really like this Pocket Watch card is for my other favorite card being Scar. It synergizes really well with Scar. Once you play them down onto the board, you can reduce one of your opponent's attack by five in the same turn. If you already had Pocket Watch down, you pay the one resource and exert it to give Scar rush, and you can rush in and attack that one character as well. Next piece of news from Disney Lorcana was actually from this past week, and it's not a card, it's a teaser. But I believe it's an actual card. So they tweeted out with the quote,"Purposeful Amber glimmers protect their friends at all cost." Then at the bottom is art credit for Juan Diego Leon. There's a gif attached with Timon, Pumbaa, and Simba walking across the log during the song Hakuna Matata. I think this teaser has two things coming from it. One being it describes what Amber is as a color. And then in addition to that, I think this is our first glimpse at what a song card will be. We don't actually know if there is a song card type, in previous quotes from the creators. They talk about songs, and this could very well be its first song card, but they don't want to reveal it to reveal too much of the gameplay. My idea of a song card I believe is probably like Enchantments from Magic the Gathering. Or what I know more personally is Pokemon Stadium cards or Yu-Gi-Oh Field spells. It will give either a one sided buff to your board or a two sided all players get this type of buff or debuff. Idea for Hakuna Matata card with the quote saying, protect friends at all cost. This might be a buff saying all your Amber cards or even all your characters get plus one defense. Or maybe it takes one less damage or something like that. Or maybe heal off all your characters once played down, if it's not an actual song card and just an action card. When this card was first revealed, we thought the next day we'll actually get the full card, but turns out we were not giving the full card at all, and they're just kind of giving us a little teaser. Last piece of news is something that the Disney team slightly messed up on. Danregal has a little script thingy going on, seeing if there's any changes to the Disney website. And he noticed that there was a bunch of changes on the back end showing a landing page for story, for Inks and Glimmers and stuff like that. He tried all the links, but it didn't work. And I had the bright idea to try the landing pages on the French or German website version of Disney Lorcana. Lo and behold, the story page was up in German and then eventually in French as well. This page didn't have too much, but it does give some kind of background story about Disney Lorcana. The first section says, "Once upon a time, a vast nebula of stars, each containing its own history. Fascinated by these stories, a powerful sorcerer built a magic fort to observe and list each star. He called his place the Great Illuminary. The sorcerer used magic inks to illuminate the characters in each story, bringing them to life through a magic called Lorcana. He thus become the first Illuminator." The next one says, "For centuries, the sorcerer recorded the stories of the stars and the walls of the luminary. Filled with the powers of these stories, the Great Illuminary began to come to life and bubble with energy." And lastly, the final section is,"Are you ready to become the new Illuminary? But one day, the sorcerer disappeared from the Illuminary, and his magic began to fade. In order to perpetuate the creations of the new story, the Illuminary used the magic it had left to call on courageous and imaginative adventures." These three sections had to be translated from French or German, so they might not be perfect. But Mushu Reports seem to have translated them pretty perfectly and adjusted things, if it did not translate correctly with an automated translator. There's not much more to say about this. It is nice that there is some kind of background story for Lorcana, but me, personally, I don't care too much about background story. I just like to get into the game and play. With the news finished, I can now get to the Glimmer Gallery section. If you don't know. The Glimmer Gallery section is a segment that I will go over a new Glimmer character card and describe the movie or media that they are from. I'll provide a movie or show details, trivia tid bits and finally go over what the card is within Disney Lorcana and what kind of decks they can work with, eventually when we get full deck list too. This week's episode I will go over Stitch -Rockstar, which is from the movie Lilo and Stitch. Lilo and Stitch was released June 21, 2002. It has a runtime of 85 minutes, a budget of 80 million, which I think is high, but at the time it might not be. For an animated show. It grossed 273m. It has a rotten tomato score of 87% and an audience score of 77%. Personally, I think that audience score is a little bit low, but I might be very biased because I really do like Stitch. I would probably say it's one of my top ten Disney movies. The Lilo and Stitch movie Synopsis is, "A tale of a young girl's close encounter with the galaxy's most wanted extraterrestrial. Lilo is a lonely Hawaiian girl who adopts a small, ugly "dog", which she named Stitch. Stitch would be the perfect pet weren't for, in reality a genetic experiment who's escaped from an alien planet and crash landed on Earth. Through her love, faith and unwavering belief in Ohana, the Hawaiian concept of family. Lilo helps unlock Stitch's heart and gives him the ability to care for someone else. This is actually the 42nd animated feature in the Disney animated canon. I think it's neat that it's the 42nd animated feature film. Just because Stitch is a creation and 42 is the meaning of life. It just kind of goes hand in hand. This first movie in 2002 eventually led to a big commercial franchise, both with direct to video sequels, a bunch of TV shows as well. First one was Stitch the Movie, which was released in August 2003 and then was followed up by
Lilo and Stitch:
The Series which ran from September 2003 to July 2006. Then there was a second direct to video sequel which
was called Lilo and Stitch 2:
Stitch Has a Glitch, which was released on August 2005. A third and final movie was released called Leroy and Stitch aired on June 2006 on the Disney Channel and then four days after on DVD release, which served to conclude the TV series. A second television series, an animated Stitch, which was made for the Japan market and ran in Japan from October 2008 to June 2011 with two post series special broadcast in 2012 and 2015. It was dubbed in English with an entirely different voice cast from the rest of the franchise with that English dubbed first airing in 2009. A third TV series, a Chinese animated series called Stitch and Ai, which was made for the Chinese market and had the production assistance of American animators. Stitch and Aiwas first produced in English and then dubbed in Mandarin Chinese. The 13 episode of the Mandarin dub aired in March 2017. The original English version of this Chinese series aired in February 2018, again with not the original voice actors. Here's a few little trivia tid bits that I think everyone should know. The original 2002 film's Climatic Space Chasing was actually instead an airplace chase scene through the city of Honolulu. This was changed and Disney had to completely reanimate the scene from ground up because of the attacks of September 11 since it was considered too controversial and upsetting for children. In fact, the film was pushed back by an additional seven months to account for these changes. Additionally, the setting of the chase was changed from Honolulu to mountainous Valleys to remove imagery of things nearly crashing to the buildings, and the ship at one point bounces off a building near the start of the chase for this very reason. In fact, the actual motion is the same between the two versions, just different models and settings. When the movie was shown on television, the part where Nani traps Lilo after she comes out of the dryer was cut out due to the scene was deemed unsafe as Lilo was hiding in the dryer and it would set a bad example for children. Eventually, this scene was brought back in the UK print and the Disney Plus streaming service, with the dryer being replaced with a cutting board and a pizza box on top of the front. When Lilo and Stitch and Nani were walking towards electronic store. The Chinese place next to the electronic store is called Mulan Wok, a possible homage to the Disney film Mulan. This is the most recent Disney Animated Studios film to have full opening credits since 1995 Pocahontas and so far the last Disney animated film to do so as well. Now that's all the information I'll provide for a Stitch in its media. That it's from now let's get to the Disney Lorcana Stitch card that we have so far. Stitch is an Amber Card. It's a six cost with the flourish. The name of the card is Stitch - Rockstar. It has three attack and five defense. This Stitch is a Floodborn with the attributes Hero and Alien. This Stitch has two abilities the shift four, you may pay four resource to play this on top of one of your other characters name Stitch. The second ability is Adoring fans. Whenever you play a character with the cost two or less, you may exert it to draw a card. It's flavor text below that is."The best part about beachside concert is that there's always room for one more." On the right, this stitch has three Lore Pips. The artist is Simangaliso Sibaya. Hopefully I did not butcher that name and I'm sorry if I did. Stitch is set number 23 out of 204. Its rarity symbol is the Super Rare, which is the silver diamond one. Like I said earlier in the episode, I have changed my thoughts about Stitch. Originally I thought Stitch was going to be like a zoo or aggro card, but I do believe that it might be some kind of combo card just because combo decks like to have a bunch of cards in their hand with Stitch's. Adoring fans ability you can start drawing a bunch of cards if you have a bunch of little guys and then eventually you can do your one big combo with all the cards in your hand. As for what deck stitch could go into, I'm not sure. I think we need more cards to even give some kind of idea for a stitch. Even then, it might not even be a combo card, and it could be something completely else. There's just not a lot of information out there for the game in general and then specifically for this Stitch, we definitely need to know the lower cost Stitch(s) for this just to see what colors it will be in. It might be in one other color. It might be two different other colors. If all Floodborn characters get a Storyborn and a Dreamborn character, As of right now, I might not want to make a stitch deck, but that's just because there's no information on what type of deck it will be. But I'm still going to try to collect all the cards anyways and have a full play set, so that won't really matter anyways. With that to end, thank you for joining me on this Enlightened Illumineers podcast episode, and I hope you come back for more. You can find me personally @cabled on all social media platforms and you can find the podcast @enlumineers on all social media platforms as well. If you have any questions or comments or any feedback, please at me or the podcast. My name is Trey 'Cabled'. I hope I have enlightened you with all this Disney Lorcana news, and there'll be plenty more to come!