Tournament Report
Event Summary
- Event: Disney Lorcana Challenge Richmond
- PreGame Promo Quest (Friday)
- Venue: Greater Richmond Convention Center
- Date: 01/09/2026 – 01/11/2026
- Players: 2008 Competitors (approx)
- PreGame Promo Quest: 770 Competitors
- Format: Core Constructed (Set 10), 12 Swiss Rounds, Top 32 Cut
- PreGame Promo Quest: 7 Swiss Rounds, No Cut
- Winner: James “Fungus” Gray
Introduction
Look sharp! It’s another tournament report – a whole new Tournament Organizer for Season 2 of Lorcana’s competitive circuit, and a whole new TO for me as staff. Let’s look at how things went in Richmond – big side events, new policies, and one very long main tournament!
Day One: PreGame Promo Quest
Be Prepared
As I said in the introduction, this was my first time working with Pastimes and I was interested to see how their approach to staffing and event preparation would differ from what I experienced with PPG. For each Season 1 DLC, PPG held at least one meeting to go over the venue, the event schedule, and any additional expectations, as well as (usually) a role-based meeting just for judge staff several weeks before the event. In contrast, Pastimes provided much of that venue/event information in written form the week of the Challenge.
I was expecting this to have an impact on how prepared I felt, and how prepared everyone else would be – but those concerns proved unfounded. It turns out that treating people like professionals invested in their own success works out pretty well, and I didn’t have to spend any unpaid time on video calls in the lead up to the show.
One thing I would like to see change in terms of communication is managing the information provided to team members who were scheduled to start later in the day. I was not present for the start of the early shift any of the three days of the event, and I felt a little out of the loop for having missed those early meetings. I will also endeavor to check in with my Team Lead if there continue to be things I feel like I have missed, though that can be challenging when considering things I might not know about.
It Means No Worries
A hot-button topic in the run-up to DLC Richmond was the slightly tweaked Takebacks Policy shared in the Disney Lorcana Official Discord and sent directly to competitors. Would the number of Takeback calls prove unmanageable? Would the competitive integrity of the event be undermined?
Well… no. Overall, it was fine. I didn’t get a Takeback call until Round 3, and it was a very simple one. The active player Boosted their Cheshire Cat and indicated a character they wanted to move damage counters to, and then wanted to make a different choice of character. They hadn’t gotten any new information, had indicated their desire to change the choice immediately, and called for a judge. I allowed the Takeback and the competitors quickly got back to their game. This was a pretty standard call over the course of the weekend, and I think the Policy was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.
I’m Still Here
My first time being appealed for the weekend, and my first time ruling that a game state should be left “as-is” despite being incorrect. The active player quested with their Jasmine – Steady Strategist, and resolved her ability:
ALWAYS PLANNING Whenever this character quests, look at the top 3 cards of your deck. You may reveal an Ally character card and put it into your hand. Put the rest on the bottom of your deck in any order.
Only… they didn’t choose an Ally; they chose a Hero character by mistake. And then they tried to fix their own error by taking a different card off the bottom of the deck. The opponent couldn’t confirm whether that new card was one of the two actually placed on the bottom by Jasmine‘s ability.
I decided that the player interfering with the fix before calling a judge rendered a rewind functionally impossible. We can’t be confident that cards are where they are supposed to be at this point, so a rewind would not be appropriate. I also issued a warning for resolving the original ability incorrectly, and reminded the player to call a judge instead of attempting a fix on their own in the future. The player appealed because, despite being fine with the fix, they did not wish to receive a warning. The Head Judge that responded upheld my ruling, and play continued.
Trust in Me
Stepping back into the floor judge role for DLC Richmond was an interesting experience, what with it being a step backwards in responsibility from ending Season 1 as an Appeals Judge. While I love working the floor of an event like this, I still found myself a little frustrated by the lack of autonomy.
That said, there were plenty of opportunities for me to take on an informal mentor role when responding to calls. I tried to be the secondary responding judge as often as I could, to let other judges take point and practice their skills, and just be available as a resource if they felt stuck. I never offered unsolicited feedback since that wasn’t my place, but several judges asked and was happy to oblige. Seeing my colleagues respond well to my presence at calls and my feedback afterwards was probably my favorite part of the weekend.
Wrong Lever!
Ok, let’s talk about Donald Duck – Perfect Gentleman. Yes, again. His triggered ability reared its ugly head once more at DLC Richmond, and the need for consistency across the whole judge team led the Lead Lore Guides to seek a firm clarification from Ravensburger. If you’re not familiar with the standing ruling the team at CCS came up with and popularized, you can read about that here.
And then throw it all out of the window. To the shock of many, and the comfort of many others, the official ruling for Richmond was that we were to treat Donald’s ability as if it were mandatory – but only if the error was noticed immediately by the opponent. In that case, the opponent would decide whether or not the ability was added to the bag at that time and if so, both players would get to draw. However, if the missed trigger was not caught until later in the turn, the ability would be treated as optional, it would be assumed to be declined by both players, and neither player would get to draw.
I can see why the decision was made to take this approach – it minimizes the incentive for the opponent to intentionally allow the trigger to be missed. My concern is the lack of any basis whatsoever in the documentation. I don’t believe fiat rulings that run directly against the rules players can access should be made or used at events – doing so can have a drastic effect on the community’s trust of both Lore Guides and event policies in general.
Day Two: So Much Swiss
Spooky Sight
Today was my first opportunity to step into the broadcast area for the event, and I was excited to see how the set up would differ from both Season 1 and Worlds. I got to sit at the eye-in-the-sky screen for (some of) my first match on stream, which is one of my favorite positions when it’s available – I get to make copious notes, mumble to myself as plays are made, and not have to worry about being in front of an audience.
In this case, though, we didn’t have direct communication between the backstage and spotter positions, which meant that I had to leap out of my seat and find my way through the correct spot in the curtains to stop a match when necessary. At future events, I would love to see judges be provided with headsets to eliminate that hiccup entirely and really streamline the process.
Nothing to Hide
I don’t write about other judge’s calls, because I don’t have all the context or information that would be needed for an accurate write-up. Also, it’s kind of unprofessional. However, there was a controversial Takeback call on stream in round 2 that had me questioning that policy…
Luckily, Lead Lore Guide Phil wrote about it himself in his own tournament report. You can find his story about his interesting call on his blog, JudgingWithPhil.
All Funned Out
Towards the end of the day, I moved from broadcast responsibilities back out onto the main event floor to wrap up my shift after the evening crew took over stream. And let me tell you, I have never seen so many errors before games even started. I had players calling me because they drew too many cards before altering, they drew too many cards after altering, they shuffled before they drew back up to seven, or even drew too few cards after altering. It was wild.
These players were tired. It’s always crucial at this point of an event to be understanding of players making these errors, and reassure them that a warning is not something to be stressed out about but just our way of keeping track of whether players are playing honestly.
However, it’s just as crucial to be mindful of the fact that there may also be players looking to take advantage of the tiredness, both to excuse their own errors and to exploit their opponent’s lapses. Don’t fall into easy assumptions. We still need to be paying attention and investigating where necessary.
Day Three: A Very Long Top Cut
If it’s not Baroque
Time to talk about one of my strangest screw-ups of the weekend. I was on the floor of the main event, and lo and behold yet another pre-game card count issue arises for my very first call of the day. The player has drawn eight cards before altering their hand, and has placed their hand face-up in front of the opponent at the time I respond to the call, with one of the Appeals Judges as second. The fix is simple – shuffle a random card back into the deck.
But is that what I do? No. First of all, I start by trying to determine which card was the last one drawn; a complete waste of time. Then I settle on having the player shuffle the entire hand away and start their pre-game procedure from scratch. Afterwards, the AJ who was with me on the call asked why I didn’t just shuffle a single random card and I had no answer. I had just taken several basically identical calls the day before, but for some reason I rushed through this one and didn’t stop to check myself. I’ve noticed that my first call of each day tends to feel hurried or pressured, and that’s something I need to work on. I don’t get a warm-up freebie.
So Much to Give
One interesting call I had on Sunday, before moving onto the broadcast, was about Lady – Decisive Dog and how her ability to gain strength interacts with Lady – Miss Park Avenue being shifted on top of her. The active player believed Pack of Her Own would trigger and resolve, giving Miss Park Avenue +1 strength, and the opponent did not.
This question was of particular note because on Saturday I had been called by an Appeals Judge to explain the exact same interaction. A player approached that judge and asked them to explain a post about Lady that they had seen online, so they were directed straight to the source of that post – me!
I explained the interaction the same way to both sets of players; that Decisive Dog sees the character played before being covered up by the shift, so is able to trigger. That ability then resolves after Miss Park Avenue is fully in play, increasing her strength by 1. The opponent on Sunday did push back a little, to the point where I probably should have reminded them of their option to appeal, but they accepted the ruling and play continued.
Stopped Chaos in its Tracks
Easily the most challenging thing I did over the weekend was handle a player dispute over the speed of play. The issue began when the active player discarded a copy of Show Me More while resolving a triggered ability, but the opponent thought they had played the action and began drawing cards. Luckily, they didn’t add them to their existing hand so the fix was easy and had little impact on the game, but the player was unhappy that it had happened at all.
At that point, the situation devolved fairly quickly into bickering back and forth about how one player or the other was playing too quickly, that it was hard to keep track of their actions, that this was deliberate cover for underhanded behavior. The spotter at the table was my Team Lead, a very experienced judge, so I spent some time expecting them to step in as the behavior of the players escalated. This uncertainty over whether I should address the situation myself or defer to my Lead led to my waiting before taking action, which I believe took too long.
When I did decide to approach the table my goal was to cool the tension over the match and get the players playing as quickly as possible, but I was also fully prepared to stop the match entirely and have one or both players take a walk. I tried to reassure each player that I understood where they were coming from, but that at this point the match needed to continue. We discussed what the spotter had already asked them to do, and I said that we would reassess if those instructions were being followed after a few turns. Both players were fairly receptive to my intervention, which reinforces my belief that I should have made that decision earlier.
Just in Time
I was lucky enough to be back on the sky-cam for the grand finals match, where I made the classic mistake of commenting that while I hoped we didn’t go to five games, a comeback from being 2-0 down would be incredible… thoroughly jinxing the stream team into a long night. Whoops.
Overall, the match was very cleanly played with the only real intervention needed from me behind the scenes was to correct a drying Tipo that quested. A few other incidents occurred, like when half the deck was dropped onto someone’s hand during a shuffle (saved by a well-placed hand marker), but that was all managed by the team in front of the curtain.
Final Thoughts
Beyond the Horizon
- Finally took actual notes at an event, and it made a huge difference to both the write-up and my own private reflections on the event! (Could stand to be more detailed, though.)
- Intentionality around how information is communicated to staff is essential, both before an event, and at meetings during shifts.
- I need to have more confidence in making decisions around more experienced staff, rather than letting their presence cause hesitation.
- Developing a routine for handling early calls to improve my consistency in this area is a high priority.
- Overall, my first DLC with Pastimes was a huge success, and I hope to get the opportunity to work with them more in the future!
