With the L.A. fires blazing just about 45 minutes up Highway 5 (three hours with traffic), the Lorcana Challenge North American Championship was held at Disneyland in Anaheim, California January 10-12, 2025. And I was 2,000 miles away in a rare Atlanta snowstorm. There was practically no way I was going to go anyway because a) I have a strict policy against travelling to play games and b) having been a game shop owner for a few years and being around competitive gamers for a large part of my life, I’m well over my sweat quota. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have an eye on what was going on, and I did this through my longtime friend, who we are just going to call Neuromorph here. I asked him to be a field correspondent for this article, and I kind of got more than I bargained for- Mickey Mouse for one thing, and a crime thwarted for another.
Neuromorph and I go way back; he was a regular at my game shop 20 years ago and now we meet every week for a Dungeon Crawl Classics game over Roll20 with some other Atlanta Game Factory alumni. He and I both got bit hard by the Lorcana bug, but my man is far more invested in the competitive scene. He’s my most frequent online opponent, and usually he whips me like a Dole Whip. When tickets for the event went on sale, I tried to help him get in but we both were denied like tweens vying for Taylor Swift seats. So we wound up on a waitlist for cancellations. He’d text me in the days leading up to the event but I didn’t have good news either. Another friend managed to secure an “attendee” badge for him, but that didn’t give him a berth in the big tournament. But I also knew that if anyone could get there and schmooze into a seat, it would be Neuromorph. This is the dude that gets into sold out events and restaurants with no reservations at Dragon Con.
But then it happened- he got the call-up right in the middle of our DCC funnel game, and he had to show up at 7am at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim the next day for a chance to get a seat for the Last Chance Qualifiers. There were a number of cancellations due to the fires and travel issues, so the slots were filled by lottery. He made it in. I was so thrilled, he bounced from our game and the party immediately got his level-0 costermonger killed. He called me up and we talked decks- we agreed that Ruby Amethyst and Ruby Sapphire were likely to be all over the place, so he considered running his Amber Steel Mufasa highroller deck- I concurred, as it’s a terrific deck and he’s super familiar with it.
So he showed up at the event and there was some drama about the sign-up process for the LCQ- folks were supposed to somehow be in and out of a 2 hour line in 30 minutes to get to the lottery for the unfilled seats, and there were over 1,000 folks angling for them.. The whole thing wound up delayed for a couple of hours, which chafed some folks hoping to participate in the various drafts, side events, and other games that were going on. But he made it, and soundly defeated his first opponent 2-0. It was single elimination, so that person’s hopes and dreams to move up to the big show went bust.
But then Neuromorph’s aspirations went south in the second round. A bad pairing found him on the back heel and unable to close the gap in his games, but they were close. He sent me the text and I probably felt about as deflated as he did, I really wanted to see him get into the top 128 for the main event Saturday. Friday night he drowned his sorrows out at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, which he said had a (and I quote) “very two dimensional menu.” He spent the rest of the event playing in the side events and had a great time overall, I begged him to send some good photos to share here.
But Sunday, it got a little wild – at least as it can really get at a Lorcana tournament. Neuromorph closed a trade with another participant, offering a D23 Mickey up for a “pack fresh” Enchanted Robin Hood. He was rushing to an event and didn’t fully inspect the card, but soon realized that there were a couple of tells indicating that it was a counterfeit. At first he was like “oh well, no big loss” but over here in the Atlanta office I was like “no way dude, find that guy and get your card back.” There were only two possible scenarios- one being that this trader didn’t know he had a bootleg card and traded it innocently, the other being that he knew exactly what he was doing and likely had more to trade. So Neuromorph reported it to the judges and this guy was quickly put under surveillance. Hotel security was called in.
Neuromorph got his card back and the guy claimed he didn’t know. But – here’s the twist you saw coming – it turned out that he had more counterfeit cards. We don’t know what happened to this guy, but he is a known YouTube “content creator” that does pack openings. And now he’s a busted fraud!
So the whole thing ended up with Neuromorph getting a Lorcana fraudster busted. It’s not that cool trophy, a shot to play against top tier players like Zan Syed, the glory that comes with the $10k worth of prizing on offer, and a chance to play in the World Championship coming soon to Orlando, but maybe that vindication was at least a little satisfying.
Next time- more second hand coverage of the event plus a look at the National Championship decks!
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