Disney's Lorcana Attack of the Vine Review!
Transcript
Hi everybody.
Hello, I'm Ryan.
I'm Bethany.
And we are Ryan and Bethany Board Game Reviews.
And today we'll be talking about Lorcana, specifically the new set that just came out, Attack of the Vine. And this is published by a Ravensburger.
All right, if you don't know anything about Lorcana at all, well Lorcana is a TCG, a trading card game, or a CCG, a collectible card game. Basically, it's in the Disney world, in the Disney universe. Uh the cards pulled the characters and actions, all those things pulled from all the different Disney movies that have ever happened. All from all the way from Steamboat Willie all the one way to the most recent movies. Uh so, it's been very endearing to to see all these movies come to life in this card game. This is the newest set, Attack of the Vine. Basically, the vine from uh Jack and the Giant Beanstalk, or you Jack and the How does it work? What's the name of it?
Jack and the Beanstalk.
Jack and the Beanstalk featuring the giant.
Yeah.
It's like a rap album featuring the giant. Uh no, basically this this vine is attacking everybody. It's turning them crazy and it's got these So, all the characters you might have guessed on these other characters, they're all like turning mad because of this vine, right? That's kind of the theme of the whole set. Uh but really what is this Same as always, your goal is to get to 20 lore, which is the victory points in this game. Uh whenever your characters go on quests, they're going to get a certain amount of lore. The first one to get to 20 lore is going to win the game. All right, so what makes Attack of the Vine different besides the theme? Um it's got some new twists on how you can upgrade your characters. Uh it's got some Winnie the Pooh stuff going on. Um the vine itself, new Pixar stuff, which I like a lot of Pixar movies, so seeing some Pixar characters show up was a lot of fun for me. Um yeah, let's get into it.
All right, so there is new shifting. So, shifting happens when you play a card and then you're able to play our character and you're able to play another one on top of that for less money. So, there's different ways or less ink.
The resource in the game is is ink cuz you're drawing these cartoon characters.
So there's different ways to do that in this game and it's really cool the way they're doing it. The way you do the shift, you can have characters that have a different character that shift with them. There's combinations of characters and then there's also different characters that can shift on top of anybody and so it's just really cool. It It makes it It makes it where you can get bigger, better characters out quicker.
But sacrificing a small character to do it.
Yes. Yes.
Cuz that small character is no longer in play and there's lots of different ways they're kind of playing around with that shifting idea. All right, this new set, it felt familiar. A lot of the concepts we've seen, there's nothing totally radically new. So it felt familiar but at the same time it felt new and fresh also. We've played Lorcana since the since the beginning. We were there at the the debut and we really were enamored with the characters and the the kind of the very positive um environment
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
There's I've I've played played competitive Pokémon I've played some magic as well and those scenes are a lot more aggressive, a lot less fun and family-friendly. This one is a so much more chill and more fun. So they kept that same vibe throughout. It feels familiar. It feels like the way we would expect but at the same time there's some some new breath breathing and some fresh new life breathed into the system as well.
I feel like if you're familiar with these types of card games that this set is a good starting point. We were able to create so many different decks with this that we played with each other and I felt like they were all viable, they were fun, there's different paths to victory. Every single time we played, we were within one or two turns of each other while doing a bunch of different strategies with just this core set. So we weren't using any of our old cards, we were just using this set of cards and I felt like it really worked as a jumping off point. You didn't it feel I mean there's a lot of stuff going on, but you didn't feel like you were missing out on anything.
The art for Lorcana has always been top-notch. This is still true for Attack of the Titans. Seeing all these characters brought to life and they all all these different Disney movies have very different animation styles, right?
Yeah.
That you know, from old school stuff to new school stuff to graphic graphic animation to all these different styles. But yet it feels cohesive in this game because all the art is is new and it's been presented in a way that is just it's very cohesive despite all these different art styles that the source material comes from. The presentation and the art is is great. Some of the cards, you know, once you get higher up into the into the game, you get the rarity of the cards and full card art, just like you would expect from a TCG. And the I just love seeing those I'm going to show you some pictures of the ones that we pulled kind of scattered throughout this as I'm talking. Just to show you some of the full art and things like that and the full holographics and all that kind of stuff. I I do have a criticism about Lorcana and also specifically this set.
Which is not necessarily a criticism. It's probably some people would call it a feature, some people would call it a bug.
Because I think it's a good thing and I'll tell you why in a moment.
I loved when I was playing Pokémon that there was just a bajillion cards out there, right? In the tournament setting and you had to pick out your favorite ones that you thought were going to mesh together well and have a synergized you know, strategy going forward and you know, a key theme or key strategy behind that you were trying to go for and maybe having contingency plans as well mixed in there. And you had to figure out yourself. In Lorcana and specifically again in Attack of the Titans, it felt like they were kind of spoon-fed to you. Hey, by the way, did you like the movie Up? Good news, we're going to give you a strategy featuring all the characters from the movie Up. And it's going to be the balloon house and the balloons and it's going to be the location of the where they go in the it's going to be Ellie and it's going to be Carl and it's going to be Russell and it's going to be Kevin and all of them are going to work together well and it's and in that way we've given you we spoon-fed you a strategy because you're sticking to a movie or a franchise.
Same with Turning Red. That's the new one of the new themes that's in this game. All the Turning Red guys all work together. All those characters can kind of do this shifting into these these red pandas and all that stuff. All the Winnie the Pooh characters all work together. They all have honey in the title and they all do things together with honey and you can make a honey deck, you can make a Turning Red deck, you can make a an Up deck, you can do all these different things. And you're not you don't have to think that hard about making a cool deck. The deck ideas are just given to you. That being said, you can get go outside the box and create some weird stuff. But at first glance, they they are giving you what to do.
Okay, and I think that that is actually a positive cuz our 9-year-old did that. She just grabbed the cards that work together and like she grabbed a couple of movies to create her deck and it was a viable deck. So, it's definitely family-friendly. It's not for like you spreading out all of your cards on the table and trying to read a thousand different cards and which ones are going to go together. It definitely is geared toward the toward the family. So, Ryan sees it as a negative, I see that as a positive.
I didn't say it was a negative per se, it's just something that you should be aware if you're a hardcore CCGer and you're looking for that. Yeah, it's you don't have to look that hard to find a a theme.
It's there.
Yeah.
But overall, I really enjoyed this set. I have never played any CCGs outside of this one and I'm really happy that this is the one I decided to play. We are very casual gamers or what was the term that Ryan taught me? Kitchen table kitchen table to gamers. That's the thing I guess.
Yeah, I used to play kitchen table magic, you know. It's where it's just like you don't care so much about like the what all the stuff here.
Yeah, we're not doing any um what are they even called? Tournaments?
Yeah, we haven't done any I've done a few actually, but it's been a couple years.
But that's not we're playing very casually with our family and this set works really great. I really like it. I like the different things it does. I actually like that the characters the special abilities abilities they have reference who they are as a character. I think that's really cool. And I just I enjoy it. I really enjoy this game. I wish we were able to play it like significantly more than we are able to play it. That's why it's fun doing these cuz then we have to play it like all the time so we can tell you about it.
Yeah, I still love this system. I still love this game. Attack on Titan is a great set. I love the movies they chose. I love the abilities they they put in there. I can't wait to mix this with other sets that I have and try to bring in my love of building bizarro decks to that set by combining them with all the previous stuff, which I know it isn't necessarily tournament legal cuz these only go so far back or whatever the thing is. I'm just going to mix and match it all. I can't wait to do that and create some more crazy combos.
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Yeah, thanks for watching. If you heard any crying in the background, that wasn't just me being sad. That was our newborn who's hanging out with us tonight. So and enjoy that just like we're enjoying it. All right, until next time guys, we will see you later. Bye. You guys thanks so much for watching. This game was provided to us by a publisher for an exchange for a fair and honest review.
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