I've been a competitive card game player for a good portion of my life, starting as a Pokemon player who got as high as 2nd at Nationals, and recently in the One Piece Trading Card Game as a regional champion. As someone who is still striving to be a top competitive player in One Piece, I get asked the same question from friends around the community - "Why even bother with Lorcana? Why not focus on one game?" Well, there are a few reasons for this, and I believe it also tells the story of why we are seeing so many card game players, from Magic to Pokemon, or even Hearthstone and Yu-Gi-Oh! players switching over or picking up Lorcana as well. I'm going to try and share why the Lorcana Card Game just may be the next big thing.

First and Foremost - Competitive Play. Competitive play isn't something new to trading card games, but it is to Lorcana. This year, Lorcana finally launched true competitive play with the Into the Inklands set. At the local and regional levels, we saw Lorcana get two kinds of tournaments that have since attracted players from all over. One of our Cool Stuff writers wrote on the topic of competitive play when it was announced, which you can read here. Since launching these tournaments, we have seen these events reach max capacity as they are filled with the most casual Lorcana fans to the seasoned trading card game pros. This is something that turned off some hardened card game vets as they yearned for competitive play, which was absent the first two sets. Now, Lorcana is getting an influx of card game players from multiple games due to what's waiting at the top of the mountain at these competitive events - prize cards.

Prizing in Lorcana is similar to the Bandai model of giving out "prize cards" to the highest placing players in the tournament, while other games offer cash prizing and so forth. This kind of prizing model has led to huge attendance numbers at competitive One Piece events, as these prize cards demand hundreds to thousands of dollars in the secondary market. In Lorcana, what you have to place in these events to receive certain prize cards varies on attendance and the type of event that's taking place. Right now, the big chase card that is getting people to move over to Lorcana is the Serial Mickey Mouse card that is given out to the top placing players at the Lorcana Challenge events.

These challenge events have been a huge hit, and a lot of that is due to the chance to get this Mickey Mouse card and other prize cards as well, ranging from recent Disney classics like Frozen, to even The Little Mermaid. Which brings me to my next reason why people are flocking to the Lorcana TCG - the Disney IP.

The power of the mouse is one of extremes. For one, it has given all of these aforementioned Disney prize cards a good home in the secondary market, where collectors and fans are seeking out their favorite Disney icons. It has also brought a ton of people into the card game space that might have never found themselves playing a trading card game if it didn't have their favorite Disney characters on the cards. I know quite a few players that turned to Lorcana because they had a significant other that wanted to play. This was all due to their personal connection to the Disney brand. The Disney brand is massive and reaches far and wide. We have seen how powerful the right intellectual property in card games can be for decades with Pokemon, and even now with the One Piece Card Game. Lorcana being centered around Disney will only help its popularity and help it to become and stay a mainstay in the trading card game world for a very long time.

It's because of competitive play, prize cards, and the staying power of Disney, that we are seeing so many other players leave their respective card games for Lorcana - or at the very least, are picking up another card game in Lorcana. We've seen in some of our first champions at the Disney Lorcana challenges that players with deep histories in trading card games are now moving over to Lorcana; from the likes of Frank Karsten, a Magic: The Gathering Hall of Famer, to Brian Courtade, who used to compete at the highest levels in Hearthstone. As someone who has been a competitive player at multiple trading card games, this excites me. But it also excites me because this Disney card game will get so many people to join the world of card games for the first time and make new friends and share new experiences that they would've never been privy to without Lorcana. It takes me back to Pokemon drawing me into this space back when I was a kid. The fact is that the power of the mouse, combined with interesting gameplay, good prizing, and icons from the world of Disney, is drawing in card players from all over and will continue to do so for years. Will you be the next one to join the ranks?

~Garrett Farrington

X (Twitter): @GarrettFTCG

YT: Talking Cards with Garrett