Ravensburger is moving organized play for Disney Lorcana away from Melee over to the Ravensburger Play Hub (RPH). From the announcement sent out by two of our Ravensburger distributors last week:
"We’re excited to announce a brand new tool for Disney Lorcana TCG in-store play reporting, the Ravensburger Play Hub Powered by Carde.io. We've been working with Carde.io to make a tool tailored to running great events for Disney Lorcana TCG and other great Ravensburger games, for both Hub organizers and our players. We'll be rolling out Ravensburger Play Hub store registrations, the event organizer, and event manager tools in early February, and we’ll have more features to announce soon!"
During the rollout of RPH, Stores are supposed to use Melee for all Disney Lorcana events run for Archazia's Island. With the release of the Reign of Jafar set, in order to remain active as a Disney Lorcana store sanctioned for organized play, alle vents must be scheduled through the Ravensburger Play Hub.
Ravensburger is also shifting its promotional tactics with forthcoming sets. Starting with Reign of Jafar, Ravensburger will start offering sanctioned stores a pre-release event, taking place a week before the official release of the set with all products available for sale. Disney Lorcana will also now have Buy-a-Box cards to create incentive for players to buy full boxes.
Disney Lorcana already has a league promo card to give to all players, but although the press release says league play will be continued using the new software supporting constructed, sealed, and draft tournaments as well as a new format called Pack Rush (a format somewhat like Magic: The Gathering's Pack Wars), prizing for Store Championships will change slightly as well. From the press release:
"Starting with Archazia's Island, Set Championship kits will now include 1 Champion playmat, 8 Enchanted Foil Promo cards for the top 8 of your event, as well as 40 non-Foil Promos featuring the same artwork as the Enchanted card in a standard card format instead of the Enchanted style."
So now Store Championships will have only a playmat for first place, rather than first and second place and enough promo cards so that every player should get one. That is a good change in prize support. I am still bemused though (as I commented awhile back) that every TCG company wants its own organized play software (see "Store Championships, Melee and the Spooky Season"), meaning stores have to keep track of multiple systems. One nice thing about Melee was aggregating multiple organized play programs onto one platform.
I received an email from Kevin Hovdestad, the director of brand development at Catan Studios, regarding my comments about the upcoming 6th edition of Catan (see "The Cash Register Goes Ka-Ching"), asking if I had any more questions about the new edition. I had three:
How compatible will the components in 6th edition be with 5th?
Hovdestad: Our official position on compatibility is as follows: The previous and current editions of CATAN can be used together. Certain product combinations have distinct card backs, which can be resolved by purchasing CATAN-sized card sleeves or replacement cards. Some accessories may not be compatible across editions due to changes in component size or design. (The only component that has changed sizes is the wooden roads, which are slightly larger in 6E than 5E; they're the same size as the roads in CATAN – New Energies, for reference)."
What rules changes can we expect?
No rules changed between 5E and 6E! There are a couple of minor additions, like including the popular paired player rule in the 5-6 player expansions, but the game plays entirely the same from 5E to 6E.
The MSRP has dropped by $5. How was this accomplished? Are all the components the same quality as in 5E?
The MSRP on CATAN (5E) was actually $59.99! We achieved the $49.99 MSRP through lower component costs, without sacrificing on quality (we're still using premium wood components in 6E). We've introduced a new card tray and changed some of the box interior to not be plastic, but no components are of lesser quality edition over edition.
So some interesting changes coming to Disney Lorcana Organized Play, although not to the game itself and some minor changes coming to Catan.
Comments? Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
