Simba - Pride Protector

(Pineapple Orange Tequila Sunrise)

We're back after nearly a year! Life has been busy but we're still playing Lorcana. In fact, this is a special post as it's my DLC Richmond tournament report! 

Last month, I went 9-3 at Richmond for a top 64 finish and won this shiny Simba - Pride Protector promo. It was easily the best performance of my Lorcana career, and I wanted to share my recap of the weekend with all of you.

Richmond was an admittedly stressful event, as I had put a lot of pressure on myself to do well. I hadn't been able to attend another DLC since Vegas in 2024, where I failed to make Day 2 after an endless parade of bad matchups. For this event, I was determined to make it to Day 2 and anything else would be at least somewhat a disappointment. To this end, I had put in a significant amount of practice with my deck, testing constantly with my team in the weeks leading up to the DLC.

The deck I brought was amber-emerald Dogs. For those of you that don't keep up with competitive Lorcana and are just here for the drinks and vibes, Dogs is an aggro-combo deck that aims to put lots of cheap characters into play and quest faster than your opponent can banish them. What makes the deck so powerful is its potential for truly explosive openings with Tramp - Street Smart Dog (aka Tramp7), alongside the ability to grind out long resource games with Lady - Miss Park Avenue while also threatening to wipe your opponent's entire board with Under the Sea. Given all these options, Dogs is one of the hardest Lorcana decks to play. I had been playing it as my primary deck since the back half of Set 9 (Fabled) and had two top 8 finishes with it in reasonably competitive set championships during that format. By the time Richmond rolled around, I had probably logged around 200 games with Dogs.

I had been posting about the deck constantly leading up to the event as I felt it was just the straight up best deck of Set 10 going into Richmond. Among the other tiered decks in the metagame (blue-purple, purple-steel, and blue-green), Dogs had a positive matchup against both of the blue decks and a neutral matchup at worst with purple-steel. 

That second fact may have been missed by a lot of purple-steel players, as the matchup was considered favorable for them at the start of the format. However by the time Richmond had rolled around, skilled Dogs players like Diego Saz (@Level9001) and Royce Townsend (@RoycelikeRolls) had proven that this was not the case with proper gameplay. This was confirmed in my mind when I won a set championship the weekend prior to Richmond. My top 4 match was played against a great purple-steel player, and I managed to win going second even with him playing Benja in his deck to counter Emerald Chromicon. 

At Richmond, I got some last minute practice in the Friday side event. This was a seven round tournament where five wins got you one of each promo card at the prize wall, and six wins netted a foil Mulan playmat! I ended up going 6-1 on Friday, losing (annoyingly) to purple-steel when I didn't draw a single Tramp7 or Chromicon the entire game 3. Nevertheless, I still came away with a shiny playmat, several hundred dollars worth of promo cards, and the confidence that I could replicate this result in the main event. 

Before we move on to Saturday, we need to discuss what might be the secret to success. On the drive down to Richmond, my friend John wouldn't stop talking about his new favorite show: Heated Rivalry. We drove for six hours and he couldn't stop hyping it the entire time. And of course the first thing he did when we arrived at the AirB&B was fire up HBO Max and put on episode 1 while we ate dinner. It was... um... memorable. My team and I ended up watching the first two episodes of Heated Rivalry that night, and while I can't prove that's what led to me going 6-1 in the side event, I can't disprove it either. So despite being invited to play cube on Friday night, I instead ducked out to perform the new ritual of watching more Heated Rivalry before the tournament.

Day 1 of the main event was 8 rounds, with 6 wins needed to make it to Day 2. At DLC Richmond, I didn't just accomplish my Day 2 goal, I did it by starting 6-0 and clinching it with two rounds to spare. That Friday morning to Saturday afternoon might have been the best run of matches of my life. In that time frame, my dogs and I went 12-1 in matches. All of the practice had paid off, and I was fully in the zone sitting at the table. I felt like I was in a zen state playing Lorcana, where nearly every gameplay decision was rehearsed and automatic. I had reached a point where the deck was playing itself. There was no position that I hadn't already seen before and knew what to do, and I was constantly putting my opponents in impossible situations to navigate. 

Between rounds, I was completely different. The one problem with playing Dogs in a room of 2,000 purple and/or blue players is that you'll finish your matches way before everyone else and have a lot of downtime. That led to me stressing out between rounds while my friends were chatting and trying to drag me out of my own head. A big thank you goes to my buddy Darwin who wasn't playing in the main event and brought us all kimbap so that we didn't have to eat fried convention hall food. And thank you to K-pop Demon Hunters - I was vibing to Golden all day to keep myself hyped.

Despite starting 6-0, I ended up finishing day 1 at 6-2. My first loss was to old school Magic the Gathering player @attackfortwo who was piloting purple-yellow midrange. It's a favorable matchup for Dogs but not one I had practiced much at all. My lack of experience led to me being outplayed and making a poor alter decision game 3. It was the first time all weekend where I couldn't rely on my own pattern recognition and felt uncertainty in my own decision making. I then ended up losing round 8 to purple-steel. In game 1, I chose a line that could only lose to my opponent topdecking their 4th Strength of a Raging Fire, which they did - bravo. Then in game 2 I shipped 6 cards in my alter and drew into a completely nonfunctional hand. Every deck has a fail rate that we have to accept, and looking back I wouldn't have played that match any differently despite the result. 

Back at the house, it was time to regroup and rest. Two of our team had made Day 2 and we had to wake up early for it. Of course, we still watched another episode of Heated Rivalry - as is tradition by this point. 

Day 2 started the same as the rest, with me going 3-0 leading into the final Swiss round with a 9-2 record. I had clinched a top 64 finish at this point and was now playing for an invitation to Continentals at Disneyland. While I had already achieved my self-imposed goal for this event, there was now a desperate desire to reach this next peak in success. I sat down for my last round, and of course lost the die roll (I'd gone 4-8 in die rolls the entire weekend) because nothing can ever be easy. My opponent then showed that he was playing blue-steel, an actual bad matchup for my deck (at least while on the draw). I managed to set up a winning position game 1 but alas my opponent drew their last copy of Spooky Sight to take it. Game 2 was about as one-sided as you would expect for Dogs on the play against a blue deck, but I would have to win game 3 on the draw. I peaked at his hand with Mowgli and saw that they had drawn the absolute perfect hand. There was truly no possible way for my deck to win at that point, and I spent the next five minutes going through the motions knowing full well that I wasn't going to Disneyland. 

In the end, I finished 9-3 at Richmond - 48th place. While not top 32 it was still a great run and I have nothing to complain about. I still went home with a ton of cool promos, two playmats, and this foil Simba. Full breakdown of matchups are below.

Promo rush side event:
R1 🟣🟡 2-1 otd
R2 🟢🟡 2-0 otp
R3 🟢🟡 2-0 otd
R4 🟣⚪ 1-2 otp
R5 🟣🟡 2-0 otp
R6 🟢🔵 2-1 otp
R7 🟣🔵 2-0 otp

Main event:
R1 🟢🔵 2-1 otd
R2 🟣🔵 2-0 otd
R3 🟣⚪ 2-0 otp
R4 🟣⚪ 2-1 otd
R5 🟣⚪ 2-1 otd
R6 🟣🔵 2-1 otp
R7 🟣🟡 1-2 otp
R8 🟣⚪ 0-2 otd
R9 🟣⚪ 2-0 otp
R10 🟣🔵 2-1 otd
R11 🟢🔵 2-0 otd
R12 🔵⚪ 1-2 otd

Overall, DLC Richmond was a great time. I got to spend a weekend playing Lorcana with my friends, and finally meet some folks that I had interacted with online for years. Now I just need to wait for season 2 of Heated Rivalry so that I can run it back again.

My team is better than yours and you can’t say otherwise pic.twitter.com/z3oJucXgAX

— alex (@muuisbored) January 11, 2026

Now for the drink itself. Here, we wanted to capture the glowing aesthetic of the card art, the runes on Simba, and the unique foiling pattern. When I think The Lion King, one of the most iconic scenes is the sun rising in the horizon at the start of the film while The Circle of Life starts to play. With all this in mind, the Tequila Sunrise was the easy choice to represent this card. The color gradient in the drink mirrors the beautiful card art, which we further brighten with the addition of pineapple juice. Edible glitter is the final touch to showcase our representation of this amazing prize card.

Recipe
2 oz silver tequila
3 oz orange juice
1 oz pineapple juice
1/2 oz grenadine
orange
edible glitter

Combine tequila and juices and pour into a highball glass filled with ice. Pour grenadine down the side of the glass so that it sinks to the bottom. Cover a slice of orange with glitter and place on top of the ice to form a rising sun.