Power creep is a touchy subject for a lot of TCG players. Because trading cards are both a game piece and an investable commodity, developers have to be very careful about introducing new cards that devalue older ones. To a certain extent power creep is a natural, unavoidable consequence of developing a live service card game, and some, 🎃like Yu-Gi-Oh!, embrace it as part of the design philosophy, making little to no attempt to mitigate the constant power increase from one expansion to the next.
With Disney Lorcana’s second expansion due in just a few weeks, the player base is watching carefully to see how the designers intend to handle the problem of power creep. And while we’ve only seen less than half of the cards that will be introduced in the new expansion, it's clear that there is a serious power differential between The First Chapter and Rise of the Floodborn. Whether that amounts to power creep or not remains to be seen, but it's apparent that RotF will fundamentally shift the way the game is played.
Disney Lorcana Can☂not Let Merlin Overtake Elsa
Disney Lorcana has been roll☂ing out new Me⛦rlin and Madam Mim cards, but they place Elsa in jeopardy
Power creep expresses itself in a number of ways, the most obvious being new cards that replace older ones because they do the same thing but better, either by way of stronger stat lines or more powerful effects. This is the kind of power creep developers should make every effort to avoid, because it's easy to recognize when it happens and it makes the old card completely useless. Hearthstone players have countless examples of this type of power creep. Vanilla cards like Silverback Patriarch and Chillwind Yeti have been replaced by better cards with identical stat lines and costs so many times that they have become memes.
At the time of writing we have one example of this kind of power creep in set two. Virana, Fang Chief is a vanilla Emerald five-cost card that has a 5/5/2 stat line. It is identical to Jumba Jookiba, Renegade Scientist, except Jumba is only a 4/5/2. Unless you want to play them both, there’s no reason to ever use Jumba once Virana is in the game. Once classifications comeไ more into play that might change, but as of right now Jumba’s Alien and Inventor tags are nothing more than flavor text Other than that, we’ve only seen the introduction of new cycles, or identical cards in different colors. Little differences to cost, stat lines, and inkability makes every card slightly different and more or less useful in different situations, even if their abilities are practically the same.
It can be argued that Virana is not true power creep since Jumba wasn't a very playable card. True power creep would require an already powerful card to get replaced by a more powerful version.
That being said, we’re clearly seeing a significant power increase in RotF thanks to the sheer number of powerful new cards that introduce abilities and playstyles that weren’t available in The First Chapter. One of the most obvious examples of the raising of the power floor is the selection of cards that provide lore instantly, or without needing to earn it via questing. Cards like Pack Tactics, The Sorcerer’s Spellbook, and Merlin, Goat can all provide lore 🐭to a player the turn they’re played, with no way for the opposing player to respond. These tools could very well end up being meta defining and push slower TFC decks out of playabi🍎lity.
A lot ꦆof the strongest cards we’ve seen in RotF center around bouncing characters back into your own hand, a mechanic that was technically possible before with cards like Genie, On the Job, but had no utility. With cards like Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo, Arthur, Wizard’s Apprentice, and the suite of Merlin cards, bounce is going to be an incredibly impactful deck archetype.
Oops All Merlin
We've seen some jaw-dropping cards coming in the next set, and some things that would have completely reshaped the current meta had they been in the game from the start. World's Greatest Criminal is Amber's new removal tool and a great answer to a lot of the cards Ruby/Amethyst control plays, like Maui, Hero to All; Mickey Mouse, Brave Little Tailor, and Maleficent, Monstrous Dragon. We also have powerful discard tools, which really only saw play in one specific Amber deck during TFC. Now we have cards like Prince John, Greediest of All, Hypnotize, and Belle, Bookworm that want you to drain your opponent's hand. Belle, Hidden Archer alone can force your opponent to dump their entire hand, which would often be a game-ender in the current meta.
It’s fair to say that Rise of the Floodborn is a strong expansion full of cards that introduce powerful new playstyles we haven’t seen in Lorcana before. The top-rated decks, Steelsong and Ruby/Amethyst control, may stick around if they can get some benefit from the new cards, but it's more likely we’ll see an entire upheaval of the meta, particularly when it comes to all the other decks with middling performance. While there’s very little true power creep in the purest sense, it seems pretty obvious that the best decks of today are going to struggle to keep up when the new expansion launches.
It’s probably best to think of The First Chapter as an introduction to Lorcana, one which establishes the game and doesn’t try to overwhelm new players with high-concept playstyles. Rise of the Floodborn will es💛tablish a new benchmark for the game, but there’s no reason to think the next expansion will represent as much of a power increase as this one will. Doubling the number of available cards was always going to have a huge impact on the game, and I’m looking forward to seeing faster decks with spicier tricks - even if that means our favorite decks toda🍬y won’t be viable in a few weeks.
