After a controversial victory involving an incorrect rule call by a judge, a professional Disney Lorcana player has seemingly been disqualified from an upcoming world tournament while his opponent has received a rare trading card worth an estimated $10,000.
On February 2nd, during the Disney Lorcana Melbourne 2025 championship, Jesse Lentini and Clément “Reclum” Fusade played each other in an important Top 8 game. The card match was streamed online and the winner would receive a very rare gold Mickey card worth between $10,000 and $20,000. The winner would also move on to the Top 4 and have a chance to make it into the first Lorcana world tournament, so this was a big moment and a lot of people were watching.
What happened during the event
In the third and final round of the match, Lentini “quested” with a magic broom card, gaining a point towards victory. Then he played Goat Merlin, a card that grants you a victory point for simply playing it. And then he went to banish his broom card to his discard pile because that card has an ability that lets you destroy it when you play another character and you then draw a card. That’s when his opponent, Fusade, complained and asked for a judge to step in.
Fusade’s argument was that Lentini had missed his chance to trigger the broom’s ability when he grabbed Goat Merlin’s point and moved on. If you’ve played Lorcana even casually you’ll know that is, uh, bullshit. In fact, in the official rules, simultaneous triggers can be handled in any order as long as you are clear with the other player. A longtime judge and Lorcana expert confirmed that no rule was broken in a video with Lorcana content creator Joe “Speci” Curley. In fact, as pointed out in that same video, Lentini did something very similar earlier in that same match which wasn’t flagged by the judge or Fusade.
That didn’t matter, however, because during the match the judge incorrectly sided with Fusade and made Lentini put his broom back on the board, not letting him discard it to gain a draw. This ended up costing Lentini the match and a chance to qualify for the world tournament. Fusade then made it to the final match and lost, but still qualified for the world final. The loss also cost Lentini the gold Mickey Mouse card.
There was a lot of outrage and backlash over the decision. Fusade’s team even suspended him for three months for his actions. Eventually, the company behind Lorcana, Ravensburger, stepped in and announced that it was investigating the incident. And while the investigation’s full results won’t be made public, it appears there’s a somewhat happy ending.
According to a Discord message from Ravensburger, Lentini has received a gold Mickey Mouse card. Meanwhile, in a blog post published Friday listing the winners who qualified for the world tournament, Fusade is missing and has been replaced with a runner-up, Ben Simmons. While it has yet to be confirmed whether Fusade was actually disqualified or just dropped out himself, based on how Ravensburger provided Lentini with a gold Mickey card, I think it’s safe to assume that Fusade was removed from the event.
Lorcana is still a relatively new trading card game compared to Magic and Pokémon, so the community is happy to see this controversial situation be resolved in a mostly satisfactory way. The hope is that this is an indicator that Ravensburger is serious about protecting the game and the quality of its future events.
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