Lorcana Finally Bans Hiram Flaversham – Toymaker

Ravensburger just announced perhaps the single biggest change to Lorcana ever since the game first released: Flaversham has been banned from competitive play as of April 8, 2025.

In a news article posted to their site, Ravensburger states that the ban was necessary to ensure that the greatest diversity of successful strategies would be available to competitive players.

Hiram Flaversham has absolutely wrecked havoc on the Lorcana meta

Sapphire as an Ink color has increasingly dominated the meta for a while now, making Ink combos that can run this card far superior to most other decks in the format. Flaversham is just so good, and has stood out as a must for any deck using Sapphire, turning what should be a relatively diverse range of decks into one single deck: an item build that uses Flaversham to draw an insane number of cards.

Additionally, the design team has chosen to ban Fortisphere from the game: a card that has contributed to Sapphire Steel’s insane rise to the top of the meta following Archazia’s Island.

Why is Flaversham so strong?

At four cost Inkable, and an ability that lets you draw two cards when played and every time he quests, Flaversham is a huge strategic advantage to any deck that runs the Sapphire Ink type. The six will power is especially a challenge, making it very difficult to remove him via challenge unless you have a card that specifically removes low strength characters (like Brawl).

Archazia’s Island has had Lorcana’s worst meta to date

Making the decision to ban Hiram comes at absolutely the right time as Lorcana players become increasingly frustrurated with what is feeling like a closed-off format. Recent tournaments have seen an incredible dominance in decks running Sapphire to the extent where entire top finishing brackets are just Sapphire/Steel or Ruby/Sapphire duking it out.

Indeed, while Sapphire/Steel has arisen as the new deck to beat in the Lorcana metagame, for many sets now Ruby/Sapphire has gained momentum as a terrible strategy – one that easily ramps, draws, and removes all hopes of victory against it.

How will Flaversham ban affect the game?

Ultimately, removing Flaversham will have a positive impact on the game. Sapphire decks will still have access to an insane number of powerful cards to ramp quickly (think Sail the Azurite Sea), but will lose the insane draw component that Flaversham provided.

Losing Flaversham is certainly a massive blow to the dominant Sapphire decks. But those decks needed something of this magnitude to bring them back down to earth and enable other strategies to have a chance.

Losing Flaversham will cause ripple effects throughout the Lorcana meta

But Flaversham’s impact will be greater than simply lowering the efficacy of Ruby/Sapphire and Sapphire/Steel – it will change the way Lorcana is played entirely. While the meta has become continually lopsided (either you are playing a heavy control deck like Ruby/Sapphire or a super fast aggro deck to get under it), more midrange decks – especially those capable of dishing out damage – should make their way back to the top.

Ultimately, Lorcana will become more balanced and playable, with potentially even outside-the-box decks standing a chance once again.

The decision to ban Flaversham is huge – the single biggest change to the game since it started. For Lorcana to survive at the competitive level, it absolutely had to happen.