Disney Lorcana enacts its inaugural bans, targeting the unassuming toymaker Hiram Flaversham.

Disney Lorcana, the charming trading card game, has banned its first cards from competitive play. Sapphire decks will be a little less powerful without Hiram Flaversham, Toymaker and the item Fortisphere, which are no longer legal to play in core constructed formats. They will, of course, remain available for other formats and in casual play. The announcement was made Tuesday in a post on the game’s official website. Polygon sat down with game design manager and lead game designer Steve Warner last week for a briefing on the change.

Warner stressed that bans like this are a sign of Lorcana’s maturation. With some 1,400 cards released for the game since its launch in 2022, some less than desirable interactions are to be expected. In Hiram’s case, he simply enabled players to draw too many cards to their hand before being removed. The win rate on decks that utilized that strategy best were simply too high — especially when used in combination with the Fortisphere.

“It’s important to us that we make exciting cards,” Warner said. “Occasionally we may have issues where some cards crop up and are a little too powerful, but it’s far better than ‘everything is way too safe and unfun.’ So there’s a steady balance that we have to maintain.”

The health of Disney Lorcana’s metagame has always been top of mind for Warner and his team at Ravensburger, and while Hiram has been out in the wild for a good long while it was only with the release of the most recent set, Arcazia’s Island, where things began to get a little unbalanced. Warner said that his team, much like Roz from Monsters, Inc., is always watching. The goal, therefore, is to be precise when making decisions like this, not reactionary.

“We look at the tournament reports; we look at the data from events; from players; we talk to stores; we have competitive players [that we work with]; we have social players that all have friends and are part of the community,” Warner said. “That gives us a lot of insight as to what’s going on, what’s really bothering players, and what’s causing some strife. […] We watch and we talk and we consider and we want to be very deliberate about our choices.”

Meanwhile, dedicated players may also be wondering why Pawpsicle, another card that has become a mainstay in powerful Sapphire decks, was spared the ban hammer this time around. Warner said that the team things removing Hiram and Fortisphere should take the edge off those powerful decks, while allowing Pawpsicle to be used by both Sapphire, other color combinations, and other gameplay strategies.

“Especially in Arcazia’s Island,” Warner said, “it’s Sapphire Ruby that really wants those item cards. So we feel like leaving Pawpsicle around allows that to still happen a little bit more organically.”

Disney Lorcana’s next set of cards, Reign of Jafar, comes out on June 6.