On April 8, 2025, two cards were added to the Disney Lorcana banlist. Hiram Flaversham – Toymaker and Fortishphere have both been removed from constructed play, marking the first time that the TCG has ever banned cards. An official post on the Disney Lorcana website says that, after April 8, “all Disney Lorcana events taking place after that date will no longer accept deck lists with those cards included”.
With only a handful of Disney Lorcana sets available, few truly broken decks have emerged. However, these two debut bans clearly caused some problems. Let’s take a look at why these were banned in the first place:
Why does Disney Lorcana need a banlist?
A banlist is typically introduced to protect the balance of a card game. A new card (or more likely, a combination of several cards) may become so powerful that playing anything else becomes near-pointless.
Pretty soon, every competitive player is building the same decks, and despite new releases, the game may begin to stagnate. Banlists remove or restrict the offending cards to allow a variety of archetypes and diverse decks to thrive in the meta.
Designers may also choose to deal with these problem children by creating cards that directly combat their abilities. This reduces the need for constant bans, but there may still be cards that are too disruptive to be left alone. With months between set releases, sometimes the TCG gods must act fast – and ban a card from play.
Why these Lorcana cards?
The official statement on these bans is that they were made “to ensure the greatest diversity of successful strategies was available to competitive players”.
Both cards offer their players a generous amount of card draw, which is a huge advantage in pretty much any trading card game. Lorcana’s lead game designer has confirmed that this was a large reason for the bans – the win rate of decks that rely on these two cards was absurdly high.
Can I still play the cards?
Disney Lorcana encourages fans to keep using these cards in casual decks, for example those they might play at home with family and friends. However, decks that include these cards can no longer be used at Disney Lorcana Challenge events or other tournaments.
Notably, the bans also don’t affect fans playing in China and Japan. “Representatives from those areas will provide a separate announcement localized to their market as to how these cards will be handled as they release more Disney Lorcana sets”, says the official ban announcement.
If you’re still waiting to give it a go, check out our guide to the best Disney Lorcana starter decks. Alternatively, if you’ve more of a collecting bent, read our explainer on the Lorcana rarity symbols and our regularly updated list of the rarest and most expensive Lorcana cards.