This took a lot longer than anticipated! The last time we released support for a “new” card game was for Pokémon back in 2021 – three years ago. So why exactly has it taken us so long to add more TCGs to our catalog? Well, first we had the massive undertaking of rebuilding our code base from scratch, as detailed in The Great Refactoring; that took us right up to the start of this year. Since the completion of that project, our Dev Team has been making improvements to every aspect of our system (back-end, front-end, card recognition, etc.) while also endeavouring to have each of those facilities conform to a standard that will work across all types of trading cards. While this is a beautiful dream – and we are making excellent progress towards this reality – as with all things it has been more difficult to implement than expected.

“Wait a minute,” you may be saying, “What happened to Yu-Gi-Oh! and Flesh and Blood?” A fair question. We had originally planned for Yu-Gi-Oh! to be the third TCG we would offer support for, but the square corners and smaller profile of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards presented a significant physical handling challenge. After running many tests, we determined we would not be able to safely process Yu-Gi-Oh! cards without making modifications to the PhyzBatch-9000, and that would take research, development, and engineering (all of which is expensive, both temporally and monetarily). For Flesh and Blood, its initial boom in popularity seems to have ebbed, and while we still plan to add support for it, it has taken a back seat to the much more frequently requested Lorcana and One Piece card games.

And so, here we are! Lorcana is an exciting one for us, as we have three competitive players on our staff (two of whom are on our Dev Team). It’s great when your passion project and your work happen to overlap, and this has certainly been the case for us as we have coded and tested our way to today’s launch. Additionally, the timing of today’s release is no accident, and we have been busting our butts to make sure we have support for Lorcana ahead of the official release of the latest set: Shimmering Skies – available in hobby stores today! We hope everyone enjoys playing (and sorting) this newest set of Lorcana cards, and you can bet that several of our number will be competing in Store Championships in and around Calgary.

A bit of an aside, but I remember way back in April 2021, I wrote what was probably my least popular Reddit post of all time, titled What would happen if Disney bought Hasbro and took creative control over Magic?.

While Lorcana is not the exact embodiment of what I was postulating in that post, it’s hard not to draw very strong inferences between it and Magic. Am I suggesting that I invented Lorcana? Haha, no, although I would be in good company in contesting its origins. Regardless of how it came to be, Lorcana has gained itself a large following over the first twelve months of its existence, and we are happy to be bringing support to our LGS customers who are serving this thriving new community of card players. From all of us here at TCG Machines, thank you for your continued support.