After revealing the first cards for Disney Lorcana at D23 Expo earlier this year, tabletop publisher Ravensburger went completely dark on the upcoming trading card game. Since September, the only thing eager fans have had to go off of was the first seven cards - the six included in the Collector’s set, and the bonus Mickey Mouse promo card.
Despite claiming we’d have to wait until 2023 for more info, the Disney Lorcana Twitter account recently started teasing new info about gameplay mechanics. In October we learned that the names of the card colors (or ‘inks’) are Amber, Amethyst, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, and Steel, and last week we learned (via Nive’s Nerd Corner) that decks will be limited to just two of each ink. Today, Ravensburger has revealed a new card type, called Action cards, along with an example - a Maleficent-themed card called Dragon Fire.
Dragon Fire gives us precious little info to go off of, but there may be something we can glean from it. It depicts Maleficent in her dragon form breathing fire and its ink color is Ruby, just like Mickey Mouse and, more importantly, Maleficent herself. Its card text is identical to the ability text on the Maleficent card - which has the same name, Dragon Fire - indicating that we can expect to see other character card abilities in action card form, like Elsa’s Freeze or Cruella’s You’ll Be Sorry!
It also has a five in the corner, which seems to indicate some kind of cost, but it's surrounded by hexagon rather than the unique symbol that surrounds the corner number on character cards. It has the ink pen line at the bottom that separates the rule text from what we assume is the flavor text, but we aren’t able to see the rest of the card right now. This indicates the flavor text is being hidden for some reason, either it reveals story details Ravensburger is still keeping under wraps, or the text hasn’t been finalized yet.
This is the first card type we’ve seen that’s different from the character cards, and we don’t yet know how action cards work. It seems there are two options: either they’re sorcery-speed, play-on-your-turn cards like Pokemon’s trainer cards or Hearthstone’s spells, or they’re instant-speed cards that can be played on yours or your opponent's turn, similar to Magic: The Gathering’s Instant cards.
“Action” is the only keyword on Dragon Fire, so my instincts tell me these are sorcery-speed cards that can only be played on your own turn. Considering none of the cards we’ve seen so far refer to timing - including Maleficent’s own version of Dragon Fire - I suspect players can only play cards on their own turn.
That still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. If action cards work like Pokemon’s trainer cards, are you limited to just one action card play per turn? The “cost” in the top left corner indicates otherwise. Instead, Action cards may work like Hearthstone’s spells, of which you can play as many as you can afford each turn, but only on your turn. We still don’t know what the resource system is, but my guess is you start with a certain amount and gain additional resources each turn, similar to Hearthstone. Alternatively, there may be ink cards like Magic’s Lands, which provide energy through tapping or some other mechanic.
The card text says “Banish chosen character,” which seems pretty straightforward, but there’s a lot we don’t know about the keyword “banish” yet. Do banished cards go in your discard, or back in your deck? Do you earn prize cards for banishing characters, or are you simply removing a threat from the board? Every new piece of information we get about Lorcana inspires a dozen more questions, and until Ravensburger lays out the rules sometime the next year, we can only speculate. At the very least, the Dragon Fire reveal proves there are more card types in Lorcana than just character cards, and, as far as we know, it isn’t the only new card type we’ll learn about either.
In any event, we’ll keep you updated with all the new developments as we get closer to the launch of Disney Lorcana in 2023.