Disney and Ravensburger have finally lifted the lid on how you actually play their upcoming trading card game Disney Lorcana, answering many questions that have been left unanswered since the game was first revealed way back in August.
Everything from combat and how you pay for cards, to hand sizes and how you even win the game have all been revealed, letting us start theorycrafting decks ahead of the mid-August launch.
The first details of Lorcana’s gameplay were released in the latest issue of Games Trader Magazine, ahead of gameplay demos at the GAMA Expo later this month. As seen on tweets that quickly circulated following its publication, this multi-page spread broke down key mechanics including the resource system, how to read cards, and the main win condition of generating 20 “lore” with your glimmers, until Ravensburger disclosed even more information on the official Lorcana website.
Like other TCGs, two or more players will bring decks of 60 cards (with the already-revealed two-ink-limit), and start the game with seven cards in their hand. However, instead of requiring lands or mana like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone, Lorcana will instead have you place up to one card per turn into the “inkwell”, where it can be used to pay the cost of other cards you want to play.
This both eliminates the need for ink-generating cards that could be dead in your hand if drawn later in the game, and also offers an interesting tradeoff between inking an expensive card to pay for a cheaper one, or taking longer to ink lots of smaller cards for a heavy-hitter.
To win a game of Lorcana, you and your opponent are racing to create lore by “questing” your glimmers. Many glimmers have several stars on the right-hand side equal to how much lore they generate – however, doing so then “exerts” (taps) them, and opens them up to be “challenged” by an opponent’s character.
Combat works more like the Pokemon TCG than Magic. Instead of attacking your opponent, your characters can directly “challenge” your opponent’s, provided they are exerted. In a challenge each will deal damage to each other equal to its “Strength” – the first of two numbers on the right of the card. Also like Pokemon, damage will remain on the character indefinitely instead of dissipating at the end of the turn. If a character’s damage meets or exceeds its “willpower” (the second number), it is “banished”.
Lorcana’s main tactical conceit is in balancing which creatures you quest with, which ones you throw into the inkwell, and which ones you use for challenging your opponent. By having a large enough board full of characters who can either quest or challenge, you’ll be able to gradually build up enough lore to win the game. However, it also seems incredibly easy to overextend, whether by putting cards into your inkwell too frequently or by focusing too much on questing, and not enough on managing your opponent’s board.
Talking about the goals when designing Lorcana’s mechanics, co-designer and brand manager Ryan Miller said “My co-designer Steve Warner and I kept four factors in mind when designing the game: approachability, fun, strategy, and whimsy. We created streamlined rules that we believe will engage new players, while also developing enough strategy in the game to engage experienced players.”
This reveal still leaves a lot to be explained, though. For instance, we don’t know the anatomy of a turn, and when you’re allowed to do things like questing and challenging. We also don’t know timing restrictions for things like Action cards and utilising abilities. But now the floodgates have been opened, we’ll hopefully be hearing a lot more about the minutia of Lorcana’s gameplay in the weeks to come.
Disney Lorcana launches on August 18.