While we’re still nearly a year out from Disney’s trading card game Lorcana, we just received one of our first hints about how the game will actually play.
Decks will only be able to use up to two of Lorcana’s six ‘Inks’ per deck. With Inks working similarly to Magic: The Gathering, Digimon’s colours, or the Pokemon TCG’s types, this first notable gameplay detail provides a look into the level of complexity the game is aiming for.
YouTube channel Nive’s Nerd Corner has discussed Lorcana’s Ink system with creator Ravensburger over Twitter DM, where it confirmed that your decks will only be allowed to use two of the different Inks in a deck, limiting the game to a total of 36 colour combinations.
Lorcana will have six Inks, which define not only which cards you can play, but also the mechanical design spaces they play in. They are Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald, Amethyst, Steel, and Amber – blue, red, green, purple, grey, and yellow, respectively.
What remains unconfirmed is how these colours will impact the turn-by-turn flow of the game. We don’t know if you’ll need to produce resources that are specific to each Ink, like Magic’s mana, or whether it serves more as a general deckbuilding restriction, like how Legends of Runeterra limits decks to two of its 11 regions.
While limiting decks to just two Inks may feel constrictive compared to other games, 36 possible configurations still allow for a huge variety of decks without pushing the complexity of the game too far. It also means we could more easily see multi-Ink cards in the future, as designing for 36 combinations is much easier than the full array of 64 if all six colours were allowed in a single deck.
Lorcana is still a long way off, with a scheduled launch of Autumn 2023. While the official Lorcana Twitter later confirmed we'll be getting a full gameplay reveal in the Spring, at least we can now distract ourselves by arguing over what the slang for various Ink combinations be. I'd like to throw “Sulley” out there for Amethyst/Sapphire decks, and “Pooh Bear” for Ruby/Amber.