The new ”Disney-Lorcana” trading card game will be released this year! On 18.08.2023 (English products) and on 30.09.2023 (German products) the time has come. But what is Lorcana and how does it work? What products are available and where can you get them (spoiler: in our store)?

What is Diesney Lorcana?

Disney Lorcana is, as the name suggests, a trading card game in which Disney characters take center stage. It is also rumored that other Disney brands, such as Star Wars or Marvel, could make their debut in Disney Lorcana in the future. Whether and to what extent this will actually happen is not yet known. But how exactly do you play Disney Lorcana? What products are there and what future prospects can we already give? Find out in this blog post!

How does Disney Lorcana work?

Ahoy adventure!

In the game, every player is a so-called ”Illumineer”, which could ultimately mean something like ”Illuminator” in German. However, there is currently no official information on this. The aim of the game is to collect so-called ”Lore” (German: ”Geschichte”). The player who collects 20 lore wins the game. But how is lore collected?

The easiest way to do this is to play characters (or ”Glimmer”) and then send them on a ”quest” (DE: mission). To do this, we need to take a closer look at the character cards: on the bottom right-hand side of the card we see these black symbols. Mickey has four, Maleficient has two and Cruella de Vil only has one. To send a character on a quest, they have to be ”exhausted” in typical trading card fashion. To do this, the card is rotated 90 degrees to the left or right (player preference). In this case, the player controlling the card receives these Lore points. Note: a character cannot be sent on a quest in the turn in which it is played.

Card structure at Disney-Lorcana

Ink costs (ink fountain)

The amount of ”ink” you have to pay to bring the card onto the playing field.

Image

The artwork that can be seen on the map.

Name + version

Which character it is and what version of it. In future, for example, different Mickeys or other characters can exist as cards without causing confusion. Each card may be played four times in the deck. If there was only one ”Mickey” without an additional version, players would quickly reach the limit of possible playable cards.

Ink type

Which ink color is required to play the card. There are a total of six different colors around which the decks can be built. The colors are:

A deck of 60 cards may contain a maximum of two different color types. This prevents simply playing the best cards of each color in a deck. Normally, different colors in card games have different things they are good at. An example of this would be red (or in this case Ruby): Usually the color red is very aggressive in card games. It can be attacked (or challenged) a lot. However, the characters usually don’t have as many or as good effects. The cards are also often inexpensive. This is why the red-playing player has a fast pace at the start of the game. Towards the end of the game, however, the strength of the deck flattens out as the color runs out of ”breath” and other colors often have very strong ”endgame” cards. How exactly this will play out in Disney Lorcana remains to be seen.

Capability

The special ”ability” or skill (also called effects) of the card. In any card game, characters with particularly strong effects are the cards that will influence the tournaments (more on this later). Abilities are, simply put, ”what the card does”. Certain abilities also require the card to be ”fatigued”, i.e. rotated 90 degrees. This has two implications: Firstly, the card cannot also attack during the turn in which the ability is used, and secondly, the effect cannot be used during the turn in which the card is played. A card that is played cannot be rotated 90 degrees in the same turn (unless the effect explicitly allows it).

Background text

The so-called ”flavor” or ”spice” that gives the card game an immersive (engaging) experience. The story and background information on the cards give the Illumineer (player) the feeling of being in the middle of the world of Lorcana.

Attack and defense

The strength of the card expressed in numbers. The ”Attack value” indicates how much damage this card inflicts during a challenge. The ”defense value” defines the damage that the character can withstand before it disappears from the playing field and ends up in the discard pile.

Subcategory

Subcategories are often used in card games to indicate what kind of character type the card can interact with.

Quest points

The above-mentioned ”Lore” (quest) or story points to win the game at the end. These can be obtained when the character is sent on a quest or ”mission” in German

The different card types in Disney Lorcana

We have already looked at the character (mica). Now there are three more types: Items, Actions and Songs. Items stay on the field when they are played and, if we look at other card games such as Pokémon, have supporting abilities. Actions are usually cards that have a very strong effect once, but then disappear from the field. Songs are a special type of action. They can be played normally by playing the ink cost at the top left of the card. However, there are also characters who can ”sing” a song and activate the card for free.

The gameplay of Disney Lorcana

Basic structure

• Each player needs a deck of 60 cards
• Each specific card may appear a maximum of 4 times in the deck (as explained above)
• Only TWO DIFFERENT COLOR TYPES may be present in a deck
• Decide who starts with the help of a dice roll
• Each player starts the game with seven cards in hand
• Before the game begins, each player can place as many cards as they wish from their starting hand of seven cards under their deck and draw the same number of cards
• Cards that are placed in the ink well are reversed.
• If an ”ink resource” is used, it must be rotated by 90 degrees. An ink resource that is rotated cannot be used again in the same turn.

Start phase

Preparation phase: Set all cards active. This means returning all cards that are still rotated by 90 degrees to their starting position.

Exploration phase: Check whether there are any abilities that need to be activated. This turn is used to see which character cards may finally use their effects and/or attack this turn.

Draw phase: The player whose turn it is draws a card from his deck. Important: the player who opens the game and has the first turn does NOT have this phase!

Main phase

Everything in the main phase can happen in any order.

• Add a card to our ink well. This action can only be performed once per turn and only by cards that have a spiral around their ink cost. An example would be the cards shown in the picture above: Cruella de Vil has a spiral around her ”two” cost indication. ”Dragon Fire” (third card from the left) only has a ”five” but no spiral. It can therefore not be added to the Fountain of Ink.
• Cards can be played
• Card abilities can be activated if possible (this mainly refers to items, actions and songs, but of course also characters)
• Activate character actions. Each character has three options per turn: go on a quest to collect ”Lore” (reminder: we need 20 to win the game), challenge other characters on the opposing side to keep the field empty and, last but not least, activate character abilities.

How does a challenge between characters work

When one character challenges another, the following happens:

You can see how much attack and defense each card has. In this example, ”Captain Hook” has 3 attack and 4 defense, while ”Donald” has 2 attack and 3 defense. Donald therefore inflicts 2 damage on Captain Hook in this exchange, while Donald receives 3 damage in return. However, as Donald only has 3 defense and this is then completely broken, Donald disappears from the field after the fight. Captain Hook on the other side takes ”only” 2 damage and can stay. The 2 damage is indicated by tokens placed on the card. But beware: Captain Hook now has to be very careful, as he only has two defense left. If he attacks again with 2 damage, he also disappears from the field. Side note: If one character’s attack exceeds the defense of the other, the character simply disappears anyway. The ”remaining” damage has no further effect.

Tournaments

As mentioned at the beginning, tournaments will also play an important role in the Disney Lorcana card game. This means that there will be official tournaments in which players will compete in their skills. Of course, we as an Uncommon Shop will also offer such tournaments. These will be so-called ”locals”, i.e. local tournaments. Normally there are different levels of tournaments in the competitive card game cosmos (try saying that 10 times in a row). It starts at the lowest level and goes through regional tournaments to national championships and even European and world championships. However, it remains to be seen how exactly this will be established at Disney Lorcana. The higher the level of the tournaments, the bigger the prizes: everything from rare Promo cards to special play mats and many other things are possible. These cards are then also highly sought-after AND limited, which usually gives them a decent ”sum” of monetary value. You can find our tournaments in our tournament calendar on the website.

Products

Of course, as an Uncommon Shop, we also offer the various products that Lorcana has to offer. You can find them in both German and English on our website.

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As with every trading card game, there are of course displays here too.

Unlike the Starter Deck Sets, the Booster Packs contain 12 random cards from the set: Das erste Kapitel. These Booster Packs are available in three different designs. Unlike other Disney Lorcana products, a Booster Pack is not guaranteed to contain cards featuring the character pictured on the front.

Summary