How to Play Lorcana!

Welcome to the enchanting world of Disney Lorcana! If you're new to this magical card game, you're in the right place. Lorcana is a fun and engaging game that brings together strategy, creativity, and a touch of fantasy. In this guide, we'll walk you through the basics of how to play Lorcana, ensuring you have all the knowledge you need to start your adventure. Let's dive in!

What is Lorcana?

Lorcana is a collectible card game where players take on the roles of powerful sorcerers known as "Illumineers." Using their decks of cards, players summon Glimmers, cast spells, and compete to gather magical shards called "Lore." The goal is to be the first player to collect 20 Lore.

The Basics: Getting Started

Before you start playing, you'll need a few things:

1. A Lorcana Deck: Each player needs their own deck of cards. A standard deck consists of 60 cards, including Glimmers, spells, and items. You can either build your own deck or use one of the many Lorcana starter decks if you're new to the game.
2. A Play Area: You need a flat surface to lay out your cards and keep track of the game, the Lorcana Starter Decks come with a paper playmat to get you started.
3. Lore Tokens: These tokens are used to track your progress and damage that is dealt during a game. The goal is to be the first player to collect 20 Lore.

Setting Up the Game

1. Shuffle Your Deck: Before starting, shuffle your deck thoroughly.
2. Draw Your Starting Hand: Each player draws seven cards from their deck to form their starting hand.
3. Place Your Lore Tokens: Place a set number of Lore tokens (usually 20) within reach of both players.

How to Play

1. Starting the Game

Decide who goes first by flipping a coin or rolling a die. The first player does not draw a card on their first turn, you also decide your first layer before drawing cards. Lorcana has a unique Mulligan rule where, after drawing the seven cards to your hand, each player gets one chance to alter them. The first player mulligans first, then the next player – going clockwise. Most people just mulligan at the same time but those are the official rules. Remember: You decide who goes first before drawing and before doing a mulligan.

You put as many as you want of the seven cards in your hand to the bottom of your deck without showing them. You don’t have to mulligan, you could just put one back, or all seven cards.

You then draw the same number of new cards as you put down from the top of your deck – so you go back to seven cards.

2. Turn Structure

Each player's turn is divided into four phases:

a. Draw Phase: At the beginning of your turn, draw a card from your deck.

b. Main Phase: This is the core of your turn. You can do several things during the Main Phase:

• Play Glimmers: Glimmers are the backbone of your strategy. They can challenge your opponent and defend you.
• Cast Spells: Spells can affect the game in various ways, like drawing extra cards or dealing damage toGlimmers.
• Use Abilities: SomeGlimmersand items have special abilities you can activate.

c. Challenge Phase: After you've played your cards and used your abilities, you can choose to challenge with your Glimmers. To challenge, choose one of your Glimmers and an opponent's Glimmersor target. The strength and willpower values on the cards determine the outcome. The challenges character / target must be exerted in order to land a challenge.

d. End Phase: This marks the end of your turn. Some effects may occur at this stage, so check your cards.

3. Winning the Game

The game continues with players taking turns until one player collects 20 Lore tokens. The first player to reach this goal wins the game.

Key Concepts and Strategies

Understanding Card Types

1. Glimmers: These cards represent the characters you summon to the battlefield. They have strength and willpower values and may have special abilities.
2. Actions: These are one-time-use cards that have various effects, like healing your Glimmers or damaging your opponent's. Actions can be standalone or they can be a Song. Song cards aresimilar to action cards except players can play them for free, if they exert a character who meets or exceeds the ink cost of the song card.
3. Items: These cards provide ongoing benefits or abilities that can aid you throughout the game.
4. Locations: Location cards act like items and Glimmers in that you pay their cost to put them in play. Unlike items and Glimmers though, locations don't have a state of ready or exerted which means they'll always be set horizontally on the table.

Building a Strong Deck

A well-balanced deck is crucial for success in Lorcana. Here are some tips for building a strong deck:

• Diversify Your Cards: Include a mix of Glimmers, spells, and items to handle different situations.
• Consider Synergy: Choose cards that work well together. Some cards may boost the abilities of others, creating powerful combos.
• Balance Your Costs: Make sure you have a good balance of low-cost and high-cost cards. This ensures you can always play something, regardless of how many resources you have.

Resource Management

Managing your resources efficiently is key to winning in Lorcana. Pay attention to the cost of your cards and plan your turns to maximize their impact. Sometimes, it's better to wait and save your resources for a more powerful move later.

Learning from Experience

As with any game, practice makes perfect. Don't be discouraged if you don't win right away. Each game is a learning experience that will help you improve your strategy and understanding of the game.

Lorcana is a thrilling and magical card game that offers endless possibilities and strategies. By understanding the basics, building a balanced deck, and learning from each game, you'll quickly become a skilled Illumineer. Gather your deck, summon your Glimmers, and embark on your magical journey in the world of Disney Lorcana. Happy playing!

Remember, the key to mastering Lorcana is practice and patience. Keep playing, and you'll soon discover the depth and excitement this game has to offer. Enjoy your adventures in Lorcana!

Original 18/04/2023

As the release date for the long-awaited Lorcana draws nearer, we are super excited to see the quick-start rules for the game have finally been revealed! The breakdown of the new rules look to be an excellent illustration of how Lorcana will be played and we just can't wait to dive in and start playing! Read the rules breakdown and check out our thoughts on the mechanics down below!

Similarities to Keyforge

The first thing that we find interesting about the newly revealed rules is the similarity they share with Keyforge, the card game devised by the legendary Richard Garfield that hasn't seen a major release since 2021. In Keyforge, players work to procure Æmber to forge 3 keys before the opponent, whilst Lorcana sees players working to gain 20 lore before the other player. Fans of the Keyforge mechanics will likely be happy with their inclusion in a new game that will see more frequent releases. As the ruleset for Keyforge has been extensively tested, we can rest easy knowing that Lorcana will be playable and not just a game for the collectors.

Simplicity of play

All in all, the rules of Lorcana look to be fairly straightforward, which is definitely something to be desired from a game designed around Disney characters! The fact that the quick-start rules are laid out so well and succinctly shows a lot of promise for the playability and even the competitive side of Lorcana in the future! We just can't wait to grab the starter decks and start playing!

Ink Restriction

As revealed many months ago, Lorcana will utilise six different inks: Amber, Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, Steel and Sapphire, similar to how MTGs use colour. What is interesting, however, is that decks are being restricted to only one or two Inks and there doesn't seem to be an option to play with 3,4 or more Inks. We imagine this restriction was introduced to make the game simpler for younger players and possibly to balance the game and avoid overpowered combos that are common in games like MTG. This still leaves players with 21 unique Ink combinations to choose from (compared to MTGs 31 colour combinations), which still leaves a lot of room for a variety of playstyles.

Multiplayer Games!

The Quick-start rules have a brief section regarding games with more than 2 players! Although it doesn't seem like there are any official formats for multi-player games at the moment, the creators have certainly left the door open for different formats in the future.

Check out the related products section down below to browse the epic upcoming products for Lorcana! Though pre-orders aren't live yet, you sign up for pre-order notifications, you'll be alerted as soon as you can place orders!