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Disney Lorcana is a trading card game where you will wield magical Ink to summon a team of Glimmers and race against other Illumineers to collect Lore. Choose your favorite characters and cards to start playing!

Table of Contents

BUILDING A DECK

You will need a deck of cards to play Disney Lorcana.

To build a deck, first you will need to pick one or a maximum of two out of the six Ink choices available.

Amber Ink Amethyst Ink Emerald Ink Ruby Ink Sapphire Ink Steel Ink

Next, pick cards from the Inks you have chosen to put into your deck. You can have a maximum of 4 copies of any card in your deck!

Once you have at least 60 cards in your deck, your deck is complete.

If you are new to the game, we recommend starting with a Starter Deck, which is a ready-to-play pre-built deck.

TYPES OF CARDS

Your Lorcana deck can have a mix of three types of cards: Character, Action and Item cards.

Character cards

Disney characters can be summoned to your board where they will quest for lore or challenge your opponent’s characters.

Some of them even have special abilities that can help you during the game!

Action cards

Action cards can be activated from your hand to give you a one-time advantage through their special abilities.

After the card’s ability is completed, it is sent to the discard pile.

Some Action cards are even Songs that can be played for free by getting your characters to sing the song!

Item cards

Item cards are also activated from your hand but they stay on the board where you can access their special abilities throughout the game.

Reading a card

  1. Cost to play the card
  2. Name and version of the card*
  3. The Ink of the card
  4. The card type or classification of a character
  5. The Strength of the character
  6. The Willpower of the character
  7. The ability of the card
  8. The amount of Lore a character has

* 2 Characters with the same name but different versions count as different cards, and you can play 4 copies of each card!

SETTING UP A GAME

Where to place your cards

  1. Deck
    This is where you place your deck. You will draw 1 card from here at the start of your turn.
  2. Cards in Play
    This is where you place all your Character and Item cards after you play them from your hand.
  3. Discard pile
    This is where you place all your cards after they have been played or banished.
  4. Inkwell
    This is where you place your cards that go into the Inkwell. You can place 1 card per turn from your hand here if they are Inkable.

Starting a game

To start a game of Lorcana, each player will need to prepare their own deck, damage counters and a way to track how much Lore they have.

Each player will then take these steps in the following order.

  1. Shuffle their Deck.
  2. Set their Lore to 0.
  3. Draw 7 cards for their starting hand.
  4. Determine who will be going first by flipping a coin, rolling a die or so on.
  5. Alter their starting hand through a Mulligan, starting with the player who is going first.
  6. Following that, the turn of the first player commences, starting with the Beginning Phase.

To Mulligan, select the cards that you do not want to keep in your starting hand and place them at the bottom of your deck, then draw until you have 7 cards in hand. Finally, shuffle the deck.

Turn Flow

Beginning Phase

Each turn is divided into two phases.

  • Beginning Phase
  • Main Phase

During the Beginning Phase, the player draws a card and readies all their exerted cards by turning them upright.

During the very first turn of the entire game, the player who is going first does not draw for this turn.

Main Phase

The Main Phase is where most of the action happen!

Once per turn, you may take a card with the Inkwell icon from your hand, show it to your opponent, then place it facedown into the Inkwell.

This is a cost icon that has the Inkwell icon around it.

Cards with this icon can be placed in the Inkwell.

This is a cost icon that does not have the Inkwell icon.

Cards with this icon cannot be placed in the Inkwell unless it is placed through an ability.

You may also do the following actions in any order, any number of times you want.

  • Play a card from your hand by paying for the cost using Ink in the Inkwell (Exert cards in the Inkwell to pay for the cost).
  • Exert a character to
    • Challenge an opponent’s character that is exerted
    • Quest to gain Lore
    • Use an ability that requires the character to be exerted
You exert a card by turning the card horizontally.

 

Characters that were just played cannot be exerted in the same turn!

CHALLENGE

Questing is how you win the game but sometimes you need to slow your opponents down. This is where challenging comes in.

Exert one of your characters to challenge an opponent’s character.

The opponent’s character must be exerted and ready characters cannot be challenged!

Both characters deal damage to each other in a challenge.

Check each character’s Strength and place that many damage counters on the opponent’s character.

If a character has the same amount or more damage counters compared to their Willpower, the character is banished and sent to the discard pile.

WIN CONDITION

To quest with one of your characters, exert them and gain lore equal to their lore value.

 

The first player to reach 20 or more lore wins the game!

You also win the game if your opponent has no more cards left in their deck and is unable to draw.

DEMO VIDEO

Check out our demo video that covers everything you need to know about the basics of playing Disney Lorcana!