How to play Disney Lorcana

Disney’s Lorcana the kid on the block in terms of trading card games. It’s built quite the amount of excitement around it and now that it’s out, players are flocking to the game. It invokes a ton of nostalgia and on top of that, it’s a pretty great game. For new players to the game, you’re probably wondering how to play Disney Lorcana. Well, we have you covered.

We are going to go over how to build a deck, how to set up a game, and how turns can play out. This will give you the foundational knowledge to pick up a deck and play a game with a friend. If you want to know more about each of the starter decks, check out our best Disney Lorcana starter decks guide.

How to play Disney Lorcana – how to build a deck

The first thing to is to build a deck. Whether you’re going to build your own deck, or use one of the starter decks, there’s a few simple rules that you’ll have to follow.

• Your deck must have at least 60 cards in it.
• Your deck cannot contain more than four copies of any single card.
  • This only applies to specifically named cards. If you have two differently named Elsa cards in your deck, you can have four copies of each.
• Your deck can only contain cards from one or two inks types.
  • There are six types of Ink types: Amber, Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, Steel

Next, there are three types of cards that you will encounter in Lorcana.

• Character cards
• Item cards
• Action cards

You may also encounter a Song card. This is a special type of action card that can function like a normal action, but if you have a Character in play that can sing the Song, you can play the Song card for free. Now, let’s talk about a few other important bits of information before getting started with a game.

Parts of a Disney Lorcana Card

Let’s first take a look at a Disney Lorcana card and talk about the different parts of a card.

1. Cost – This is how much Ink is required to be exerted in order to play a card. If a card has a gold swirl around the hexagon of this number, that means it can placed into your inkwell to be used as Ink.
2. Name – This is where the name of the card is shown.
3. Ink Type – This is the Ink type of the card. Remember, your deck can only have one or two ink types in it.
4. Classifications – This is different categories of the card. These are often referenced in abilities or other cards.
5. Strength – A character’s offensive stat that is used for Challenging.
6. Willpower – A characters health stat. When this reaches zero, whether via a card effect or challenging, the character is banished. Damage stays on characters unless an effect removes the damage counters, or the character is banished.
7. Abilities – This is the main text box where abilities on the cards are shown
8. Lore Value – This is the number of Lore points that you’ll gain if the character quests.

Disney Lorcana key terms

There’s a few important key terms that you’ll want to know about before starting your first game. There’s a lot here, so we’ll briefly detail each term.

• Ready – Readying a card is turning a card upright (vertically)
• Exert – Exert means that you’re using a card for the turn. To exert, you will turn the card on its side. Characters cannot be exerted on the turn they are played.
• Inkwell – The Inkwell is your resource pool. You can play one card in your inkwell per turn if it has a swirl around its cost in the top left. To do this, show the card to your opponent and place it facedown in your inkwell readied. Cards placed in the Inkwell stay there for the whole game.
• Lore – Lore points are points you gain during the game. Get 20 Lore to win!
• Questing – Questing is they way you score Lore in the game. To Quest, pick a character card, and exert it. Then add the number of Lore value on the card to your Lore points. You cannot quest with a Character you just played.
• Banished – Banished means to set a card into the discard pile. This is because the card was discarded, used, or a character in play reached zero Willpower.
• Challenging – Challenging is the form of combat in Lorcana. To challenge, exert one of your characters and declare it as challenging. Then choose an exerted character your opponent controls. You cannot challenge a ready character. Then, each character deals damage to the other equal to their strength.
• Abilities – Abilities are effects that characters or items will have. You can use abilities on your turn, and will only affect cards that are in play, unless otherwise stated. Some abilities will cost ink to use. Remember that you cannot use abilities of characters that you just played.

How to play Disney Lorcana – starting a game

To start a game of Lorcana, two or more players will need to have a deck. You’ll also want to have a way to track your Lore points, and some damage counters to keep track of damage. Players will shuffle their deck and draw seven cards.

Once everyone has drawn their opening hand, randomly determine who is going first. Then, starting with the player going first, players can alter their opening hand once. To do this, a player will choose any number of cards in their hand, put them face down on the bottom of their deck and draw new cards until they have seven cards. Then they will reshuffle their deck. Once everyone is happy with their opening hand, the game can begin.

How a turn works in Disney Lorcana

A turn in Lorcana is broken up into two phases, the Beginning Phase and the Main Phase. At the beginning of a turn, the player will take these steps in order.

• Beginning Phase
  • Ready – Ready your exerted cards
  • Set – Check for effects that happen at the start of your turn and follow their steps
  • Draw – Draw a card from the top of your deck. The first player in a game skips this on their first turn.
• Main Phase – These steps may be done in any order and you may do as many actions as you can in a turn.
  • Once per turn, you may put a card facedown in your inkwell.
  • Play a card by exerting the required number of ink and playing the card on the table.
  • Use a Character’s ability that doesn’t require them to exert.
  • Use an Item ability
  • Take an Action with a card that has been in play since the start of your turn:
    • Quest
    • Challenge
    • Use an ability that requires them to exert.

After a player has exhausted all actions they can, or decides to not take any additional actions, they pass their turn to the next player. This goes back and forth until a player gets 20 or more Lore, or until one player’s deck runs out of cards, in which that player loses the next time they would have to draw a card.

And that’s all there is to it! Now you have the knowledge of how to play Disney Lorcana and you can now enjoy your first games with your friends! We covered a lot of ground here, but if you’re looking for more information, be sure to head over the Disney Lorcana website, as they have some great videos and a quick start guide for quick reference. If you want to give the game a try but can’t get cards, then check out our guide on how to play Disney Lorcana online!