Quick Links
Disney Lorcanalooks whimsical and colourful, with all those characters, magic spells, and songs, but there’s a surprising amount you need to learn before shuffling up and playing your first game. Don’t let the Winnie the Poohs and Flounders (just sayin'…) fool you, this is just as deep and strategic as any other TCG.
RELATED:Everything We Know About Disney Lorcana
Fortunately, Lorcana is also incredibly accessible. In no time at all, you’ll be brewing decks with your favourite Disney characters and generating Lore with the best of them. Here’s everything you need to know before starting your first game.
Updated July 21, 2025 by Joe Parlock:With only a few weeks until launch, more and more of Lorcana has been unveiled. We’ve updated this guide to clear up some things we didn’t know before, as well as going more in-depth on how song cards work.
Reading A Lorcana Card
Lorcana cards have a number of important stats and abilities on them, and knowing how to read the cards is vital to understanding the game.
Description
Cost
This is how much ink you need to exert to play the card. If there is a circle around it, known as the Inkwell icon, this card can be placed into your Inkwell to be used as ink.
Name
This is the name of the card. you may only have four copies of thisexact namein your deck.
How much damage the character deals during a challenge.
Willpower
How much damage a character can take before it is banished.
Classifications
These specify what types the card is. For example, characters might have specific classes, while Actions could specify they are Songs.
Ink
Ink is effectively what ‘colour’ the character is. You can only have two inks in any deck.
Abilities
These are the main things the card can do. They will either be triggered by other actions in the game, or will be things you can activate on your turn. Some abilities arekeyworded, meaning they work the same way every time, such as Evasive or Ward.
Lore Value
This is how much lore the character will generate when it quests.
Set Information
This gives you information about that card’s place in the set it’s from, such as the artist, card number, and language.
Rarity
The rarity of the card. There are five rarities: grey Common, white Uncommon, bronze Rare, silver Super Rare, and golden Legendary.
Building Your Deck
Your Lorcana deck needs to beat least sixty cards, of which you’re able to only havefour copies of any name of a card.
Keep in mind the name includes both the regular character’s nameand its subtitle. For example, you can only have fourcopies of Mickey Mouse, Wayward Sorcerer, but you can also have four copies of Mickey Mouse, Brave Little Tailor in the same deck.
Your deck will be composed of three different types of cards,characters, items, and actions:
The only other important rule is that your deck canonly have up to two colours of ink in it.Each card in Lorcana is grouped into one ofsix inks, with each ink having its ownabilities and strategic design:
Good at buffing and protecting other cards.
Use abilities and actions to control the table.
Emerald (Green)
Highly adaptive, and is easily able to avoid or discourage challenges by moving cards from zone to zone.
Ruby (Red)
Fast and aggressive, and can deal direct damage to characters more efficiently than other inks.
Focuses on playing and using item cards.
Steel (Grey)
High defence, and good at challenging to “brute force” your way through.
Winning The Game
There are two ways to win a game of Lorcana.
The first, and main way, is bycollecting 20 Lore before your opponents can.This is usually done throughquesting your characters,meaning you’ll want a big enough board state to allow you to quest at least a couple of your characters each turn.
The second way is by having your opponentrun out of cards in their deck. If you go to draw a card, but have no more left in your deck,you immediately lose the game.
Starting The Game And Altering Your Hand
Once all players (ideally two, butmore is supported) have a deck and are ready to begin,shuffle your decks and draw seven cards each. This is your opening hand.
If this is the first game, youmust keep this opening hand. Otherwise, you are allowed toalter your handby putting as many cards as you like from it onto the bottom of your library, and then drawing that amount again. You can only alter your hand once; after that, you must keep the seven you have and re-shuffle your deck.
If every player has seven cards in their hand and are ready, use any random way, like rock-paper-scissors, rolling a die, or flipping a coin to decide who goes first. From there, the game can begin for real.
The Phases Of A Turn
Your turn is split into two phases: the Beginning Phase, and the Main Phase.
The Beginning Phase
The Beginning Phase is all about setting up your board ready for your turn, and is further split into three parts:Ready, Set, and Draw.
Ready
In the Ready step, any of your exerted cards are readiest by turning them 90 degrees into their usual, upright position.
Set
In the Set step, any abilities that trigger on at the start of your turn are resolved.
Draw
Draw the top card of your deck. If you’re the first player and it’s the first turn, youskip your Draw step.
Once the Draw step is finished, you then immediately move into your turn’s Main Phase.
The Main Phase
The Main Phase is where the vast majority of your actions will take place.
In the main phase, you can:
Unlike other TCGs, there is no kind of ‘end step’ or ‘ending phase’. Instead, your turn simply ends once you have taken all the actions you are able to and have chosen to do.
After that, any abilities or effects that lasted until the end of the turn come to an end, andthe turn passes over to the next player(either your only opponent, or the player to your left when playing in a multiplayer game).
Timing And Priority
Unlike other games, you can only take actions on your own turn.There have so far not been any “instant-speed” cardsthat can be used on your opponent’s turn, and you can’t activate any abilities of cards already in play unless it is your own main phase. This may change with future releases.
The only exception to this is if one of your character’s abilities is triggered by an action an opponent takes on their turn, such as Mickey Mouse Wayward Sorcerers’ Ceaseless Worker ability triggering when a Broom of yours is banished in a challenge.
Making Ink And Playing Cards
To play any kind of card, you need to pay the amount of ink specified in thetop left corner of the card.Unlike other games that need specific cards for their resources, likeMagic’s Landsor Pokemon’s Energy, Lorcana has youconvert the cards in your hand into ink.
Cards that can be turned into ink will have amore ornate circular symbol around their cost, known as the Inkwell icon. Once per turn, you can reveal a card with the Inkwell icon to your opponent, and then place itface-down in your Inkwell.
Each card in your Inkwell can beexerted to produce one ink, which can then be used to pay for the cost of any other card, or toactivate abilities of cards that have an ink cost attached to them. For example, the card Cruella De Vil, Miserable As Usual costs two ink to play, meaning you must exerttwo ink cards in your Inkwell to play it.
Like all other cards, your ink will be ready to use again at the start of your next Beginning phase. Unlike characters,ink cannot be challenged when it is exerted.
Singing Songs
One of the most powerful plays you can make in Disney Lorcana issinging songs.
Songs are a subtype of actions. Like actions, they are asingle-use card that goes to your discard pile when it has been revolved.However, unlike other actions,you could potentially play them without paying any ink.
While you could pay ink to play a Song as normal, all songs have a number at the start of their ability text. This number specifiesthe cost of a character that can be exerted.If you exert a character with that cost or higher, the song can beplayed for free.
When playing songs, make sure yourboard has enough different costs on it to cover all bases.You don’t want to find yourself stuck with a song you have to pay actual ink for, so by maintaining your ink curve you’ll ensure you can get the maximum bang for your buck.
Questing
Questing is the key way you’ll have togenerate lore. The player who gains 20 lore firstwins the game, meaning you’ll likely be wanting to quest with your characters every turn.
Questing is an action you can take during your main phase, and is done byexerting a character card. That character will generate lore equal tothe Lore Value found on the right hand side of the card. For instance, Mickey Mouse, Wayward Sorcerer generated two lore when it exerts, whereas Cruella De Vil, Miserable as Usual only creates one.
Keep in mind that characters can only be exerted forone reason. This means you may either quest, challenge, or use an ability that requires them to exert,but not all three in the same turn.
Questing doesn’t only produce lore. Maurice, World-Famous Inventor has the abilityGive It A Try, which reduces the cost of the next item you play that turn. Meanwhile, Yzma, Alchemist has theYou’re Excusedability which allows you to sort the top card of your library to either remain on top or go to the bottom of your deck, which is arguably a more powerful ability.
The downside of questing is that, by exerting themselves,characters become open to being challenged.
Challenging
Challenging is Lorcana’s take on combat. Instead of attacking your opponent directly, like in Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh!, you’re instead using challenges tokeep your opponent’s exerted characters in checkand prevent them from questing too frequently.
You can only challenge during the main phase of your own turn.
Characters can only challenge if two conditions have been met:
To challenge an exerted character, you mustexert your own.From there,both characters in the challenge deal damage to the other equal to their Strength (the first of two numbers on the right of the card). If either character takes more damage than their totalWillpower (the second of the two numbers), they are banished andsent to the discard pile.
Damage in Lorcanaremains on characters across turns. This means that you can slowly chip away at a larger character by throwing numerous, smaller ones at them. However, it also meansyour heavy-hitters will gradually accumulate damage over timeand be more prone to being banished themselves.
Each character can only challenge once per turn. However, you can challenge the same exerted character withmultiple characters within the same turnif you need to get rid of it quickly.
