Deciphering Disney Lorcana Keywords for Strategic Play

One of the best thing I love about Trading Card Games is the amount of strategic potential provided by having thousands of different cards. In fact, the main rules of these games are very straightforward and easy to grasp by any new player. However, the amount of potential card interactions is almost infinite due to the number of new cards released constantly every few month. Among them, there are some cards without an ability that are usually the most common ones. These cards usually called “vanilla” in TGC slang can be solid choices in your overall strategy but they do not usually spice up your games. All other cards may have some kind of special ability that can make them very powerful and therefore you can expect them to be among the rarest in the game and/or to have some kind of weakness or disadvantage to help balance the gameplay.

In Disney Lorcana there are two main types of special abilities. The first includes any abilities that is unique and specific to a certain card. In most of the cases, these unique abilities are linked to the Character, Item or Song depicted on the card like the ability of “Rapunzel, Gifted with Healing” to remove damages from a character. There are also other abilities that are shared by groups of cards and that are collectively named “Keywords”. All these abilities are easy to learn as their effect is the same on all cards having that keyword.

As this TGC is a relatively new, the amount of Disney Lorcana keywords is limited although they have a massive impact on the gameplay making extremely important to know how to use them. Interestingly, the recently released set “Ursula’s Return” just expanded the possibilities of one of the main keyword for the game and, with this in mind, we thought it would be a good time to summarize the main keywords of the game and to go through their strategic value. Our list will focus fist on four of the main Keywords and how they can interact together. We will also provide an overview of all the other Keywords at the end of this article pointing out how these can synergize or antagonize with the main four.

Challenger

The first Keyword we decided to discuss is Challenger as it is easily the most widespread one and the one most interesting for the game. In essence, Challenger allows a character to increase their strength by a certain value when they declare a challenge. For example, “Captain Hook, Forceful Duellist" has a Strength of 1 when attacked but it can deal 3 damages when challenging due to its Challenger +2.

The purpose of characters with the Challenger ability is to keep pressure on your opponent. For example your opponent may chose to not quest with a weak card like a “Lilo – Making a Wish” if they know your Captain Hook will easily banish her the turn after. Playing a challenger character as soon as possible can therefore prevent your opponent to gain precious lore by questing and therefore can limit the efficiency of some type of aggro decks like Amber and Emerald.

On the other hand, it is important to know that the Challenger ability does not work when characters are challenged making these cards more vulnerable when they are exerted. Challenger Characters   should therefore stay active until they can fulfil their role to the fullest by attaching another card instead of Questing and risking to be removed too early.

Bodyguard

To answer the threat of Challenger characters, players can decide to protect their high questing Characters behind the shield provided by Bodyguard Characters. A character with this keyword must in fact be challenged first if the are eligible as target (i.e. they are exerted). Back when the first Chapter was released a classing opening move was to play Lilo on the first turn and then “Simba, protecting cub” in the second one as the future Lion King will prevent any opponent character to challenge her right away.

In general, characters with the Bodyguard keyword have good willpower (or even a Resist ability as you will see later) that can allow them to survive a few challenges. In addition, there are now a lot of cards with Bodyguard keywords, including a few that provide buffs and bonuses to the cards with that Keyword.

On the other hand, players may risk to become too complacent thinking they Bodyguard characters can protect all their other characters forever. In addition, some Bodyguard characters may have very low Strength and they may not pose a threat to be challenged by multiple characters as their main purpose is to defend, not to attack.

Evasive

Another way to prevent your characters to be challenged and banished by your opponents is to exploit Evasive characters. This keyword is largely available for Emerald cards although there are a few evasive Characters in each Ink colour now. There are also some card abilities and Location that can make another Character evasive for the duration of the turn.

In the terms of Gameplay, an Evasive characters can only be challenged by other evasive characters. This means that questing with these Characters is usually a good option as it is less likely they will be banished the subsequent turn. In addition, opponents will need to commit some of their Actions and Songs to deal damage to an Evasive Characters meaning they may not be able to pursue their strategy as planned.

Shift

The last main Keyword we would like to review is “Shift”, an ability that allows a Character to “grow” into a FloodBorn version of itself that is usually more powerful. Characters with the shift ability can be played as usual by paying their full cost in Ink OR they can be played on top of another characters that meets the requirement of the Shift Ability. For Example, “Aurora, Lore Guardian” can be played for 4 or can be shifted for 2 on top of another Character named “Aurora”.

In terms of gameplay, this usually means that a higher cost Character can enter play much earlier because of the lower shifting cost. Some Characters released in the latest Disney Lorcana set, “Ursula's Return” can instead Shift by discarding a certain type of cards allowing them to come in play even faster. For example, we may see “Olaf, Friendly Snowman” being played on turn one just to shift immediately into “Olaf, Carrot Enthusiast” by discarding an Item card instead of waiting 2 more turns to pay its full cost of 3 Ink.

When shifting, the new Floodborn Characters keep all the buffs and damages of the cards they shift onto and also their status. For example, if you shift a character that is already dried, the new Floodborn can Quest, Challenge or Sing immediately. In this sense, deciding when to shift a character is very important to make sure that you can obtain the maximum advantage from it.

Reckless, Resist, Rush, Singer, Support, Ward

As you may have noticed, most of the keywords described above are relevant only in Character-to-Character interaction. This is mainly due to the fact that there are no interruptive effects in Lorcana at the moment therefore challenging an opponent card plays a key role in any strategic plans. Of course there are a few other interesting Keywords that can play interesting roles during a challenge. The first one is Resist (i.e. Resist +1) as it allows a characters to ignore a certain amount of damage every time it take some disregarding if it is from Actions, Songs or from another Character. This ability was introduced in the Second Chapter and can be quite effective in allowing your Characters to survive, in particular your bodyguards. To balance this ability, some characters can increase the Strength of another character by their own value making them more efficient in a challenge. This ability, called Support, requires the character to quest in order to be activated and it may expose them to be challenged the turn after.

Two other interesting Keywords are Reckless and Rush. The first one forces a character to always challenge if there is any available target disregarding if they will take damage, be banished or trigger any unfortunate effect by doing so. If there are no available targets (including Locations), a Reckless characters is allowed to Sing a Song but they will never be able to Quest. In the current format, Reckless Characters are not really used mainly because they can easily be exploited by the opponents to gain an advantage. On the contrary, Characters with Rush play a very important role in the game as they can challenge the turn they are played (i.e. they do not need to dry). This ability is extremely important as it can be used to ambush an exerted character your opponent left unprotected banishing them without mercy. Among the card with Rush, “Queen of Hearts, Impulsive Ruler” has been a staple in any Ruby Red since Chapter 2 due to its low cost, 2 Strengths and, of course, Rush ability. Interestingly, the other largely used Staple in all Ruby deck is “Maui, Hero for All” that has both Rush and Reckless making him the only Reckless character you will likely in competitive games.

The next Keyword in our list is Ward, a very strong defensive ability that prevents your opponent to pick a Character with this ability as a target for any effect directed to him. Basing on this, your opponents will not be able to use cards like “Fire the Cannon” or “Smash” but they can still use cards with generic effects like “Be Prepared” or “Grab your Sword”.

The last keyword in our list is actually one of the most useful one, in particular, if you are playing the super-competitive Amber-Steel Song Deck. As you may imagine, we are talking about Singer, an ability that allows a Character to Sing Songs with a cost higher than the character Ink cost. For example, “Ariel, Spectacular Singer” has a cost of 3 but she is a Singer 5 meaning she can sing Song with a cost of 5 or less. This ability has been taken to the extreme in the latest Chapter (Ursula's Return) with the release of new powerful Songs with very high cost that can be sang by multiple Characters (“Sing Together”). “The Mob Song”, for example, can deal 3 damages to up to three Characters or Locations but requires characters with a total cost of 10 to be used. In this cases, the Singer 9 “Cinderella, Melody Weaver” can be of great advantage if you want to exploit these new songs.