Disney Lorcana Card Types: A Comprehensive Overview

Since its launch in September 2023, Disney Lorcana has completely taken the TCG world by start. It’s a game that lets you take control of dozens of your favourite characters, their magical McGuffins, and even the songs they sing to race your opponent to that vital 20 lore. If you ever wanted Prince John from Robin Hood to sing A Part Of Your World from Aladdin, this is the game that lets you do it.

However, starting out with Lorcana can be tricky thanks to all the different types of cards there are. Knowing your characters from your songs is crucial, and the new Into The Inklands set also throws locations into the mix. What are they, and how do they all work?

Each card in Lorcana is split into one of four different types: characters, items, actions, and locations. These are comparable to the card types in other games like Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon, in that each card type has its own uses and rules surrounding how you play them. However, unlike those games, Lorcana doesn’t have any sort of resource card type, like Magic’s lands or Pokémon's energies. Instead, almost any card can be turned into ink from your hand to help pay for other cards’ costs.

The first, and most common, type of Lorcana card are characters. These represent all your favourite names and faces from Disney like Mickey Mouse, Baloo, Elsa, or even John Silver. Characters are your main way to win the game, as they’re both your primary attackers and your way of generating lore.

Characters come with a few extra stats on them. The numbers on the right of the card are its Strength and Willpower – this is how much damage it can deal in a challenge, and how much it can take before it gets banished. Underneath that, most characters have a column of diamond symbols – this is its lore value, or how much lore it can generate whenever it quests. Each turn, provided your character wasn’t played this turn, you can do one of a few things with each. It can challenge – meaning it deals damage to an opponent’s exerted character, and takes damage equal to that character’s Strength. It can also exert itself to quest, generating lore equal to its lore value. Plenty of characters also have their own, special effects, whether that be paying a cost to activate it, or it activating in response to something else you did.

A huge part of Lorcana is balancing your characters. Go for the heavy hitters with high costs and you’ll find yourself unable to play anything or keep your opponents’ questing characters in check. Play too small a character, and you’ll find your opponents’ beefier ones a pain to remove through challenges!

Characters are further split into three different types: Storyborn, Dreamborn, and Floodborn. Storyborn and Dreamborn characters are mostly the same mechanically, with the difference being in their art designs – dreamborn characters are fantastical new takes on Disney classics, whereas Storyborns stick firmly to the source material. Floodborn, though, are different.
Every Floodborn card has the shift keyword. By paying the shift cost, which is usually lower than playing it normally, you can shift it on top of a character you already control with the same name. Think of it like mutating in Magic: The Gathering – pay a reduced cost to replace a card already on the board.
Floodborns usually also have effects that trigger when they shift into play, making them some of the most unpredictable and powerful cards in the game. Take Gramma Tala, Spirit of the Ocean. It can shift onto another Gramma Tala for two whole ink less, and it gains more lore whenever you put a card into your inkwell. Value and ramp, all in one!

Next, there’s actions. Actions are similar to Magic: The Gathering’s sorcery spells, insofar as they have one-off effects, and don’t stay on the board after playing. Keep in mind that one of the big things that separates Lorcana from Magic is that it has no concept of instant-speed. You can’t play cards on your opponents’ turns, and so all actions can only be played on your own turn in conjunction with questing and challenging. To make up for that, some of Lorcana’s action cards can be pretty devastating to be on the receiving end of.
Take, for instance, Dragon Fire for five ink, you can play this to banish any chosen character, getting potential challengers out the way or cutting off your opponent from their best questing characters. It’s a one-and-done effect, though, so when you’ve played it, it goes straight to your discard pile.
Action cards aren’t quite as crucial a part of your deck as characters, but you should always look at including them in your deck where you can. These are the problem solvers of your Lorcana deck – if your opponent is doing something sneaky, a few well-placed actions can help you break through and regain control of the game.

A subset of action cards are songs. Songs represent all the toe-tapping tunes of Disney, from Be Prepared to Friends On The Other Side. Like actions, these can only be used once before going to your discard pile, and can’t be played at instant speed.
However, the big thing about songs is, naturally, that you can sing them. Every song card specifies the ink cost of the characters that can sing it. If you exert a character that meets the requirements, you can play the song for free. No ink wasted, more resources to play other cards. It’s no wonder songs have quickly become one of the most powerful card types in Lorcana, going so far as to have their own entire deck archetype built around them known as Steelsong decks.

While actions on their own are a great thing to include in your deck, songs are imperative. Most of the game’s best cards are songs, like Be Prepared and A Whole New World. Anything you can play for free is good in any TCG, and in Lorcana exerting a creature to play one is almost always a good deal when you get the chance.
Unlike other types of cards in Lorcana, songs don’t really have a comparative type in another game. They’re somewhat similar to Magic: The Gathering’s convoke mechanic, but songs are a unique type of card for trading card games, and something that makes Lorcana so special.

The final type are Locations. Locations were introduced in Lorcana’s third set, Into the Inklands, and give you the chance to visit all of your favourite Disney places and vistas. They’re also really powerful for the right decks, so make sure you’re not sleeping on them.

Like characters, locations have a lore value. However, instead of questing, locations give you lore at the start of your turn by default, no questing needed. The downside, though, is that they’re always exerted, and can be challenged by characters. You can move characters onto a location, though, and doing so will often grant them powerful effects, like The Queen’s Castle, Mirror Chamber drawing you cards for every character you have on it.

As locations are so new, we’re still learning the full potential of what this new card type can do. But we already can tell just how important it’s going to be for the game going forward, and practically every deck will want to at least pack a few.
In your deck, you’ll always need a good balance of character, item, action, song, and location cards. While you could get on with just characters, learning all the other types opens up your options for strategies, and gives you access to easy ways to deal with your opponents’ decks. This is why learning all of Lorcana’s card types are so important: you don’t want to seal yourself off from ways to win just because you’re worried you’ll play a song card wrong, for example.

When collecting cards, keep in mind the type of card doesn’t have much of an impact on its value. Instead, you’re going to want to check the rarity icon on the bottom of the card. There are five levels of rarity, with a sixth (Enchanted) found exclusively on character cards. You can tell the rarity by the number of straight sides the icon has: the more straight sides, the rarer that card, starting from the circular common up to the pentagonal legendary rare.

Enchanted rares are alternate art treatments of some of the most iconic cards in a set. These are exceedingly rare and are identified by their full-art cards, and the rainbow hexagonal rarity icon.

Lorcana is simpler to get in to that lots of other TCGs, but that doesn’t mean it’s without its learning curve. Identifying all these card types and knowing how to put them together is part of the challenge, but once you’ve got the hang of it, you’ll quickly find it’s one of the most rewarding and fun TCGs around!