Disney Lorcana - What it’s all about

When last August Disney announced a new trading card game, Lorcana, designed by former Wizard of the Coast Ryan Miller and produced by board gamers Ravensburger (Villainous, The Castles of Burgandy), they lit up our cardboard corner of the internet with excitement. Videos from popular Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon content creators flooded Youtube, and it seems that interest has only grown since then.

The first set will be available in a short few months and many TCG players have their eyes on the steady stream of cards that are being revealed. In this article we explore the immersive setting and story of the game, and let you know what Disney's Lorcana is all about.

The Enchanting World of Lorcana

With so many trading card games competing for space on your gaming table, it’d be easy to dismiss Disney's Lorcana as just being another collectible for Disney adults, but the attention to detail, unique storytelling and cohesive art style across the game’s new world hopes to convince you otherwise.

Games of Lorcana take place in the fictional world of The Great Illuminary. This new setting looks to immerse you in a narrative where fragments of Disney’s stories come together in new ways with familiar characters both acting as you’d expect from their movie personas, but also as re-imagined versions of themselves unique to Lorcana. Characters in the game are called “glimmers”, another nod to a setting where individuals may take on new roles and relationships than those we’d initially expect.

To bring these characters to life, players will use the in-game resource of ink to draw them into The Illuminary. In practice, this happens when players choose which of the cards in their hands they will play facedown to generate ink resources, allowing them to spend the game resource on face-up characters, items, actions and songs, all inspired by Disney animated movies. Cards come in six ink colours, each housing a different theme and gameplay mechanics. These colours are amber, amethyst, emerald, ruby, sapphire and steel. Or yellow, purple, green, red, blue and grey for those of us less au fait with geology.

But why are these characters questing into The Illuminary? Disney are keeping the story rather vague in the first set and have just said that we’ll be “protecting the wondrous realm from threats'', but the cards that have already been revealed feature a broad range of villains (a card type clearly appearing under their names), with each villain’s re-imagined alter egos appearing to be even more evil than the established movie characters we love to hate.

We do know that to defeat these threats we’ll need to collect “lore”, the second in-game resource. Lore serves as a victory point system. Each player’s character cards can challenge each other in the hope of banishing their opponents cards and gaining the upper hand in the game. Players can also choose instead to use their characters to “quest” and collect the number of lore counters appearing on the bottom right of their card. The first player to 20 lore wins the game. While this victory point race appears simple at first, it offers something new to fans of multi-player trading card games. Where other multiplayer experiences such as Magic: The Gathering’s Commander format are won by being the last player standing, Lorcana offers a cleaner end-game with all players still in the game when victory is declared.

This race towards the goal while attempting to set other players’ plans back hopes to provide great in-game storytelling moments as unlikely allies come together to find unexpected routes to victory.

Unravelling the Story: Key Plot Points and Characters

With the stage set, what can we expect from the ongoing storyline of Disney's Lorcana? Ravensburger have committed to releasing 4 sets of cards each year from August 2023, and at a recent promo event in France said they were already working on the seventh set. As each expansion releases we’re expecting to visit new settings, franchises, heroes, and villains.

The set they’re launching the game within August is simply called “The First Chapter”. At time of writing (late May) around half the set has been revealed across four card types.

Character cards are the most numerous, and the line up is of course led by Mickey Mouse. We’ve seen a staggering 6 cards featuring the flagship rodent, one in each colour, and they show the breadth of how characters can be depicted. On his green card, Mickey appears in black and white against a vivid colourful background. His title is Steamboat Captain, and he looks like he’s been lifted directly from his 1928 animated short.

This type of card is called Storyborn, where characters play the roles they do in their movies. On the other hand Mickey’s red card, the Brave Little Tailor, sees him updated and reimagined from the 1930s short of the same name. His clothing has been updated and he wields a new giant pair of scissors. These reimagined cards are called Dreamborn. Across the other ink colours he also appears as a detective, a musketeer, and a wayward sorcerer.

The final character type is one we have the least information on. Floodborn characters appear to hold little in common with their movie counterparts. We find Aurora, the sleeping beauty, apparently wielding magic and Hades is sat on the throne as king of Olympus. We’ve yet to find out how this third card type fits into the narrative of Lorcana, but the characters we’ve seen so far have us intrigued.

The Magic of Lorcana's Setting

As Ravensburger has revealed more and more cards, the excitement has grown for just how many film franchises will be featured in the very first set. Regardless of which era of Disney resonates most with you, you’ll find characters and locations from your favourite movies.

Sorcerer Mickey together with his troupe of magic brooms visits us from 1940. The classics of the fifties and sixties are represented, mostly by fan-favourite Maleficent across five cards. That’s nearly as many as the main mouse Mickey. Peter Pan’s allies and enemies are also here, with Captain Hook and Tinkerbell appearing as blade-wielding reimaginations. Moving through the decades, my inner child is delighted to find nineties icons such as Aladdin, Simba and Ariel.

The game isn’t just about nostalgia. Many cards feature more recent movies such as Frozen, Moana and Tangled. And yes, in case you were wondering, you can play a card featuring the legendary weapon that is Rapunzel’s Frying Pan.

Each of these cards has been beautifully illustrated with new, cohesive art. There isn’t a movie screenshot in sight, and this visual identity creates a vision of a new in-game world where traditional characters and wild reimaginings can coexist.

Discovering the Captivating Creatures of Lorcana

This new setting isn’t just beautifully designed, but it also cuts deep into Disney’s catalogue of characters. We don’t just find Rapunzel and her frying pan, but also her pet chameleon Pascal and her adversary-turned-friend Maximus. Ariel and Flounder are here as expected, but so too is her trusty dinglehopper.

For collectors and fans of Disney movies, these nods to quirky characters and items show a real understanding of their source material. For gamers this will create hilarious juxtapositions where you might heal damage from Cerberus the fierce three-headed dog by combing out its coat with Ariel’s twisted fork. Or you might want to fire the Jolly Roger’s cannons at Goofy, who appears on his card flying in some kind of webbed wingsuit.

Exploring the Theme of Adventure and Friendship

As with any trading card game, Disney's Lorcana invites you to build your own deck to quest alongside your friends and opponents. Each deck can contain up-to 60 cards with no more than 4 copies of any card, and no more than two colours of ink. These limitations breed creativity in deck-building and can lead to many different playstyles and narratives depending on each player’s choices. Even with the initially limited card pool (The First Chapter will contain 204 cards), many themes are explored for both casual, storytelling players and competitive deck builders.

Perhaps you’d like the most thematic Disney Princess deck, featuring all strongest heroic women in the game. Moana’s card lets you do just that, protecting your other princesses from being challenged by your opponent’s cards. Or maybe you’d rather play cards from just one or two film franchises? The designers have done a great job ensuring that the cards you’d expect to work together often do.

But this game is far from deckbuilding-by-numbers. Competitive, well-rounded decks may feature unlikely alliances, but the new artwork and worldbuilding created for the game means they never feel too disjointed. A fast, aggressive deck might find Olaf the Friendly Snowman adventuring alongside Pascal the Chameleon, but they somehow seem to belong together like the TCG equivalent of a Disney Theme Park with different characters crossing paths by the pretzel stand.

The Impact of Lorcana on Disney Fans

The clearest winners here are dyed-in-the-wool Disney fans who will find an expanding collection of cards featuring their favourite characters, movie quotes and songs. Whether they are just looking to collect each set, casually pick up some games with friends, or compete at local events, Disney fans will find a lot to enjoy here. There’s enough familiarity that the game feels like something from our childhoods, but enough new art and twists of narrative to keep us engaged in this new story.

But even if you’ve only ever watched a few Disney movies, the beautifully detailed worldbuilding and narrative potential of the game as new sets release could draw you in. This is, afterall, a fantasy world unlike many others.

Simeon Smith is half human and half snorlax. He is also a cohost of the fan-made Lorcana Podcast “We Don’t Talk About Uno”. He lives in Wales with his pet tortoise Shelldon Koopa.