A few days ago Disney Lorcana arrived in Italy, and we tried it. On the occasion of the launch of the expansion “Nelle Terre d'Inchiostro” – the first to receive an Italian translation – Ravensburger organized a demo evening intended for the press, during which we were given the opportunity to discover the secrets of the plot of the cardgame based on the Disney classics and to test the mechanics and gameplay of Lorcana first-hand, starting from the basics of the game and then focusing on the new features of the latest set.
In fact, the Mickey Mouse TCG is a breath of fresh air from several points of view: the narrative is complex and layered, while the hybridization between the classics and a fantasy kingdom with almost gothic features intrigues us, showing us the Disney icons under a light never seen before. The news also concerns the gaming sector: perhaps you have heard that Disney Lorcana is very (too?) similar to other card games, but things are not quite like that…
The Kingdom of Lorcana and the Inklands
Lorcana arrives in Italy with its third expansion: “Nelle Terre d'Inchiostro”, in fact, is not an introductory set, but rather continues to build on the solid foundations laid by “The First Chapter”, released in August last year, and by “Rise of the Floodborn”, which arrived in November instead.
This means that the plot of “In the Inky Lands” also begins in medias res, and requires a broader discussion to be fully understood. “The First Chapter” introduces us to the kingdom of Lorcana, a fantastic world made up of stars, in which all the characters from the stories told in the last century by Walt Disney and his films live. At the center of the Kingdom stands the Illuminarium, a large castle that emanates a mysterious force. The very one that dragged you – the players – into the manor, where you find the Big Book and a never-seen-before tool called the Inker. After picking up the brush and dipping it in the magic ink, you begin to draw a figure on the Big Book and, to your enormous surprise, it comes to life. In the world of Lorcana, in fact, you have become Illuminators: your power is to create glimmers, new but familiar versions of the Disney characters that you have already known and loved in animated films.
In “Rise of the Floodborn”, however, the magical ink spills over the Great Book and invades the world of Lorcana, overwhelming its inhabitants. Three orders of characters emerge from these events. The first are the “Storyborn”, that is, the figures whose form in the Kingdom of Lorcana almost perfectly reflects the one we all know. Then there are the “Dreamborn”, that is, partial reinventions of the protagonists and antagonists of Disney films, but still quite similar to their “classic” counterparts. The big news is the “Floodborn”, complete reimaginings of Disney faces: these creatures more or less maintain the appearances of their cinematic counterparts, but their story is revolutionized.
The good guys stay good and the bad guys stay bad, but everything else changes. For example, the “Floodborn” version of Beast (the prince from “Beauty and the Beast”) is an interesting What if…? linked to the evolution of the character: what would have happened if Beast had never met Belle and her curse had never been lifted? Lorcana allows us to explore these intriguing hypothetical scenarios, in which the only limit is the imagination of the designers and illustrators: it goes without saying that these narrative bases can be exploited infinitely, given the boundless park designed by Disney (without considering the other IPs of the company, such as Marvel, Star Wars and so on, which for the moment however have not made their entry into Disney Lorcana and it does not appear that they will do so very soon).
If the first two sets of the game served to present the Kingdom of Lorcana and its rules to the players (or rather, to the Illuminators), “In the Inklands” immerses us in the Inklands, that is, that part of the Kingdom that has been contaminated by ink, leading to the (almost) complete transformation of the creatures that inhabited it.
The characters included in the set are a mix between “Storyborn”, “Dreamborn” and “Floodborn”, and collecting them all is an adventure in itself: new versions of beloved figures, such as Jafar, the vizier of Agrabah and enemy of “Aladdin “, or the Atlantean princess Kida, are convincing due to the profound revision they bring to traditional characters, which however never makes them completely unrecognizable. Furthermore, the set hints at a more “vertical” plot than that of the two introductory expansions, which instead limited themselves to tracing an overview of Lorcana's laws and their subversion due to the flood of ink. This time, however, the idea is to explore the Inklands in search of some legendary artifacts, which a mysterious figure, who is only seen for a few seconds in the trailers dedicated to the history of the expansion, also wants to get his hands on. In short, it seems that Disney and Ravensburger are laying the foundations for a multi-set narrative development. An ambitious goal, which however testifies to the desire of the two companies to support Lorcana for years and years, in an attempt to undermine the Big Three triad, traditionally made up of Magic The Gathering, Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh!. It is no coincidence that Lorcana's 2024 has already been planned down to the smallest detail: in addition to “Nelle Terre d'Inchiostro”, three other expansions will be released by December, while the organized game and the competitive circuit started in February.
Go adventuring with the Floodborn
Transforming the Big Three into the Big Four is a difficult goal to achieve, but Lorcana has several tricks up his sleeve. The first is well-crafted artwork and iconic characters: the formula, which combines classic elements of the most beloved Disney IPs with fantasy symbols and a veil of steampunk motifs, allows for a truly fresh reinterpretation of an iconography consolidated for decades, as well as great charisma.
Collecting each set is therefore a very satisfying experience, even if the most beautiful cards are far too rare and expensive to be included in the albums of all players: the Enchanted variants, with alternative and extended illustrations, in fact, have a truly low and are found on the secondary market at very high prices. Nonetheless, the design of the cards is excellent, especially thanks to the reduction of the borders to reserve as much space as possible for the excellent illustrations, without sacrificing the area dedicated to the characteristics and effects of the creatures. On a graphic level, the similarities with Magic: The Gathering are noticeable, also because the statistics, effects and traits of each card are very similar to what has already been seen in the world of Wizards of the Coast. In Lorcana there are currently four different types of cards, one of which has just been introduced with “In the Ink Lands”: these types are “Characters”, “Objects”, “Actions” and the very recent “Places”. There are then subtypes for each family, with “Songs” being a subtype of Action for example. To find out more, we recommend you take a look at the graphic explanation provided by Ravensburger, which will teach you how to read Disney Lorcana's cards in no time.
The most interesting part of the TCG – as well as the most innovative one – is its much less competitive character (at least apparently) compared to other cardgames on the market. To win, in fact, you will not have to reduce your opponent's Life Points to zero or exterminate all of his creatures, but you will have to compete with him in a “race” to see who reaches 20 Legend Points.
In fact, each Disney icon has a “Legend Value”: at each turn, you can engage one or more of your characters to obtain the number of Legend Points shown on the respective cards (these are the diamonds on the right side of the box dedicated to the effect). Once you reach 20 Legend Points, you have won the game. This means that – under the right conditions – a player could focus only on “racing” Legend Points without ever interacting with the opponent.
However, this does not mean that Lorcana is a single-player game: the enemy's race for Legend Points can be slowed down or stopped by deciding to attack (Challenge) his characters with allied creatures (perhaps enhanced with some Objects), or by using the effects of Songs. In other words, to the list of typical actions of each TCG (drawing, playing a card, attacking, activating an effect or a spell) an additional possibility is added in Lorcana, that of “Going on an Adventure”, which allows you to obtain Adventure Points. A character who goes on an adventure can neither activate his effect nor attack the enemy, but rather makes himself vulnerable to the opponent's blows. The strategy, therefore, lies in choosing which actions to carry out in each turn and how (and how much) to interact with the challenger. Focusing only on your own adventure and leaving the enemy free to develop his strategies could allow him to overwhelm you with his creatures, but adopting an overly reactive attitude risks making you fall behind in terms of Legend Points.
All the other rules of the game are developed on this basis: for example, “In the Ink Lands” introduces Locations, which generate Legend Points passively at the start of each turn and which provide additional bonuses to the characters who are played within them. Furthermore, before playing a card, the latter must be “Inked” by paying its cost in Ink.
Inks are your own cards, which can therefore be placed face down on the playing field and used to pay the cost of creatures and spells in your hand. It will be up to you to choose how many and which Inks to play, keeping in mind that a greater quantity of the latter will allow you to carry out more actions at each turn, but at the same time will push you to sacrifice cards that could be central to your strategy and that you will not be able to recover .
And finally there is the question of deckbuilding: each deck can revolve around two types of Ink at most, out of a total of six (Amber, Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire and Steel). To build a good deck, you will first have to choose the combination of inks best suited to the strategy you want to develop and then draw on the (relatively) limited pool of cards of the two inks chosen for the formation of the deck.
In truth, the deckbuilding experience seems rather standard, also because in almost all cardgames (from Magic to the very recent Star Wars: Unlimited) the number of Aspects or “colors” of each deck is equal to two or three. However, as in competing games, in Lorcana too the possible choices are numerous, while it is not certain that two decks that use the same combination of Inks will adopt the same strategies or the same cards.