There is a saying in the trading card game communities: Reading Cards Explains Cards, The same can be said about Disney Lorcana, the media giant’s latest venture into the world of TCG — especially considering that the game’s developer, Ravensburger, has yet to release the official rules. The game won’t be available until 2023.
But during its D23 Expo, Disney showed off seven new cards from the game, Offering a first look at characters, card templating, and art styles lorcana, Taking a closer look — and some experience with other TCGs, like Magic the Gathering, stoveand also gwent – You can see the telltale fingerprints of existing designs and popular mechanics. Elsewhere, questions remain that would require official confirmation from the game’s designers.
what we think we know so far
Based on the visual elements shared across the cards, including compatible features and subtle card-by-card differences, we can make some educated guesses based on proven game design mechanics that lorcana‘s The architects were likely to be influenced.
Resource
In the upper left corner of each character card is a prime number similar to other card games commonly referred to as casting cost. On Stitch, that number is 6, and on Captain Hook it’s 1. Maleficent is 9, and so on.
It is likely the “cost” to move characters from a player’s hand to the table during a game. And, although it remains to be seen what kind of resources players will use to pay this cost, there is one notable quality that all numbers share across the revealed cards – the resource system appears to be universal.
Universal resources are surprisingly unusual in the top tier TCG. In Magic the Gathering, players take advantage of a resource called “mana” that matches the cards to be “tapped” or turned over. Mana is a color-specific resource and appears prominently on the cards themselves, which in turn determine the types of cards players can play in a deck for a coherent strategy.
If the top left on these Disney character cards represents their casting cost, that can tell us a lot about the pace of the game. Another game that uses singular casting cost is Blizzard stove, In stoveMana is a renewable resource – you automatically gain an extra mana at the beginning of each turn, which effectively prevents players from playing four mana-costing cards before the fourth turn.
If lorcana Adopting a similar system, we can find that average gameplay tends to be relatively orderly but snowball over time. Playing multiple cards on a single turn can be reserved for mid-game, when you may have two two-cost cards on turn four, which allows players to play cheaper cards while buying time for big heymakers like Maleficent. Provides strategic balance. Close a game in a later round, when more mana is available.
card type
Although the processing system appears to be fairly streamlined, we can see some sort of baked-in synergy between the cards. This is because the cards appear to be of different types, and those types can generate a strategic advantage depending on how they are used to build a given deck. We see that these synergies appear on a thin line just below the title of each card.
Image: Ravensburger, Disney
For now, out of the seven characters previewed, we see two recurring keywords — “storyborn” and “dreamborn,” which are evenly split between both heroes and villains.
Based on some examples from other card games, these categories may mean that future cards or rules will provide advantages and synergies between certain types of characters. Perhaps we’ll see cards that make the heroes on the board stronger, make it cheaper to cast the Dream Borne cards in your hand, or even have rules that rule out each and every one in your deck. Can limit the number of characters.
Some cards in this design space have additional types, reminiscent of the types of creatures we see Magic the Gathering. Stitch is an alien and Captain Hook is a pirate, whereas Robin Hood’s character type is not – he’s just a storyteller hero.
These types of creatures and card types hint at deck building opportunities players will gain balance as they develop new strategies within the game. If you’re ready to play with a particular Disney icon, building a deck of cards that support different categories of that character can be a winning strategy.
War
It looks like the game will have a form of combat, possibly with cards battling each other like pokemon trading card game, Several clues point to a combat attribute, including a distinctive detail that appears directly to the right of the card’s name on every card we look at.
two numbers that appear together lorcana character cards look like attack and defense stats we see Magic And Yu-Gi-Oh Creatures We also see references to a feature called “Challenge”, which reads like a fight between two characters.
For example, Cruella de Vil has an ability that occurs when he is challenged, while Captain Hook seems to have the power whenever he is challenged. Meanwhile, Mickey Mouse finds it difficult to challenge the entirety, as his “Evasive” ability indicates that “only Evasive characters can challenge this character.”
If confirmed as the central feature of war lorcanaExpect to see a lot of games on who is the most kick-ass princess in the Disney world, once and for all.
what remains unknown
Despite all the context clues that allow us to guess about the game, many questions remain such as lorcana‘s Designer ahead of next year’s release. Between the game’s rules engine and other unusual card features, much of the system remains unknown.
the board says
For starters, what do game states look like? Since the characters will “challenge” each other, we can see the two central characters square off like active monsters pokemon tcg, Alternatively, boards can be arranged in lanes, as in Adventure Time: Card Wars either gwent, and of course there are such board states Magic And stove, Where combat is determined not by the placement of the cards across from each other, but by other, more complex rules.
As of now, the details of the board are not mentioned on the seven revealed cards, but it will be fundamental to fully understanding the game.
diamonds
What are those diamonds at the bottom of the attack and defense stats? Mickey has four, Elsa has two, but they all have at least one. Are these rare indicators indicating the probability of opening a certain card in a sealed product, or are they integrated into the rules system? The possibilities are endless, but there doesn’t seem to be any other indicator on the card that distinguishes between normal and rare characters, so it’s likely to be as good as any guess.
colour’s
Lastly, do cards have some kind of color designation detracting from their casting cost? The seven characters have six different color palettes, where we see the hero, villain, storyteller, and other character traits.
A correlative symbol appears in each of these color palettes based on the shared symbol and color of Maleficent and Mickey Mouse. Five other cards have different symbols adjacent to their type line, which may point to greater in-game synergy among cards that share symbols, or even rules that which limit free-for-all deck construction.
According to Disney, the game isn’t scheduled to officially launch for about a year, with the current release window slated to fall in 2023.
