When we first opened our Disney Lorcana starter decks, we’d be lying if we weren’t a smidge confused about what the keywords and abilities meant. Luckily, after playing only a few games, we had a pretty good handle on what these keywords mean, and what they have to do with the game.

In this guide, we’re going to cover the most important and common Lorcana keywords abilities and share with you what they mean, and how to use them.

Updated October 27, 2023 to include the brand new “resist” keyword ability.

Disney Lorcana Keyword Abilities Explained from A-Z

Bodyguard

This particular keyword ability is pretty cool, and pretty self explanitory. Basically, if your opponent has a character with bodyguard in play, and that character is exerted (turned sideways), you have to attack that character before you attack any other.

What if the bodyguard isn’t exerted?

Then you don’t have to attack it. The ability only applies if the character can be attacked. In order to be able to be attacked, the bodyguard character has to be exerted.

Disney Lorcana Keywords — Simba – Protective Cub

Simba is arguably the most effective character in the game with the handy bodyguard ability, thanks to its cost/willpower ratio.

Challenger

Challenger is a handy keyword ability. Cards with this ability will show lower strength than what they actually have. With challenger, cards gain a certain amount of strength. But that strength is only factored into the equation when that card is challenging an opponent’s character.

Different cards gain different ammounts of strength with this ability, but our favorite example of a card with challenger is Captain Hook – Aggressive Duelist.

Evasive

Evasive is by far the trickiest keyword ability a character can have. A character that has the evasive keyword ability can only be challenged by other characters with the same ability.

This is an incredibly handy ability as it adds another layer of protection to your characters, meaning they can have more opportunities of questing without getting banished.

However, this protection is not foolproof. Evasive characters can still be targetted and banished or damaged by effects from cards.

If possible, you really want an evasive character in your deck, or at least a character that can emulate the evasive ability during your turn, enabling you to pick off opponent’s evasive characters and preventing them from running away with the game.

One such character that we use in our Sapphire/Steel deck is Robin Hood. During your turn, Robin Hood counts as a character with evasive, meaning it can pick off opposing evasive characters.

Reckless

Reckless is an interesting keyword, and unlike all the other keywords on this list, it’s not a beneficial keyword. Usually, cards with this ability are combat focused. They can’t quest, and they must challenge if able.

Usually, these characters are focused on challenging anyways, but it’s still not ideal to be forced to do anything in a card game.

Reckless is a keyword that can also be used in a few situations strategically against your opponent. Action cards like “The Best is Mine,” for example, give characters reckless. This is great if your opponent has a really strong quester that you want to take out of the equation for a turn.

Resist

The latest keyword ability to be introduced in Rise of the Floodborn is the Resist ability. Resist is a powerful defensive ability that will undoubtedly shake the foundations of the Lorcana meta game. The Resist keyword indicates how much additional damage characters may be able to withstand. For example, Resist + 2 on a character would mean any damage dealt to them is reduced by 2.

Rush

As opposed to reckless, Rush is a handy ability. Characters with Rush are able to attack the turn they are played. This is super handy when you want to quickly clear your opponent’s board and gain a strategic advantage.

By far the most popular characters with this keyword right now have to be Maui and Rafiki – Mysterious Sage.

Shift

As an avid Pokemon player, this keyword makes me chuckle a little bit. It’s basically the same thing as evolving in Pokemon, so if you’re familiar with that particular game mechanic, you shouldn’t have any issue grasping this one. Otherwise, it’s probably the most confusing keyword ability because of what it implies.

Basically, shift enables you to play a character ontop of another character. That “shift” makes the new character basically count as the same character as the one you had had in play. They become one in the same. This means everything that applies to the other card now apply to the new one – damage, affects, and turns in play.

That’s right. The best thing about the shift ability other than the cost savings to play it is the fact that you don’t need to wait a turn for the Ink to dry (if the character in play has already had that time to dry).

Singer

Singer is a keyword mechanic that is most commonly found in Amber Ink right now. Basically, a character with this ability can be used to play songs at a much higher cost value than what they actually are.

For example, a card with singer that cost three to play can sing for a song that costs five. It’s a pretty broken ability that gives current best decks in Lorcana like Amber/Steel a major advantage.

Support

Support is a common ability in the game that is seen less commonly in gameplay right now. Basically, a character with support can grant its strength to another character in play when it quests. This can be handy for taking out particularly strong opposing characters.

However, given how many cards exist that just wipe out opponents at the moment, support isn’t usually necessary.

Ward

Last but not least is our favorite keyword ability of all: ward. Ward is great because it grants protection to characters from being chosen by card effects. Yep. Have a Dragon Fire in hand? Can’t use it on a character with Ward.

However, there are some workarounds to this card. Cards like Be Prepared or Grab Your Sword that just do damage in general aren’t prevented by Ward. Again, it’s not a foolproof solution, but it can be a really handy defense against common threats in the game.

Apart from cards that have the ward keyword, some characters and cards can grant the ward ability. For esample, Aurora – Dreaming Guardian can give other characters in play the ward ability. Have two of these cards in play and all of your characters will be prevented.