Shift Mechanic in Lorcana’s Fourth Set Changes the Game

Lorcana just casually dropped a bomb today on the Lorcana community via COMICBOOK debuting a new way to take advantage of the Shift keyword ability. Shown via a series of new Ursula’s Return Spoilers, this new way of Shifting characters takes advantage of alternate means of playing buffed-up Floodborn characters besides paying Ink from the Inkwell.

You can see these newly revealed cards with the Shift mechanic in the gallery below.

What does Shift mean?

Shift is a common ability in Lorcana that lets you play high powered cards more easily. It’s one of the strongest abilities in the entire game and used in many competitive Lorcana decks.

To date, you’ve been able to Shift Floodborn characters onto other characters in play with the same name by paying a reduced Ink cost. Not only does this save on Ink and allow you to play more cards in a turn, it also bypasses the Ink drying mechanic that forces your characters to wait a turn once played before they can do anything.

How will this twist on Shift impact the game?

While none of these cards are ground-breaking powerhouses in themselves, the introduction of an alternate way to Shift cards can certainly have an outsized impact on the game. All of a sudden you can potentially play even more cards than ever before in a turn. For example, you could use up all of your Ink on turn four to play a powerful Location card, then discard a card from your hand to drop a Floodborn character.

This could potentially make many new decks faster, as well as give rise to a further varied meta.

All-in-all, right now it looks like characters Shifted using Ink still outmatch their alternate Shifting coutnerparts. However, that could change quickly as more cards are revealed in this set and beyond.

No matter what, it seems certain that Ravensburger isn’t done innovating their game yet!