We Played Two of Disney Lorcana’s Starter Decks – Here’s How it Went

Sep 16

Disney Lorcana is the big new trading card game to come out of legendary game maker, Ravensburger. Already, the game is a massive hit. Stores are immediately selling out of product virtually the moment it is available. Ravensburger can’t get games into the hands of stores fast enough. But a lot of that is because of the hype around trading card games in general. What we wanted to know was – is Disney Lorcana actually fun to play?

Disney Lorcana is A Blast to Play

Disney Lorcana doesn’t only have a large number of valuable, gorgeous alternative art cards collectors can attempt to pull from booster packs, it’s an incredibly immersive and fun game to play.

To start, we purchased two decks from TCGplayer, and had them mailed within a week of purchasing.

Those were the Steel/Saphire deck, and the Ruby/Emerald decks.

Disney Lorcana was Surprisingly Beginner Friendly

The starter decks had everything we needed in order to start playing, but I won’t lie and say we weren’t intimidated to begin. The rule book was not particularly dense, and there were things not explained in there. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however, as plenty of information on key concepts to the game can be found online. A simple Google search provided us with what we needed to fill in the gaps that the brief instruction booklet didn’t cover.

It was easy enough to get started, and after a few fun rounds things were moving quickly and smoothly and we were ready to upgrade our starter decks with some cards we got from the Disney Lorcana Illumineer’s Trove.

What we Liked Best About Playing the Disney Lorcana Starter Decks

Although many lesser game makers would be tempted to create a cash grab with Disney properties that doesn’t live up to the standards of seasoned gamers, it’s clear Ravensburger has no intention of simply selling some product and moving on. This game is here to stay.

We had high hopes for Lorcana’s gameplay because we love the Disney Villainous games, and Ravensburger also created those. And we weren’t disappointed. In many ways, there are aspects of Lorcana that feel like Villainous. Of course, the format is vastly different, but much of what we loved from the Villainous games – the variety, the ease of gameplay, not to mention the sheer fun – was present in the Disney Lorcana Trading Card Game.

Here are a few of the best things we enjoyed about playing the game:

The Cards are Beautiful

Even well before playing the game, it was clear that love and artistry was put into the creation of these cards. They are not simple images of characters we all know and love. They are beautiful artworks reimagining these characters, and bringing them back to life in new ways, much inline with the spirit of the game.

With illustrator’s names written on each and every card, and frequent illustrator highlights on the Disney Lorcana Twitter (X) page, it’s clear that Ravensburger celebrates their artists. And rightfully so, as their art and creations have a huge impact on how we percieve the cards we are handling.

The Resource System Feels Well Paced

From our gameplay with the starter decks and then with our upgraded decks, the game feels well paced. One person doesn’t quickly blitz ahead for no reason, or pull a bunch of crazy combos out of nowhere. “Inking” cards certainly forces the game into a steady pace that is buildable based on the makeup of your deck, the luck of your draw, and the decisions you make.

The “Ink” Concept is Easy to Grasp

Basically, you can do just about anything you want during your turn, as long as the ink on your characters has dried, and you have ink in the well. This concept is extraordinary in its duality – simple to understand, yet strong enough to be the backbone of the entire game.

Once you understand that you are almost solely limited by what you can do based on the mechanics of the Ink Well, the game flows naturally.

Want to play your entire hand at once? Go for it – as long as you have the ink to do it.

The rules in Disney Lorcana flow naturally like the paint from a brush, and turn a competitive game into a sort of melodic dance only interrupted by crucial decisions that could turn the tide of the game towards victory or defeat.

The Different Ink Types Feel Well Balanced

I can imagine when creating Lorcana that it could have been tempting to make cards different colors only in look and not in function. That’s not what Ravensburger did, however. Instead, what you have is a game punctuated by variety and differences even with only one base set available to play with.

Each and every Ink color has a vastly distinct feel, with different but unified strengths and weaknesses to them.

Sapphire can build Ink early to power up strong characters later in the game, whereas Ruby is all about aggression and combat ability throughout.

I’m not sure how this aspect of the game will evolve over time, but it’s really enjoyable to have such distinct feeling Ink types in the game, and fundamental to deck building given you are limited to just one or two types in each and every deck.

What We Didn’t Like About Playing The Disney Lorcana Starter Decks

Just writing that headline feels a little wrong because we immensely enjoyed our experience playing the new Disney themed trading card game. However, there were a few things that were less than ideal when playing. But even these slight inconvienences were more due to the game being new than anything else. We’ll share them below.

Lack of Draw Support

Disney Lorcana’s First Chapter doesn’t seem to have a lot of draw support or card search to its name. Steel seems to have an advantage in that area, with several cards you can use to draw or search for specific cards you want. It would be nice to see an increased focus on this for all Ink types in further expansions.

Thin Rule Book

The rule book that comes with Disney Lorcana’s starter decks is called a “quick start guide”. And while that might work for games that are less complicated and can be played quickly without bringing in more advanced mechanics, Disney Lorcana has advanced mechanics build into the game. Other trading card games come with rule books that contain almost everything you need to know howto play the game at anything but the highest competitive level.

Lorcana’s quick start guide, however, leaves out many, many important explanations, leaving things open to interpretation in a type of game where loose interpretation is deadly to enjoyment and competition.

While this is likely their first major trading card game so it makes sense they might have slacked in this area, they really need to come out with a more thorough rule book that is condensed enough to ship out in their products.

When you are having to take frequent breaks to look up rules from other sources, it can hamper the fun of the game. Luckily, answers were readily available from third party sites, but that was still time that could have been spent playing and not browsing the web.

Cheap Damage Tokens and Poor Playmat

Lastly, the damage tokens that come with the starter decks are very cheap, as is the playmat. The playmat is somewhat understandable, as more serious players tend to acquire their own more quality playmats down the line. However, it was really unclear how you use the playmats that the decks came with, and they felt like they had been cut in half or in thirds even.

It was also unclear how the board in front of you was supposed to be setup. Luckily, the game itself is so intuitive and easy to grasp that before long we found a way of setting up the board that worked for us. However, in competetive play, we’ll need a standardized way of doing this.

The damage counters feel like the really, really old damage counters you would get in Pokemon TCG decks back in the day. Pokemon players, however, all use dice now, and so should Lorcana players.

The Lore Concept is Amazing – Tracking it, Not So Much

Collecting Lore is the core goal of the Lorecana trading card game. However, the way they want you to track it direclty out of the box doesn’t work great. More than once I found my hand slip on the cheap materials of the Lore counter and the cheap, almost partial playmat. They instead need a 20-sided die or something equivalent to make tracking Lore easier, and the products really should come with it included so you don’t have to buy your own.

Our Final Verdict – Should You Buy Disney Lorcana Starter Decks?

With all of that being said, those issues weren’t with the game itself but more with the packaging and contents of the starter decks. Hopefully Ravensburger will learn and overtime fix these relatively minor issues to further enhance the playing experience.

In terms of gameplay, Disney Lorecana is a fun, exciting, immersive experience that brings your favorite Disney characters to life in a whole new way, and we couldn’t recommend more that you pick up a starter deck as soon as you possibly can!