Disney Lorcana

Designer: Ryan Miller, Steve Warner
Artist: Luis Huerta
Published: 2023
Players: 2-6
Playing Time: 20 Mins
BGG Rating: 7.3
BGG Ranking: 2695
Publisher: Ravensburger
Mechanics: Deck Building, Dueling Card Game, Collectible Card Game
Sleeves: TCG 63,5x88mm,

Game Description:

The game is set in the rich and fantastical world of Lorcana, a combination of the words "lore" and "arcana". Players will take on the mantle of Illumineer, a powerful sorcerer, and band together Disney characters from Lorcana's "The Great Illuminary", a treasury of all Disney songs and stories ever made.

Quick play overview:

Each player uses a deck constructed from 60 cards from 2 out of the 6 available colors.

On their turn players will:

• place one Ink in their play zone that will be used for playing other cards. Ink is a card from your hand that is turned with the back up and loses all other abilities except that it can be exhausted to give 1 resource/turn to play other cards.
• Players can play cards (Characters and Items go into the play area, Actions cause an effect and are discarded from play) from their hands by spending Ink resources to pay the cards cost.
• Creatures that are in play from previous turns can exhaust to attack exhausted opponent's creatures or they can exhaust to quest (collect Lore)

Players will go back and forth collecting Lore and/or causing opponent to lose creatures, till one player collects 20 lore to win the game.

Final thoughts:

This is a well done collectable card game. It has a strong core with all the standard traits of such games. There is a lot of cards to choose from when constructing a deck. The different abilites on creatures make the gameplay fun and interesting.

Compared to the king of collectable card games, Lorecana is a much simpler game and if it doesn't evolve, it won't have the power to compete with Magic: The Gathering.. even if Disney is behind it. On the other hand, if they keep the game simple as it is, they can target non-gamers that will have fun collecting cards and playing a few games once in a while.

SCORE:

Gameplay: 7/10

Starter decks make this a simple game where the player who draws best will win the game. Experienced players don't really have much choice..

Constructing your own decks is another story..

Art & Graphic Design: 9/10

The art is beautiful. Everyone playing this game will find characters from his childhood that will bright up his day.

Graphic Design is OK. It's what the modern TCGs are supposed to have. Not my favourite type of design but it's clean.

Rules & Complexity: 7/10

Rules are clear and easy to learn. You can start playing the game very fast.

Lorecana is not a complex game as of yet. It's a bit too simple for my taste in the current iteration.

Theme: 5/10

Disney has a ton of Lore for their game.. but the main story of some Illumineers writing stories.. bah. Hopefully they will make new sets with an actual story attached to it.

Fun & Replayability: 7/10

Playing a duel game is always fun if the game's mechanisms allow you to have agency and surprise your opponent. Currently Lorcana doesn't allow you to do anything on your opponent's turn.. which makes this game a simple tug-of-war type of game.

Replayability should be huge as long as you try to make some decks of your own. If you keep only to the starter decks, the game gets stale really fast.
Deck building is the most difficult part of such games, but also the most rewarding, if you are willing to put in the time.

FINAL SCORE: 7.0/10