Disney Lorcana rules aim to be accessible for new and old TCG players

The first cards were issued in 1895. Disney Lorcana We shared the news in September 2013. Both Disney and avid gamers had one question: How are they different from existing franchises such as The Gathering is Magic The Pokémon Trading Card Game? Well, as it turns out, it’s hard to keep a lid on this magical little game, and those rules leaked a bit early on Monday. But perhaps the most important part of those rules — their context and their intent — has been missing until now.

Polygon spoke with Polygon in the beginning of this month. Disney LorcanaRyan Miller was Ryan Miller’s codesigner. We wanted to find out everything possible about this new Disney collectible. We discovered a product with an amazingly light touch. The rules actually fit quite well on a single sheet paper. But don’t mistake that brevity for simplicity.

“What we wanted was something that was accessible. And I like the term accessible, because it doesn’t mean simple,” Miller said. “It’s generally got concepts and things that are easy to pick up for folks who’ve never played this type of game before — and that bore out in our early playtests.”

A let it go song, an action card from Disney Lorcana, shows Elsa singing and spreading ice beams from her hands. “It’s time to see what I can doTo test the limits and break through.”

Kristoff, official ice master, is a 3/3 glimmer — a storyborn ally — that can be played to the table for 3 ink. He generates two lore when questing.

Disney LorcanaPlayers take the role of Illumineers. These powerful people use an ink-based resource to create animated versions of Disney characters or items. The table is set up so that each player has a different deck, or an already-made deck. The goal is to gather up “lore,” a kind of magical macguffin that stands in for life points, or hit points, in similar games. You can gather lore by sending your characters on quests. The game is won by the player who has the most lore points (20).

In order to bring those classic Disney characters to life, first you’ll need to generate a pool of ink — the main resource that Disney LorcanaThe game’s action is powered by these inks. So, true to what Miller said, the process is approachable — generate ink to create characters, who you then send on quests to gather lore — but it’s not all that simple. Miller stated that designing the right resource system was the most difficult part of design. Disney LorcanaIn the beginning.

Ink

These are the most well-known trading card games. Magic And Pokémon, cards and their abilities can’t just be played at will. You must first pay resources before you can use them. Those resources are represented by their own special cards in both games — land cards, which generate mana in MagicEnergy cards and, that are attached to the creatures. Pokémon.

To put energy or land into play, however you must first draw the cards in your deck to your hand. The case of MagicYou might need more than one. Different types of resources — different kinds of land, each yielding different colors of mana — to play the different cards from your deck. It can prove difficult to make it through the first round, since players will need only a small amount of resources.

Miller and Steve Warner, Miller’s co-designer, spent six long months looking for an alternative solution. Eventually they found something that was unique.

Tinkerbell, tiny tactician, is a glimmer — a dramborn, ally, fairy — with 2/4. When exerted, she allows the player to draw a card and then choose and discard another card. She is worth one lore when questing.

A frying pan item can Clang! which banishes the item, and the character hit can’t challenge — that is do battle with other glimmers — on their next turn.

In the beginning, almost every card was in Disney LorcanaThe resource ink could be generated at the rate of 1 per turn. This solved the issue of having insufficient resources during the first rounds. Ink was removed from the most powerful cards. It lowered their utility while increasing it in others. Today, many of the cards in the game cannot be turned into ink, but it’s up to players to decide whether or not to include them in their custom-made decks.

“It allows a really interesting balancing tweak that we can do,” Miller said, “because by taking the ink off of a card and saying this card doesn’t provide you ink, it really changes your valuation when you’re building your deck. It’s really got to justify itself now because I can’t use it as ink. […] I believe that the experienced trading card gamers are really going to find that very interesting.”

It is as it was written Disney Lorcana’s ink system moves resource generation away from luck-of-the-draw chance and instead makes resource generation a choice — one informed by experience and skill — that players get to make on their own, both during play and when building their custom decks. Further adding complexity, any cards that are converted into ink can’t be used for any other function later in the game. That makes melting down your more powerful cards to generate ink a really bad idea — unless it’s necessary to keep from being backed into a corner.

“[I’ve] got to decide which of these cards is the least useful to me this game,” Miller said, “and I’m going to decide that by looking at the [other cards on the] table. That’s the best kind of decision to make, because I feel — as a player — I’m using my skill now. I can see from what they’re playing, they’re doing this strategy. […] So I’m gonna go ahead and ink that [high-value card]. I feel good about that decision: I feel like I’ve used my skill.”

Miller also enjoys the fact that ink designs can increase what he refers to as variance. By giving every card in that 60-card deck multiple functions — being used as ink, being used to gather lore, or being used for some other unique action — further compounds the amount of variance in every deck. And it’s that variance that should make Disney Lorcana so much fun to play and collect — and to experiment with, even if it means losing a hard-fought game.

“The reason I want to add variance is that variance gives hope,” Miller said. There is a greater chance that players who start to lose the race 20 lore will have fewer chances of succeeding. ContinueLosing the race is inevitable. A higher variance means that players have more options and more cards in order to close the gap. It’s not a blue shell from Mario Kartby no means, but each one adds more drama.

“Without variance,” Miller continued, “there can be no hope.”

Songs

With the ink system in place, Miller said that many of the other elements of the game’s design began to crystallize throughout repeated playtesting. These included the three types of cards that Miller said would be made available at launch: actions, characters and items.

The universe has glimmers, which are characters that can be called “glimmers”. Disney Lorcana, have been sourced from the vault filled with Disney’s back catalog of classic animated films and given unique, thematic powers to play at the table. Items, like Ariel’s dinglehopper from The Little MermaidTo fulfill important roles like healing others, she leapt off the pages of film scripts. In the meantime, some iconic scenes, such as Maleficent’s green fire breathing while shaped like a dragon at its end, were being performed. Beauty Sleeping Beauty, were a natural next step in the game’s evolution.

An action card, a song, called One Jump Ahead. The art shows Aladdin using a carpet like a parachute. It’s power allows the player to put the top card of their deck into the inkwell.

A seagull holding a fork. The dinglehopper card allows you to straighten your hair in Disney Lorcana, removing up to one damage.

But one sub-type of card, called a “song,” stands out. Songs are drawn from Disney’s immense catalog of cultural touchstones that also happen to be potent earworms. Every player can play any song for the cost of ink. Songs can be performed by the individual players who have played them to the table. This allows for more time to spend ink on other things. Mechanically, they’re yet another way to add variance to Disney Lorcana.

As an example, Miller points out a card called One Jump Ahead, named after the song by the same name from Disney’s Aladdin. Players can pay two ink to play One Jump Ahead themselves, which allows them to draw a card from their hand and immediately turn it into ink — placing them one jump, or one ink as it were, ahead the following round. Players can also have any character worth at least two ink and allow them to sing the song, essentially turning that round’s action into an opportunity for more ink. But that choice — exerting the character instead of using it to generate lore — is a trade-off that could have further consequences down the line.

The Community

The time will show if these design ideas are appreciated by players as much as Ravensburger. The rules themselves are purposefully skeletal, Miller said, and much of the meat of the game exists on the hundreds of cards included in the first of many sets — the vast majority of which haven’t been revealed yet.

However, the true magic is in Disney LorcanaThis can only be possible if the fans are ready to buy it at their local retail outlets when the last game is released. Miller remains optimistic. His optimism is rooted in his belief system. This goes back to the earworms.

“One of the things we noticed,” Miller said, “is you’ll sing the song, at least the [first]Line of it. So like ‘One jump ahead of the bread line!’ […] It’s almost like it’s a rule of the game because it happens so much, that people will sing the song as they play it.”

Miller, an Army veteran with a beautiful baritone singing voice, said he particularly enjoys crooning “Let it go!” as he banishes his opponents’ glimmers with Elsa’s powerful song.

“Just imagine a room full of folks, and randomly you’ll just hear people singing snippets of Disney songs,” Miller continued, a wide grin spreading across his face as he shuffles and bridges a stack of pre-production cards. “It’s just wonderful!”

Disney Lorcana will first be available at this year’s Gen Con, and soon after at hobby stores beginning Aug. 18 — followed by 12 weeks of organized community play. You can purchase it from major retailers as of Sept. 1 or on ShopDisney.com.

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