How to Play Disney Lorcana: Rules and How a Turn Works

Disney Lorcana is a race. You and your opponent each lead a band of Disney characters, called glimmers, and send them on quests to gather lore. The first player to 20 lore wins. Along the way, characters can challenge each other, songs get sung, and the card you put in your inkwell today decides what you can play tomorrow.

This lesson covers the Lorcana rules as of Hyperia City, in our own words, checked against the official Comprehensive Rules.

How do you win?

• Reach 20 lore. You win the moment you get there.
• Your opponent runs out of cards. A player who ends their turn with no cards left in their deck loses.

Almost every game ends the first way.

The play area

Each player has:

• A deck, facedown.
• A discard pile, faceup. Banished characters and used actions go here.
• An inkwell, a row of facedown cards you spend to play other cards. Each card in it is worth 1 ink.
• A play zone in front of the inkwell, for your characters, items, and locations.
• A lore tracker set to 0. Pen and paper or the Companion app work too.
• A hand, kept hidden.

How do you set up?

1. Pick the starting player at random, with a coin or a die.
2. Shuffle your deck and offer your opponent the chance to cut it.
3. Set your lore to 0.
4. Draw 7 cards.
5. Alter your hand, once. Starting with the first player, you may put any number of cards on the bottom of your deck without showing them, draw back up to 7, then shuffle.

What happens at the start of your turn?

Three quick steps: ready, set, draw.

• Ready. Turn all your cards in play and in your inkwell upright.
• Set. Characters you played last turn are now “dry” and can act. If you have locations with a lore value, gain that lore now.
• Draw. Draw 1 card. The player who goes first skips this draw on the very first turn of the game.

What do the Lorcana rules let you do on a turn?

After that, do any of these in any order, as often as you can pay for them, with one exception.

Put a card into your inkwell, once per turn. Choose a card from your hand that has the inkwell symbol, the swirl around its cost. Show it, then put it facedown and ready in your inkwell. Cards without the symbol can never be inked this way.

Play a card. Exert (turn sideways) ready ink cards equal to the card’s cost. Characters, items, and locations stay in play. An action does its effect, then goes to your discard.

Quest. Exert one of your dry characters and gain lore equal to its lore value.

Challenge. Exert one of your dry, ready characters and pick an exerted opposing character. Each one deals damage equal to its Strength to the other. Ready characters cannot be challenged.

Move a character to a location. Pay the location’s move cost.

Use abilities printed on your cards in play.

When you are done, say so, and your turn ends.

Drying: why new characters wait

A character you play this turn is still drying. Drying characters cannot quest, challenge, or exert to pay a cost, and that includes singing a song. They are ready to go at the start of your next turn. A character with the Rush keyword can challenge the turn it is played.

Damage and banishing

Damage stays on a character from turn to turn. Track it with damage counters or dice. When a character’s damage equals or passes its Willpower, it is banished to the discard pile.

Songs, items, and locations

• Songs are actions with a second way to pay. Instead of spending ink, exert one of your dry characters whose cost is at least the song’s cost, and the song is played for free. That is called singing.
• Items stay in play. Their abilities can be used the same turn you play them.
• Locations are printed sideways. Characters can move there for the move cost. A location with a lore value gives you that lore at the start of each of your turns. Locations are never ready or exerted, so opposing characters can challenge one on any of their turns, and it deals no damage back.

Ink drops

Hyperia City added ink drops, a temporary ink. When a card says you get one, put an ink drop counter in your inkwell. Dice or other small objects can stand in for them. To pay a cost, remove ink drops instead of exerting ink cards; each one pays 1 ink. Used drops leave the game. An ink drop is not a card, so it never goes into your deck.

The heart of the game

Here is the tension that makes Lorcana work. Questing exerts your character, and an exerted character can be challenged on your opponent’s turn. So every quest asks: is this lore worth the risk? The next lesson shows how to read a card, so you can answer that question at a glance.