How to Build a Disney Lorcana Deck from Scratch

Upgrading a starter deck taught you to change a few cards at a time. Building from scratch is the next step: a blank page, two inks, and a plan. It sounds daunting. It is mostly counting.

This lesson gives you a checklist that works for any pair of inks.

The rules first

A constructed deck must have:

• At least 60 cards. There is no maximum, but nearly every deck plays exactly 60, so your best cards show up as often as possible.
• No more than two ink types. Dual-ink cards only fit if both their inks are your inks.
• No more than 4 copies of a card with the same full name, meaning name plus version.
• No banned cards for the format.

For Core Constructed, the format most store nights and Set Championships use, every card must also come from a set in the current rotation. Right now that means Fabled and later. A card from an older set is fine if it was reprinted in one of those sets. The official card gallery shows which sets a card appears in.

Step 1: write the plan in one sentence

“Quest fast with cheap characters and win before the opponent sets up.” “Remove everything they play, then win with a few big questers.” “Sing songs every turn with characters that love them.” The sentence decides every cut later.

Step 2: pick your core cards

Choose the eight to twelve cards that do the plan best. These are the cards you will play four copies of. A deck with four copies of its best cards draws them often; a deck of single copies plays differently every game, which is fun but rarely wins.

Step 3: count characters

Characters are how you gain lore. Most decks run a large majority of characters, with actions, songs, items, and locations filling the rest. A deck with too few characters will have turns with nothing to quest. Count your characters, and if the number looks low, ask how the deck reaches 20 lore.

Step 4: shape the cost curve

Lay the deck out by cost, 1 through 7 and up. You want:

• Enough cheap plays that you have something to do on turns one and two in most games. A 2-cost character played on turn two can quest many times before the game ends.
• A solid middle at 3 to 5, where most of your turns are spent.
• Only a few expensive cards. They are powerful, but you can only play one or two in a game, and they sit dead in your hand until you have the ink.

If your curve has a gap, such as nothing at cost 2, fill it before you add anything else.

Step 5: count inkable cards

Most of your deck should carry the inkwell swirl. Inking every turn is how you reach your expensive cards, and every uninkable card is one you can never turn into ink when your hand is stuck. Level 3 shows how many inkable cards you need, with real odds. For now, treat each uninkable card as something that must earn its place.

Step 6: keep a few answers

Whatever your plan, include a handful of cards that deal with a big opposing character: a strong challenger, an action that deals damage or banishes, or an effect that returns a character to its owner’s hand. A deck with no answers loses to the first huge threat it meets.

Step 7: cut to 60

You will almost always have too many cards. Cut in this order:

1. Single copies of cards that are not in your plan sentence.
2. Expensive cards beyond the few you need.
3. Uninkable cards that do a job another card can do.

Test before you spend

Use paper stand-ins in sleeves, as in the upgrades lesson. Play five games and keep a tally: turns with no ink, turns with nothing to play, games where a threat beat you. Each tally mark points at a fix.

When the deck is ready, buy the singles you need. If you want to open packs as well, Hyperia City booster packs are the newest cards and the ones likely to stay Core legal the longest.

Keep the list

Write your 60 cards down, with full names and versions. You will need a list like this for every Competitive event, and it makes tuning far easier. Change a few cards, play a week of games, and note what changed. A deck is never finished; it just gets closer to its plan.