In Disney Lorcana, each player brings their own deck and races to be the first to collect 20 lore, mostly by sending characters on quests. You pay for cards with ink, which comes from cards you place face down in your inkwell, one per turn, according to Ravensburger’s Quick Start Rules.
Hyperia City, the newest set, is available everywhere from 23 October, according to Ravensburger’s Hyperia City announcement; that is a global date, and Ravensburger has not published a separate Singapore one. Our Hyperia City guide covers the set. This post sticks to how to play Disney Lorcana, using Ravensburger’s own rules.
What kind of game Disney Lorcana is
Disney Lorcana is a strategy trading card game made by Ravensburger, “an official licensee of Disney”. Each player brings their own deck, and decks are never mixed together.
The characters, items and locations you summon are called glimmers. Each card has one of six ink types: Amber, Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire or Steel. There are four card types.
| Card type | What it does |
|---|---|
| Characters | Quest for lore and challenge; some have abilities |
| Items | Stay in play and give you abilities |
| Actions | One-time effect, then discarded; songs are a kind of action |
| Locations | Stay in play; give lore at the start of your turn |
Prefer to watch? Ravensburger’s How To Play page has eight short videos.
How to set up a game of Disney Lorcana
Each player needs a deck, damage counters and a way to track lore. Then:
- Decide who goes first with a coin flip or a die roll.
- Shuffle your deck.
- Set your lore tracker to 0.
- Draw 7 cards for your starting hand.
- Alter your hand if you want, once each, starting with the first player: put any number of cards on the bottom of your deck without revealing them, draw back to 7 and reshuffle.
The Quick Start Rules say to skip step 5 in your very first game.
Ink and the inkwell
Once per turn, you can take a card from your hand that has the inkwell symbol around its cost, show it to your opponent, and put it face down in your inkwell. Each card there is worth 1 ink, whatever is printed on the front, and it stays in your inkwell for the rest of the game.
Each card’s ink cost sits in a hexagon in the top left corner. To play a card, you exert that many cards in your inkwell. Exerting means turning a card sideways; readying means turning it back upright. Once a card is in your inkwell, nothing on its front matters any more, so the rules tell you to choose wisely.
What happens on your turn
Every turn starts with three steps:
- Ready: turn all your exerted cards upright.
- Set: check for anything that happens at the start of your turn.
- Draw: draw a card. The first player skips this on their very first turn.
Then comes the main phase. Besides adding one card to your inkwell, you can play cards, use abilities and move characters to your locations, as many times as you like and in any sequence. Characters that have been in play since the start of your turn can also quest, challenge or use abilities that need them to exert.
A character you have just played can’t do anything until your next turn: you need to wait for their ink to dry. Items and locations work straight away. Songs have a shortcut: exert a character whose cost is at least the number on the song to sing it for free, as long as that character did not come into play this turn.
Questing, challenging and winning
Questing: exert one of your characters and gain lore equal to its Lore value. This is the main way to win.
Challenging: exert one of your characters and pick an opponent’s exerted character. You can’t challenge a ready character. Both characters deal damage equal to their Strength at the same time, and a character is banished once its damage equals or passes its Willpower. Characters can also challenge an opponent’s location, which takes damage but deals none back.
Winning: the first player to reach 20 lore wins. Ravensburger’s current Comprehensive Rules (version 2.3.0, effective 16 October 2026) add that a player whose turn ends with no cards left in their deck loses.
Building a deck
Every Disney Lorcana deck follows three rules:
- At least 60 cards.
- No more than 4 copies of any single card.
- Cards from only 1 or 2 inks.
Ravensburger says the easiest way to build is to take a ready-to-play starter deck and swap cards in and out.
Where to start: starter decks and learning tools
If you are looking for a Lorcana starter deck, these are the starter products Ravensburger names on disneylorcana.com:
- Disney Lorcana TCG 2-Player Starter Set: two ready-to-play 60-card decks that Ravensburger says are “curated for those who are new to the game”, with 2 special cards in each deck, plus storage boxes, tokens, lore trackers and a rulebook.
- Disney Lorcana Gateway: a box Ravensburger calls “specially designed to be the best way to learn how to play”, with no experience required. It holds 2 starting decks of 30 cards each, 4 reward packs, a game board and guides, among other parts.
- Collection Starter Set: Rapunzel Edition: a collecting set rather than a ready deck, with 4 booster packs (48 random cards), a card portfolio, a collector’s guide and a promo card.
For learning, the Quick Start Rules say the best way is to have a friend teach you. Ravensburger’s Companion app adds a step-by-step how-to-play section, a lore counter and a card database.
FAQs
How do you win at Disney Lorcana?
You win by being the first player to reach 20 lore. Most lore comes from questing: you exert a character and gain lore equal to its Lore value. Locations also give lore at the start of your turn. Under Ravensburger’s current Comprehensive Rules, a player whose turn ends with no cards left in their deck loses the game.
What is ink in Disney Lorcana?
Ink is what you spend to play cards. Once per turn, you can put a card with the inkwell symbol face down into your inkwell, where it counts as 1 ink for the rest of the game. To play a card, you exert as many inkwell cards as its cost. Your cards are readied again at the start of your next turn.
How many cards are in a Disney Lorcana deck?
A Disney Lorcana deck needs at least 60 cards, with no more than 4 copies of any single card, and it can use only 1 or 2 of the six inks. Different versions of the same character count as different cards. Each player starts by drawing 7 cards and may alter that starting hand once.
What is the best way for a beginner to start?
Ravensburger’s Quick Start Rules say the best way to learn is to have a friend teach you, and its Companion app has a step-by-step guide. Among its products, Ravensburger describes the 2-Player Starter Set as curated for new players and calls Disney Lorcana Gateway the best way to learn how to play.
Can more than two people play Disney Lorcana?
Yes. Ravensburger describes Disney Lorcana as a 2-player game, but its Quick Start Rules say three or more players can play too. The rules stay the same, except that the turn passes to the player on the left. When an ability needs several players to act at once, start with the player whose turn it is.