As a tabletop game enthusiast since I bought Zombies!!! from Forbidden Planet in London over a decade ago, I’ve come to realise that many of my decisions in this hobby have been based around who I’m able to play with. When practically my only contact was my abusive ex-partner, I was forced to solely collect two-player affairs, shutting me out of some truly incredible multiplayer epics. During my gap year, living at my parents’ house, I sought less complex titles that I could play with mum, or if I invited a friend round for some drinks and a casual games night. And in my second year of university, while living with three other people who were willing to go head to head, I had a Magic: The Gathering boom (a bubble which has since burst). Which brings me neatly to Lorcana.
I’ve since finished university, and now live with my current girlfriend, her parents, and our housemate. This is my most versatile set-up to date, because it consists of two adults whose exposure to the hobby has (until I came along and broadened their horizons, naturally) until now been limited to chess and Subbuteo; my girlfriend, who will engage in slightly deeper games if the theme takes her fancy; and a new friend who has been playing games all her life. So, although I no longer have to so strictly limit my selections lest a game be unwrapped and then promptly gather dust because no one wants to play it, this is a mix of experience levels into which Lorcana fits almost perfectly, and that’s really the thrust of what I’ll be discussing here.
Part I: ‘The Heffalump in the Room’ – Theming
Let’s start with the first thing that caught my (and many others’) eye about Lorcana: the fact that it’s Disney-related. Immediately, however, I was sceptical. Yeesh, Ravensburger, too? The company whose infantile, chance-based titles – like Monkey Mix-Up – I used to play as a child? Admittedly, this pairing has since birthed Disney’s Villainous, a game which certainly seems well-produced, but one I’ve never been won over by after hearing the general consensus that it isn’t really a game at all and is more akin to multiplayer solitaire (if those terms can even go together). Still, Lorcana did sound like it might engage with more mature gameplay ideas, and I was quietly hopeful.
But, then, I saw Lorcana‘s cards. Seven of the things, in fact, revealed from nowhere like a genie from an inconspicuous lamp during the D23 celebrations; and they changed my feelings from suspicious optimism to outright uncontainable excitement.
As someone who, like I said, has dabbled in MTG over the years but has always felt sort of like they got into the hobby too late, Lorcana looks to be the answer to that issue; being here at the game’s inception is far more appealing than sinking a bunch of money and research into an existing and established property that everyone else is going to have either years more experience with, or none at all. Plus, when it comes to just opening the blind packs, it’s going to be a treat to actually recognise and be surprised by cards depicting characters and artefacts that I enjoy. I’ve heard the argument that Lorcana looks like it’ll land closer to Pokémon than MTG, in terms of people collecting it for the artwork rather than buying it to play it.
Indeed, that artwork is lovingly crafted and as gorgeous as a fairytale princess to behold. But, for starters, I’ll certainly be someone who plays Lorcana as well as collecting it, but the quality of the artwork (all unique, original pieces created specifically, nay, especially, for the game, which is even more indicative of the weight Disney and Ravensburger are lending to their own creation) should only further how much easier it will be to open a pack and go “Oh my god, look, look, I got Tarzan!” instead of “Oh, an Undying Red Wimblepopper, that artwork is kind of cool, no idea if it’s a good card though, let me go home and Google it.” MTG just didn’t bring me the same joy as I think Lorcana will easily capture. It appears likely that it will be a game where my girlfriend and I can actually sit down with a cup of tea and open packs together. A game where we can just pick up a pack or two each during a day out (availability permitting, a dilemma I’ll cover below in the third section of this discussion), and, most importantly, one that she will not just reluctantly dip her toes into to throw her nerdy boyfriend a bone for an evening, but will actively want to pursue herself. I’m excited for Lorcana not only for personal reasons but precisely because of how genuinely excited my partner is (finally!) about a tabletop or card game. But the theme alone isn’t what gives me that impression.
Part II: ‘Inside the Magic’ – Mechanics
While we have little to go off in the way of explicit gameplay rules, the seven cards (all characters, raising the question of whether objects or locations will likewise feature) do give us some tantalising tidbits in the form of flavour text and abilities.
Where the scant mechanics which have been revealed seem to fill a few people with emotions ranging from dismissive disinterest to sneering mirth (both ends of the scale owing to Lorcana‘s immediate similarity to MTG), all they fill me with is more hope; the hope that Lorcana really is going to be an easier-to-teach and more visually appealing (albeit subjectively) version of MTG as I initially dreamed it might be when it was announced and very briefly explained.
Keyforge notwithstanding, my partner finds MTG-style keywords, like ‘Trample’ or ‘Flying’, to be meaningless game-speak. However, she’s been slowly getting her head around them, and I’ve got a feeling her existing knowledge of the characters portrayed will actually aid her ability to interpret the rules. Elsa’s ‘Freeze’ or Maleficent’s ‘Dragon Fire’ abilities are far more self-explanatory when twinned with glorious character artwork than the ‘Vigilance’ of an Alert Heedbonder or a Vampire Nighthawk’s ‘Lifelink’. I know any game is going to have its own lexicon to learn, and many of us are familiar with that of MTG, but Lorcana’s seems to lend itself far more neatly to the link between abilities and cards themselves, particularly for new players.
Another echo of MTG inspiration comes in the process of ‘Exerting’ a card (accompanied by an icon of a card tilting or, in the case of MTG, ‘Tapping’) also hinted at on Elsa’s card. Hey, Adventure Time: Card Wars had ‘Flooping’, so this seems to simply be yet another take on the now-universal action of expending a card’s use. We also see ‘Banish’, which almost definitely parallel’s MTG‘s ‘Destroy’ keyword, or, simply removing a creature from the board.
What’s not yet as clear as the reflection in magic mirror is the no-doubt intricate relationship between health (or defence), power (or attack) – both in the bottom right of a card’s artwork – and mana (or cost) in the top left-hand corner. What we can glean, however, with the aid of Stitch’s ‘upgrade’ card of sorts, allowing you to play it for a lower cost (simply denoted as ‘4*’ instead of six), is that there is a single resource to be spent to play cards. Perhaps it will be something fitting with the game’s Illumineer player-surrogates, like Lums (wait, that’s Rayman) or simply Light. To me, this is the one aspect which seems significantly simplified. While it was a noticeably simpler system than MTG‘s multi-coloured land cards, even Card Wars required you to have a certain combination of the four available land spaces to be able to play cards from certain themed decks. Whether Lorcana will go a similar route to make up for the simple card costs remains to be seen, and this leads neatly onto our final section.
Part III: ‘Villain’s Lair’ – Worries
The simplified nature of the game – and I realise I’ve used that as a positive already – does, of course, worry the seeker of complexity in me. It seems like the creators really are keen to add depth of strategy to this game, and certainly smaller games have done so to great effect. I just hope that rings true, and that they aren’t simply cloning MTG then hand-waving all of Lorcana‘s rules as “depth” simply because they’re borrowed from a more established franchise which has earned the right to call itself deep.
One worry that the game would be not just recycled mechanics but also low-quality reuse of artwork has already been thoroughly put to rest, thank Zeus.
But looming on the horizon like a certain hook-handed pirate’s ship is the threat of the collectible purchase model. Until very recently, I collected Transformers. But it was the snowballing stock availability which first irked me then entirely turned me away, a problem which has already plagued many companies but is now at all-time high (or is that low?). I’m not the first and won’t be the last to point out how Lorcana‘s rich combination of complex crunch and media conglomerate fluff makes it a perfect gateway game. But will the powerful backing of the House of Mouse result in a popularity which shuts off access for all but those who set up bots to monitor online releases, or buy out a brick and mortar store’s entire stock on the first day? The eye-watering prices the exclusive foil variants from D23 are already fetching on eBay seem to confirm the worst, and further embitter a collector like me who shares his hobby with hyena-like scalpers on a regular basis.
Speaking as a Brit, will we even see physical copies of Lorcana on this side of the pond at all? On the other side of the poison apple (I’m trying, okay, there are no famous Disney coins), I fell out of love with Keyforge because my local board game shops stopped stocking it altogether due to lack of sales, and I’d hate to see Lorcana to suffer a similar fate if the artwork appeals to some but the facts it’s a game turns them off. For all the meta commentary on Lorcana‘s gameplay itself, my one true dread is that I will simply not be able to play it at all. That being said, the game releases an entire year from now – I’m wishing upon a star that I’m proved wrong, because I’m truly looking forward to Lorcana.
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