Beginner's guide

How to Play Disney Lorcana

Ravensburger's Disney card game is a race to 20 lore. Here's how ink, questing, challenges and songs really work, with real cards from the current sets.

Rules checked 24 September 202614 minute read

Players: 2
Deck: 60+ cards, 1 or 2 inks
Game length: About 15 to 25 minutes
Ages: 8+
To learn: Easy
You win by: First to 20 lore

The short version

Disney Lorcana is a card game for two where you play Disney characters and race to collect 20 lore. Each player brings a deck of at least 60 cards in no more than two ink colours. On your turn you draw a card, can put one card face down in your inkwell as ink, spend ink to play characters, then send characters on quests to earn lore. Questing turns a character sideways, and sideways characters can be challenged and knocked out. First to 20 lore wins.

Lorcana is Ravensburger's Disney trading card game, and it's the easiest of the big card games to teach. No resource deck, no life total, no instant responses to untangle. Almost every turn comes down to two questions: do I quest now or keep this character safe, and do I ink this card or keep it to play?

Everything below is checked against Ravensburger's current rules (version 2.2.0, July 2026), so it won't always match older guides. The big one: a character doesn't need to cost 5 to sing a song.

What you need to play Lorcana

Each player needs a deck of at least 60 cards. There's no maximum, but nearly everyone plays exactly 60. Then you need:

A way to count lore up to 20. Pen and paper is fine. So is a dial counter or the official Disney Lorcana Companion app.
Damage counters. Damage stays on characters between turns, so dice, beads or starter-set tokens are a must.
A clear bit of table. A playmat is nice but optional.

That's the lot. No side deck, no prize cards, no resource cards.

The easiest way to start

If there are two of you, get the Wilds Unknown 2-Player Starter Set. It has two ready-to-play 60-card decks, a Learn to Play rulebook, two paper deck boxes and a punch-out sheet with a lore tracker and damage tokens. Both decks come from Set 12, so they're also legal in Core Constructed, the main tournament format.

If a friend already has a deck, a single starter deck is cheaper. The older starters are one ready-made 60-card deck each. The Whispers in the Well decks are Core-legal; the Archazia's Island and Reign of Jafar decks have rotated out of Core but are every bit as good for learning at home. They're all in our Lorcana starter decks collection.

Watch out

A "Collection Starter" set is not a deck. It's booster packs and a folder for collectors. Ravensburger's Gateway box is a learning product with two 30-card decks and a game board, which is lovely for young players, but those decks are half the size of a real one, so expect to move on quickly.

How you win: first to 20 lore

Lore is the score, and it's the only one. The first player to reach 20 lore wins. The game checks after every action and every effect, so the moment a quest takes you to 20 you've won, even halfway through your turn. You don't have to survive until your next one.

Most lore comes from questing. You turn one of your characters sideways (the game calls this "exerting") and gain lore equal to its lore value: the diamonds on the right of its text box. Locations also hand you lore at the start of each of your turns, and some cards gain lore through their text.

There are two ways to lose besides your opponent hitting 20. If your turn ends with no cards in your deck, you lose. Drawing your last card is fine; ending your turn with an empty deck is what does it. And you can concede at any point.

Worth knowing

Knocking out your opponent's characters doesn't score you any lore on its own. Challenges matter because they stop lore coming in on the other side of the table. A few cards do reward banishing, but that's the card talking, not the base rules.

The four card types (and where songs fit)

Lorcana has four card types: characters, actions, items and locations. Songs are a kind of action, not a fifth type. Every card also belongs to one of six inks, Amber, Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire and Steel, shown by the colour of its name bar and the ink symbol. Some cards carry two inks and count as both.

CharacterThe only cards that can quest and challenge. Moana quests for 3 lore.
ActionDoes its thing once, then goes to your discard. This one banishes a character.
Action: SongPay ink as normal, or have one of your characters sing it for free.
ItemStays in play. Items don't have to wait, so you can use them the turn they land.
LocationPrinted sideways. Gives you its lore at the start of each of your turns.

One oddity: "Character" isn't printed on character cards. If it has Strength and Willpower, it's a character.

How to read a Lorcana card

This is Elsa, Snow Queen, the card Ravensburger uses for the diagram in its own rules. Read a character and the rest are easy.

Elsa, Snow Queen Disney Lorcana card with numbered markers showing cost, name, version, Strength, Willpower, ink type, classifications, abilities, lore and collector number — Elsa, Snow Queen (Fabled, 53/204). The numbers match the list below.

Cost: how much ink it takes to play. The swirl around it means you can ink this card.
Name: the character.
Version: the subtitle. Name plus version is the card's full name.
Strength: the damage it deals in a challenge.
Willpower: once it has this much damage, it's banished.
Ink type: Elsa is Amethyst.
Classifications: Dreamborn, Hero, Queen, Sorcerer. Other cards refer to these.
Abilities: keywords and named abilities. Freeze lets her exert herself to exert an opposing character.
Lore value: the lore she earns each time she quests.
Collector number: 53/204, English, Set 9.

People mix up Strength and Willpower more than anything else on the card. Strength is how hard it hits. Willpower is how much it can take. Elsa hits for 2 and is banished once she has 3 damage on her.

Ink and the inkwell: Lorcana's only resource

There are no land or energy cards in Lorcana. Instead, once per turn you can take a card from your hand that has the swirl around its cost, show it to your opponent, and put it face down in your inkwell. From then on it's just ink. Every card in your inkwell pays for 1, whatever it used to be.

To pay, exert that many ink cards (turn them sideways). They stand back up at the start of your next turn. A card you've just inked can be spent straight away, so on turn one you can ink a card and play a 1-cost character.

Look at the cost corner before you ink. Be Our Guest has the swirl, so it can go in. Dragon Fire and Merida's Bow have a plain hexagon, so they can't.

Colour doesn't matter when you pay. An Amber card in your inkwell pays for a Ruby card just as well.

The inkwell has no size limit, cards normally stay there all game, and nobody can look at them, you included. So the real question every turn is which card you're willing to lose. Ink the card you'll miss least: a spare copy, or something so expensive you won't be casting it for several turns.

Tip

Don't skip inking in the early turns to "save" good cards. Being one ink short on turn four hurts far more than losing a decent card. Some card effects put cards into your inkwell for you, and those don't need the swirl.

The play area: where your cards live

You don't need a mat, but keeping things in the same place every game helps. Here's one player's side.

One player's side of a Disney Lorcana play area with zones for characters, items, locations, deck, discard, inkwell and lore — One player's side. Your opponent mirrors it across the table.

Zone	Face up or down	What goes there
Deck	Face down	Your draw pile. You can't look through it or reorder it, but anyone can count it.
Hand	Hidden	Seven cards to start. There's no maximum hand size.
Play	Face up	Your characters, items and locations. Actions pass through briefly and then go to the discard.
Inkwell	Face down	Your ink, 1 per card, with no limit. Nobody can look at these cards.
Discard	Face up	Banished cards and used actions. Either player can look through it.
The bag	Not a real place	Where triggered abilities wait before they happen. The player whose turn it is sorts theirs out first.

How to set up a game of Lorcana

Pick who goes first Do it at random, with a coin or a dice, before anyone draws. In a best-of-three, the loser of each game chooses who starts the next one.
Shuffle Each player shuffles their deck. Your opponent may shuffle or cut it too.
Set lore to zero Both players start on 0.
Draw seven That's your opening hand.
Change your hand, once Starting with the first player, put any number of cards face down on the bottom of your deck without showing them, then draw back up to seven. If you put any back, shuffle and offer a cut. One go only.
Play The first player starts their turn, but skips the draw on their first turn only. That's the only first-turn restriction.

Tip

Keep a hand with a few cheap characters (cost 1 to 3) and enough inkable cards to ink every turn. A hand of 7-cost characters goes back, however pretty.

How a turn works in Lorcana

Three phases, and only the middle one takes any thinking.

Start of turnThree quick steps in order: Ready, Set, Draw.
Main phaseInk a card, play cards, quest, challenge, move to locations and use abilities, in any order you like.
End of turnEnd-of-turn effects happen, "this turn" effects stop, and play passes. If your deck is empty now, you lose.

Ready, Set, Draw

Ready: turn everything upright again, characters, items, locations and all your ink. Set: characters you played last turn stop "drying", your locations give you their lore, and start-of-turn effects happen. Draw: draw one card.

Set isn't the draw step, whatever older guides say. It's where location lore comes in.

The main phase: anything, in any order

Do any of these, as often as you can afford:

Ink a card, but only once per turn.
Play a card by paying its ink cost, or by singing a song or using Shift (both covered below).
Quest with a character that's ready and dry.
Challenge with a character that's ready and dry.
Move a character to one of your locations by paying the location's move cost.
Use an ability printed on one of your cards.

So a turn might go: quest with Moana, ink a card, use the fresh ink to play a character, then challenge with someone else.

Rule check

Only the player whose turn it is can play cards or activate abilities. There's no answering back on your opponent's turn unless a card specifically says you can. If you've come from Magic, that's the biggest adjustment.

Drying: why new characters have to wait

Characters come into play ready (upright) but drying, because the ink's still wet. A drying character can't quest, can't challenge, and can't exert to pay for anything. That includes singing a song. It's dry at the start of your next turn.

There's an upside. Only exerted characters can be challenged, and a new character arrives upright, so your opponent usually can't touch it by challenging on their next turn. Rush lets a character challenge the turn it's played, but it still can't quest. Items and locations never dry.

Questing has a catch. The character stays exerted until your next turn, and exerted characters are exactly the ones your opponent can challenge. Every quest is a small bet that the lore is worth the risk.

Moving to locations

A location's move cost sits on the left of its name bar. Pay it and one of your characters moves there. Andy's Room, Home Base gives a character +2 Willpower and +1 lore if it's the only one there. If the location is banished, the characters stay in play.

Lorcana challenge rules, step by step

A challenge is Lorcana's version of a fight. Only characters can challenge, and it always runs in this order.

Pick one of your characters that's ready and dry (or has Rush) to be the challenger.
Pick what it's challenging: an exerted opposing character, or any opposing location. You can't challenge a character that's standing upright.
Check the keywords. Evasive and Bodyguard can change who you're allowed to pick.
Exert your challenger.
Both characters deal damage equal to their Strength to each other, at the same time.
Any character with damage equal to or more than its Willpower is banished to its owner's discard.

Damage stays put until something heals it, so a character that took 2 last turn is 2 closer to being banished next time. Locations can always be challenged, and they don't hit back.

Stitch, Rock Star and Lilo, Patient Weaver Disney Lorcana cards side by side for a challenge example — Stitch (3 Strength, 5 Willpower) challenges an exerted Lilo (2 Strength, 3 Willpower).

Worked example

It's your turn. You've had Stitch, Rock Star in play since last turn, so he's dry and ready. He's 3 Strength, 5 Willpower.
Your opponent quested with Lilo, Patient Weaver last turn, so she's still exerted. She's 2 Strength, 3 Willpower.
Nothing with Evasive or Bodyguard is in the way. You exert Stitch and challenge Lilo.
Damage happens at the same time. Stitch deals 3 to Lilo, and Lilo deals 2 to Stitch.
Lilo has 3 damage against 3 Willpower, so she's banished. Stitch has 2 damage against 5 Willpower, so he survives and keeps those 2 damage.
Stitch is now exerted. He can't quest this turn, and on your opponent's turn they can challenge him. Three more damage and he's gone.

If Lilo had stayed upright instead of questing, you couldn't have challenged her at all.

When should you challenge? Usually when the character you'd knock out would otherwise keep earning lore. Leave Moana alone and she's 12 lore in four quests. Even trades are fine too, as long as you're not falling behind on lore.

Singing songs: the cost rule most guides get wrong

Songs are actions, and you can always pay for them with ink. But any song can also be sung for free: exert one of your dry characters whose cost is equal to or higher than the song's cost. A 2-cost character can sing a 2-cost song. A 3-cost character can sing a 2 or a 3, but not a 4.

Every song spells it out in its reminder text. Be Our Guest says "A character with cost 2 or more" can sing it, because it costs 2. A Whole New World says "cost 5 or more" because it costs 5. That's where the myth that you need a 5-cost singer comes from.

Singer N lets a character count as cost N for singing. Ariel, Singing Mermaid costs 4 but has Singer 7, so she can sing anything up to 7.

Ariel, Singing Mermaid, an Amber Disney Lorcana character card with Singer 7

Sing Together N is on some bigger songs. You can exert any number of your characters whose costs add up to N or more to sing it.

Common mistake

Singing with a character you played this turn. Singing means exerting, and drying characters can't exert, so a fresh character can't sing until your next turn. And once a character has sung, it's exerted: it can't quest that turn and your opponent can challenge it.

Lorcana keywords explained

Keywords sit in bold in the text box, usually with a reminder of what they do.

EvasiveCan only be challenged by characters that also have Evasive (or Alert).
AlertCan challenge Evasive characters, without gaining Evasive itself.
BodyguardMay enter play exerted. If your opponent challenges, they must pick a Bodyguard if they can. It doesn't force a challenge or protect locations.
RushCan challenge the turn it's played. It still can't quest that turn.
WardYour opponent can't choose it with their effects. It can still be challenged.
Challenger +N+N Strength while challenging, not while being challenged.
Resist +NDamage dealt to it is reduced by N.
SupportWhen it quests, you may add its Strength to another chosen character's this turn.
RecklessCan't quest, and you can't end your turn while it's ready and able to challenge.
Singer NCounts as cost N when it sings a song.
Boost NOnce during your turn, pay N ink to put the top card of your deck face down under it.
VanishIf your opponent chooses it with an action, it's banished once that action has resolved.
Shift NPay N to play it on top of your character with the same name.

Shift, the one that needs a paragraph

Stitch, Rock Star costs 6, but he has Shift 4: pay 4 ink and play him on top of one of your characters named Stitch. The new card picks up where the old one left off (though it doesn't gain the old card's text). If the old Stitch was dry, the new one can quest or challenge straight away. If it was exerted, it stays exerted. It keeps its damage too.

You get a bigger character for less ink, often without the wait. The catch is you need the right character in play first, and if the shifted card leaves play, the cards under it go too.

Stitch, Rock Star, an Amber Disney Lorcana character card with Shift 4

Lorcana deck building rules

For normal play (called Constructed) your deck must follow three rules:

At least 60 cards. No maximum, as long as you can shuffle it.
No more than two inks. A dual-ink card is only allowed if both of its inks are your deck's two inks.
No more than four copies of any card with the same full name. Full name means name plus version, so four Elsa, Snow Queen and four Elsa, Spirit of Winter in the same deck is legal.

Sealed (40+ cards) and Draft (35+), built from packs opened at an event, allow any number of inks and copies.

Building your first deck

Start from a starter deck and change a few cards at a time, swapping out whatever never does anything. A few pointers.

Stick to exactly 60. Every extra card makes your best cards turn up a bit less often.
Make most of your deck inkable. If too many cards lack the swirl, you'll get hands where you can't ink every turn.
Pack plenty of cheap characters. Games are won by questing early and often, and you can't quest with an empty board.
Pick two inks whose characters you like. You'll play the deck more.

A fair warning: booster packs are random, so building a specific deck from packs alone gets expensive. Trading with friends goes a long way.

Mistakes everyone makes once

Thinking only 5-cost characters can sing. The singer's cost has to match or beat the song's cost. That's all.
Singing or questing with a character you just played. It's drying. Wait a turn, or Shift it onto a character that's already dry.
Challenging an upright character. You can't. Only exerted characters can be challenged (locations always can).
Inking two cards in one turn. Once per turn, unless a card lets you ink more.
Forgetting location lore. It comes in during the Set step at the start of your turn, not when you quest.
Thinking an empty deck is harmless. End your turn with no cards left in your deck and you lose.
Thinking Ward stops challenges. It doesn't. Ward only stops your opponent choosing that card with effects.

Formats and what's legal (September 2026)

Core Constructed is the main tournament format, and it rotates. Since 17 July 2026 (the Attack of the Vine! prerelease) it uses Sets 9 to 13: Fabled, Whispers in the Well, Winterspell, Wilds Unknown and Attack of the Vine!. There are no banned cards in Core right now.

Infinity Constructed lets you use every set since The First Chapter. One card is banned there: Hiram Flaversham, Toymaker.

If a card is legal, every printing of it is legal. Stitch, Rock Star was first printed in The First Chapter and reprinted in Fabled, so an old First Chapter copy is fine in Core.

Set 14, Hyperia City, has its UK prerelease on 16 October 2026 and general release on 23 October. New sets become tournament-legal at their prerelease, so expect it in Core from 16 October. There's no date yet for the next rotation, and ban lists change, so check before an event.

Stores also run Limited events such as Sealed and Draft, played with packs opened on the day. At the kitchen table none of this matters: any cards you own work fine. When you're ready for more, everything we stock is in our Disney Lorcana range.

For every last detail, the full rules and tournament rules are on Ravensburger's official Lorcana resources page.

Questions people ask

How many cards are in a Lorcana deck?

A Constructed deck needs at least 60 cards and has no upper limit, though almost everyone plays exactly 60. You can use one or two inks and up to four copies of each full card name (name plus version).

Can a character sing a song the turn it's played?

No. Singing exerts the character, and characters can't exert on the turn they arrive because they're still drying. The one common exception is Shift: a character shifted onto a card that was already in play since the start of your turn keeps that dry status, so it can sing straight away.

Can a 3-cost character sing a 5-cost song?

Not normally. The singer's cost has to be at least the song's cost. It works if the character has Singer 5 or higher, such as Ariel, Singing Mermaid (Singer 7), or if the song has Sing Together and your characters' costs add up to enough.

What happens if you run out of cards in Lorcana?

If your turn ends and your deck is empty, you lose. Trying to draw from an empty deck doesn't lose on its own. The check only happens when your turn ends.

How many cards can you put in your inkwell each turn?

One per turn, and it has to show the inkwell swirl around its cost. Some cards let you ink an extra card or put cards into the inkwell directly, and the card text always wins.

Does the first player draw a card in Lorcana?

No. The player who goes first skips the draw on the first turn of the game. After that, both players draw one card at the start of every turn.

Can you play three ink colours in Lorcana?

Not in Constructed, where the limit is two inks. In Sealed and Draft you can play as many inks as your opened packs give you.

Is there a hand size limit in Lorcana?

No. You can hold as many cards as you like, and you never discard down at the end of your turn.

Can I use an item the turn I play it?

Yes. Only characters dry, so an item's abilities work immediately, including ones that ask you to exert the item.

Which sets are legal in Lorcana Core Constructed?

Since 17 July 2026: Fabled, Whispers in the Well, Winterspell, Wilds Unknown and Attack of the Vine! (Sets 9 to 13). Hyperia City should join from its prerelease on 16 October 2026. Infinity Constructed allows every set, with one banned card.