Ravensburger has lifted the lid on one of Disney Lorcana’s central mechanics, revealing that its cards will follow a similar colour-coded system to that of Magic: The Gathering.
Much like how Magic’s cards are spread across white, blue, black, red, and green “colours of magic”, Lorcana’s cards will be based in six different types of “ink”: Amber (yellow), Emerald (green), Sapphire (blue), Amethyst (purple), Ruby (red), and Steel (grey).
The names of the six inks were revealed by Ravensburger during the Lorcana panel at the Spiel 22 tabletop gaming convention in Essen, Germany. However, we still don’t know how they’ll interact with each other, or whether each ink has a different design philosophy underpinning it. The seven cards we’ve already seen for Lorcana cover all six inks. For instance, Stitch, Rock Star is an Amber card, while Elsa, Snow Queen is Amethyst.
The only two cards that share an ink that we’ve seen so far are Mickey Mouse, Brave Little Tailor and Maleficent, Monstrous Dragon – both of which are Ruby. Both of them also have the highest attack numbers of the seven cards, suggesting that, potentially, Ruby could be focused on aggressive and damage-dealing tactics. However, this is merely a guess based on just two cards.
Lorcana’s inks tie nicely into the overall theme of the game, which has players take on the role of “Illumineers” as they do battle using cards with storybook-like illustrations. Art and illustration seem to be a big part of Lorcana’s visual identity, so it’s likely that we’ll hear more about ink as we approach launch.
While Lorcana is clearly drawing inspiration from Magic, that sixth ink over Magic’s five colours actually adds an order of magnitude more space for the game to work in. Assuming you’re allowed to mix up colours, decks could have a whopping 64 different colour combinations over Magic’s 32.
Lorcana launches in Autumn 2023, meaning we’re still quite a way out from seeing more cards and having a better understanding of how its six inks function in its first set, The First Chapter.
