“In a spitting match nobody spits like Gaston.”
Introduction and Gameplay
Disney Lorcana is a competitive trading card game designed by Ryan Miller and Steve Warner, and published by Ravensburger. It plays 2 to 6, with games lasting about 30 minutes.
Disney Lorcana is set in the fantastical Walt Disney universe. Players will take on the role of a powerful Illumineer to summon characters, songs, and items from the treasury of Disney stories. During each turn, players can generate resources, play characters, challenge an opponent, or quest for Lore (points). The first player to achieve 20 lore wins the game!
Seasoned TCG players will recognize the basics: card cost, character Strength (attack), Willpower (defense), and keywords like Rush (character can challenge/attack on the same turn they are summoned) and Evasive (character can only be challenged by other Evasive characters).
After several plays of Lorcana during its first week of release, and my own experience with trading card games, I have found Lorcana gameplay to be similar to KeyForge (another racing game with similar decisions), and its resource system reminds me of Marvel Champions. Each turn introduces interesting choices:
- Since cards themselves are the resources needed to play more cards, the choice to Ink a pretty-good card is difficult
- Characters can either quest for lore or challenge each turn (among other actions for some cards), and doing either makes that character susceptible to challenge from an opponent.
As a Disney fan, I enjoyed the setting and clever thematic ties to movies, songs, heroes, and villains I enjoy. The rules were easy to learn, and I can see some of where the complexity will increase over time as the game expands.
Visual Accessibility
Historically, trading card games have solid visual accessibility for colorblind and low-vision gamers. From Magic: The Gathering to Pokemon and beyond, the primary types of cards are denoted by both color and symbol, and the most important information is clearly indicated. Disney Lorcana follows this approach, as shown below.
Low Vision Assessment. Card cost (top-left), Strength (middle-right), and Willpower (middle-far-right) are large numbers with high contrast. Character names are also in large text, and the primary text is big enough and black, providing good contrast with the light-colored background. The lore icons (right side, near the bottom) are clear and high-contrast, too.
However, the Classifications (text in the middle – for Aurora these include Floodborn, Hero, and Princess) are smaller and more difficult to read on the table. This is especially true when viewing opponents’ cards that are further away and upside-down or sideways.
Color Vision Assessment. The Ink Type denotes the color of each card. Some (Amber and Sapphire) are easier for me to distinguish than others. Ruby/Emerald can trick my eyes from time to time, and Amethyst/Steel is an even bigger issue for me.
Card colors are double-coded with icons (middle-left of card), which is helpful, but this icon is very small. It has not created an hurdle during gameplay, as there are no current mechanisms requiring color identification. But while sorting cards and constructing decks, I’ve had trouble putting colors in the correct piles due to the confusion I noted above.
Rarity and Collector Information. As expected, collector information (card number, set) is in microscopic font in the bottom-left corner of the card, which for many players and collectors will require assistance. Card rarity (bottom-middle) is double-coded by symbol and color, which is great!
Foiled Again. To add excitement to booster packs and encourage collectability, many TCGs add alternative versions of cards with shiny/holographic/foil art elements. While fun to see in a pack, these cards are sometimes more difficult to play with.
Each Lorcana booster pack includes one foil card, which can be a card of any of the rarities shown above (or an unlisted Enchanted super-super-duper-rare version).
I had trouble seeing the Willpower number on my opponent’s foil character cards. See in the image below that Maleficent is easy to read, while the Mickey Mouse Willpower number is basically invisible.
Conclusion
I’ve had a lot of fun during the early days of Lorcana’s release, and Ravensburger did a nice job putting a lot of information on cards while maintaining aesthetics and visual accessibility for colorblind and low-vision players. Foil cards are a problematic exception during gameplay, and the Ink Types might trip up some gamers during deck construction and card organization.
Image Credits: Ravensburger, Brian Chandler
Colorblind Games 