Disney Lorcana
Disney Lorcana is a race to 20 lore. You build ink into a pool, play characters, and send them questing while your opponent tries to do the same. This page covers the rules a new player needs, as of September 2026.
You win by reaching 20 lore before your opponent does. Everyone starts at 0, and most lore comes from sending characters on quests. You also spend your turns building up ink, playing cards, and challenging the characters your opponent uses to quest.
This page follows the Comprehensive Rules, version 2.0.1 (February 2026). If a ruling matters at an event, Ravensburger's current rules document decides it.
Each player needs a deck of at least 60 cards, with no more than 4 copies of a card by full name and cards from no more than two inks. The six inks are Amber, Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire and Steel, and the Lorcana deck-building guide covers how to choose them. You also need a way to keep lore: a dial, dice, pen and paper, or one of the options on the lore counter page.
The player going first skips the draw on their first turn. Going first means inking and questing first, so the missing card is what evens it out.
Lorcana has four card types. Every card has an ink cost in its top left corner, and cards that can go into the inkwell have the inkwell symbol around that cost. How to read a Lorcana card shows where each number is printed.
Characters are usually the largest share of a deck, because they are the cards that quest for lore.
A turn has a beginning, a main phase and an end. Your beginning of turn is automatic: you ready all your exerted cards and inkwell cards (turn them upright), then you gain lore from your locations, and then you draw a card, apart from the first player's first turn. After that you choose what to do, in any order and as many times as you can afford:
When you have nothing left you want to do, you pass the turn. Your inkwell readies at the start of your next turn, so ink you spent this turn is available again.
A character you play is drying until your next turn starts. While it dries, it can't quest, challenge, or use an ability that exerts it. This is the main reason a character you play now does its work next turn.
Questing exerts a dry, ready character, and you gain lore equal to its lore value. The character stays exerted (turned sideways) until your next turn, and an exerted character can be challenged.
Challenging is how you remove those characters. Exert one of your ready, dry characters and choose an opposing character that is already exerted. Each deals damage to the other equal to its Strength. A character with damage equal to or above its Willpower is banished and goes to its owner's discard pile. Damage stays on a character until it leaves play or an effect removes it, so a character can survive one challenge and not the next. A character can also challenge an opposing location, which is never exerted and can be challenged on any of your turns. Locations have no Strength, so they deal no damage back, and a location with damage equal to its Willpower is banished too.
Questing and challenging both exert the character, so without an effect that readies it, a character does one or the other each turn. Most turns come down to that choice for each character: take the lore now, or banish the character your opponent was going to quest with.
The first player to 20 lore wins immediately, and a player loses if they concede. Under the current rules, a player whose own turn ends with no cards in their deck also loses, so drawing your last card is not a loss by itself. The Lorcana lore counter page covers lore, all three endings and how to keep count in more detail, including how to track a game in TurnZero HQ.
The two constructed formats share the deck rules above. Core Constructed only allows recent sets, and older sets rotate out once a year. As of September 2026, sets 1 to 8 are not Core-legal, so Core uses set 9 (Fabled) onward. Infinity has no set rotation and allows cards from every set, subject to a banned list. Ravensburger runs both, so check its current rules for the format your event uses.
The newest set is Hyperia City (set 14), with its prerelease on October 16 and wide release on October 23, 2026. It adds a new mechanic called ink drops.
Once you know how a turn works, you need a deck. The Lorcana deck-building guide walks through it, and the public deck gallery shows what other players have published. If you're also collecting, the Disney Lorcana hub lists everything TurnZero HQ does for the game. If you'd like to know what a card in your binder is worth, here's how Lorcana card value works.
Two players each bring a deck of at least 60 cards in no more than two inks. You take turns playing characters, actions, items and locations, spending ink from your inkwell, and questing with characters to gain lore. The first player to reach 20 lore wins.
At least 60, with no more than 4 copies of a card by full name and no more than two inks. That is the rule Core Constructed and Infinity share, and it's what TurnZero HQ's Deck Lab checks a Lorcana deck against.
The player who goes first skips the draw on their first turn. Everyone else draws at the start of each of their turns, including their first.
The inkwell is your pool of ink. Once per turn you can show a card with the inkwell symbol from your hand and put it into your inkwell facedown. Each card there gives you 1 ink to spend every turn. Cards without the symbol can't go in, and a card in the inkwell can't be played later.
Core Constructed only allows cards from recent sets, and older sets rotate out. As of September 2026 that means sets 9 (Fabled) onward, and sets 1 to 8 are not Core-legal. Infinity has no set rotation and allows cards from every set, apart from banned cards. Check Ravensburger's current rules and banned lists before a tournament.
Yes. Start a Lorcana gathering, seat the players with their decks, and each seat gets a lore number that counts up from 0 and ends the game at 20. It records the result in the gathering's history. It doesn't run the cards for you, and it isn't a place to play Lorcana online.
Seat the table, pick decks, and count lore to 20 with undo and a saved result. Free on iPhone, Android and the web.
Create Free AccountDisney Lorcana card names and images are the property of Disney and Ravensburger and their respective owners. ©Disney. TurnZero HQ is not affiliated with, sponsored, or endorsed by Disney or Ravensburger. Card data and prices come from Lorcast, which republishes TCGplayer market prices.