The upcoming Disney Lorcana TCG has been very, very, gradually releasing new card spoilers and rules hints, without ever giving us a clear idea of how the game will play. From what we’ve seen so far, it’s looking a lot like a Disney-fied version of Magic: The Gathering. Further strengthening that assumption, the Disney Lorcana Twitter account has started sharing its own version of the MTG colour pie – the specific strategies each colour (or ‘ink’) in the game tends to use.
So far, we’ve only seen an explanation of two different Ink types, but we know there are six in total in the game: Amber, Amethyst, Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald, and Steel. According to the official Lorcana Twitter account, Amber cards “protect their friends at all costs”, while Steel cards “rely on brute force to forge ahead”.
These are cryptic hints, but we can unpack them a bit further if we look at the current Disney Lorcana cards that have been revealed in these ink colours. For instance, in Steel we have Gantu, who stops characters with cost 2 or less from challenging your characters, and Captain Hook, who gets more powerful when challenging.
Both these abilities revolve around challenging, presumably the game’s version of combat, so we can see that Steel ink’s ‘brute force’ is all about strong creatures that do well in a scrap. Gantu’s ability is particularly interesting, since it’s a more controlling effect, hating on small characters.
We’ve less to go on with Amber, but we do at least have one fully-revealed card: Stitch, Rock Star. This Amber card lets you exert characters that cost 2 or less when you play them to draw more cards. Then we’ve got a half-obscured spoiler of Hades, King of Olympus. We can’t really see the full effect here, but it seems to get better stats based on how many other villains you control. So Amber seems to have effects that are all about what other characters you have around.
Notably, both these cards have the ability Shift, to create a new variant a bit like MTG’s Mutate or the Pokemon TCG’s evolution mechanic. It’s too early to speculate if this is something that’s specific to Amber, but it seems notable that another costumed character, the Ruby card Mickey Brave Little Tailor (which recently sold for $4000) didn’t have this effect.
Interestingly, all of these Lorcana cards seem like they’d fit into different facets one MTG color: White. You’ve got Gantu’s prison effect (see Reverence), Hook’s Bushido type ability, and Stitch which is a bit like Welcoming Vampire. Hades, we can’t fully judge, but getting more power and toughness for other creatures is also very White (see Geist-Honored Monk.)
Check out our Disney Lorcana release date guide for all the latest news on the set.