Are you just as into the awesome new TCG game, Disney Lorcana, as I am? If so, we’ve got good news for you: the third expansion pack, Into the Inklands, is coming out soon.
If you’re new to Disney Lorcana, here’s what the game is and how it works: Disney Lorcana is Disney’s own trading card game that they released back in August 2023. It plays similarly to Magic the Gathering. Players start with seven cards, use 60-card decks, and use Ink, which is Lorcana‘s version of MTG’s Mana system. The card game features beloved Disney characters like Elsa, Mickey Mouse, Lilo and Stitch, and many more.
The official release date for Into the Inklands is March 8, 2024. According to Screen Rant, this expansion is the third card set in the series. It will come with all new special sets, accessories, and cards. Fans of the series DuckTales are in luck, as this expansion will also come with cards from the show, along with characters from TaleSpin. Several other properties, like 101 Dalmatians and Treasure Planet, are getting their own characters as well.
On top of the new characters, there will also be a myriad of card sleeves, playmats, and deck boxes to come with the expansion, allowing you to duel in style. Two new starter decks are coming, too, plus booster packs, Illumineer’s Trove content, and more.
Although the official release date for the expansion pack is in March, it seems like this TCG expansion set will actually appear early in various game shops and hobby stores. Disney is doing a special early access period starting February 23, 2024, so keep an eye out for that release in the near future.
Right now, you can buy Lorcana card sets and booster packs in brick-and-mortar stores like GameStop, Target, Wal-Mart, and your favorite local independent hobby store. You can also buy them from online retailers like Amazon.
Since the game is still relatively new, expect it to become more popular over time. Here’s hoping we get some Bluey cards in this game soon.
Altered, a novel new trading card game from startup Equinox Studio, will compete with Disney Lorcana, Magic: The Gatheringand Pokémon Trading Card Game when it launches on Aug. 26, 2024. Distributor Asmodee, which was purchased by Embracer Group in 2021 for $3.1 billion, announced Thursday that it will fund the game via a Kickstarter campaign. And while an early demo shown to Polygon at this year’s Gen Con proved that the mechanics are engaging, the unique technology layer and business model could change the entire TCG industry.
Anyone who has tried to pick up booster packs for Disney Lorcana lately is well aware that cards are extremely hard to come by, with unopened boxes selling for more than twice the manufacturer’s suggested retail price. But that scarcity is only partially organic. It has also been artificially inflated by speculators, who snatch up large quantities of product to flip for a profit, or to cellar in the hopes that they’ll rise in price over time. Entire websites, subreddits, and YouTube channels are dedicated to the hobby of profiting from, not playing with, these cards, and it’s clear to see how TCG trading has evolved from a side hustle into an elaborate get-rich-quick scheme — much the same way that day trading and, later, cryptocurrency have done the same.
Intelligence on the price of these trading cards, as well as the marketplace through which to trade these unique goods, has become so valuable that eBay acquired industry leader TCGPlayer in 2022 for nearly $300 million. (Its employees have since organized, and their union is negotiating its first contract.) eBay even offers a secure, environmentally-controlled warehouse to store the cards in. Like gold speculators, now Magic card traders need never take possession of the items that they own.
Meanwhile, my 13-year-old would just like to get that fourth Tinker Bell card to complete her Steel decks, thanks.
But what if a card game could box out marketplaces like eBay’s TCGPlayer entirely?
What Equinox is proposing with its design for Altered is that every card pulled from a pack is, in reality, a kind of proxy for the digital token which actually represents the value of the card. While developers assured Polygon in August that its technology does not involve blockchain tech, a kind of token is created and locked to a player’s digital account using a QR-style code. The value to consumers, Equinox says on its website, is that if they lose that card they can order a new one to be printed on demand and mailed to them anywhere in the world, even in a different language. But the unstated value for Equinox and Asmodee is absolute visibility, and control, of the marketplace for their cards.
From its website:
Download our app and scan an entire booster in seconds. Your cards are secure, and now you can enjoy a host of features that will enhance your Altered experience. Explore the story behind each card and delve into a deeply positive, inspiring, and inclusive universe. […]
Trade, sell, or buy from collectors worldwide using your smartphone. At any time, select cards from your collection and have them printed and delivered to your doorstep, brand new and in your preferred language. Print decks for yourself and your friends. Stolen or lost cards, proxies — the possibilities are endless.
The value to Asmodee of this partnership with Equinox is that by creating its own centralized, digital marketplace for its “cards” it is therefore able to profit from secondary and tertiary sales of those same cards. They will be able to achieve a profit both at the initial point of sale — when consumers purchase that blind pack off the store shelf — and also in perpetuity, each time the card moves from player to player.
As an example: Rapper Post Malone recently purchased The One Ring — a singular card created for Magic: The Gathering’s The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth — for $2 million. The owner of that card walked away with all of that money, less a hefty sum paid in taxes. Publisher Wizards of the Coast earned nothing. If it had been a card for Altered, publisher Equinox would have been able to profit from that transaction as well.
If Equinox is successful, it’s possible that other TCG publishers would be compelled to follow suit with similar digital platforms. How this will play out in independently owned gaming shops around the world, however, which depend on the sale of individual cards as a profit center, is currently unclear.
A Kickstarter campaign for the game will begin on Jan. 30, 2024. Equinox currently offers six full decks on its website to print and play at home for free.
Ever since Disney Lorcana launched on Aug. 18, curious friends and family have wasted no breath asking me their most pressing questions: What’s it like?How does it compare to Magic: The Gathering? To thePokémon Trading Card Game?And why the hell can’t I find any product in stores? It’s complicated, I say. The game is quite good, and compares favorably to both of the leading trading card games on the market. Product is hard to find because, well… people are very eager to try and turn a buck on collectibles these days. Also, spooling up the manufacturing capacity to compete with the two global revenue leaders in all of tabletop gaming is hard. Quite hard, in fact.
But the thing I end up talking about the most in these casual conversations is the fact that there are lots of gaps in the design of Disney Lorcana — holes that very clearly need to be filled in with new cards, new mechanics, even whole new decks to play with. With the release of Rise of the Floodborn, at least some of those holes are beginning to get filled in.
I’ve spent some time with its two new starter decks — both Amethyst and Steel as well as Amber and Sapphire — and they’re every bit the match for the three starter decks that came before. In fact, they fit into the metagame like a key fits into a lock… almost like they’d been designed that way.
My favorite of the two, Amethyst and Steel, is a hefty, brawling thing with a slower ramp-up than my previous favorite, and The First Chapter’s breakout star, Amber and Amethyst. Played right it’s almost as effective, so long as you have enough patience to pad out a few early rounds just dropping ink. But once you get Madam Mim and Merlin cards bouncing back and forth, earning lore left and right, it’s satisfying to then start taking a few big swings with Tiana, Celebrating Princess or Kronk, Junior Chipmunk. Keeping everyone protected with a few sets of Mouse Armor, it’s possible to cruise to a mid-game win nearly unopposed.
Image: Ravensburger and Disney
Image: Ravensburger and Disney
On the other hand, my 13-year-old daughter prefers Amber and Sapphire. Also a slow burn, this one’s a team-builder that accelerates surprisingly fast in the mid game thanks to Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs. The Dwarfs vary in cost from two to five ink, but the more of them you get on the table the more powerful they become individually when challenging. It’s a terrific little swarm of charming ruffians, buoyed by none other than Christopher Robin, Adventurer, capable of snagging four lore each round — so long as he has enough friends in play beside him.
Adding these two starter decks to the game, however, does more than just open up two new ways to play. Each 60-card deck in Disney Lorcana must be built from either one or two different colors, and these starter decks are split more or less right down the middle. Amethyst and Steel, for instance, includes 29 Amethyst and 31 Steel cards, respectively. With just a few booster packs — maybe even the ones that come bundled in with each starter deck — you could easily round each of those stacks into two 30-card half decks.
Paired with the other three decks sold at launch in August, those 10 half-decks give you 45 different combinations.
Are all 45 combinations of decks going to be as viable as the five starter decks that the game shipped with across its two launch sets? No. Absolutely not. There are gonna be some real bad matchups in there, to be sure. But until you mash ‘em up together and play them against another deck of cards, you won’t know. And, once you do know, you’ll have a better idea of how to augment those decks to make them better. At its best, the game is intuitive enough that you’ll discover unique maneuvers and combinations at a steady pace. It’s a starting point, and an entrée into the larger world of collecting and building decks for competition.
The bottom line is that Disney Lorcana is growing, just like Magic and Pokémon started growing more than three decades ago. Rise of the Floodborn includes more than 200 new cards in all, effectively doubling the number of cards available with which to build and play. It’s a great game, and its complexity is building at a speed that even its youngest fans can keep up with — and, at $16.99 a starter deck, at a price that many people can afford.
Just don’t you dare pay a penny more than $16.99 (plus taxes) for those starter decks.
Grab a deck or two, maybe all five starters if you can find them with the reprint launching around the same time, and get started learning the game. Quit worrying about the outlandish prices being paid for shiny, sexy cards online. Stop confusing these things for bitcoin. It’s a card game, one with a massive fandom and a healthy momentum behind it. It’s going to be a long journey, one that gets even better as it rolls along.
Disney Lorcana Rise of the Floodborn’s two new starter decks arrive at local retailers on Nov. 17, with a wider release on Dec. 1. They were reviewed using pre-release physical copies provided by Ravensburger. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
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