How to Build a Disney Lorcana TCG Deck – Complete Guide
How do you build a Disney Lorcana TCG deck?
Whether you are coming to Disney Lorcana from another TCG, or if this is your first ever trading card game, we’ve put together a guide for beginners that will help you build a competitive Lorcana deck.
*Updated March 19, 2024
Disney Lorcana Deck building – Card Types
Before you can get into building your deck, it’s helpful to know what components make up a deck. So let’s quickly cover the card types that are going to be in your deck.
Character cards
Right now, Lorcana decks are largely focused on characters cards. While new card types have cropped up to make deck building a more varied and intricate experience, most top decks still have a majority of characters in them.
There are a few reasons for this.
For starters, characters are the primary way to gain lore. They are more versatile than any other card out there, capable of questing, challenging, and even possessing solid abilities that make them an asset to your deck.
The majority of the cards in your deck will be character cards.
Character card stats and information
Characters have several important stats to pay attention to, as well as additional classifications and abilities.
Character cards can be Inkable or Uninkable just like any other card in Lorcana.
Each character will have a lore value, unless that character has the Reckless keyword ability.
Each character card has a strength stat and a willpower stat.
Characters will have additional classifications which can be seen just below their picture. Aurora, for example, is a Hero, Princess, and Floodborn. These classifications are important because they will often interact with other cards in the game.
Some character cards have the Shift ability, meaning they can shift onto another character with the same name for a lower cost than their Ink cost.
Characters have additional abilities that are either common in the game or unique to that character. Common abilities that run across many characters are called keyword abilities.
Actions
While the majority of the cards in your Lorcana deck will likely be characters, typically actions will be on the lower end percentage wise. Actions are cards that take effect when you play them, and are then discarded. The amount of ink to play varies based on the action card, and they are either Inkable or not Inkable
While many Actions have powerful effects, because they use up your Ink that could have been spent on getting characters into play and can’t be sung, decks tend to run very few action cards and tend to favor Songs instead which offer more versatility.
Songs
Songs are very powerful cards. Technically, they are also Actions, and can be played by paying their cost from your Inkwell. However, Songs work so differently in game play due to their versatility that they should really be considered their own category.
What really makes Songs special is that you can exert a character of the same cost to play them. This means you can avoid wasting Ink that you could use on playing characters. It’s this versatility that makes songs so popular.
Just like Actions, Songs are discarded after you play them.
Items
While some decks focus heavily on Items (like the Ruby/Sapphire Pawpsicle deck), most Lorcana decks will run very few Item cards. Item cards have more in common with character cards than with Songs or Actions as they stay in play each turn, and often have abilities that can be used more than once.
Locations
The latest card type to be revealed in Lorcana are Location cards. Locations offer a lot of versatility in use and have several unique characteristics that are worth mentioning. For the full rundown on how these cards work, read our Locations guide.
Like items, unless you are running a location specific deck, most decks will only run a few Locations to benefit from passive lore and/or special abilities.
Disney Lorcana Deck Ratio by Card Type
While every deck will be different, most decks run 60 cards (60 cards is the minimum and having more than 60 will impact your ability to draw the cards you want), and most will follow a similar ratio to the one below:
Characters: 46
Actions: 4
Songs: 8
Items: 2
Lorcana Deck Break Down by Card Type
Inkable Cards VS Non-Inkable Cards
Another vital aspect of deck building in Disney Lorcana are inkable cards vs non inkable cards. In fact, the ratio of inkable/non inkable is more important to pay attention to than the ratio of card types.
This is simply because ink is such a fundamental aspect of the game. Each turn you have only one opportunity to ink a card in your hand. And if you have too many non inkable cards in your deck, it will make it hard for you to gain momentum. You don’t want to miss a turn ink if you can help it.
That being said, really strong cards are often non inkable. This helps keep the balance of the game together, as you really can’t have too many of these cards in your deck.
What is a Good Ratio of Inkable to Non Inkable Cards in Your Disney Lorcana Deck?
A good ratio for inkable to non inkable is as below:
44 inkable cards.
16 non inkable cards.
If you can get away with less than 16, you’ll be able to get ink into your inkwell more consistently. But you can probably get away with 16 non inkable cards most of the time.
Ratio of Inkable to Non Inkable Cards
Paying Attention to Costs is Vital when Building Your Disney Lorcana Deck
One last ratio you are going to need to pay attention to is the ratio of low cost to high cost cards in your deck.
As the pace of the game is dictated by the amount of ink in your inkwell, and you can only add one ink per turn, you need a healthy ratio of lower cost coards to higher cost cards.
Lower cost cards can be considered as cards with a cost of 1-3, middle card costs can be considered 4-6, and high cost cards are anything 7 or above.
This is a little tricky to set a general rule for, because decks with different strategies are going to have varying ratios. But as a general rule, you will want a set number of cards with costs of 4 and below vs 5 and higher. Here’s a general ratio you can follow
Rough Breakdown of Cards by Cost
We put this at about a 50/50 split as its important to have low cost cards for early game, and high cost cards for late game. However, see our list of best Disney Lorcana decks for more detailed and specific lists.
How to Build a Disney Lorcana Deck – Steps to Success
With those basics covered, lets get into the steps to building your own, competitive Lorcana deck.
#1 Pick up a starter deck and upgrade it
The starter decks are quite good for getting started. We picked up two different starter decks that we loved. You’ll need to upgrade your starter decks with additional cards. However, given the Lorcana shortage, getting those cards via sealed products like the Illumineer’s Trove is going to be quite costly.
It will save you time and money to pick up singles on Ebay or TCGplayer (the two places we use for singles).
#2 Use Dreamborn.ink to build your dream deck
Before you drop a bunch of money on expensive Disney Lorcana cards, leverage dreamborn.ink to build your dream deck, export your list, and use that to purchase the cards you need to upgrade your starter deck.
#3 Download Pixelborn and test out your deck
It’s very difficult to correctly test your Lorcana deck only in person. If you build your deck on dreamborn.ink, however, you can export that and then use your deck in Pixelborn.
Pixelborn is quite difficult to explore, but you can see our article on our experience using it to play and test decks.
#4 Play at your local league and make changes as you go
While playing card games online is great, as you play competitions in person, you’ll notice even more things that work and don’t work.
Deck Building Rules and Selecting Your Ink
Lastly, let’s look at a few deck building rules, and discuss the importance of Ink types, their differences, and which are best for your deck.
Lorcana Deck Building Rules
Decks must contain a minimum of 60 cards, but can have more.
You cannot have more than 4 copies of one card with the same name.
This only applies to cards with the exact same name. For example, you can have four Mickey Mouse – Detective cards and four Mickey Mouse – Wayward Sorcerer because they are not the exact same card.
Decks cannot have more than two ink types.
How to Select the Right Ink Types for Your Deck
While you could theoretically build a deck with just one single color, it’s not advisable to do so. The different ink types come with vastly different strengths and weaknesses, and the optimal strategies only manifest when combined together.
As you will see from your own games, combining different ink colors with one another will create vastly different playing experiences, and decks with greatly different strengths and weaknesses.
How do you pick the right ink for your deck?
There’s two ways you could do this.
a). You read every single card, test every single color combination, and every single card set (that would probably take you forever) or
b). You see what’s working from the data, and base your deck on that.
Luckily for you, we’ve put a list together of the best Ink combinations right now in Disney Lorcana. Choose one of these proven ink combinations and build from there!
