We’re just about to get a brand-new set of Lorcana and the most fun way to get ahold of new cards is through a Draft. Here are some tips for winning a Disney Lorcana Draft.
Disney Lorcana doesn’t need too much of an elevator pitch to sell it to new TCG players thanks to its popular IP and stellar art. Fortunately, underneath the hood is a mechanically tight experience that more seasoned card game veterans can also enjoy.
It began with an impressive showing during the introductory First Chapter and has followed that up with two expansions that have resulted in a varied and healthy meta. Now that Usula’s Return – Lorcana’s fourth set – is on the horizon, the hunt for new Lorcana cards is about to begin all over again.
One of my favorite ways to get ahold of new cards in any game is by competing in the Draft format. Below I’ll explain how a Lorcana Draft works as well as the methods I used to win the most recent Lorcana Draft I participated in.
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Disney Lorcana Draft rules
Most major TCGs have rules for a Draft format although they will vary from game to game. Lorcana is no different and we’ve put together a quick explainer of the rules below.
In a Lorcana Draft, every player is given four booster packs of 12 cards and split off into pods depending on the number of players in attendance. Once separated, Players will open their first pack and choose one card from the pack.
Once you choose a card, you pass the remaining cards to the player on your left as you are passed the player on your right’s remaining cards. You will repeat the process of selecting one card and passing on the rest until the pack is exhausted.
At this point, every player opens their second pack and repeats the process with the caveat that this time, you pass your remaining cards to the right. This goes on until all four booster packs have been opened and every player has 48 cards in total.
From these 48 cards, each player constructs a deck of 40 cards to use in a series of 50-minute best-of-three rounds. To make things easier, the usual deckbuilding rules of Lorcana that only allow two colors of Ink in a deck don’t apply, so you can use cards from all six Ink colors in your Draft deck.
The best part about a Lorcana Draft is that you get to keep all of the cards you pick including the eight that don’t make it into your final deck. Playing with a Draft deck can also be interesting because having access to six types of Ink rather than two allows for combos that can’t be used in organized play.
On top of that, the friendly local game stores that host Drafts usually offer prizes in the form of more booster packs. This means that strategizing and playing well can net you even more new cards as well as the possibility of pulling a super valuable Enchanted card.
Disney Lorcana Draft tips: Card selection
Drafts are usually limited to a single set of Lorcana cards so there may be different considerations for each expansion. In saying that, there are some general rules of thumb regarding selection during a draft that should serve you very well.
Of course, there are factors to consider that might have you ignoring some of these tips. If you’re just hoping to pick cards for a constructed deck you want to build, that’s perfectly okay. If by some insane stroke of luck, one of the packs you open has an Enchanted card, you should definitely pick it no matter what because you can sell them for a mint.
With those caveats out of the way, these are the considerations I kept in mind when picking cards for my winning Lorcana Draft deck. By winning at the event, I was able to pick up even more booster packs and pull a bunch of cards I missed out on.
Prioritize Evasive cards
Ordinarily, when you first open a pack, you’ll want to pick the biggest threat in the pack. These are usually Characters with a high Ink cost that quest for multiple lore. They’ll also usually have handy effects that reward you for playing them, Questing with them, or Challenging.
You should definitely pick up some of these cards so that you’re not overwhelmed in the late game but your mileage with them can vary. You have to draw them to play them and the game needs to run long enough for you to get them out.
In my own winning run, I found that Lorcana Characters with the Evasive keyword were far more valuable. In Lorcana, only Characters with the Evasive keyword can challenge and defeat other Evasive Characters meaning a large number of characters have no way to deal with them.
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In a limited pool, there will only be so many Evasive cards so every one you select is another your opponents can’t. My final deck had 11 Evasive Characters and most of my opponents had between two and four.
In all my games, once I had taken care of the Evasive cards my opponents were lucky enough to draw, they had almost no answers for mine. I was able to Quest and rapidly gain Lore with no threats. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Evasive cards almost singlehandedly won me this Lorcana Draft.
Watch your curves
While those high-cost threats I mentioned earlier can be handy, it’s far more useful to have a number of low-cost cards that you can play quickly. Some players will overlook Lorcana cards that only cost a single Ink because of their low stats and lore potential.
They’re usually left until last in the early rounds because players want strong cards that seem threatening. In the later rounds, they do become more of a priority. Making sure that you have a good number of them before everyone starts looking for them means you’ll have more opportunities to get a card in play during your first turn.
I had a total of four cards in my deck that cost more than four Ink, the remainder were all relatively cheap allowing me to play multiple per turn in the late game, and field Characters early. This is what’s referred to as a low-cost curve.
The second curve you’ll want to look at is Lore. If you have a number of good Characters with useful abilities, but they only Quest for a single Lore, you can be outpaced by your opponents. Look back at your cards and make sure that you have a number of cards that Quest for two Lore or more.
Card draw and removal
When you have acquired enough cards with Evasion or none are available, look at Characters or Actions that have useful abilities. The most useful are cards that allow you to draw more cards or those that deal direct damage to your opponent’s Characters.
Running out of cards in your hands can be crippling and while you can rely on playing as you draw if your deck is constructed tightly enough, it’s not ideal. Having Characters, Actions or Items that allow you to keep filling your hand can be the difference between winning and losing.
Being able to deal direct damage to Characters can ensure that you don’t have to Challenge as often. This means your Characters are free to Quest and you can accumulate Lore quicker.
Aside from card draw and removal, picking Characters with existing abilities like making your opponent discard a card is always better than their vanilla counterparts. The pool of Songs, Actions, and Items will be relatively thin but if you have enough Characters with their own abilities, they can act as Actions themselves.
Lorcana Draft Strategy
If you’ve followed the above tips, you should have a Lorcana Draft deck filled with relatively low-cost Evasive Characters, three or four big threats, and a number of versatile abilities. So, how do you pilot it?
Because most players won’t be able to craft heavily synergized decks that excel at a particular playstyle, you should be hard to stop. The general idea is to flood the board with Characters, most of which are hopefully Evasive.
Quest as early and often as you can because Lore is the only thing that will win you the game. Keep an eye on your opponent’s field and don’t be afraid to Challenge when they get more than two characters out. You’ll be able to replace any you lose fairly quickly to keep the pressure up.
Because many of your Characters are evasive, they’ll be forced to deal with any other Characters of yours they can in an effort to reduce your Lore-per-turn. While they’re busy with that and not able to Quest, you’ll run away with the game.
Following this outline only lost me one game of the nine that I participated in and I won every best-of-three round. Like all TCGs and especially Drafts, there is an element of luck involved but hopefully, these tips on how to win a Lorcana Draft will put the odds a little more in your favor.
Ursula’s Return releases on May 17, 2024, and there are sure to be a bunch of Draft events in your area. Give the tips in this guide a go and see how many booster packs you can get ahold of.
