Disney Lorcana’s co-designers Ryan Miller and Steve Warner hosted a Q&A session on Twitter and Instagram Friday to answer questions about the rules, provide clarification, and reiterate some of the details found in the recently-revealed rule book. If you don’t fancy scrolling through hundreds of tweets to find the answers, here’s an easy-to-read breakdown of everything we learned.
All About Shift
The biggest topic of the Q&A was Shift, a mechanic that allows you to play certain characters for a reduced cost if you already have a Glimmer on the board with the same name. The designers got so many questions about Shift that they eventually wrote a thread explaining the mechanics:
“You can play a shift character normally by paying its ink cost and putting it into play. You can choose to pay its shift cost to play it on top of one of your characters that has the same name. That character is completely covered by the shift character, so its abilities and numbers are no longer in effect. Any states the previous character had do carry over - If the old character was exerted, so is the shift character, and any damage the old character had remains on the shift character. Also, if the old character could have quested or challenged, the shift character can as well.”
Once you play a character with Shift on top of another character with the same name, the new card fully replaces the original. If the new card is banished, both cards go to the discard. If it is returned to your hand, both cards go to your hand. If it gets moved to your Inkwell as a consequence of Let It Go or some other action/ability, both cards move to the Inkwell and each one counts as a separate Ink. You can stack multiple Shift cards on top of each other as well, and the entire stack moves together.
Using the Shift ability is considered ‘playing’ a character, so any abilities that refer to something that happens when you “play a character” will trigger when you play a Shift card at the reduced cost.
If a card you have in play can Exert, and you replace it with a Shift character, the Shift character can Exert the turn it is played.
You can use items, actions, and abilities to reduce the cost of Shift. If you Exert a Lantern, the cost to Shift a card onto a character of the same name is reduced by one. This goes for any card that lets you pay less ink to “play” a card.
Stacking, Stacking, Stacking
The second biggest topic is the issue of stacking. This relates to items, like Lantern, but can also apply to abilities and actions. The designers answered this question a few different ways, but the short answer is yes, everything stacks. If you Exert two Lanterns, the next character you play will have its cost reduced by two. If you have two Mickey - Wayward Sorcerers on your board, you can play Magic Brooms for free. Multiple Moanas will let you ready your princesses multiple times.
Card Cost Reduction
An important rule to remember is that any cost reduction you gain does not change the actual cost of the card. This subject came up across a wide range of topics, especially Shift, Lantern, and Just In Time.
Here are a couple of examples to make the rule clear. If you play Stitch - Rock Star on top of Stitch - New Dog for four ink instead of six, you cannot play Just In Time to make Stitch - Rock Star free, because Stitch’s real cost is still six.
This goes for any cards you play after Exerting a Lantern. Elsa - Snow Queen costs two ink, but if you Exert a Lantern, you can play her for two. You cannot then Exert her to activate Stitch - Rock Star’s Adoring Fans ability, because Elsa’s actual cost is still three, and Stitch’s ability only works when you play cards that cost two or less.
Cruella Clarification
There were lots of questions about the way Cruella De Ville - Miserable As Usual’s ability You’ll Be Sorry works. The designers say that Cruella can only target characters that are in play. She cannot target herself, since she needs to be Banished for her ability to trigger, and if she targets a Shift character, the entire stack goes back to the player’s hand.
Exerted Cards
There were a few questions about how cards behave when they’re Exerted. As previously explained, any Shift card that gets played on top of an Exerted card will also be Exerted that turn. Additionally, Exerted cards that move to your inkwell will remain Exerted until the start of your next turn.
Minor Clarifications
- Cheshire Cat is not affected by Ward, since its ability doesn’t use the words “Choose” or “Chosen”
- Characters with zero strength can still Challenge
- There is no hand limit
- “Banished in a Challenge” refers to both the challenger and the challengee. If either card is banished in a challenge, the ability can take effect
- You choose what order to resolve abilities if they trigger simultaneously
- You can use a character’s ability the same turn you play them as long as it doesn’t require them to Exert.
- Aladdin - Heroic Outlaw’s ability Daring Exploit still triggers even if Aladdin is banished in the Challenge
- Neither player is allowed to look at cards in the Inkwell, but you can look through either discard pile
- You can have as many cards on the board with the same name as you want, but only four of each card in a deck
- If you have two Aurora - Dreaming Guardians on the board, their Wards will protect each other
- Characters can not sing the turn they are played
- Every card in the set also has a foil version
- When you play One Jump Ahead, no one looks at the card ever
- There is no limit on the number of cards that can go in your Inkwell
- Bodyguard only takes effect when the card is Exerted
- Lore cannot go below zero
The Unknown
There were quite a few questions asked that the designers could only supply vague or non-committal answers to. I’ll show their answers verbatim, and you can decide if they’re worth reading into.
- Board wipes?
- “There will be various cards to deal with various situations. You will have to wait and see.”
- More keywords?
- “Going to have to wait and see ;)”
- More card types?
- “There is always going to be chances for new card types in the future. We will always look at what we think is best for the game at the time”
- Take cards out of Inkwell?
- “Currently - No”
- More card draw?
- “There are many more cards in the set that may shed some light on this question.”
- How far ahead in planning are you?
- “We can’t say how far out we are currently.”
- Colorless cards?
- “We can’t really answer right now about Generic cards with no color”