Challenging is the core of Disney Lorcana. It’s your primary way of interacting with your opponent and throwing a wrench in their gameplan. However, it’s also very risky, as you’re putting your own characters on the line to try and hurt your opponent’s chances of winning.
Fortunately, the Challenger keyword is here to help. While it won’t guarantee you’ll come out of a challenge on top, it allows your characters to hit harder than anticipated, provided you play them aggressively. Here is everything you need to know about Challengers.
What Is Challenger?
Challenger is a keyword exclusively found on character cards. It’s one of the simplest keywords to understand: whenever that character challenges, it gets a buff to its Strength. Strength determines how much damage that character deals, effectively letting it punch above its weight.
The one caveat of Challenger is that the character must be the one doing the challenging. If it is being challenged, it won’t gain the buff. As a result, characters with challenger are most effective when they’re being used aggressively, rather than sat in the back, quietly picking up lore.
The buff each character gets is different, and specified on the card. For example, Captain Hook, Forceful Duelist has Challenger +2, and so will gain +2 to his Strength when he attacks. Meanwhile, Tinker Bell, Peter Pan’s Ally gives Challenger +1 to all Peter Pan characters you control, letting them buff by +1.
How To Use Challenger
As mentioned, Challenger is only effective when you’re playing aggressively, as it only triggers when you’re on the attack. Challengers are meant to be used to chip away at your opponent’s characters, so don’t be afraid to get in there and hit as much as you can with them.
Challenger stacks with other buffs for power. For instance, if you have a character with Support quests, you can give that buff to a character with Challenger, and then they’ll still gain their own Challenger buff when they move in.
Multiple instances of Challenger will stack. The only way for this to happen in The First Chapter is to control multiple copies of Tinker Bell, Peter Pan’s Ally at a time, but if you do, Peter Pan will get a buff equal to the combined total of those Challenger triggers (meaning two Tinker Bells would equal +2 to Strength.)