One thing that keeps coming up with Disney Lorcana is how it’s been difficult to get into in-person games mostly due to the lack of sealed product availability and subsequent scalping of sealed product.
My wife and I were discussing ways to teach people who were new or unfamiliar with TCGs (trading card games) how to play Disney Lorcana, as a way of getting them more interested in gaming in general, but TCGs specifically. Disney Lorcana, she posited, was a great game because of the immediately recognizable characters and reasonably low learning curve.
But that obviously wouldn’t matter if you couldn’t procure cards to play with.
Lots of players on the Disney Lorcana subreddit have suggested formats which only allow commons and uncommons (colloquially this is called “Poorcana,” but this will be the last time you hear me refer to it in this way, because I don’t like the social implications and negative connotations of that kind of language. More on this on the ABOUT DAVE page. It’s not even that great of a pun). Other players have suggested porting something like Magic’s COMMANDER, a Magic: the Gathering format where you play with 100 cards and no more than one copy of any card, and a specific, “legendary” character who serves as a deck-building guide by dictating the colors you can and can’t play, to Lorcana. I don’t love that idea for lots of reasons, chief among them being that all Lorcana characters are “unique” and no Lorcana characters are multi-colored, meaning that efforts to copy that format to this game are a bit ham-fisted or, at least to me, feel forced.
The chat with my wife and these alternative formats led me to think of a living, budget-friendly, teaching-friendly format of Lorcana that was accessible, allowed for 2 or 3 players (but is, theoretically, expandable), and could be the kind of thing you keep in a long box for conventions or big events to let people who want to play, but don’t have cards the ability to do so (without risking damage to your Enchanted Elsa – Spirit of Winters).
Enter: Disney Lorcana MASHUP (™ and Patent Pending)
I know you’re excited to learn how it works, and we’ll get there in just a second, but first, let me tell you what you’ll need:
- 180 standard sized card sleeves (I recommend Dragon Shields, but any will do) – but this is important, make sure they are of the same color.
- 5 Dividers. These can be made of cardboard or index cards or scrap paper, but TCGPlayer does sell these, here for relatively inexpensive.
- A 200ct cardboard storage box. Any box will work if it will hold ≈ 200 cards, but this one is conveniently exactly what I’m looking for.
- And some cards…(coming soon, I promise).
So here’s how Disney Lorcana ✨ Mashup works:
- Your box contains SIX single-color, thirty-card decks called an inkmash.
- Before gameplay begins, each player starting with the winner of a coin toss or die roll, chooses a single color from Amber, Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, or Steel.
- After the final player chooses their first color, that player chooses their second color from the remaining 3 or 4 inkmashes (if you have 2 players, there will be 4 inkmashes remaining, and with 3 players there will be 2 inkmashes remaining).
- Once each player has selected two inkmashes, they shuffle their inkmashes together, and play a few games of Lorcana.
- After you finish playing however many games you’d like, you can easily separate the cards back into their respective inkmashes by color. If you play again, the player who picked 2nd in a 2-player Mashup, or 3rd in a 3-player Mashup picks first.
The great thing about Disney Lorcana Mashup, is that it’s inexpensive, gives a reasonable taste of what each color of ink excels at (in Magic, this is called “color identity”), and let’s players mentally think up combos and synergies that could exist between the cards they are playing and the cards in the various inkmashes. As a bonus – you can build your inkmashes however you want to, and you can swap cards in and out when new sets release. The only real rule to deck construction is that inkmashes must be thirty cards, and must be one-color each.
Because I wanted to keep these reasonably budget-friendly, I’ve worked up a base-list for each inkmash, but you can build these however to suit your preferences and Disney Lorcana play style. The only thing I’ve really tried to do here is limit expensive bombs, but cards at rarity above common and uncommon are perfectly acceptable, you just don’t want to make one inkmash too lopsided.
Anyway, onto the deck lists!
MASHUP ✨ AMBER (click to add this entire list to your cart on TCGPlayer.com)
2 Hades – Lord of the Underworld
1 Prince Phillip – Dragonslayer
2 Goofy – Musketeer
2 Sebastian – Court Composer
1 Lefou – Bumbler
2 Maximus – Palace Horse
3 Simba – Protective Cub
1 You Have Forgotten Me
3 Moana – Of Motunui
2 Be Our Guest
3 Cinderella – Gentle and Kind
4 Minnie Mouse – Beloved Princess
1 Ariel – On Human Legs
2 Mickey Mouse – True Friend
1 Lantern
MASHUP ✨ AMETHYST (click to add this entire list to your cart on TCGPlayer.com)
2 Maleficent – Sorceress
1 Dr. Facilier – Agent Provocateur
2 Rafiki – Mysterious Sage
1 Flotsam – Ursula’s Spy
1 Reflection
3 Friends On The Other Side
2 Elsa – Snow Queen
3 Olaf – Friendly Snowman
2 Befuddle
2 Elsa – Queen Regent
2 Tinker Bell – Peter Pan’s Ally
1 Archimedes – Highly Educated Owl
1 Magic Broom – Bucket Brigade
1 Jetsam – Ursula’s Spy
3 Anna – Heir to Arendelle
1 Jafar – Keeper of Secrets
1 Marshmallow – Persistent Guardian
1 Yzma – Alchemist
MASHUP ✨ EMERALD (click to add this entire list to your cart on TCGPlayer.com)
3 Megara – Pulling the Strings
1 Genie – Powers Unleashed
2 Mad Hatter – Gracious Host
1 Steal from the Rich
1 Genie – On the Job
2 Duke of Weselton – Opportunistic Official
2 Mother Knows Best
2 Aladdin – Prince Ali
3 Mickey Mouse – Steamboat Pilot
3 Genie – The Ever Impressive
1 Mickey Mouse – Artful Rogue
2 Cheshire Cat – Not All There
2 Tinker Bell – Most Helpful
2 Jasper – Common Crook
3 Peter Pan – Never Landing
MASHUP ✨ RUBY (click to add this entire list to your cart on TCGPlayer.com)
1 Moana – Chosen by the Ocean
3 Aladdin – Street Rat
2 Minnie Mouse – Always Classy
1 Tigger – Wonderful Thing
1 Aladdin – Heroic Outlaw
2 Abu – Mischievous Monkey
1 Stitch – Abomination
2 Elsa – Ice Surfer
2 Donald Duck – Boisterous Fowl
2 Mulan – Imperial Soldier
2 Pongo – Ol’ Rascal
2 Dragon Fire
1 Shield of Virtue
1 Scar – Shameless Firebrand
1 Goofy – Daredevil
1 Tangle
1 Scar – Fiery Usurper
3 Rapunzel – Letting Down Her Hair
1 Gaston – Arrogant Hunter
MASHUP ✨ SAPPHIRE (click to add this entire list to your cart on TCGPlayer.com)
2 Aurora – Dreaming Guardian
1 Aurora – Briar Rose
1 Jasmine – Queen of Agrabah
3 Jasmine – Disguised
1 Scar – Mastermind
1 One Jump Ahead
1 Belle – Inventive Engineer
3 Aurora – Regal Princess
1 Maleficent – Uninvited
3 Develop Your Brain
1 Maleficent – Sinister Visitor
1 Gramma Tala – Storyteller
2 Philoctetes – Trainer of Heroes
1 Eye of the Fates
2 Flounder – Voice of Reason
2 Donald Duck – Strutting His Stuff
1 Coconut Basket
1 Chief Tui – Respected Leader
1 Mickey Mouse – Detective
1 Triton – The Sea King
MASHUP ✨ STEEL (click to add this entire list to your cart on TCGPlayer.com)
2 Musketeer Tabard
2 Mickey Mouse – Musketeer
1 Fire The Cannons!
2 Captain Hook – Forceful Duelist
2 Beast – Hardheaded
1 Tinker Bell – Tiny Tactician
2 Beast’s Mirror
2 Goons – Maleficent’s Underlings
2 Smash
1 Gantu – Galactic Federation Captain
2 Donald Duck – Musketeer
1 Simba – Future King
2 Prince Eric – Dashing and Brave
1 Cerberus – Three-headed Dog
3 Aladdin – Cornered Swordsman
3 Hercules – True Hero
1 Simba – Rightful Heir
You can buy all 6 of these inkmashes for about $85, depending on changes you choose to make or how budget-friendly you want your box to be. I think if you played this only included commons and uncommons, or cards “under $2” or something, you could put these together much less expensively. Some other things to keep in mind when putting together an inkmash:
- Don’t go overboard on uninkable cards.
- Try to think of themes (e.g. in this batch, across Amber/Steel we have bodyguards/Musketeers. In Emerald/Ruby, there’s evasives…) so that when someone is deciding what to use, they can better understand the characteristics of the color or the resulting mashup.
- Don’t make bulleted lists with less than three bullets, lest you have to add in some nonsense like this.