Disney Lorcana: Gateway – The First Taste is so Sweet

Some people jump in fright when you yell “Boo!” at them. Parents – or perhaps more accurately, parents’ wallets, jump in fright when you say things like “Pokémon cards!”. But for me, ever since its announcement in 2022, it was Lorcana that truly made my moneybags quake.

I was a Magic: The Gathering player back in high school, and the prospect of a game like Magic coming along with the Disney properties attached was almost too much to bear. I tore myself away from CCGs and put that dangerously delicious and collectible world behind me twenty years ago. The idea of entering it again was terrifying. That is, until the staff at Ravensburger put Disney Lorcana: Gateway into my hands late last year.

Lorcana: Gateway is the casual fan’s entry into the collectible card game that is Ravensburger’s Disney: Lorcana.

Starting with two ordered decks of 30 cards, players will race to gather 20 Lore and win the game. Lorcana is a two-player duel and a game takes between 15-60 minutes to play.

Setup

Lorcana: Gateway comes with a board to help players learn how to organize their cards. Set this up in the middle of the table with the character standees on the 0 space of the Lore track. Put the damage counters nearby and place the two decks on their respective spots on the board.

Draw seven cards and begin. Page 3 of the rulebook tells each player exactly what cards they should have in that first starting hand.

Gameplay

As an introductory game, Lorcana: Gateway‘s initial decks have very few special powers, but it’s still important to read each card to understand what they do. In this first game, all cards will be either Characters or Actions.

• Characters are well-known characters from Disney movies or shows. Characters have Strength (attack) and Willpower (defense) and can be used to quest for Lore. Players can find a full description of character cards on page 5 of the rulebook.
• Actions are one-time use cards that affect other things in the play area in some way. Discard them after using.

All cards have a value on the top left that is their cost. Players need to expend ink from their ink well to play these cards. Some cards have an extra swirl around their cost which indicates they can be played face-down into the inkwell area to use as ink for the rest of the game.

A Player’s Turn

On a players turn they first Ready any exerted cards from their play area and inkwell by turning them upright (untapping). Then, they Draw a card. Next they may Play one card face-down into their inkwell – if it has the swirl around the cost. Finally, players can Act. When Acting, players may:

• Play any number of cards from their hand, expending ink from their inkwell as needed to do so.
• Exert characters to quest for Lore or challenge their opponent’s exerted Characters.

Questing for Lore

The goal of a game of Lorcana is to be the first to obtain 20 Lore. Players do this by sending their Characters on quests for Lore. They do this by exerting their Character and turning it sideways. Then they gain Lore equal to the Lore icon(s) on the Character card, plus any special abilities it may have.

Challenging a Character

If an opponent’s Character is exerted (usually from questing), a player may Challenge it with one of their Characters. When this happens, each Character deals damage equal to their strength to the other Character. If either Character takes enough damage to overwhelm their willpower, they are banished and must be discarded.

Card Abilities

Some Characters have abilities that players may use on their turn only. These abilities do all sorts of things like gaining Lore, removing damage, or modifying the strength or willpower of Characters in the play area.

Play until someone reaches 20 Lore, winning the game!

Extra Abilities

In each Lorcana: Gateway box are four extra packs of cards. By completing challenges in the Guidebook, players can open these additional packs and add cards to the respective decks.

These additional cards unlock new card types like Songs, Items, and Floodborn characters. We’ll leave you to discover what these new and unique card types can do.

And of course Lorcana: Gateway is just the beginning! You can pick up pre-made Lorcana starter decks or booster packs with tons of amazing and interesting cards at any store that sells collectible card game products.

Impressions

As I indicated at the top, I was very hesitant to get into another collectible card game. It isn’t that they aren’t fun, but they can be a rabbit hole that it’s difficult to climb out of.

Our 14 year old has gotten into Magic: The Gathering (ah, a boy after my own heart) and now has thousands of cards in collection boxes under his bed. The prospect of diving in like this with another game just wasn’t appealing, despite how fun it may be.

But with Disney Lorcana: Gateway, Ravensburger has taken the seemingly limitless world of the collectible card game and shrunk it down to 120 cards. With boundaries around where the “collecting” finished, I was open to giving it a chance.

Family Friendly

What I found was a wonderfully light game that felt incredibly similar to Magic but sported some key differences. Importantly, the goal isn’t to tear down your opponent (in Magic you normally started with 20 life – the similarities are strong) but instead to race towards story enlightenment.

Lorcana is a more advanced game. The box for Gateway says 8+, but realistically most children won’t grasp the complex strategy until 10 or 12. As a former Magic player, the game felt very basic until we started opening packs, but I’m glad we did. I would love to dig into strategy but I very much want players to discover it for themselves.

Gorgeous Cards, But Frustrating Gameboard

The biggest negative I have for Lorcana: Gateway deals with the board. There simply aren’t enough elements to need permanent direction on where to place cards, and the rigidity of the board layout made it difficult to play anywhere but on a large table. The tableau wasn’t big enough for more than three or four cards, and the Lore tracker was too big for the space while also being too small for the standees. After a game or two we got rid of the board and tracked our Lore on paper or with D20s.

But Lorcana is a gorgeous game with classic Disney artwork and delightful references to characters developed across the last 100 years of Disney animation. Gateway has an incredibly approachable price point and the most gentle onramp to the complexities of this game style that I have ever seen.

Even if you never go past the four walls and 120 cards of the Gateway box, this is a full and wonderful Lorcana experience. I heartily recommend it for the CCG fans and the Disney fans out there. Perhaps this is the very thing to bring the two together.

You can pick up a copy of Lorcana: Gateway directly from Ravensburger, from Amazon, your local big-box store, or from your Friendly Local Game Store (they can tell you all about collectible card games!).

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Disney Lorcana: Gateway from Ravensburger for this review.

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