After months of silence, we have more news on Ravensburger's Disney Lorcana! There is new terminology, character art, and product photos to go over. We also have a release date and release languages for the first set called The First Chapter.

Let's start with the terminology! The different colors of cards in Lorcana are called Inks. There are 6 colors of ink - Ruby (red), Sapphire (blue), Steel (gray), Emerald (green), Amber (orange), and Amethyst (purple). There are 3 starter decks that include two different ink colors. It is not clear yet if you can play with more than two colors of ink in your deck. The starter decks feature Amber and Amethyst with Moana and Mickey, Emerald and Ruby with Cruela and Aladdin, Sapphire and Steel with Aurora and Simba.

Speaking of the starter decks, did you catch all the new characters? The starter deck Mickey is not the same Mickey as the Mickey card given out with the D23 promos. As I said in my earlier articles, I think having easy access to your favorite characters is an important thing this game needs to get right to be exceptional. Mickey can be a chase card but there also needs to be an easier to acquire version for kids buying a pack from their local big box retailer. Aladdin has some art I was not expecting, he looks more like a king than street rat. Aurora and Simba are both newly revealed characters with new art. I am, again, surprised to see Adult Simba on the packaging and not baby Simba but maybe his card is too ferocious to be that small. The art that has surprised me the most by far was Hades. Rather than his usual blue hair, piercing yellow eyes, and black and gray robes he's got golden hair and bright colored robes as he sits on top of Olympus. At first glance, I thought he was Zeus! This really signifies to me we are going to get some characters depicted in situations or ways that we might not expect. While I am excited to see more "what if" type scenarios from Disney characters, I think it is important to note that we still haven't seen any characters from Disney's other properties like Star Wars, Pixar, or Marvel. They might be saving them for a tease later but I feel like you'd want those characters on your booster wrappers for marketing.

The newest gameplay thing Ravensburger has shown us are Action cards. In this tweet, Ravensburger gives a glimpse of the ruby action card, Dragon Fire. If you read my last Lorcana article you would have expected this type of card to exist. I was expecting them to be called moments and to show iconic movie events but this accomplishes the same goal of having cards that aren't characters that impact the playing field. It's possible they may have more iconic moments at higher rarities. They have said there are 5 rarities of cards in booster packs (more on that below). Unfortunately, it does not appear we will get any more information about rules until spring.

The product lineup for The First Chapter looks pretty good. There are some things you'd expect, like starter decks, but also some special boxes that have been very successful for other large TCGs. I don't know if I love everything included (mostly because I don't know what "gameplay tokens" are) but it's a good start to have a varied shelf presence. I've done a lot of combing through the official Lorcana twitter account to try to bring you as many details as I can.

• Each booster pack will contain 12 randomized cards including 6 commons, 3 uncommons, two cards that are rare, super rare, or legendary cards, and one foil card.
• Starter decks will contain 60 cards including two foil cards that are the characters on the box, 11 game tokens, a booster pack, and a rulebook.
• The gift set (featuring Hades and Mulan) will contain 2 oversized foil cards, 2 foil game cards, 34 game tokens, and 4 booster packs.
• The Illumineer's Trove will contain 1 collection storage box, 2 deck boxes, 8 booster packs, 15 game tokens, and 1 player's guide.
• The suggested retail price of the products in Germany is 5.99 EUR for booster packs, 19.99 EUR for starter decks, 29.99 EUR for gift sets, and 54.99 EUR for the Illumineer's Trove according to the Ravensburger website. I was not able to find suggested retail prices for other countries but this should be comparable.
• All special cards in these products will be obtainable in booster packs according to the Lorcana twitter account

If you're looking to buy Lorcana and want to know when and where it drops, that's good because they've told us! It will first be available to purchase at Gencon this year (Aug 3 - 6). They have said they will save product to be able to offer it every day. I would recommend getting in line early if you're going and interested in picking some up. The D23 promos sold out exceptionally quickly. After Gencon, it will be released at your local game store August 18th and in big box retailers on September 1st. Unfortunately, the distribution seems rather sparse. The game will be available in English, French, and German and available in the US, Canada, the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. While this is more languages than Magic's Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited sets were released in, it is still disappointing to see huge swaths of the TCG community without support. My hope is that next year they will be able to distribute the game in Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and more languages and be able to support TCG fans in South America and the Asia Pacific region. Ravensburger has not committed on any more language support yet but they are looking into it. Finally, just like many other TCGs, Ravensburger has said they plan to release 4 sets per year (I assume that since the year will be half over by The First Chapter's release that there will only be one more in 2023).

So, what do you think? Are you impressed by the product line-up? Does the MSRP of the German products surprise you? What character are you hoping make it into the 200-card set, The First Chapter?