If you’re lucky enough to have a tabletop gamer to buy for this holiday season, we’ve found the perfect presents for them—including the most popular new games, incredible gifts for Dungeon Masters and Dungeon & Dragons players, and even a game designed to get you outside to literally touch grass.

And if you’re the tabletop gamer? Give someone one of these picks from our Holiday Gift Guide and you’ll immediately have someone to play with! Win-win.

The Deck of Many Things

The Deck of Many Things is a D&D magic item so legendary that most Dungeon Masters shudder when they hear its name. (Or they cackle, which is much worse.) Just in time for the holiday season, The Deck of Many Things is now available as a gorgeous gift set with updated rules, a 66-card deck (which includes the 22 classic cards), its own supplement guide for incorporating the reimagined deck into your game, and more.

Dungeon Masters will love its ability to create adventures on the fly complete with traps and puzzles; D&D players will find new character backgrounds, spells, and star-signs inside. ($99.99, available digitally on November 14 with the physical copy release date TBD)

Disney Lorcana

Lorcana is a Disney-themed trading card game that’s taking the tabletop by storm! While the first starter sets quickly sold out, more are on the way to stores everywhere. Rise of the Floodborn, the second chapter of the game, is due out in December.

In Lorcana, players take the role of Illumineers and use character and item cards to collect 20 lore and win the game. This trading card game is easier to learn than most, but still encourages thought-out strategy and card collecting. And have you seen some of the art? Pick this up for the Disney or TCG fan in your life, and be sure to grab a starter pack for yourself while you’re at it. (2 players, Ages 8+, $5.99-$49.99)

Linkee

Part trivia, part lateral thinking, and part party game, Linkee is the perfect gift for the social butterfly in your life. (It also has two-player rules if your gift recipient prefers to cocoon at home.) Each Linkee card features four short trivia questions. Players remember the trivia answers as they’re revealed, and once they see the connection between them, they shout, “Linkee!” The first team to successfully find the common link for the answers wins the card.

Work together as a team to find the connection and earn bragging rights for eternity. Well, maybe until the next game night. (2+ players, Ages 12+, $8.45)

Magic: The Gathering – Doctor Who

All we really have to say is “Doctor Who Magic cards” and you’ll know immediately who to give this to for the holidays. But, if you need a little more info, we have you covered. The new official “Universes Beyond” set features gorgeous art of 13 Doctors and their companions. These cards with Doctor Who-themed mechanics are now available to join the Magic lineup.

Choose your gift recipient’s favorite Doctor to find the perfect 100 card Magic: The Gathering – Doctor Who Commander Deck, and allons-y! (2 players, Ages 13+, $59.99)

Nine Arches

Nine Arches might be designed like a tabletop card game, but it’s intended to take you and your friends and family away from the table. The game includes a 54-card deck similar to tarot cards that are used to choose your next adventure. Cards feature activities like “dance party,” “caravan,” and “ghost.” With the drawn cards and input from each player, the group adventure’s is talked out. Will you do the activities all at once? One at a time? It’s up to you and the group. Then you’re all off on a real-life journey based on the prompts on the cards!

If your recipient is the type who appreciates experiences instead of plain gifts, you’ll wow them with this one. (1-5 players, Ages 13+, $34.99)

Potion Pack – Cantrip Candles

Whether your lucky gift recipient is a fan of tabletop role-playing games or video game RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3, this three-candle set from Cantrip Candles will be met with delight when it’s unwrapped. The Potion Pack comes as a lovely gift set of 10 ounce soy wax candles in decorated glass containers.

The Health Potion, Stamina Potion, and Magicka Potion candles are sure to heal and reenergize any weary adventurers (or office workers) who lights them. And how can you pass up the opportunity to give someone a container labeled “Dragon’s Blood”? ($80.00)

The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons

Do you remember being a kid and re-reading your favorite book so many times you had every page memorized? This is your chance to give the youngest Dungeons & Dragons or fantasy fan in your life that same experience!

The Practically Complete Guide to Dragons is exactly what it says on the cover: an imaginative, in-depth look at the dragons that populate the D&D setting of Dragonlance. Written in-character by the kender Sindri Suncatcher, this guide to dragons is packed with personality—along with, you guessed it, lots of dragons. Dragon facts, dragon stories, dragon lair maps, it’s all here. Your lucky gift recipient will spend hours staring at the gorgeous art alone. ($39.95)

Sea Salt & Paper

The stocking stuffer-sized card game Sea Salt & Paper is a delightful set collecting game with a dash of luck to keep things exciting. Collect and play pairs of cards to score points and use their effects to earn even more points. If the player thinks they have enough points in hand, they can call for the end of the round or give everyone one last chance to try to beat them for bonus points. Reach the necessary number of victory points to win the game!

Not only does each card feature charming and original origami art, Sea Salt & Paper includes bold icons so that colorblind players aren’t excluded from the fun. (2-4 players, Ages 8+, $14.95)

Kelly Knox is a pop culture writer and the author of Star Wars Conversation Cards, Be More Obi-Wan, and the upcoming Star Wars Dad Jokes. You can still find her on Twitter at @kelly_knox.

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Disney Lorcana: The First Chapter is a new trading card game that gives us a fresh outlet to play with our favorite Disney characters and create epic crossovers. Would Maleficent and Cruella de Vil be friends or foes? Could Stitch endear himself to the likes of Captain Hook? And would Robin Hood and Elsa make a good team? Those are the six characters that make up the first set of Disney Lorcana trading cards. The game was announced at the D23 Expo, but it launched in August 2023, with new sets releasing four times a year. So far, we know the second set, Disney Lorcana: Rise of the Floodborn, will release later in the fall. The trading cards will show off more original Disney artwork than any other product, and from what we’ve seen so far, the cards are all beautiful.

Here’s everything you need to know about the game, including details of its cards, app, rules, and more. You can also check out our review of Disney Lorcana for an in-depth look at the game from a player’s perspective.

Jump to: Disney Lorcana Cards // Disney Lorcana TCG Companion App // Disney Lorcana Story // Disney Lorcana Rules // Disney Lorcana Release Dates, Availability, and More

Disney Lorcana Character Cards

Disney Lorcana is a partnership with puzzle and game maker Ravensburger, who has lots of other great Disney content. Fans at last year’s D23 Expo were able to buy an exclusive first-edition pack of the cards. They also got their hands on an exclusive Mickey Mouse card called “Brave Little Tailor” that isn’t part of the set. The other characters have their own unique abilities. Captain Hook is listed as a forceful duelist and has a sword for a hand. Maleficent appears in her dragon form in the Disney Lorcana trading cards, while Cruella de Vil’s strongest quality is “miserable as usual.” I wonder how that presents itself in gameplay. There’s also Elsa the Snow Queen, Robin Hood, the unrivaled archer, and Stitch as a rock star.  Certainly an interesting lineup.

Click To View Gallery

More Disney Lorcana Cards: From Maleficent to Olaf

It seems like more or less every Disney character will find their way onto a Disney Lorcana card. Here are a few more looks at what’s to come. The “Dragon Fire” Lorcana card, for example, features Disney’s Maleficent in her dragon form, “breathing cursed green fire.” Use of this card will allow players to “banish [a] chosen character.”

We also glimpsed a new Disney Lorcana card that brings a cheerful face to the gaming table, Olaf. Warm hugs for all! Disney’s Jumba Jookiba and Princess Aurora joined the ranks of Disney Lorcana as well. And even accessories are coming onboard. A new type of card, an item card, features the “Magic Mirror.” Very mysterious.

Click To View Gallery

Recently, Nerdist went behind the scenes with Ravensburger creative director Shane Hartley, who shared more about how the game was conceived. And, of course, we got to see the magical art of four new Disney Lorcana cards.

Disney Lorcana Launches Trading Card Game Companion App

These cards are just a taste of what the full game will hold. Already, we’re a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount and artistry of all the Disney Lorcana cards that exist. But this trading card game wants keeping track of all its cards to be a breeze—and that includes both the ones you own and the ones you want. The official Disney Lorcana Trading Card Game Companion app is here to help all users keep magic high and chaos low.

A release shares:

The Disney Lorcana TCG Companion app features a complete card catalog, which can be used by players to keep track of cards in their collection as well as “wish list” cards they hope to add to their deck. TCG rookies and experts alike will also appreciate the app’s deckbuilding feature, which allows them to create and manage their own custom deck right from their phone. Other highlights of the app include easily accessible how-to-play information and videos, a lore points counter tool and the latest news updates from Disney Lorcana TCG.

The Disney Lorcna app is free to download and is available on the Google Play and Apple App Stores.

The TCG’s Story

Disney Lorcana recently released more about its lore. It’s official story shares:

Welcome to the Great Illuminary, the center of a magical realm called Lorcana… The Illuminary summoned you here because of your powerful imagination… Nearby, a unique tool catches your eye. It’s an inkcaster, and when you pick it up, it feels both exciting and familiar. Instinctively, you hold it high above the open book. Magical ink pulsing with energy flows through the mechanism and combines with the light from a story star on a page of the lorebook in front of you, creating an image of a Disney character. With the power of your inkcaster, the image rises off the page. This is a glimmer, a new version of the character that only exists in this world. As an Illumineer, you can create glimmers of characters and items to add to the lore of Lorcana—a treasure that must be preserved and protected at all costs. 

Soon, other Illumineers across the globe will be called to the aid of Lorcana. You’ll summon glimmers to quest with you as you search for missing lore in a race against time. Only together can you protect this wondrous realm from threats. 

Will you answer the call?

Disney Lorcana’s Rules

We finally have a better understanding of Disney Lorcana‘s rules and gameplay. According to a release, here’s how the trading card game works:

Players become “Illumineers” and wield magic ink to summon a team of Disney characters known as “glimmers,” who appear in both familiar and reimagined forms. In Disney Lorcana, players embark on a search for lost lore with their teams of glimmers. They’ll play characters, actions, and items from their hand and choose whether to “quest” for lore with their glimmers or challenge their opponents. The first player to collect 20 lore wins.

Additionally, Disney Lorcana‘s quick start rules note, “Disney Lorcana is a strategy card game where each player makes their own deck before the game starts, and the decks aren’t mixed together. You can play with one of the available ready-to-play decks, make changes to one of those decks, or build a deck that’s entirely your own! In a game like this, cards can allow you to do things that aren’t normally a part of every turn. If a card’s text ever contradicts the game rules, follow what the card says.”

That all sounds simple enough, but we have a feeling actually playing might get a bit more complicated. Thankfully, the game’s official website has a dedicated “How to Play” page with video guides to walk you through playing your most magical game. These will help you to understand how to generate ink, what different cards you can have in your deck, what abilities each has, and more. And hopefully, the game will leave you singing just a little bit.

Disney Lorcana‘s Release Date and More

Finally, all that Disney knowledge rattling around our brains will win us more than just trivia contests! Disney Lorcana launched “at local game stores” on August 18. And has now released via mass retailers, as of September 1. To keep up with exceptionally high demand, more Disney Lorcana booster pack product will be sent to North American stores in October. Disney Lorcana: The First Chapter will also be reprinted and “will be available starting in Q1 2024 in North America and Europe.”

Meanwhile, the second set of cards Disney Lorcana: Rise of the Floodborn will be released on November 17 in specialty/hobby stores and on December 1 for the mass market.

Country Availability and Language Options

The game originally released in United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg. And it comes in English, French, and German. But now, Disney Lorcana will also be released in an additional 10 countries: Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Mexico. This expansion will occur “with the release of the third set in early 2024.” The game will also come in Italian as of its third set release.

Decks and Other Merchandise

Players will be able to purchase starter decks of 60 cards in “two of the six ‘inks’ — Amber and Amethyst, Emerald and Ruby, or Steel and Sapphire.” These decks will come with two foil cards of the characters on their boxes and also include a booster pack (12 random cards, including one foil card and one card of varying rareness) and game tokens. More robust sets will also be available for purchase. Additionally, “themed playmats, card sleeves, deck boxes, and card portfolios featuring Disney Lorcana art will be available at launch.”

Ravensburger has many other licensed products from properties like Despicable Me and Minions. There are Star Wars puzzles and an Alien board game. Plus, some less obvious partnerships, like a card game for Taco Bell. 

Originally published on September 9, 2022. Original reporting by Melissa Miller.

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Disney Lorcana debuted to huge success in August. Such huge success, in fact, getting hold of The First Chapter has been a challenge. Ravensburger recently announced it would be reprinting chapter one in 2024 to meet demand. That reprint will come after the game’s second set of 200 plus cards. And now we know more about that second set. Ravensburger has revealed details for what’s next for its Disney trading card game. Disney Lorcana: Rise of the Floodborn brings new characters, different starter decks, and the origin of the floodborn glimmers. Here’s how Disney Lorcana will expand.

What Are Disney Lorcana‘s Floodborn?

Glimmers with the floodborn trait are characters whom a mysterious flood of ink transformed. The same flood damaged the Great Illuminary. That caused the game’s six inks (Amber, Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, and Steel) to blend and release in a mixed-up, chaotic form. Ravensburger shared in a release, “When storyborn or dreamborn glimmers encountered this mixed ink, they surged with a power that changed them, transforming them into floodborn glimmers. As the magical ink poured out of the Illuminary, treasured lore went with it, including Disney’s King Triton’s powerful trident.”

Disney Lorcana: Rise of the Floodborn New Characters and Cards

Click To View Gallery

Matching The First Chapter, Disney Lorcana: Rise of the Floodborn will have over 200 cards, all with brand-new artwork. We’ll see familiar characters in different ways, but this second Disney Lorcana set will also bring newcomers to the game. Winnie the Pooh and Tiana will both appear for the first time. Additionally, the set will include glimmers from The Jungle Book, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Great Mouse Detective, Pinocchio, Zootopia, and Raya and the Last Dragon.

All the new Disney Lorcana cards are playable with the first set. You can preview 13 of the cards above, and you may notice a different game ability: Resist. The Resist keyword indicates how much additional damage characters may be able to withstand. For example, Resist +2 on a character would mean any damage dealt to them is reduced by 2.

Disney Lorcana: Rise of the Floodborn Starter Decks and Booster Packs

Disney Lorcana: Rise of the Floodborn will include two starter decks featuring different combinations of inks from set one. The pairings this time are Amber and Sapphire and Amethyst and Steel. Starter decks will be priced at $16.99. Booster packs will cost $5.99.

Disney Lorcana: Rise of the Floodborn Illumineer’s Trove and Playmats

The set will also feature a new Illumineer’s Trove and at least two new playmats, one featuring Winnie the Pooh and the other depicting the Beast. As a reminder, the Illumineer’s Trove includes collection storage box, two deck storage boxes, eight booster packs, 15 game tokens, and a player’s guide.

Disney Lorcana: Rise of the Floodborn Release Date

Disney Lorcana: Rise of the Floodborn will release first at local game stores on November 17, followed by mass market retailers on December 1.

Disney Lorcana: Disney100 Edition

For the holidays, Ravensburger will release the Disney Lorcana: Disney100 Edition. Available at local game stores and mass retailers on December 1 for $49.99, the Disney100 Edition comes with six cards. The cards are from The First Chapter and Rise of the Floodborn but feature alternate artwork from Disney animators. Each card features an exclusive Disney100 frame design, a satin holographic foil finish, and a copy of the animator’s signature prominently displayed.

Artists featured include:

• Mickey Mouse – Friendly Face – Mark Henn
• Elsa – Gloves Off – Brittney Lee
• Genie – Powers Unleashed – Eric Goldberg
• Stitch – Abomination – Alex Kupershmidt
• Maleficent – Uninvited – Lorelay Bové
• Maui – Demigod – Bill Schwab

Each Disney100 Edition comes with four Rise of the Floodborn booster packs.

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Disney Lorcana brings Disney animation to the world of trading card games. Perfect for fans of Disney’s animated films and trading card game beginners, Disney Lorcana is about to become your new personality. The cards are beautiful and collectible with abilities that bring Disney storytelling to the table in moments that will make you nod and say, “Yes, of course.” Gameplay flows quickly, making it all too easy to play just one more game. Nerdist spent some quality time with an early review copy of Disney Lorcana from Ravensburger. For context: I played the game with two players, I’m a huge fan of Disney animation, and while I play a lot of tabletop games, I’m not super experienced with trading card games (the only one I’ve played for any amount of time is Star Wars: Destiny).

What Is Disney Lorcana About?

In Disney Lorcana, the player is an Illumineer. Players must protect Lorcana by using magical ink to play glimmers. To win, players race to collect 20 lore. Questing for lore will win the game, but players can challenge their opponents along the way.

Is It Easy to Learn Disney Lorcana?

Despite needing to learn the above terminology, getting started with Lorcana is so quick and straightforward that it feels like a trick. I’m all too used to playing games that take 20-30 minutes to review the instructions for the first time and set up the board. With Disney Lorcana, we were ready to play in 15 minutes with only minimal fumbling through the first round of play. However, I wouldn’t call the first game (or even the first few) skillful. You play, learn, and refine as you go. Initially, I focused on gaining lore as quickly as possible—which is good, gathering 20 lore first is how you win—but I did so at the expense of paying attention to my opponent’s lore and cards in play.

Lorcana is a game about balance. Strategy comes with practice and getting to know your cards. The approach that works best for you will be subjective. After playing 10 times, I’m still figuring out the nuance of when to turn cards to ink and when to hang onto them and when to challenge and when to quest for lore.

What’s Disney Lorcana’s Replayability Like?

The more practice you get, the faster Lorcana games go. It’s easy to fit games into your schedule or to sit down for a best two out of three. And you’ll want to. I’ve played at least once every day for the past week, and I don’t see that changing. And once booster packs are out and I can build my own deck? Forget about it. The combination of gorgeous Disney art, honing my technique, and wanting to play as many of the cards as possible keeps me coming back again and again.

Which Disney Lorcana Starter Deck Is Best?

I gave mostly equal time to Lorcana’s three starter decks: Amber and Amethyst, Emerald and Ruby, and Sapphire and Steel. These decks come ready to play with different strengths. Amber and Amethyst “likes to quest early and often.” Emerald and Ruby “is especially good at delaying your opponents’ progress early on.” Sapphire and Steel “is great at quickly increasing the amount of ink in your inkwell.”

Those descriptions from the quick-start rules for each deck proved true. While I cannot tell you which Lorcana starter deck is best, because they’re weighted equally, if in different ways, and much depends on luck of the draw, I can tell you about the play styles and which I enjoyed the most. I am not taking into account which characters are in which deck; I would never be able to choose.

Amber and Amethyst has plenty of characters with a low ink cost. You can play characters quickly and start questing for lore early. Those low-cost characters are easy prey, but numbers matter, as does having options. This deck is my personal preference because I like getting cards into play as early as I can. You can defend with this deck, but it’s gentler than the other two.

If you are an aggressive and sneaky strategist, Emerald and Ruby is for you. This deck has strong cards in all categories, ideal for dealing damage to your opponents. This does not match my playstyle, however. I struggled anytime I tried the Emerald and Ruby deck, while my opponent flourished with it.

Sapphire and Steel has some sharp offensive cards too, but it’s with more brute force than Emerald and Ruby. Cards in different categories help you fill up your inkwell, which means you can put your more powerful characters into play. These high-cost characters can challenge repeatedly before other characters drain their willpower and banish them. Despite that, Sapphire and Steel feels like a kinder deck than Emerald and Ruby. It’s my second favorite since it occupies a middle ground between the other two decks.

I haven’t tried mixing and matching other combinations of two inks yet (you can have up to two ink colors in a deck).

Disney Lorcana’s Design

The first thing I did with my decks was look through every card because I needed to see the art. Some characters, items, and songs look right out of the animated films they come from. Other cards look from the world of the animated films but with some extra zhuzh. All the card illustrations are lovely. Ravensburger includes the artist’s name on each card so you can look up your favorites online. Each card’s mechanics complement the character, item, or action. I am consistently impressed with the thoughtfulness applied to Lorcana’s cards.

The only element I found lacking is the paper playmat that comes with the starter decks. This is what you use to place your cards and track your lore. It gets the job done. I understand it needs to fit in the starter deck packaging, but its nature meant I accidentally slid my lore tracker around. However, a d20 easily solves this, as does the Lorcana app (which was not live at the time of review).

Is Disney Lorcana Worth It?

If you are a trading card game fan and especially if you are a Disney animation fan, Disney Lorcana is absolutely worth it—especially with starter decks costing $16.99. It’s quick to set up, easy to learn the basics, and then continues to challenge you as you develop your skills.

The first set of over 200 cards, Disney Lorcana: The First Chapter, debuts August 18, 2023 at local game stores and Disney Parks. The game then arrives in mass retailers and on shopDisney on September 1.

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Ravensburger’s Disney Lorcana brings the world of Disney to the arena of trading card games. Featuring characters and items you know and love from your favorite Disney animated films, Lorcana takes players to familiar places in a new style. The game’s story unfolds in a unique setting. It positions players as Illumineers who must bring together elements from the Great Illuminary to protect Lorcana. This includes glimmers, new versions of Disney characters that exist only in this world. Blending decades of Disney nostalgia in this different framework takes a deft hand. The Lorcana creative team, all fans of Disney animation, has that awareness, as Nerdist learned when we went behind the scenes of Disney Lorcana‘s art.

“From the beginning we had a clear vision of a cohesive art style for the majority of our cards that we call ‘modern storybook.’ It’s an illustration style inspired by the work of some of our premier and featured artists in the first set,” Ravensburger creative director Shane Hartley tells Nerdist. “Since our glimmers come from Disney stories past and present, the illustrations needed to feel nostalgic but not old, familiar but original and exciting. The modern storybook style we developed has visible line work to align with animation as well as vibrant color washes that purposely break those lines, making each image come alive. It mixes the traditional hand drawn and painted attributes seen in fairy tale storybooks with new digital techniques.”

The modern storybook style establishes a distinct look for Lorcana‘s art, and additionally, design pillars feature in the designs—literally. They used pillars to tell part of the story. The booster packaging has a large pillar, or column, beside the character. Hartley notes those are ink columns from an inkcasting room inside the Great Illuminary. The character you see is a glimmer emerging from magic ink. “So, the pillars not only create a branding element to frame the characters on the packaging. They also provide a visual representation of how glimmers are created in Lorcana using magical ink,” Hartley explains.

Lorcana‘s many elements from packaging to cards to character design connect to make an expansive -wo.rld. For example, the “o” in the Lorcana logo, is the Illuminary’s silhouette. The outer ring shows how each of the six magical inks converge on a story star in the center. That reinforces the creation story of glimmers.

The magical inks play a key role in the game. As an Illumineer, players use an inkcaster to summon glimmers. Hartley says designing the six ink icons of Lorcana was a huge team effort. They began by gathering references and mood board visuals that evoked the traits reflected in each ink’s play style. “It’s important to note that in addition to each ink having its own personality and traits, they all include glimmers of both heroes and villains, so it’s not just a matter of good and evil,” Hartley says.

He calls Lorcana’s inks the building blocks, or periodic table, of the world. Hartley says, “It was important to create icons that looked like a family, ones that were unified in shape and visuals as well as working individually. They also needed to work in different combinations, since you can have two inks in a deck. Very early on we landed on using a hexagon as a container for the icon, with its six sides representing the game’s six inks. This also felt complementary to the game’s logo design, which we decided on first.”

Hartley shared in-depth information about each of the glimmer’s characteristics:

• Amber glimmers are purposeful, patient and dedicated.  They often work within their community, so the icon was inspired by knots and weaving to illustrate the strength found by working together. The whole is greater than the individual.
• Amethyst glimmers are incredibly powerful and use otherworldly powers and arcane abilities to achieve their goals. Amethyst was probably the first icon we did and were happy with, although it was also tricky. Our first iterations of this icon leant itself more to villains, which isn’t an accurate representation of the inks. It took some work to get to a version that looked good for heroes, too.
• Emerald glimmers are flexible and can easily adapt as things change. I think this icon took the longest to develop, as it was difficult to create a visual of something that felt like it was elegantly bobbing, weaving and diving—but in a flat 2D shape.
• Steel glimmers are strong and can be large, armored, or just plain powerful. The idea of a defensive fortress is something we had very quickly, but the refinement actually took a while, as we wanted to make sure it was also a symbol of strength and force.
• Ruby glimmers are daring; this is the ink of the speedsters, the brave and the risk-takers. We purposely created an asymmetrical design for this icon to show how these glimmers leap right into action.
• Sapphire represents glimmers who are intelligent, strategic and inventive; these are the thinkers, planners, and creators in Lorcana. This icon has elements of an eye and sacred geometry.

The inks connect to another important part of Lorcana: the Great Illuminary. The Great Illumnairy holds the inkcasting station. Concept artists tried several designs to create an aesthetic informed by magic and science that felt timeless. Hartley adds, “We wanted the Great Illuminary to feel almost like it was alive, or an autonomous machine.  The top is similar to a lightning rod and is designed to draw the story stars into it, pulling them through the top and down through the center before projecting them to the inkcasting stations. The gold and bronze outer shell of the magical sphere has openings and separations that mysteriously reveal the vast inner workings.”

The design team “powered” the Illuminary structure with flowing lines, or grooves. Those serve as the conduits for the power of the inks to travel throughout the Illuminary.

As Hartley mentions, creating the look of Lorcana was a collaborative effort. We can exclusively reveal four cards today from three of the artists who created card illustrations for the first set: Nicholas Kole, Koni, a.k.a. Amandine Girard, and Hedvig Häggman-Sund. All are fans of Disney, citing the films and characters as inspiration. Kole says, “I was a musical theater kid in high school; I have an encyclopedic Disney music library in my head. Any time I get a Disney Lorcana assignment I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll have that movie’s soundtrack stuck in my head until I move on to the next card. That emotional connection to the source material is pretty potent stuff; each illustration feels connected to a whole world of art and music and memories.”

Calling back to those memories can enhance the art, too. Koni mentioned working on her favorite characters takes her back to childhood and that makes the characters more alive. The creative process then becomes more personal.

Disney artists like Jin Kim, Cory Loftis and James Baxter inspire Häggman-Sund. Koni looks to the color work and atmospheres in films like Coco. She also calls out the overall creative process it takes to bring Disney films to life. Kole is a huge fan of Milt Kahl, Shiyoon Kim, Ami Thompson, and also Cory Loftis. Kole says, “They’re all incredible commanders of line and shape, but more than that, I can feel loads of heart and sincerity coming through their work and that’s what draws me to the artists I remember forever.”

Speaking to inspiration for Disney Lorcana‘s art, Hartley says, “For me and for the team, it’s important to stay true to the origins of the stories and the personalities of the characters but then expand upon that in new and exciting ways. The last thing we want to do is something that feels inauthentic for a character or their personality. We look at elements of a character’s story and iconic moments, their clothing, their regions, and even the cultural themes and time periods represented and explore how these characters might adapt or be reinvented in this new world. Just like the Illumineers in the game who are casting these glimmers, we’re creating new and familiar versions that feel true to the Lorcana realm and to join us on our quest.”

Disney Lorcana will be available at hobby stores and Disney Parks on August 18. It will be available at mass retail and shopDisney on September 1. Learn more at Ravensburger’s site.

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