With his investment in OpenAI, Bob Iger has signaled that he at least is no longer interested in Disney’s legacy of incredible art and artists. As a Disney fan this is sad and honestly hard to believe. It’s like watching someone set their own house on fire. There are still people making Disney stuff that do care though and I think it’s important to recognize them. For example, Shane Hartley is the creative director for the Disney TCG Lorcana and he just made a very strong anti AI art statement over on his Instagram essentially saying he will never allow it in their game and praising the work of their talented artists. I would love to see something similar from other big card games.
If you have not played Lorcana it’s really well made and a lot of fun. Over the weekend my wife Kara and I dove back into it with some new starter decks and something they call an "Illumineer’s Quest”.
Real quick, if you’re not familiar with Lorcana it’s a TCG that will be comfortable to anyone familiar with the genre but has enough unique mechanics to make it stand out as something special. For starters, you are not dealing damage to your opponent. Rather you are using the various Disney characters you summon to “Quest” which gains you “Lore” and the first person to 20 Lore wins. You can still “Challenge” your opponent and do battle to get rid of their cards but a character you use to Challenge can’t Quest so it makes for some fun decision making. Kara and I had not played in years so it was cool to see new mechanics as well like “Locations” and a mechanic that has you tucking cards underneath other cards to power them up in different ways. We battled each other a couple times and had a lot of fun with all the new stuff but it was the Illumineer’s Quest we cracked into next that made me really want to write this post.
We played the Illumineer’s Quest “Deep Trouble” and what it is, is a way to play Lorcana cooperatively with your friends. This particular quest is based on you fighting Ursula and the box itself comes with a special deck for her that sort of plays itself as well as two starter decks you can use to battle her if you don’t already have your own. You can play 1-4 players against Ursula and each player will need their own deck but you will all be working together and can help each other out during the game. The box also comes with 4 different scenarios to play that offer varying difficulty levels and a special foil package with a prize card in it that you can open once you beat the sea witch!
Kara and I played the two of us versus the Ursula deck and started with the beginner difficulty just to learn how it all worked. We beat that difficulty and had a ton of fun but the normal difficulty kicked our butts. Honestly we both loved the challenge though and we’re already talking about how we’ll attack it again tonight. The Ursula deck itself is simple to play and makes for some exciting turns even though it’s all automated. The old World of Warcraft card game had something similar with its Raid Decks and I never understood why more TCGs didn’t do something similar. Obviously PvP is how most people want to play these card games but I can’t help but think they wouldn’t mind another way to play their decks. Plus I feel like you could grab a whole new audience of people who like the mechanics and fun of playing a TCG but hate squaring off against another person. For me personally I would much rather team up with my wife to battle Urusla than fight each other.
The other thing that’s cool about Lorcana is you can buy it in a store. Having had a lot of trouble recently getting my hands on the latest card games, I have to say it was novel to walk into Zulus this weekend and just buy some cards. I’m not going to twist your arm to support Disney, but there are artists out there who still care and despite everything that’s going on, they are still trying to make something beautiful. I can’t help but appreciate that.
-Gabe Out
