✾ Aura, a Lady.

So Ravensburger, the board game company behind the Disney Villainous game, has been teasing their new DIDNEY trading card game, Lorcana. It's been a card or two at a time but they have finally released the rules pamphlet (which you can read here). Being a Magic player for many years I've been curious about how this game will play because I'm curious about all card games. And now we know! And the answer is "actually a lot like Magic."

So I'm just looking at this from the perspective of Magic.

• Almost identical deckbuilding rules: 60 cards, 4-of at max. You're limited to two colors at max per deck.

• Dudes bonk into dudes but not your opponent. Rather than attacking your opponent directly you're sending your DIMDEY characters off "questing" to get lore. Once a character is tapped exerted they can be attacked challenged. So ultimately it is a generic card game in that sense. But it ties into...

• Lorcana is a first-to-win game, not last-to-lose. This is going to be the most important in multiplayer (which they encourage). You're racing to be the first to 20 lore, not trying to be the last person to be reduced to zero lore (unsure at this stage if there's anyway to reduce your opponent's score). So multiplayer Lorcana will probably be more aggressive and less stall-filled than Magic. Since there doesn't seem to be a way to block questing characters, you'll always be able to tell where their score will be.

• Damage persists between turns. So you can wear creatures down over turns.

• No land cards, but only certain cards can be resources. Rather than including resource cards in your deck, in Lorcana commit your cards facedown and then they functionally become Lands. But only certain cards are allowed to be committed in this way. So you don't have to add any "air" to your deck and probably will experience mana screw less, but there's still a chance it could happen. We'll have to see what the distribution of inkwell to non-inkwell cards are.

• Card color is a deckbuilding restriction only, all costs are generic. When you play a card as Ink you play it facedown and its color doesn't matter. You'll never have all mono-white cards and basic Forests in hand and be unable to do anything.

• This is Wacky Races??? A couple of months ago a fan-created Magic format called Wacky Races started getting popularity (note to self make Wacky Races jumpstart packs) where instead of attacking your opponent, you play Vehicles and send them at The Finish Line to gain Laps and the first player to get ten Laps wins. And this happened weeks before we get the Lorcana rules??? I'm shaping my tinfoil hat into mouse ears RIGHT NOW.

So... I am still interested in trying Lorcana for the same reason I want to try the Netrunner revival and Battle Spirits Saga. But I will say that having seen those games and played Marvel Snap I was expecting Lorcana to be more unique. I mentioned that this was just Wacky Races because this does just look like a house ruled version of Magic with DIFNEE characters.

Actually it looks like those house rules that come from people who've played Magic for a little while and then decided that they will FIX the game. This thirty year old game is a FAILURE that will DIE because you put lands in your deck and can get mana screwed or flooded. Only THEIR MUCH MORE THOUGHT OUT RULES can save the game and everyone telling them to just play another game is a hater or has stockholm syndrome.

And not, y'know, that the game is in trouble because the company that makes it is seeking ever increasing growth and thus driving the audience to product oversaturation while complexity creep becomes untenable because there are too many products being released and they all need to stand out so we get cards that are impossible to intuit and parse.

Maybe it is intentional. Maybe they're hoping to grab DIGEEEE adults and the parents who just get stuff that looks safe for their kids and at the same time grab disenfranchised Magic players. But if I really wanted to play Magic then I simply would play Magic.