Casting a (Winter)spell

Hello Illumineers! I’m Lukas Litzsinger, lead game designer on the Winterspell set.

I’m here today to talk about two different mechanisms you’ll see in the set; one is completely new and one is a twist on a mechanism you first saw in Whispers in the Well.

Introducing Underdogs

One of our design goals is to make sure the meta feels fresh and exciting from set to set. The meta is the collective consciousness of the community, as expressed through deck building choices, and each time new cards are released we want to make sure that we are shaking things up.

Sometimes when you are playing a game of the Disney Lorcana TCG, you have an advantage in “going first.” This is a natural part of many games, not just card games, and can lead to interesting gameplay patterns as you try to solve how to win the game from the position of going second, starting with your mulligan.

But what if there was a way to tip the scales in your favor before you started playing the game? Introducing Underdogs. Each Underdog costs 2 ink and has the text “If this is your first turn and you're not the first player, you pay 1 ink less to play this character.” This means that when you are going second, you get to play your 2 cost character a turn early, tipping the game back into your favor.

One more note: we felt like it was important to only allow you to play these cards for cheaper on your first turn, so as to not burden the players with tracking who went first over the course of the entire game.

Each ink type gets its own Underdog, so we’re confident you’ll find one that fits your play style.

Scaling Boost

We also wanted to expand on the Boost mechanic from Whispers in the Well. In this set, most characters with Boost have abilities that turn on or off with having a card under it, we wanted to raise the stakes and give you a reason to boost cards multiple times. As such, most Boost cards in this set scale up with the number of cards underneath them, so the more you Boost the more powerful they get!

Let’s take a look at some examples:

Genie gains lore for each card under him, while Bambi’s ability gets more powerful based on how many cards are under him when you use it! You’ll find these cards, and even more that scale with Boost, in Winterspell.

See more Winterspell cards in the card image gallery!