Building a Winning Disney Lorcana Deck

 

Every strong Disney Lorcana deck starts with a vision—a clear idea of how you want the game to unfold. As your best performance will usually come from a deck you enjoy piloting, it’s important to choose a strategy that matches your preferred playstyle. That might mean going aggressive, flooding the board with cheap characters to quest toward 20 lore before your opponent can stabilize. It might mean taking control, banishing threats and dragging the game out until a big finisher takes over. Or perhaps you lean toward midrange, flexible enough to shift between aggression and control. You may also opt for a focused deck that revolves around a clever interaction between specific cards, or you could embrace a theme like Evasives, Princesses, or Songs.

 

With so many options, the easiest way to begin is by choosing a centerpiece: often a legendary or super rare with a powerful ability, or simply the Disney character you love most. From there, ask yourself: what kind of story does this deck want to tell? For example, a deck built around Dumbo – Ninth Wonder of the Universe will thrive on Evasive characters. Mulan – Considerate Diplomat rewards you for filling the list with Princesses. And Max Goof – Chart Topper invites you to load up on cheap Songs.

 

Once you’ve set your foundation, everything else should flow from that core. Supporting cards ought to complement your theme, cover weaknesses, and keep the deck coherent.

 

 

 

A deck overloaded with expensive cards risks stumbling early, while one made entirely of cheap plays can run out of steam. The key is balance: a distribution of costs that lets you spend your ink efficiently, turn after turn. This distribution is your ink curve, the backbone of every successful deck.

Ideally, it lets you “curve out” by playing a one-cost character on turn one, a two-cost on turn two, a three-cost on turn three, and so on. This ensures you waste no ink along the way.

 

Your ideal curve depends on your strategy. Aggro decks often lean on one- and two-drops and may top out at four ink, while control decks go bigger, sometimes reaching eight-ink plays. For a nimble 60-card midrange deck, a solid framework might look like this:

 

Turn-1 plays: 8 cards

Turn-2 plays: 8 cards

Turn-3 plays: 12 cards

Turn-4 plays: 8 cards

Turn-5 plays: 8 cards

Turn-6 plays: 4 cards

Flexible actions and songs: 12 cards

 

Most of these slots for each turn will be filled with characters, locations, or items meant to be played right on curve. A challenge-focused deck, for instance, might use four Royal Guard – Octopus Soldier and four Captain Hook – Forceful Duelist as its eight turn-1 plays. However, characters that you would often plan to play on later turns to maximize their abilities, such as Doc – Bold Knight or Dumbo – Ninth Wonder of the Universe, are best counted where you expect to play them most often, for instance on turn 5 or 6.

 

Flexible actions and songs—ones that deal damage, boost characters, or draw cards—fit into a separate category, since they’re rarely played at the very first opportunity. One exception is Sail the Azurite Sea, which Sapphire decks nearly always want on turn two; therefore, it should count as a turn-2 play for your curve.

 

Sapphire Ramp lists often pair it with Tipo – Growing Son, reliably giving them four ink by turn three and letting them skip the usual three-cost slot entirely. For such decks, turn-3 plays will generally be comprised of four-cost characters, turn-4 plays are five-cost characters, and so on. With these nuances in mind, you’ll find that many top tournament decks use an ink curve close to this framework. It’s a simple tool, but one that can make your deck feel smooth, consistent, and powerful.

 

 

 

Uninkable cards are among the flashiest tools in Disney Lorcana. They often deliver powerful abilities at an efficient rate, but they come with a cost: you can’t place them in your inkwell. If you load your deck with too many, you risk stalling out. You might find yourself unable to build up your inkwell, clog your hand with cards you can’t play, and miss the flexibility of choosing which cards to use as ink.

 

Striking the right balance will help ensure you'll be able to put a card into your inkwell nearly each turn. While the ideal number of uninkables depends on both your strategy and the relative strength of your inkable versus uninkable options, extensive data from successful tournament decks suggests a sweet spot: between 11 and 13 uninkables, spread across your ink curve.

 

This ratio of approximately 11-13 uninkable cards to 47-49 inkable ones is a suitable guideline for most decks. Ideally, you use your uninkable slots for cards that are great in every matchup, on both play and draw. This approach lets you enjoy the power of cards like Genie – Wish Fulfilled while keeping your deck consistent, reliable, and flexible.

 

 

 

If a card makes your deck tick, you’ll want to see it often. And the best way to do that in Lorcana is to run four copies—the maximum allowed. This gives you the best chance of drawing it early and consistently. Accordingly, many initial 60-card decks start with 15 sets of four, representing a focused and reliable approach.

 

But not every card deserves a full playset. To balance consistency and flexibility, you’ll often scale back:

4 copies – Used for cards that are absolutely essential, ones you want in nearly every game and don’t mind seeing in multiples. Tipo – Growing Son in ink acceleration decks or Daisy Duck – Donald's Date in aggressive decks are perfect examples.

3 copies – Great cards, but with diminishing returns. You don’t want to draw multiples, perhaps because the card is expensive or uninkable. For example, Calhoun – Marine Sergeant shines on turn two, but a second copy may squander valuable ink if it has to be played off-curve. Likewise, Madam Mim – Elephant is strong once, but her bounce tax can become burdensome in multiples.

2 copies – Used when the downsides of multiples are even sharper, or when you’re filling a precise slot in your curve. For example, if you decide your deck needs exactly 10 two-drops or cards of a specific functionality, then you may end up with two copies of a card. And sometimes you’ll opt for a flexible 2-2 split between two situational characters that each excel in different scenarios rather than committing to four copies of any single card.

1 copy – The most natural reason for running a single copy is when you don't want to draw the card naturally but still want to have access to it. Toolbox strategies with Antonio Madrigal – Friend to All often rely on singletons to provide specific answers or win conditions.

 

Learning when to play one, two, three, or four copies is part science, part art, but it’s one of the more enjoyable aspects of tuning your deck.

 

 

 

Sometimes four copies of a card just isn’t enough. In a 60-card deck, running four copies gives you about a 40% chance to see at least one in your opening hand, climbing to 67% if you always fully alter your initial seven when you don’t see that desired card. But if your entire game plan revolves around a certain effect—like accelerating ink or curving out—then you’ll need even more reliability.

 

Enter the “Rule of Eight”: the idea that a strategy really takes off once you can pack at least eight functionally similar cards. For instance, a Circle of Life deck thrives when you have access to four Bobby Zimuruski – Spray Cheese Kid and four Yzma – Exasperated Schemer. That way, your probability of seeing a discard enabler jumps to 65% in your opening seven, or 90% if you always alter fully in search of such an effect. Those percentages are the difference between a deck that works sometimes and one that works like clockwork.

 

Most competitive decks lean on this principle. Sapphire lists, for example, generally use four Tipo – Growing Son and four Sail the Azurite Sea to ensure reliable ink acceleration. And now it may be clear why the suggested ink curve features eight turn-one plays and eight turn-two plays: to let you consistently curve out. Playing early challengers to contest the board is one of the best ways to combat aggro decks in the early game, and doing so consistently is key.

 

 

 

It’s easy to fall into the trap of designing a Disney Lorcana deck as if you’ll always go first. Such decks often excel at executing their own game plans, but they may stumble when forced to interrupt their opponent. To avoid such a wide play–draw disparity, strong decks frequently include tools that let them “break serve ”—a term borrowed from tennis, where players can gain a strong advantage by winning a game when their opponent is serving. In Lorcana, the idea is similar: you want cards that let you wrest back momentum even when you’re on the draw.

 

In practice, that means playing cards that help you contest the board even while starting a turn behind. Maybe it’s a rush character like Elsa – The Fifth Spirit, ready to remove a threat the moment she hits the table. Maybe it’s low-cost removal, through direct damage or reckless, that stops your opponent’s momentum. Or maybe it’s an early drop that challenges efficiently to stabilize the board.

 

The trick is balance. You want a mix between cards that shine when you’re ahead and cards that help when you’re behind. For midrange decks especially, this often means splitting your cards for every ink cost across different roles. On the play, you’ll often want to ink Captain Hook – Forceful Duelist and quest with Daisy Duck – Donald’s Date. On the draw, the roles reverse: you’ll prefer to set Daisy Duck aside during your alter and lean on Captain Hook to challenge the board. If both were inkable, the flexibility would be even greater. By building such a balanced mix of cards for either play or draw into your deck, you’ll increase your chances of winning when the wind is at your back.

 

 

 

It may be tempting to squeeze in just one more tech card, but the best competitive decks rarely go above the 60-card minimum. The reason is simple: every extra card lowers your odds of drawing the ones that matter most. The smaller the deck, the higher your chances of finding your best cards. Every card you add beyond 60 dilutes your list with weaker options.

 

Mathematically, it can be proven that if you shuffle only once per game and never reach your bottom card, then a 61-card deck can be no better than the best 60-card deck. The gist of the argument is that under these assumptions, a game with a 61-card deck would play out in the same way as a 60-card deck with an extra card on the bottom. The win probability of that 61-card deck can then be expressed as the average of 61 possible 60-card decks, and an average can never exceed the maximum.

 

There are exceptions. If you fear that A Whole New World could make you run out of cards in your deck, adding a card or two can make sense. Likewise, if you have cards that you don’t want to draw naturally—for example,  specific tutor targets for Antonio Madrigal – Friend to All, or a convoluted win condition after Donald Duck – Coin Collector plus Monstro – Infamous Whale draws your entire deck—then going above 60 can be strategically justified. But these cases are rare. For nearly every other deck, like Cinderella with her glass slipper, the perfect fit is exactly 60.

 

 

Card advantage gives you more resources than your opponent. It comes in many forms, ranging from characters like Doc – Bold Knight or Genie – Wish Fulfilled to actions such as Finders Keepers. Without card draw, you’ll eventually run out of steam, topdecking while your opponent pulls ahead.

 

Removal denies your opponent their resources. Options such as Strength of a Raging Fire, Elsa – The Fifth Spirit, or Hades – Infernal Schemer make sure dangerous opposing characters don’t stick around. The most powerful removal effects all have the ability to answer ready characters.

 

Most top-performing Disney Lorcana decks include both card advantage effects and ways to remove opposing ready characters. Without at least four copies of either pillar, your deck is unbalanced and vulnerable. With both, you’ll be ready to handle the twists and turns of any game.

 

Many Disney Lorcana cards let you look at the top four cards of your deck and grab one that satisfies a certain condition. It’s a powerful mechanic—if you actually hit something. The danger is running too few eligible targets, turning your card selection effect into a disappointing whiff. Nothing feels worse than inviting the magic only for nothing to show up. To make these effects shine, you need enough “hits.”

 

The exact number depends on the card, the stakes of hitting or missing, and the deckbuilding sacrifices involved. At its heart, though, selection is about consistency, and consistency is about math. By removing one card selection effect from your 60-card deck, playing it, and considering the resulting hypergeometric probabilities, a useful guideline looks like this:

 

70% consistency – With 15 hits, you’ll find at least one 70% of the time in your top four cards. This number can be acceptable for characters like Scrooge McDuck – Resourceful Miser, who already has solid stats to fall back on.

80% consistency – With 19 hits, your probability rises to 80%. This level of consistency works well for cards like Powerline – World's Greatest Rock Star, whose base stats may be slightly below curve but whose ability has enormous potential.

90% consistency – With 25 hits, you’ll succeed 90% of the time. At that point, an ability does what it promises most of the time, and it’s suitable for repetitive effects such as on Mulan – Considerable Diplomat.

95% consistency – With 30 hits, you’ll find at least one 95% of the time in your top four cards. This level is best for cards like Be Our Guest, where missing would be a wasteful disaster.

 

 

 

Deckbuilding doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The metagame—the distribution of deck archetypes, cards, and strategies you expect to face—is an important factor to keep in mind, as this can elevate  your deck from good to great. Sometimes, the best cards for your deck are not the flashiest ones but the one that perfectly answers what everyone else is playing.

 

If Illusions such as Iago – Giant Spectral Parrot are everywhere, then you’ll want cheap actions that can choose an opposing character while drawing you a card. The prevalence of actions and songs in the metagame also determines whether Ursula – Deceiver or Pete – Games Referee deserve a slot. They were once core staples before the release of Fabled, but as popular songs rotated out, their influence has faded, with many Core Constructed lists trimming them entirely.

 

The metagame shifts constantly, shaped by new sets, content creators, and tournament results. Staying informed ensures you’re not caught off guard, and one of the best ways is to follow the live coverage of Disney Lorcana Challenge events on Twitch.tv/DisneyLorcana.