What does Disney’s take on Magic: The Gathering mean for Star Wars?
Disney is jumping into the card game market and is looking to challenge Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon Trading Card Game for a seat at the gaming table.
Last month, the company announced Disney Lorcana as a new family-friendly trading card game. The game is being produced by the German company Ravensburger who has been in the industry for over 100 years. At D23 Expo 2022, fans got their first look at the gorgeous cards for the upcoming game.
In Disney Lorcana, you’ll wield magic inks and the power of Lorcana to assemble your team of Disney characters. Some characters will be familiar friends. Others will be fantastically re-imagined.#Disney #DisneyLorcana #TCG #TradingCardGame #TradingCards #TCGCollector pic.twitter.com/zdxrDWjcJV
— Disney Lorcana (@DisneyLorcana) September 9, 2022
Polygon reported the brand manager for Disney Lorcana, Ryan Miller, discussing the game and saying:
“The basic idea is there’s this place called The Great Illuminary. It is a treasury of all the Disney songs and stories ever made — all the characters — and it’s where they’re kind of recorded. The players take on this role of an Illumineer — this powerful sorcerer that has the ability to bring these characters to life off the page. [Players will be] bringing a band of their favorite Disney characters together to adventure in this world.”
The card art has taken on a more storybook quality as the book openings of older Disney movies were the inspiration for the game. Disney also knows that anytime someone steps into the TCG market that players have come to expect a certain level of long-term investment. Ravensburger’s North America CEO Filip Francke said to Polygon about Disney Lorcana:
“This effort is a multi-year series [of releases]. It’s something that Disney has never really allowed any [collaborator] to do. So the trust that we built with Disney […] I think allowed us to come to a point where we both strategically, commercially had the trust to say, ‘Yeah, let’s dare to do this together.’”
The first cards for Disney Lorcana have been revealed.https://t.co/KWsTYZlx8n pic.twitter.com/nD2PyeKKfk
— ComicBook.com (@ComicBook) September 9, 2022
Ravensburger and Disney’s relationship does have precedence as well which brings us to the Star Wars speculation of what might happen with Disney Lorcana. One of Ravensburger’s most popular games is Disney Villainous, an all-ages strategy board game. The game started in 2018 and has expanded to include villains from Disney, Marvel, and, of course, Star Wars. The Star Wars Villainous: Power of the Dark Side expansion was released in August bringing in Darth Vader, Asajj Ventress, Moff Gideon, Kylo Ren, and more into the game.
I would say this bodes well to see a possible Star Wars connection to Disney Lorcana in the future. More than likely, the creators would probably want to focus on Disney characters first and build up the world before bringing in other franchises. It took four years to bring Star Wars to Villainous, so I would guess the situation for their TCG venture would more than likely follow the same path. Still, the idea of Jedi like Obi-Wan Kenobi squaring off against a big bad dragon like Maleficent sounds like a heck of a lot of fun. Plus, the card artwork is gorgeous. I’d love to see Star Wars characters in this style.
Regardless, Disney Lorcana seems like a game that card collectors and Disney fans alike will enjoy. Time will tell if we see Star Wars join in on the action.