We play some type of card game each night at our house, usually during dinner. For Christmas, I was given Unstable Game's Twisted Cryptids which we are really getting into and which I will probably post about soon. However, over the Christmas break, we really wanted to learn how to play Lorcana.

The local shop that we go to for cards (my son plays a lot of the One Piece Card Game) usually only has about 5–6 people show up to play on the One Piece nights, but I think the attendance of Lorcana is starting to rival that of the old juggernaut of Magic: The Gathering when it comes to attendance at the shop on play nights. I didn't really see the fun in it from the outside, considering it is Disney-based, but we started to see the decks show up in good numbers and it looked to be not hard to find cards for and also that since so many people were playing it, there had to be some allure.

I sat down and watched a few videos on it today to get the basics of play, and we decided to try it out tonight. I was the moderator, my wife played the Peter Pan/Dalmatian premade deck, and my son played with a Simba deck. I guided what rules I did know, and we began playing without the addition of the Locations just to get a start. We later found out that Locations were critical to my wife's deck's playstyle, so we ended up adding those back in.

The game seems very similar to Magic except for two keep aspects. The first is that there are no separate mana cards, the cards you would normally put into the play field are the mana. There are certain cards that are marked as available to use as mana. Once used the play abilities are moot and the card becomes a generic mana to be tapped.

The second thing that is pretty different is that the receiver of a challenge does not get to direct damage from the attacker. This is a pretty big head turner for me, and I have to alter my way of thinking a good bit. I am used to the attack receiver being able to divvy out damage between multiple cards, and in this game it is a direct 1v1 when fighting (the Disney-friendly way is to say "challenging"). The damage done to the attacker also does not get wiped at the start of the attacker's next turn.

It's these ins and outs that we will learn as we go on playing. We plan to get in a few games a night, so be prepared to see it more and more on here.