Disney Lorcana’s Ryan Miller Gives Us The Inside Scoop On New Dual-Ink Cards [EXCLUSIVE]

When the first character for Disney Lorcana’s upcoming Archazia’s Island set was revealed, it sparked a debate throughout the TCG community. Lorcana’s introduction of Bolt, star of the 2008 animated film of the same name, seemed to have the visual identity of both Amber and Steel characters. Many immediately suspected what we eventually learned: Archazia’s Island will introduce dual-ink cards to the game.

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“That’s a true testament to our creative team,” says Ryan Miller, brand manager and co-designer of Disney Lorcana. “There’s a shape language for every ink that we have in our internal documents, but I bet you there’s plenty of folks out there that could go ‘oh yeah, that’s the Amber shape language’ because they’ve done such a great job conveying that through the art.

Dual-Ink Cards Enter Lorcana

The introduction of cards with two ink colors was confirmed with the reveal of Belle, Mechanic Extraordinaire; the first dual Ruby/Sapphire card. Since then, we’ve been introduced to some of the dual-color cards featured in Achazia’s Island’s new starter decks, like Amethyst/Steel card Jafar, Newly Crowned. But Ravensburger has remained tight-lipped about how exactly these new dual-ink cards work – until now.

Miller says that he and co-designer Steve Warner discussed dual-ink cards earlier in the design process. They knew it was something they definitely wanted to do, but first, they had to decide how they would work. “There’s two ways it could have worked,” he explains. “It could be more restrictive, or it could be less restrictive.” Miller says while he favored the less-restrictive option at first – allowing decks to include a dual-ink card so long as one of its colors is represented in the deck – he was eventually swayed by Warner, the eternal voice of reason.

Part of the problem was that cards in two inks give certain colors access to mechanics they don’t tend to get as often, and so the costs would have had to be changed for balance. “It would have meant that the cards would have had to pay some sort of cost for that extra power,” he explains. “It would make dual-ink cards a little less exciting. They would cost more for what they do.”

Miller says there’s an interesting challenge of balancing deck building cost and in-game cost. “Once I’ve built my deck, the deck building cost is no longer a consideration,” he says. “By going wide it would have destabilized the balance between the inks.”

It was ultimately decided that dual-ink cards would only be allowed in decks that contain both ink colors. If you’re looking to build a deck around Belle, Mechanic Extraordinaire, you’ll need to build a Ruby/Sapphire deck, rather than any deck that contains either Ruby or Sapphire. By restricting dual-ink cards to a specific ink color archetype, Miller says the team is able to create powerful new cards that can both support less-common ink color combos and open up new strategies in popular combos, like Ruby/Sapphire.

“It allows us to do some neat stuff on cards that we couldn’t do before.” Miller says. “In a lot of dual-ink cards you’ll see a blend of game mechanics that you would never see on a single-ink card.”

Ink Geyser!

A great example of a card that blends two ink colors together is Ink Geyser, which TheGamer is proud to exclusively reveal today. When this three-cost, uninkable Emerald/Sapphire card is played, all players must exert all the cards in their inkwell and return those cards to their hand until there are only three left. “Ink manipulation is a very Sapphire thing, while Emerald is very flexible and all about turning on a dime, so this is a very subtle blend,” Miller says.

Why was Arcazia’s Island – the seventh set halfway through the game’s second year – the right time to introduce such a foundation-shaking mechanic? Miller says when looking at the long-term scope of the game, you don’t want to overwhelm new players with too many complex rules. “Every set can, and will be, someone’s first time playing Lorcana.”

At the midpoint of year two, it felt like the right time to give Lorcana players something exciting and new to play with that will hopefully shake up the meta. “One of the things every set endeavors to do is to reshape the landscape a little bit and give players options they didn’t have before,” he says. Giving players decks and strategies they haven’t considered before is the lifeblood of a good trading card game.”

Archazia’s Island will feature both dual-ink and regular cards, but there’s still a lot we don’t know. Is this something we’ll see in future sets, or just Archazia’s Island? Will every possible ink-color combo be represented? What about Enchanted dual-ink cards? Miller gave me his standard answer when it comes to unanswerable questions – a signature line of his that’s become a beloved, if a little frustrating catchphrase: “Those are Bruno questions, and we don’t talk about Bruno.”

If you’re looking for more information on dual-ink cards and Archazia’s Island, check out Disneylorcana.com. The official Disney Lorcana Discord server is also hosting a presentation about the new set on February 17.

Disney Lorcana

Original Release Date

September 1, 2023

Publisher

Ravensburger

Designer

Ryan Miller, Steve Warner

Player Count

2-6 (suggested)

Age Recommendation

8+

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