Disney Lorcana‘s first set, The First Chapter, was released in August 2023, but despite the massive appeal of Disney’s plethora of characters and movie universes to me as a dad who has watched pretty much every one of their movies, I never picked the TCG up.
However, when I asked manufacturer Ravensburger what the best way to get into the game was, it told me that the Shimmering Skies set has changed everything with a brand new Gateway Box that helps you learn the game and prepare to master it.
Disney Lorcana has only had five sets up, including Shimmering Skies, and I’ve heard that it’s changed a fair bit since launch with the new mechanics and characters added in each set. While the main appeal of any TCG is ripping booster packs and seeing what pulls you get, with Enchanteds being the best in this one, if you want to really get into a TCG, you need to learn how to play it.
What’s in the box?
Inside the Disney Lorcana Shimmering Skies Gateway box, you get the following.
- 2 Starter Decks (30 cards each)
- 4 Reward Packs (18 cards each)
- 30 Damage Counters
- 2 Double-sided Character Movers
- 2 Character Bases
- 1 Game Board
- 1 Rulebook
- 1 Guidebook with QR codes linking to how-to-play video tutorials
- 2 Deck Tip Pamphlets
This is all you need to get started in the world of Disney Lorcana. Note that the decks and rewards packs are set and don’t contain any Enchanteds or extremely rare cards that you might be hoping to pull for from booster packs. This box is designed to teach you how to play, not make you rich.
Once you’ve opened the box, the guidebook tells you everything you need to know. It outlines your first several games by explaining the basic rules of playing Disney Lorcana with a few card types omitted to keep things simple. This is the most bare-bones version of the game that only uses character cards.
From there, you need to follow the ‘quests’ in the rulebook. These require you to play a few games, a villain and hero simultaneously, and quest for Lore. Once you’ve mastered those basics, you can unlock the Gate 1 pack, which adds Songs and new characters to each deck.
There are four Gate packs to unlock by playing multiple rounds and learning the growing complexities of the game as you go. By the time you’ve opened Gate 4 and have played a few rounds with all cards unlocked, you’re ready to open a booster box, build your own deck, and head to your local game store for a game night.
I learned how to play Disney Lorcana with my wife, who had absolutely no previous experience playing card games. Over the course of a week, we played rounds each night, adding new cards every time we sat down to play until we couldn’t stop.
We usually crack out Scrabble when we have time for a board game, but Disney Lorcana is now our go-to. The Gateway Box made it so much more accessible not only to me but to someone who needed the slower pace and levels to work through before being thrown in at the deep end.
Every card is linked to a Disney movie or franchise, making this an easy card game to become engrossed in. Most of us watched a few of the movies as children, and parents will know most of the songs by heart.
Bringing the characters to life in a new way, with a card game that relies on you earning points instead of fighting each other, just makes Disney and the TCG world feel more accessible as an adult. Disney Lorcana also doesn’t really have a proper meta deck yet, meaning you can try out all sorts of card combinations and still be in with a chance of winning. That, and the fact that the goal is to score 20 Lore, not annihilate your opponents, adds enough elements to the game that require a careful strategy that blurs the line between board games and TCGs.
It’s easy to pick up games like Magic: The Gathering by watching people play it on YouTube, but not everyone has the time to sit there and invest hours in learning a game before they decide if they want to buy a few packs and start playing. Even then, there’s a significant financial element to every TCG, with Shimmering Skies booster boxes costing over $100 at launch. That’s a steep price for something you’re either only going to collect or ‘might’ play.
The Disney Lorcana Shimmering Skies Gateway box is the perfect way to get into the game. It’s dirt cheap at the time of writing on Amazon, and I imagine that price won’t rise too much because this product is designed to be accessible forever.
If you’re on the fence about getting into the game, whether you’re a long-time TCG fan or have no experience but love Disney or some combination of both, this really is the box for you. Both starter decks are viable against anyone and fun to play. When you feel like you’ve outgrown that box, there’s a whole world of Shimmering Skies and beyond to look forward to, and I can’t wait to see you there.
