Ravensburger are known for a lot of things, but mostly puzzles and board games. As such, it was a real surprise when they managed to not only land the Disney license for a card game, but actually deliver an easy-to-access and fun to play TCG in the form of Disney Lorcana.
The moment Lorcana was announced, even before mechanics were finalised, I was drawn in by the artwork. However, just because people find a game particularly attractive or compelling, doesn’t mean that they’ll have the confidence to buy into the system. The Lorcana Gateway Box is designed to ease people into the system, and it does so with the careful step-by-step design of a high quality board game’s ruleset.
Step-by-Step is the critical bit here. I’ve played Lorcana a fair few times now, and the onboarding that comes with the starter pack is already pretty good. However, the cost (critically, the fact you need to buy two) and some of the terminology (specifically, the difference between abilities, songs, etc) might be tricky for people who haven’t played TCGs before. The Lorcana Gateway box literally holds back cards (gating them, if you will) that add new mechanics in, and sets you objectives to complete before you can unlock the new cards and mechanics that go with them.
This is incredibly smart and I don’t just mean in a kind of ‘Wow, that’s actually a great tutorial’ but also in a strategic capacity. I love the idea of gating progress for the first pack behind, say, having to have three characters questing on the same turn. This makes the Lorcana Gateway Box a great way to teach people how to win by having them do it, and while it might be a little bit hands on, certainly compared to most games, its a great way to work around the ‘sink or swim’ mentality that needs to be employed when you join a game that has been running for several years and has stacked more and more mechanics into it. (I’m looking at you ‘Just read the cards’ MtG.)
Specifics, specifics, specifics. So, the Gateway Box basically holds your hand through the first round by controlling the first seven cards that come into your hand. From there it then shows you various ways that you could play out that first turn through a video. This way of learning is much closer to learning from a friend or patient tutor than having to scrape through an instruction booklet but then, when you get to the instruction booklet it’s — as I said before — about gates. What I mean by that is that you then have objectives you’re given, if you manage to achieve them then you add more cards, and mechanics in pack-by-pack. Well, actually the last pack just rounds you out, but the three before bolt more features on.
The Lorcana Gateway Box brings together mechanics from the first four chapters of Lorcana, meaning it includes cards from Into The Inklands, Floodborn and more — that said, it doesn’t include location cards. It casually dipping into each of the four packs is welcome as, as you might have picked up on earlier, new ‘seasons’ of cards can be daunting to players (myself included) for the rules they bring. This, however, is comfortable and warm, and after you’re done learning you’re left with two decks that you fully understand and have some room to mess around with.
It’s an incredibly elegant and carefully designed solution to the onboarding problem that a lot of TCGs have, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other card games look to this for their own equivalent in future.
The Lorcana Gateway Box is available now from Amazon.
