Lorcana Gateway Review – Perfect Portal
For more on Lorcana from Player2, check out our First Wave Review, our coverage of the Into the Inklands and Ursula’s Return Wave, Shimmering Skies Wave and our Exclusive interview with Lorcana co-creator Ryan Miller.
Lorcana Gateway is one of the latest products in the growing Lorcana line-up, aimed at introducing newcomers to the game with scaffolded rules, a large board, character standees and two complete decks. The box itself is fairly slimline while the included tokens are of a higher quality than those in the standard Starter Decks. Where this differs majorly from purchasing two Starter Decks by comparison is the lower price point and lack of Booster Packs but a much smoother intro to anyone lacking experience in modern card games.
Many of the decisions in the Gateway box have clearly been made to bridge the gap between Disney fans and TCG fans – the included board, something almost any longtime TCG fan will eschew in favour of neoprene, has handy reminders about key stages of the game on both sides while the Lore tracker splits the middle, having players place their chosen Character standee on their side of the dividing line. Whilst the tokens themselves are favourable due to the thicker stock used as compared to the very thin tokens found in a Starter Deck, I would eventually like to see a more involved set of tokens akin to those made by Gamegenic for Star Wars Unlimited that cover Status effects and other buffs/debuffs. Lorcana Gateway doubles as a micro Legacy game, whereby completing certain events in game will change how future games are played; four small packs of cards are included which players are instructed to open after fulfilling certain conditions during play. The provided decks showcase four of the six Ink types; Ruby/Sapphire going against Amber/Amethyst, each providing a mix of offense and support.
A Lorcana Gateway journey starts with a scripted first game using pre-arranged decks that can be reset if desired and contain only Character and Action cards which simplifies play quite a bit. The included rules clearly explain the aim of the game and procedure of play – to reach 20 Lore first – as well as card layout, how each type of card functions and much more in a clean, easy-to-follow format and wording. In order to get a more authentic experience, I played through Gateway with my wife who is an extreme Disney fan but has never played a TCG before. This initial game saw my wife’s Amber/Amethyst deck out-draw and then outpace my Ruby/Sapphire – a key moment being when I pointed out that it was in her best interests to wipe out one of my Character cards that was pulling 2 Lore per turn, leading to an endgame state where I had to finish my turn knowing there was no way I could stop her hitting the 20 threshold on hers. After a quick shuffle before a second game, things went similarly, if a little better for me finishing on 19 Lore before submitting to defeat once again.
However, during this second match, we had satisfied the Guidebook’s conditions for unlocking our first ‘Gate’, opening up a small pack of cards which expanded our decks with a few more characters and also introduced a new mechanic. This was a turning point for my Ruby/Sapphire deck which felt like moving through molasses compared to the speed at which the Amber/Amethyst was moving.
I managed to wrest victory from the jaws of defeat in our third match through judicious use of Ariel, an Evasive character (unable to be targeted by non-Evasive characters) for which my wife had no answer, and her ability Inspiring Voice which grants Evasive to another Character, combining that power with the Song card ‘You Can Fly!’ that allowed me to save both of my Anna cards for another turn by granting them the Evasive status. Both Anna cards were each pulling in double Lore thanks to Ariel’s Hero Status which granted them this boon. In this way, the Legacy aspect of Gateway became quite a clever way to teach players the importance of attributes like Evasive and comboing cards, but one that may play out very differently or not at all depending on card draw. Whilst the conditions to open the second ‘Gate’ pack were met in this match, I can also see players needing to get multiple games in to meet the ‘Quest Three Characters’ in some situations if either are playing aggressively in regards to Challenging. Without spoilers, the second and third ‘Gate’ packs continued to expand on the mechanics of Lorcana in a measured way before introducing the concept of deck construction and the deck limit for the full game by the fourth ‘Gate’.
The Lorcana Gateway set is an excellent opportunity to dip a toe into Lorcana, providing two decent decks for players to fiddle around with by exchanging decks or simply swapping Ink colours between the two, housing it all in a compact box with a good quality board and tokens to boot. With at least half a dozen games if not more before all of the content is unlocked, it can even be reset and passed along to friends or family if players outgrow what is has to offer, although it would be quite possible to turf the insert and stash another six or so decks if the game turns out to be a hit. Perhaps the only weakness is that there isn’t much here for experienced Lorcana players who may find the compromised decks uninteresting and would have little to no use for the included board and standees. Despite that, at least for my household Gateway has fulfilled its purpose as a product that can turn a Disney fan into a Lorcana fan.
Lorcana Gateway was reviewed using product kindly supplied by PR.
