6 best Disney Lorcana action cards in The First Chapter
Banish characters, draw cards and hinder your opponents using these essential abilities.
The best action cards in Disney Lorcana are crucial to claiming victory, supporting your characters as they challenge and quest their way to 20 lore. From protecting your own cards to doing away with those of your opponent, action cards provide a fast way to turn a match to your advantage - and leave your rivals struggling to keep up.
Best Disney Lorcana action cards
Action cards have some of the most straightforward effects in Lorcana. You simply pay the cost in their upper-left corner, before doing what the text says and putting the card in your discard pile. Don’t be fooled by their simplicity, though - while your characters may have the responsibility of questing for lore and challenging opponents’ characters to slow them down, action cards are crucial to keeping a step ahead of your rivals and responding to any threats.
Action cards in Lorcana technically come in two different forms: standard action cards and songs. Both can be used by paying their normal ink cost, but songs have the added benefit of being able to be played for free if you have the right character - worth at least the value of the song - already on the field. Standard actions, meanwhile, are even more simple: you pay the card’s cost to do the thing it says. (Need a refresher on how to play Lorcana?)
Here we’ll be running down the best action cards in Lorcana’s debut set The First Chapter. If you’re looking for the best songs in Lorcana, you can find those in our separate list - we’ll be sticking to standard actions here. We’ve picked out one standard action card for each ink colour in the Disney trading card game, with a mixture of costs and effects - from dishing out damage to enemies to accelerating your own lore gains. While they all differ in their use, they’re united by being some of the very best Lorcana cards in the game.
Whatever you’re looking to build your Lorcana deck around, these action cards are essential to getting you on your way to victory.
1. Dragon Fire
Heat things up
Featuring Sleeping Beauty villain Maleficent in her fearsome dragon form, Dragon Fire is one of the most brutally effective and powerful action cards in Lorcana.
For five ink, you can banish a character of your choosing - sending them straight into their owner’s discard pile without needing to whittle down their health through challenges. It fits right into Ruby decks’ focus on attacking your opponents and leaving them reeling.
Five ink is relatively cheap cost for a card that can instantly deal with tough, high-willpower attackers or characters ready to churn lore and progress their player toward victory, so having Dragon Fire at the ready when you need it is always recommended.
2. Fire the Cannons!
Prepare for a barrage
Fire the Cannons! deals two damage to any character. Like many of the best action cards in Lorcana, it’s a simple effect that’s useful in a number of situations. Being able to quickly finish off a pesky rival character or make their owner think twice about using them to challenge or quest opens up plenty of opportunities for you to pull ahead in the race to 20 lore.
What makes Fire the Cannons! even better is its incredibly low cost. It costs just a single ink to unleash the card’s barrage of damage, meaning you could even play this on your first turn if you wanted to quickly wipe out a lower-willpower character early on.
Fire the Cannons!’s massive value easily makes it a card that belongs in every Steel deck, but it becomes even more formidable and essential when paired with Captain Hook, Captain of the Jolly Roger. The character’s ‘Double the Powder!’ ability allows you to return a copy of Fire the Cannons! from your discard pile to your hand when Hook is played, allowing you to quickly dish out even more damage. Like the pirate captain himself, it’s a force to be reckoned with.
3. Develop Your Brain
An intelligent pick
Echoing Merlin’s advice to Arthur during The Sword in the Stone, Develop Your Brain is an action card that favours brains over brawn.
Costing just a single ink, the action card allows you to look at the top two cards of your deck, choosing one to put in your hand and the other on the bottom of your deck.
Develop Your Brain’s cheap ability to draw cards early in the game and pick your way through your deck makes it an excellent action card for those who build their deck around finding specific characters and cards quickly.
What’s more, you can always choose to place it in your inkwell and use it to pay for other cards if you have everything you need, giving it a welcome versatility in any Sapphire deck.
4. Steal from the Rich
All for one and some from all
Steal from the Rich is a delightfully frustrating action card to come up against - which makes it all the more satisfying when you’re the one playing it.
Channelling Robin Hood’s love of taking from those who don’t deserve wealth and giving it to those in need, Steal from the Rich forces every one of your opponents to lose one lore whenever one of your characters quests for the rest of that turn.
There are a number of things that make this action card especially fantastic, and a must-have in any Emerald deck. The first is the fact that you’ll also gain a point of lore when you quest, meaning you gain the equivalent of at least two points on your opponents as they all lose one (unless they’re already on zero, in which case we’d wait to play this) and you go up one.
Another detail is that it applies whenever any of your characters quests on that turn - so if you have a line of characters ready to be exerted on a quest, you can quickly drain away your opponents’ lore reserves, taking them even further from victory as you advance.
Finally, the action card affects every opponent you’re playing against - so if you’re in a multiplayer match against more than one person, every single person will see their lore vanish.
All this for a mere five-ink cost makes Steal from the Rich an outstanding action card in The First Chapter, and one that’s sure to find pride of place in many Emerald decks - best make sure you’re the one using it.
5. Freeze
Stop right there, thank you very much
Freeze is another of those action cards that has a very simple effect, but one that can be used in a number of situations to give you a major advantage.
For just two ink, the action card lets you exert an opposing character of your choice, freezing them in place like the ice power of Frozen’s Elsa. (Who makes an appearance on this card, and has her own Amethyst character card with a similar Freeze ability.)
While exerting a character might not grant as long-term an advantage as banishing them, it’s a subtly powerful option - especially for such a low cost.
Exerting a rival character can open them up to challenges from your own characters if their player isn’t likely to put them at risk by questing or challenging, helping to clear irritating passive effects and other abilities off the field. Exerting characters can also make them vulnerable to certain other card effects, frustrating your opponent’s efforts to keep them safe.
With exerted characters returning to a ready state at the start of your opponent’s next turn, Freeze is best used on a turn where you’re ready to unleash a barrage of attacks and challenges afterwards. Used effectively, the action card is one of Lorcana’s best at punching a hole through your opponent’s defences.
6. You Have Forgotten Me
Don’t forget about this
Just as the ghostly face of Mufasa looms over Simba in The Lion King, this action card is sure to loom over your next match of Lorcana.
You Have Forgotten Me lets you force your opponents to choose and discard two cards from their hand, for the cost of just four ink. (The Amber card can also be added to your inkwell.)
Being able to empty your opponents’ hands is always helpful, and You Have Forgotten Me can be used in a number of ways to make the most of its hindering effect. Playing it when your opponent is already low on cards is an easy way to force them into a difficult position, while using it to whittle down their full hand if they’ve been drawing a lot of cards recently can put a stick through the spokes of their deck’s strategy.
While You Have Forgotten Me is good in one-on-one matches, its four-ink cost becomes ever better value when playing against multiple people in multiplayer formats, with its power affecting every opponent - meaning you can frustrate all of your rivals for exactly the same price.
Combined with your own card draw options, You Have Forgotten Me can create situations where you’re literally holding all the cards - ready to quest your way to victory as your opponents struggle to get the cards they need. It’s undoubtedly one of the best action cards in Lorcana.
Disney Lorcana is planned for release in local game stores on August 18th, ahead of a wide release on September 1st. Disney Lorcana products are available on Zatu.