Lorcana shows what Magic’s Universes Beyond is missing

Cards that care about characters and not just cards could work in Universes Beyond

As a veteran Magic: The Gathering player with more than a quarter-century of experience, I initially had a hard time teaching myself how to play Disney Lorcana. Instead of chipping away at your opponents' health, you’re working to generate 20 Lore first to win, which requires a total rewiring of how you approach deckbuilding. That said, there are some similar mechanics between the two games: Ward in Lorcana resembles Hexproof, and Evasive functions a lot like Flying in Magic. But as is the case in every trading card game, the real core is in finding the interactions between various abilities that give you a distinct advantage. The most novel mechanic I found in Lorcana is its approach to name-based mechanics.

Lorcana cares about you recognizing characters, remembering their stories, and understanding the relationships they have within the Disney universe. Since the release of the game’s first set in August 2023, it has leaned on presenting multiple iterations of the same character many times over. The upcoming Winterspell set, due out in February, for example, will introduce at least two new versions of Elsa from Frozen, bringing the grand total to about 13. But each different version of any given character earns its space in the game by representing a different moment on the character’s journey. In some cases, it’s an entirely different version of the same classic character: Winterspell has versions of Mickey, Donald, and more from Mickey’s Christmas Carol.

Elsa, Ice Surfer from The First Chapter has an ability that lets you ready the card (Lorcana’s version of untap) whenever you play a character named Anna — not Anna, Diplomatic Queen or Anna, Ensnared Sister, but any version of Anna.

Lorcana doubles down with this broader name-based mechanic with Shift. Let’s look at Anna, Mystical Majesty. She has Shift 4, which means you can pay four Ink to play this Anna on top of another character in play named Anna. Normally, Mystical Majesty costs seven ink. But let’s say earlier in the game, you put Anna, Braving the Storm on the board for only two ink. She’s a 1/4 that earns only one lore when she quests. If you have Mystical Majesty in your hand when you reach four ink, you can play it at the cheaper cost to exert (tap) all opposing characters. As a 4/5 that generates two lore when she quests, this version is a lot more powerful.

Magic: The Gathering doesn’t have anything that even remotely resembles Shift, except Mutate, a mechanic from Ikoria: Lair of Behemots. The game focuses more broadly on mechanical interactions. Plenty of cards interact with creature subtypes, like elves or knights. And sometimes they might reference a hyper-specific named card. Hare Apparent famously — and annoyingly — creates a number of rabbit tokens equal to the number of creatures you control named Hare Apparent. Magic almost never references a character’s name without a subtitle referencing a specific card. (There are some exceptions, from sets like War of the Spark like Chandra’s Triumph, a direct-damage instant spell that does extra damage if you control a Chandra planeswalker, of which there are about 20 different kinds.)

Wizards of the Coast has tiptoed around these kinds of name-based mechanics for years, probably because, aside from a handful of planeswalkers at the heart of the ongoing story, it doesn’t have any characters with anything close to the name recognition of Disney icons. But things change when you look at Universes Beyond, which is set to be a central pillar of Magic’s future.

The Final Fantasy crossover set released last June has four different versions of Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy 7, and many different FF heroes and heroines get three versions each. Barret, Tifa, and Aerith from FF7 each have two. Wouldn’t it be fun if Magic gave you a reason to play cards like these together, if only for the flavor? Maybe something like, “every time you play this character’s party member, draw a card.” Universes Beyond sets do a great job of delivering cards that each tell a different part of the same character’s story, but they could always do more to convey how that storytelling is an experience that characters share.

Something like Shift could be much more easily adapted into Magic thanks to Universes Beyond. Cloud, Midgar Mercenary is a 2/1 that costs two white mana. Two other versions of Cloud each cost five mana for a 4/4. They essentially show us his increase in power over time. What if Magic gave us weaker versions of the same character and then allowed us to Shift a more powerful version into play at a cheaper cost? It’s obviously too late for crossovers like Final Fantasy, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it’s a mechanic that could very easily be applied to future crossovers, whether they’re Marvel-focused or something else we don’t even know about yet.

Such a mechanic works well in Lorcana because it’s a game full of varied iterations of characters from across Disney franchises. And what is Universes Beyond but Wizards of the Coast’s play at capitalizing on fan enthusiasm for all sorts of popular franchises? It’s the perfect avenue through which Magic can explore new mechanically interesting ways to tell the stories associated with the characters the game is borrowing.

In other words, it might finally be time for Magic to stop avoiding mechanics that Lorcana has embraced from the start.