Disney launching new card game to rival Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon

When it comes to collectible card games, Magic: The Gathering and the Pokemon Trading Card Game have dominated the industry for decades, each a billion-dollar franchise in its own right. But it looks like Disney wants a slice of that pie.

The House of Mouse has partnered with Ravensburger, a powerful 139-year-old game publisher, to launch its own card game titled Disney Lorcana. The first sets are expected in the latter half of 2023.

Most board game consumers will recognise Ravensburger for its popular line of Disney-themed strategy board games, called Disney Villainous.

The Disney Villainous series began in 2018 and now contains nearly 30 villains from all across the Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars universes. With Disney Lorcana, Ravensburger says that it wants to take things to the next level.

Disney Lorcana is touted as a family-friendly collectible trading card game and will include a modern storybook art style.

Shane Hartley, Global Games Creative Director, said that it "was inspired by the storybook openings of classic Disney films and features visible line work and vibrant colour washes" and "mixes both traditional hand-drawn qualities seen in fairy-tale storybooks with new digital techniques."

Disney Lorcana will also feature "more original Disney artwork than any other single product ever created".

Although nothing has been revealed about Lorcana's mechanics just yet, the setup sounds more than a little reminiscent of Magic: The Gathering – a clear competitor of Disney and Ravensburger's latest effort.

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"Magic, I would say, has a very high competition level," said Ryan Miller, Brand Manager.

"People love that about Magic. We have pulled back from it. I wouldn't say that we're cooperative in any sense – it's definitely a strategy card game.

"But I would say that we've pulled back the confrontation level, because we feel that that will appeal to a lot more folks.

"So if you think [of] chess as the highest confrontation level you can get, we're a bunch of notches behind that because we want people to have fun […] with these characters that they love so much."

Taking place in a world called the Great Illuminary where every Disney song and story is stored, players become sorcerers known as Illumineers that can band together with characters from across franchises.

That said, folks will have to wait a little bit longer before they can see a preview of the actual gameplay, or find out who the heroes (as well as the villains) they would be playing with.

We're sure that more details on the card game will be revealed at the upcoming D23 Expo held from Sept 9 to 11

This article was first published in Geek Culture.