You've played a starter, you know the rules, and you're ready to build your own. This is the wall most new Lorcana deck-builders hit: the rulebook tells you a deck is at least 60 cards across one or two inks, up to 4 copies of any card, but it stays quiet on the questions that actually decide whether your deck wins games. How many characters? How many uninkables is too many? Where should the curve sit? What role does each card play?

The good news: Lorcana is one of the cleaner TCGs to deck-build for. The two-ink rule narrows your card pool in a helpful way, the ink-resource system is honest (one card inked per turn, no land flood), and most cards can be evaluated against a small set of jobs. The skill isn't memorizing the metagame — it's making coherent choices inside the framework. This guide is the framework.

Everything below is ink-agnostic and archetype-agnostic. The exact card recommendations belong in our deck guides (linked throughout); the principles here apply whether you're building Amber/Steel, Ruby/Sapphire, or anything else. By the end, you should be able to look at a 60-card list — yours or someone else's — and tell whether it actually makes sense.

The Legal Structure

The official deckbuilding rules, every one of them:

• Deck size: at least 60 cards, no upper limit — but you must be able to shuffle it unaided, and consistency drops fast above 60.
• Inks: one or two of the six (Amber, Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, Steel). Most decks are two-ink for the card-pool depth.
• Copies: up to 4 of any unique card — "unique" means the full name and title together (Stitch, Carefree Surfer and Stitch, Rock Star are different cards; you can run 4 of each).
• Card types: Characters, Actions (including Songs as a subtype), Items, and Locations.
• Format: after the September 2025 rotation, the Core format runs sets 5–12; see our rotation survival guide for what's legal where.

Step 1: Pick Your Inks

Your two inks define what your deck can do. Most decks pick a primary ink for identity and a secondary for tools the primary lacks. A quick read on what each ink brings:

The pairing test: pick two inks that together give you at least two distinct tools from this short list — early board, interaction (removal/bounce/disruption), card draw, or efficient lore generation. If your pair covers fewer than two, your deck is going to feel one-dimensional. Amber/Steel covers protection and big bodies; Ruby/Amethyst covers speed and bounce; Sapphire/Amber covers ramp and finishers — all common pairings precisely because they cover multiple tools.

For new builders, two inks is almost always better than one. Mono-ink works for a few specific archetypes (some Amber and Steel mono builds are real), but it cuts your card pool roughly in half and limits your tools. See our mono-ink viability piece for when it actually works.

Step 2: Define Your Plan

Before you pick a single card, answer this in one sentence: How does my deck win? Most Lorcana decks fall into one of three archetypes, and the cards you choose should serve that archetype, not work against it.

Many beloved real Lorcana decks blend archetypes — Sapphire/Amber ramp is "midrange that wants to control until it finishes" — but as a builder you need to know which mode is primary. A deck that's "half aggro, half control" is usually neither. Pick a lane and let secondary mode support it, not split focus. Our tempo and lore race guide covers the rhythm each archetype plays at.

Step 3: The Role Ratios

A 60-card Lorcana deck has four card types, and a healthy starting framework looks like this:

The hard rule under this: if your Actions and Songs combined exceed roughly 25% of the deck, you're short on characters. Lorcana is fundamentally a character game — characters quest for lore, contest the board, and embody most of your win conditions. Spell-heavy builds work for specific control archetypes, but a default deck wants more bodies than tricks.

Archetype shifts: Aggro pushes Characters toward 24–26 with fewer Actions and almost no Items. Control drops Characters to 18–20 and raises Actions/Songs to 14–16. Midrange sits at the framework above. Items and Locations are highly archetype-dependent — a Sapphire ramp build might run 6 Items; a Ruby aggro build runs 0.

Step 4: The Uninkable Question

This is the single most important deckbuilding decision in Lorcana, and the one new builders get wrong most often. Uninkable cards — the ones without the dotted hex border on the cost — can't go into your inkwell. They tend to be the most powerful cards in the game (Ravensburger balances them by removing the ink option), which is exactly why the temptation to overload on them ruins decks.

Every uninkable in your hand is a card you can't use to make ink. If you draw two uninkables in your opening seven and need to ink one to start the game, you're already behind. Pile too many uninkables into the deck and you'll routinely brick — powerful hands you can't play because there's nothing to fuel them.

A few additional notes on uninkable management:

• Every uninkable should be exceptional. If a card is uninkable but only marginally better than its inkable alternative, it's not worth the brick risk. The uninkables that earn their slot are the ones that flip key turns — a finisher, a critical removal spell, a game-warping engine.
• Cheap uninkables hurt less. A 1-cost uninkable in your opening hand is easy to play and forget; a 6-cost uninkable in your opening hand is dead weight for several turns. Bias your uninkable picks toward low-cost cards or once-per-game finishers.
• When opening hands feel awkward, cut the top end first. If you're regularly mulliganing because you have two expensive uninkables you can't ink and can't cast, the fix isn't fewer big spells — it's fewer big uninkable spells. Trade them for inkable versions or smaller versions of the same effect.

For a deeper dive on the inkwell decision tree and which cards typically deserve uninkable slots, see our inkable vs. uninkable guide.

Step 5: The Ink Curve

Your curve is the distribution of card costs across the deck. Lorcana adds one ink per turn (from your inkwell), so by turn 3 you have 3 ink, by turn 5 you have 5, and so on. A reasonable midrange curve:

• 1-cost: 6–10 cards — early plays, songs, cheap utility. Crucial for not falling behind on turn 1.
• 2-cost: 10–14 cards — the workhorses; efficient questers and key removal.
• 3-cost: 10–14 cards — bigger questers, impactful Actions and Songs.
• 4–5 cost: 10–14 cards — mid-game threats and key Items/Locations.
• 6+ cost: 4–8 cards — finishers and bombs. Cap this slot tight; too many here and you'll brick early.

Curve shifts by archetype: Aggro packs heavily into 1–3 cost (often 30+ cards in that band) with almost nothing above 5. Control stretches higher, accepting more 5–7 cost cards because the early game is about surviving, not pressuring. The midrange curve above is the default starting point.

Step 6: Give Every Card a Job

A deck isn't a collection of good cards — it's a collection of cards that support a plan. Every card in your 60 should answer the question "what is this doing for my deck?" with one of a small set of jobs:

• Quester. Cards that exist to generate lore. Evaluated on lore-per-cost, evasion (Evasive, Rush), and survivability.
• Contester. Cards built to challenge opposing characters — high Strength, Bodyguard, Resist, Ward, or specific challenge-related triggers.
• Interaction. Removal Actions, bounce effects, songs that disrupt — the cards you use to stop the opponent's plan.
• Engine. Card draw, ink ramp, recurring effects from Items and Locations — the resources that keep you ahead over time.
• Finisher. The card(s) that actually close the game — a big-lore quester, a Singer-enabled song, a board-clearing combo.

The cut test: for every card in your 60, name its job in one word. If you can't — "it's just good," "I like it," "it might be useful sometimes" — it's a cut candidate. Decks are won and lost on the cards you removed, not the ones you added. Cards without clear jobs are dead weight.

A Worked 60-Card Skeleton

Here's what a 60-card midrange deck looks like by role (not specific cards — those depend on your inks):

From here, you tune toward your archetype. Aggro shifts the curve down (more 1–3 cost, fewer 5+ cost) and pushes Characters higher. Control raises Action/Song count and trims questers. The skeleton above is the place to start; the deck you end up with after testing is the deck you'll actually win with.

Tuning the Deck

A new deck is a hypothesis. You test it against real games, learn what's wrong, and fix it. The discipline experienced builders use:

• Play 5 games. Change 5 cards. Repeat. A small, deliberate iteration loop. Don't rebuild the whole deck after one bad game; don't refuse to change anything after ten. Five-and-five forces incremental improvement.
• Ask three diagnostic questions after each batch: What did I lose to most often? On turn 3, did I feel ahead, behind, or even? Did my "best cards" actually get played, or sit in my hand? Each answer points at a specific kind of change.
• Losing to speed? Lower your curve and add cheap interaction or Bodyguard. Your 5-cost answers are arriving too late.
• Cards stuck in hand? Either too expensive (cut for cheaper alternatives) or your engine isn't drawing enough — add card draw or trim non-impact bodies.
• Flooded on ink, short on plays? You need more impactful late-game cards. Add a finisher or two; the deck has resources but no use for them.

Common Deckbuilding Mistakes

FAQ & Quick Reference

• Can I run 3 inks? No — the limit is two. You can run mono-ink, which is harder but viable in specific archetypes, or two-ink, which is the standard. Pick one or two of the six inks and commit.
• Should I run 4 copies of every good card? Of cards core to your plan, almost always yes — you want maximum chance of drawing them. The exceptions: very expensive finishers (drawing two is often bad, so 2–3 copies suffices) and uninkables you only need to see once (3 copies caps brick risk while still hitting them when needed).
• How many ink-ramp cards do I need? Highly archetype-dependent. Sapphire ramp builds want 4–6 ramp pieces; aggro decks want zero. The test: if your finishers cost 7+ and you can't reliably reach 7 ink by turn 5 or 6, you need ramp. If your deck wins on turn 6 anyway, you don't.
• When should I tune away from these ratios? After playing 10–20 games with the framework. The ratios above are starting points; once you've experienced your deck in real games, you'll notice "I always need one more bounce spell" or "I keep flooding on questers" — that's when you tune. Don't tune in theory; tune from results.
• Is it cheaper to upgrade a starter or build from scratch? Almost always cheaper to upgrade. Starters give you a tuned two-ink baseline plus playable cards in both inks — you fill gaps with singles rather than buying packs hoping to pull what you need. See our starter buying guide for which to start with.

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