Yesterday on their official social media channels, Disney Lorcana announced that the game’s premier expansion, titled Disney Lorcana: The First Chapter, would be available for purchase in local game stores on Friday, August 18th, and in big box stores (e.g. Target and Wal-Mart) two weeks later on Friday, September 1st. This puts the release of the game nearly one year after it debuted at the D23 convention this past September.
The timing of the release is not surprising. When the game debuted it was announced that the set would come out at some time in the fall of 2023. September is a very popular time for retail product releases. Since Mercadian Masques, every single fall expansion of Magic the Gathering has released in late-September until Dominaria United released in early September. The early Fall release also lines up with the annual D23 convention. This year Disney will be celebrating its 100th anniversary as a company.
Disney Lorcana further announced that at launch the game will be available in English, French, and German with availability based on where you’re purchasing the game. This is a much smaller set of locales than the most recent Magic: the Gathering expansion, The Brothers’ War, which was printed in eight languages English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese. The Brothers’ War was the first set in many years to drop Korean, Russian, and Traditional Chinese as languages.
At Launch, according to Disney Lorcana, the game will be available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Given the success that Magic the Gathering and Pokemon have had globally, it is surprising to see that places where card gaming is incredibly popular including Latin America, Italy, Australia, Japan, China, Korea, and all of Southeast Asia are not included in the initial launch.
Disney Lorcana Product Line
IGN also exclusively announced that the first glimpse of products for Lorcana: The First Chapter would be available at GenCon this year which will be taking place August 4th, two weeks before the official launch of the game. In an interview with Disney Lorcana co-designer Ryan Miller, IGN was able to reveal the following information about the products that will be available in the launch expansion:
- There will be an organized play system at launch, and Lorcana is working with hobby and game stores to prepare for the launch
- The First Chapter will have over 200 cards and be available in several products including starter decks, booster packs, a gift set, and the “Illumineer’s Trove”
- The three different starter decks will each include 60 cards featuring two of the games “inks” (think colors in Magic)
- Starter decks will also include one booster with 12 random cards, one foil card, and two cards with rare, super rare, or legendary rarity
- The “Illumineer’s Trove” is similar to a Magic Bundle and contains eight booster packs, two deck boxes, a player’s guide, and a themed storage box.
- The gift set will feature Mulan and Hades, two oversized foil cards (similar to Pokemon), two foil game cards, four booster packs, and game tokens
Unsurprisingly Disney Lorcana also confirmed there would be a full line of playmats, sleeves, deck boxes, and portfolios available at launch.
Stay tuned for all your Disney Lorcana news here at Hipsters of the Coast!
Rich Stein (he/him) has been playing Magic since 1995 when he and his brother opened their first packs of Ice Age and thought Jester’s Cap was the coolest thing ever. Since then his greatest accomplishments in Magic have been the one time he beat Darwin Kastle at a Time Spiral sealed Grand Prix and the time Jon Finkel blocked him on Twitter.