10 Common Lorcana Beginner Mistakes

Everyone makes these when they start. Spotting them in your own play is the fastest way to improve. Here are ten of the most common, with a fix for each.

1. Not inking every turn

You only get one ink per turn, and a missed ink drop is a permanent tempo loss. Keep a healthy inkable count and almost always ink on turns 1 and 2.

2. Inking your best cards

The flip side: don't shove your bombs into the inkwell because you panicked. Plan your inks around the cards you're least sad to lose.

3. Keeping bad opening hands

A hand with no early plays or no inkable cards is usually a mulligan. Read the mulligan guide and ship hands that don't have a plan.

4. Questing into a challenge

Questing exerts your character, making it a target. Don't quest a key body into an open board of untapped attackers that will happily trade up.

5. Challenging when you should race

If you're the faster deck and ahead on lore, quest. Fighting a board war you don't need to win just hands the game to the slower deck.

6. Racing when you should challenge

The mirror mistake. If you're the slower deck, stop trying to out-quest aggro — trade, stabilize, and win with card advantage.

7. Forgetting summoning sickness

A freshly played character can't quest or challenge unless it has Rush. Plan your turn around what can actually act now.

8. Ignoring accumulated damage

Damage stays until it's healed. A character at 2 damage is one challenge from gone — use that to finish threats across multiple turns.

9. Overvaluing big bodies

A 7-cost giant that quests for 1 doesn't win the game. Lore-per-cost wins games. Don't fall in love with stats that don't advance your clock.

10. Not counting the clock

Most close games are decided by a turn or two. Practice asking "what turn do I win, and what turn do they?" every game — it sharpens every other decision.

The cure for all ten is reps. Run hands in the goldfish simulator and play as much as you can — these stop being mistakes faster than you'd think.