Inkable vs Uninkable: Building a Reliable Inkwell

Look at the top-left corner of a Lorcana card. If it has a decorative swirl around the cost, the card is inkable — you can put it face down in your inkwell as your once-per-turn ink. No swirl means uninkable: it can only ever be played, never inked.

The tension every deck faces

Inking is how you ramp, but it costs you a card. The best cards in the game are often uninkable precisely because they're strong. So you're constantly choosing: do I ink this to hit my curve, or hold it to play it?

If too much of your deck is uninkable, you'll have turns where you can't ink at all — your inkwell stalls and you fall behind on resources.

How many inkable cards do you need?

A widely used floor is about 22–24 inkable cards in a 60-card deck. That gets you to a comfortable spot where you'll almost always have something inkable in hand in the early turns.

Practical tips

• Count as you build. When you add a powerful uninkable card, make sure you still clear the ~22 inkable floor.
• Cheap inkable cards are gold. A 1- or 2-cost inkable card that's also fine to play is the most flexible thing in your deck.
• Mulligan with ink in mind. A hand with zero inkable cards is usually a mulligan, even if the cards are individually strong. (See the mulligan guide.)

The mid-game flip

Early on you ink to ramp. Later, once you have enough ink, you stop inking and start spending every card. Recognizing that turn — when ramp stops mattering and board presence takes over — is a real skill. Pair this with a smooth ink curve and you'll rarely have a dead turn.