FloodBorn.Ink Removal in Lorcana: Hard vs Soft Answers
"Removal" is anything that gets an opposing character off the board or makes it stop mattering. It's how you survive aggression and dismantle value engines. But not all removal is created equal — knowing the difference between hard and soft answers is key to building a deck that can actually interact.
Hard vs soft
| Type | What it does | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hard removal | Banishes a character outright | Answers anything, any size | Often costs more ink |
| Soft removal | Damage, bounce, debuffs, stat reduction | Cheap, flexible, can hit multiple | Doesn't always fully deal with big threats |
Hard removal (banish effects) is your answer to the scariest single threat — the huge body or the must-kill engine. Soft removal — dealing damage, returning a character to hand, shrinking its strength — is cheaper and great against go-wide boards, but a determined opponent can sometimes play around it.
How much removal to run
It depends on your archetype:
- Aggro: a light touch — maybe 2–4 pieces of cheap reach/removal to clear a blocker. You'd rather be questing.
- Midrange: a moderate package — around 6–8 flexible answers to trade up and keep the board honest.
- Control: a heavy suite — 8–12 mixed answers, because controlling the board is the game plan. (See building a control deck.)
Mix your answer types
The trap is running all the same kind of removal. If every answer is expensive hard removal, you die to a wide board of cheap characters. If it's all small damage, a single huge body walks through you. A healthy suite has cheap answers for early pressure and a few big answers for the threats that matter most.
Damage is permanent — use it
One Lorcana-specific note: damage stays on a character until something heals it. That means you can "remove" a big character across two turns — chip it with a challenge or a damage effect, then finish it later. Tracking accumulated damage is a small habit that turns unfavorable trades into favorable ones.