Disney Lorcana TCG’s Hyperia City Expansion: First Hands-On Impressions

The Disney Lorcana card game is capping off the year with the upcoming booster set, Hyperia City. This will be the fourteenth set, with pre-release events starting October 16 and the wide release on October 23. Pixar continues to be featured in these new sets, this time with the beloved Coco. We’re also seeing familiar faces with some fresh new cards representing Big Hero 6 and The Sword and the Stone, alongside new pre-constructed decks in the form of a two-player starter set. The most exciting addition to the game, though, is the introduction of floating mana or ink drops, making some game-changing plays even more possible.

Speaking of ink drops, this new mechanic is featured heavily in the new two-player starter set, Technically Terrific and Madcap Whimsy, which highlights Big Hero 6 characters in one deck and The Sword and the Stone in the other deck. Ink drops are essentially floating mana, which are additional mana or ink that can be accrued and used on top of the normal mana generation. These ink drops are a one-time use, so it helps pay for some high-cost cards slightly earlier than a normal match would go. After a few matches, I really gravitated towards The Sword and the Stone deck since it seemed to be more consistent with drawing and deck filtering. This allowed for keeping consistent pressure with more options and potentially more plays through the new ink drops. It’s not too much of a surprise with the Sword and the Stone deck having the amethyst color support, which tends to see draw effects. The Big Hero 6 deck also had draw options, but they were reliant on items, which I didn’t see as often as I would have liked to. In my Sword and the Stone matches, I utilized the locations like Merlin’s Shop and Smithy to get more cards and also gain lore. This is on top of the straight card draws of amethyst, putting the deck ahead early in lore and making it tough for the Big Hero 6 emerald/sapphire deck to catch up while trying to maintain a beneficial board state. Overall, the ink drops were nice to have, allowing for more optimum plays with the little choices I had. The balance between playing more cards and keeping ink drops on the field to trigger other passive abilities is an interesting balance that players will need to get used to as the competitive season progresses.

Outside of the new dual starter set, there are of course new cards to look forward to messing around with. Namely, the new Powerline Megastar character, who has Singer 9 and abilities surrounding characters with the Singer keyword. It’s an amazing new card that would be a great addition to singer decks. Not only can Powerline Megastar play songs that cost 9 or less for free due to Singer 9, there’s great value if Powerline sings every turn. For instance, when the player plays a song one time during the player’s turn, the player can return a card with Singer from the discard to hand. On top of that, for every other singer on the player’s field, Powerline gets +1 lore. Alongside a new song like Remember Me, the player can constantly bring Singer characters back on the field with Powerline while also playing songs for free, keeping the pressure on with huge lore gains. If the player can keep him safe, they can really run away with the game if left unchecked.

Another card that caught my attention is the new Belle Exceptional Writer. During the turn whenever she exerts, the player pays 2 less ink for the next action played this turn. Her second ability allows the player to gain 3 lore when the third action is played during the player’s turn. So on top of making an action card cheaper, she benefits from playing many action cards in one turn. As seasoned TCG players will know, this is very reminiscent of storm decks, where the gameplan is to play many cards in one turn for major benefits at a fairly cheap cost. The new Powerline Megastar could actually pair well with this Belle since songs are also actions. Between fairly cheap action cards like the new Chemical Reaction card or the always helpful Strike a Good Match, there’s a lot of opportunities for Belle’s ability to trigger for that lore pressure. I’ve had experience on both sides of a storm deck and it’s not pleasant. It can be very difficult to pilot, so tread lightly if you’re interested in an emerald(green) storm deck this upcoming competitive season.

Speaking of the competitive season, top meta decks will continue to see some play soon after the Hyperia City release, so it won’t be too surprising to see some slight tweaks to those decks with the power creeped cards. It just so happens that a winning emerald/amber deck at a recent tournament is a song-heavy deck with some singers, so Powerline Megastar actually fits pretty well here. There could be an argument to add more to the already ten singers or so in the deck to help trigger Powerline more often, but the twenty or so songs are enough to have maybe one or two Singer 9s around. Especially with the four copies of the 8-cost Circle of Life song card. Another top cut deck is a character-heavy one in emerald/steel colors that revolves around playing out your entire hand to reap the benefits from certain characters like Angel Experiment 624 and Elinor Renowned Diplomat. Some nice additions from this latest set could be Flash Efficient Clerk and Marie Caught in the Act. Flash is a cheap sturdy character with Resist +1, but also nullifies Rush for all characters. This means no hasty banishes from your opponent via glass cannons. Marie is also nice for a one-cost card that adds an ink drop if an opposing character took damage at the time she quests. Considering the heavy deployment of characters, the extra ink drops can be useful to speed things along or drop down a bigger character to really put the pressure on. Overall, there are some really fun looking cards to upgrade some top tier decks.

Hyperia City brings familiarity in returning characters, another popular Pixar addition, and a game-changing mechanic in ink drops to end the year. Characters from Big Hero 6 and The Sword of the Stone are back in a big way, which is a nice touch after the big set rotation, making some of their older cards unusable in the main competitive scene. Plus, with another Pixar favorite in Coco being highlighted, the set is very enticing for players and collectors out there. And with ink drops being a pretty major mechanic introduction adding another layer of resource management, it’ll be interesting to see how the meta and deck brewing changes as the competitive season progresses. For more Disney Lorcana, check out our exclusive reveals for this set and our hands-on impressions of the last set, Attack of the Vine!

Mike Mamon is a Syndication & Digital Specialist at IGN, devil fruit user, and Warrior of Light! Let’s chat anime or TCGs on Bluesky @xpmnms.bsky.social