Tier 1 · Pull Up a Chair · Lesson 6 of 15
Exert and ready
Almost every new player believes they are running out of ink. They pay three ink on turn three, watch three cards turn sideways, and assume those cards are used up. They are not. Nothing in your inkwell is ever spent.
Sideways does not mean gone
Underneath everything in Lorcana there is one physical verb: turn the card sideways. It is how you pay for things, how you send a character out to score, and how you start a fight.
The game calls turning a card sideways exerting it, and turning it back upright readying it. Cards are not thrown away when you use them. They rotate, and next turn they rotate back.
Ready and exerted
Ready. When a card is readied, it's turned upright and is known as a ready card. Characters and items enter play ready.
Comprehensive Rules 5.1.1.1
In plain terms: upright means available and unused.
Exerted. When a card is exerted, it's turned sideways. A player can use an exerted card's abilities that don't require exert as part of the cost. A player can't use any of an exerted card's abilities that include exert as part of the cost.
Comprehensive Rules 5.1.1.2
In plain terms: sideways means used, and only for this turn.
Everything you do turns something sideways
- Paying an ink cost. You exert as many ready ink cards as the cost (4.3.2.4). They stay in your inkwell, lying down.
- Questing. You exert the character, then gain its lore (4.5.1.3).
- Challenging. You exert the character doing the challenging (4.6.4.4).
- Singing a song. You exert a character instead of paying ink (5.4.4.2).
- Some printed abilities. If the exert symbol is in an ability's cost, turning the card sideways pays it (5.1.1.2).
Two notes. Locations are never ready or exerted (5.1.2.3), so they work without turning. And a character you played this turn cannot exert yet, which has its own lesson shortly.
And then it all comes back
At the start of your turn, before you draw, all of your cards stand back up.
The active player readies all their cards in play and in their inkwell.
Comprehensive Rules 3.2.1.1
In plain terms: you get everything back. Every character, every item, and the part that matters most, every card in your inkwell. Use all six of your ink cards this turn and you have six again next turn. Ink is not a tank you drain.
Note what it does not say: your opponent's cards. Those ready on their turn. A character you exerted to quest lies sideways through their whole turn, which is why challenging works at all.
An exerted card is not dead weight. The only thing you lose is the ability to pay an exert cost with it. Its printed Strength and Willpower and its always-on abilities all keep working. Players slide exerted cards aside, stop reading them, and give back value they already owned.
You exert all five cards in your inkwell to pay for a 5-cost character. How much ink do you have next turn?
- None. You used it all up. The belief this lesson exists to kill. Paying a cost never takes a card out of your inkwell. It only lays it sideways for the rest of the turn.
- One, the card you add that turn. Half right, and the most common wrong answer. You do add one per turn, but the five already there readied at the start of your turn too.
- Five, plus a sixth if you add a card that turn. Right. The Ready step readies everything in play and in your inkwell, so all five stand upright again. Spending from your inkwell never shrinks it.
- Exerted means turned sideways. Ready means upright.
- Paying ink exerts ink cards. It never removes them.
- Questing, challenging and singing each exert a character.
- Your turn opens by readying everything, inkwell included.
- An exerted card still works, minus its exert abilities.
Take any card, a Lorcana card or a coaster. Stand it upright and say "ready". Turn it sideways and say "exerted". Five times. Once your hands know it you never have to translate at a table.
Rules quoted from the Disney Lorcana Comprehensive Rules, version 2.2.0, effective 9 July 2026. The exert symbol is spelled out here because the icon does not survive being copied.
Next: Ink, the resource everything runs on. You know what paying ink does to a card. Now, how cards get into your inkwell in the first place.
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