Tier 5 · Read the Table · Lesson 7 of 8
Line drill
By now you can define a line, search for more than one, and hold a plan together across several turns. What is still missing is reps. Three boards follow, and on each one your job is to name two lines out loud before your eyes reach the answer.
Your line generator only looks in one place
When you scan a board for options, your eyes go to your ready characters, because they are the pieces that visibly do something. That is one source of lines. There are at least four, and three of them are somewhere else: your hand, the card you are about to put into your inkwell, and the option of doing nothing at all.
Each board below hides its best line in one of those three. Read the board, stop, and say two lines out loud, even when the first one feels finished. You are not being graded on picking correctly, only on whether a second line existed and you found it.
Board one: the line is in your hand
- You: two ready characters. One with 3 strength and 3 willpower that quests for 1. One with 2 strength and 2 willpower that quests for 2.
- Your ink: 6 cards, all ready.
- Your hand: a character costing 4 with 4 strength and 4 willpower, plus two cards you cannot use yet.
- Them: one exerted character with 2 strength and 5 willpower. One ready character with 4 strength and 1 willpower.
- Lore: you 9, them 14.
The two lines almost everybody names: quest with both and go to 12, or challenge that exerted character with your 3 strength body and quest with the other. The second is easy to reject. Three damage does not get through 5 willpower, and your character takes 2 back for the privilege.
The line that beats both is not on the board. Play the character in your hand, then quest with both. You still go to 12, and you have a third body.
The objection arrives immediately: that character cannot act this turn. True, it is drying. Now notice the half nobody counts. Your opponent cannot touch it either, because a challenge has to be declared against a character that is already exerted.
Second, the player chooses an exerted opposing character to be challenged.
Comprehensive Rules 4.6.4.2
In plain terms: ready characters are not on the menu. The body you played this turn is untouchable until you exert it yourself.
Board two: the line is in your inkwell
- Your ink: 4 cards, all ready. You have not put a card into your inkwell yet this turn.
- Your hand: a character costing 5 that you have been saving, a character costing 3, an action costing 2, and two cards with no inkwell symbol.
- Board: one ready character each, nothing exerted.
- Lore: 6 to 6.
The two lines almost everybody names: play the 3, or play the 2 and keep two ink spare. Both are wrong the same way. Both treat 4 as the budget, and 4 is not the budget. You have not inked yet, and a card you put into your inkwell arrives usable straight away.
Third, the player puts the revealed card into their inkwell facedown and ready. This marks the end of the process.
Comprehensive Rules 4.2.1.3
In plain terms: ink first, then count. Inking is not the thing you do at the end of the turn with whichever card you like least. It is a turn action you can take before any other (4.1.2), and it sets the size of everything after it. Ink, go to 5, and the character you saved is live now instead of next turn.
Then the sharper half, which is the actual drill. Which card you ink is itself a line. Not the 5, that is the payoff, so it is the 3 or the action. Either puts you on 5 ink and plays the same character. The two lines are identical today and different for the rest of the game: one ends with an answer still in hand, the other with a body. Whichever goes in is gone, because nobody may look at a card in an inkwell, including you (7.5.4).
Board three: the line is doing nothing
- You: three ready characters, questing for 2, 1 and 1.
- Them: two ready characters, one of them with 5 strength.
- Hand: nothing you can afford this turn.
- Lore: you 15, them 11.
The two lines almost everybody names: quest with all three, or quest with the 2 lore character and hold the other two back. The third one, the one most people never say out loud, is to quest with none of them.
That is a real line with a real argument. Everything you quest with becomes exerted, and exerted is the only state a challenge can point at. Quest with all three and you hand your opponent three legal targets for a 5 strength character. Quest with none and that character has nothing to challenge, while all three of yours stay ready for your next turn.
And on this board it is wrong. Count it. Your three characters quest for 4 between them, so questing puts you on 19, one lore from the game. They are on 11 and gaining roughly 3 a turn, which is three turns of work. They get one turn in between, and with two characters they can banish at most two of yours. You ready whatever survived and quest for the single point you need.
That is the drill's real output. Not a different play: a reason. You named the safe line, priced it, and rejected it in a sentence you could say at the table.
The most common failure is naming two options that differ only in which character does which job. "Quest with A and challenge with B" and "challenge with A and quest with B" are one line wearing two hats, if both end the turn exerted and your opponent's board looks the same.
A second line has to change something your opponent can see on their turn: a different number of your characters exerted, a different body on the table, a different card gone from your hand. If your two lines end in the same picture, you have named one.
On board one you play the character from your hand and quest with the other two. On their turn, which of your three characters can your opponent challenge?
- The two that quested, and not the one you played. Right. A challenge is declared against an exerted opposing character (4.6.4.2). Questing exerts, so both questers are legal targets. The one you played is still ready, so it is not on the menu, even though it could not act.
- All three, because the new one is the weakest right now. State decides who can be challenged, not strength. Being played this turn does not make a character more vulnerable. It makes it less, because it is ready.
- None of them, because your characters ready at the start of the turn. They ready at the start of your turn, which comes after theirs. Everything you exerted stays exerted through your opponent's whole turn, and that gap is where challenges live.
Where this drill is wrong
The first cost is time. Naming two lines every turn is slow, and against a clock it will lose you a round you were winning. Spend it where it pays: the first turn a challenge becomes possible, the turn your ink finally reaches the top of your curve, and any turn you feel a flicker of doubt. Not every turn.
The second cost is invisible, which makes it worse. A forced second line is sometimes a manufactured one, and players take plays they invented purely because they invented them. If the second line is clearly weaker, the right output is "I checked, the first one is right." That is a result, not a failure.
This trains width, not depth, and two shallow lines lose to one line calculated three turns out. Width comes first only because you cannot calculate a line you never saw. And board one leans on ready characters being unchallengeable, which is the default and not a law: some cards let their controller challenge ready characters, and one of those on the table changes that board completely. The habit survives. The specific answer does not.
- Name two lines before you evaluate either one.
- Lines hide in your hand, your inkwell, and doing nothing.
- Only exerted characters can be challenged, so ready is safe.
- An inked card arrives ready and can be spent immediately.
- "I checked, the first line was right" is a result.
Pick three turns. Not every turn, three. On each one, say a second line out loud before you touch a card, then take whichever you prefer, including the first one.
The rep is the sentence, not the play.
Rules quoted from the Disney Lorcana Comprehensive Rules, version 2.2.0, effective 9 July 2026. Every rules claim here is checked against the current document, because rule numbers change between versions.
Next: When to break every rule in this tier. It takes the hard numbers this course handed you and shows you the boards where obeying them loses.
No account needed. Sign in and your progress follows you anywhere.