Opening hands: what to keep

Some games are lost before a card is played. Your opening 7 decides what your first four turns look like, and by the time a bad keep shows, you are already behind. Ten seconds of counting during setup is the cheapest edge in this game.

You are not keeping cards. You are keeping turns.

The instinct is to look at your 7 and find the best card in it. That is the wrong question, and almost everybody asks it.

Your ink rises by 1 a turn and no faster (4.2.3), and each turn returns only the ink you already put down (3.2.1.1). So your opening 7 is not a collection of cards. It is a plan for turns 1, 2, 3 and 4.

Judge a hand by what it lets you do on those four turns, not by the best card in it. A hand holding your strongest card and nothing under 5 ink is not a strong hand. It is four turns of inking and passing.

Three questions, in this order

Ask these before you decide. They take about ten seconds, and the order matters.

1. How many of these 7 can go into my inkwell? Only a card with the swirl around its cost may be inked (5.2.3), and you reveal it as you do (4.2.1.1). Count the swirls. Fewer than 3 is your alarm.
2. What can I do on turns 2, 3 and 4? While you answer, ignore anything costing more than 4. Those cards are not part of your early game.
3. Does this hand still work if I draw nothing useful? You see 1 new card a turn. Keep a hand that stands on its own, not one that needs rescuing.

Question 1 comes first because it is the one you cannot fix later. Every card you put into your inkwell is a card you never play, and only some cards are allowed in at all. The inkable ratio lesson suggests 36 to 40 inkable cards in your 60.

At 36 inkable, an opening 7 holds 2 or fewer of them about 8% of the time, roughly 1 hand in 12. At 40 inkable, that drops to about 4%, roughly 1 in 28. It is uncommon. It is also the most common reason a hand cannot be kept.

Three hands, counted

Here are three opening hands written as ink costs. Read the swirl count first, then the early turns.

Hand 1 is the ordinary keep. Nothing in it is exciting. It does something on every turn while your ink grows, and that is the whole job.

Hand 2 fails question 2. You would ink and pass for two turns, and the ink would sit there ready with nothing worth spending it on.

Hand 3 is the one worth staring at. Every card is cheap, so it reads like a dream. Only 2 of the 7 can be inked, and everything you draw after turn 2 is stranded in your hand.

Going first changes what you keep

The two seats are not the same hand of cards, because they are not the same number of cards.

The active player draws a card from their deck. If this turn is the first turn of the game, the starting player skips this step.

Comprehensive Rules 3.2.3.1

In plain terms: if you go first, you do not draw on your first turn.

Count what that costs. By the end of your third turn, the starting player has seen 9 cards and the second player has seen 10. One card sounds small. It is not small when you are working from 7.

Going first, keep the hand that already works. Going second, you can keep a hand that is one card short. One card short, not four turns short.

The seat also decides who chooses first. The starting player alters, then the other player decides (2.2.2), and anybody who altered at least 1 card must shuffle and offer a cut (2.2.2.3). So if you are going second, you get to see whether your opponent reshuffled before you commit.

The honest part

Three things this lesson cannot do for you.

First, altering does not change your deck. The 60 cards are the same 60. If your opening hands are bad often, the fault is in the curve or the inkable ratio, and redrawing only rolls the same dice again.

Second, you get one attempt at it.

Once each player has drawn their opening hands, they each may alter their hands, beginning with the starting player and then proceeding in turn order. Each player can alter their hand only once in each game, following the steps listed here.

Comprehensive Rules 2.2.2

In plain terms: one alter each, for the whole game. Whatever you draw into is what you play. The mechanics of it are in Setting up a game.

Third, you never find out whether you were right. You do not get to see the hand you turned down. A keep that loses was not automatically a mistake, and a keep that wins was not automatically correct. Judge the decision by the counting you did, not by how the game ended.

Rules quoted from the Disney Lorcana Comprehensive Rules, version 2.2.0, effective 9 July 2026. The opening-hand odds were calculated for a 60-card deck on 9 August 2026, and they move with your inkable ratio.

Next: Playing around what you cannot see. You have just learned to read your own 7, and the same counting works on the ink your opponent puts down.