Tier 2 · Learn the Table · Lesson 11 of 11
Rules gauntlet
You have read ten rules lessons in a row. This one teaches nothing new. It asks ten questions and finds out which of those ten lessons actually stuck.
Say the ruling out loud before you open the answer
Each situation below is one you will meet at a real table in a close game. Read it, decide, say your answer out loud, then open the reasoning underneath.
Committing is the exercise. A rule you recognise while someone explains it is not a rule you can find under pressure. Every answer names its rule, so a miss points at the lesson to reread.
Round one: your turn, and what is yours to see
1. You were randomly chosen to go first. Ready, Set, Draw. How many cards do you draw?
None. The starting player skips the Draw step on the first turn of the game (3.2.3.1). You draw normally from your second turn on. The skipped card is what going first costs you.
2. Last turn you exerted six ink to play a character. Your next turn begins. How much ink can you use?
All six, plus whatever else is in there. At the Ready step the active player readies all their cards in play and in their inkwell (3.2.1.1). Ink is never spent, only exerted (4.3.2.4), so the card you inked on turn one is still paying you on turn twelve.
3. You cannot remember whether you inked a card you now need. Can you look through your own inkwell?
No. The inkwell is a private zone and no player may look at a card in an inkwell at any time, even their own (7.5.4). You may count any inkwell, and so may your opponent. What goes face down is gone as information. Think before you ink.
Round two: characters, challenges, damage
4. Your opponent quested with one character and left two upright. You have a big, ready, dry character. Which of the three can you challenge?
Only the one that quested. The challenging player chooses an exerted opposing character (4.6.4.2), so upright characters cannot be challenged at all. That is the whole "why can I never do anything" feeling of a first month: your opponent is not handing you a target.
5. You played a character this turn. On your opponent's next turn, can they challenge it?
Only if something exerted it first. Characters enter play ready (5.1.1.1), and only an exerted character may be challenged (4.6.4.2). So a fresh character is usually safe, but not for the reason people give: drying limits what it may do and never protects it (5.1.1.11). Exert it for any reason and it is a target like anything else.
6. Your character has 2 damage. An effect returns it to your hand and you play it again next turn. How much damage does it have?
None. When a character with damage leaves play for any reason, all its damage counters cease to exist (1.9.6). Damage otherwise stays for the whole game and never clears at end of turn (5.3.6.3), so anything that removes a damaged character and returns it is quietly a full repair.
7. A character with 4 Willpower is sitting on 4 damage. Part-way through an effect you move all of it elsewhere. Is it banished?
No. Damage equal to or greater than Willpower banishes a character (1.8.1.4), but only as read at the game state check. Conditions are met only when the check occurs, and one met mid resolution but not met at the check produces no result (1.8.5).
Round three: keywords, and the bag
8. Your opponent's best character has Ward. You play an action reading "banish all characters." Does it survive?
No, it goes with everything else. Ward means your opponents cannot choose that card when resolving an effect (8.15.1), and effects that do not require a choice still affect a character with Ward (8.15.2). Ward is protection from being picked out, not from harm. Reading it as a shield is how careful players lose good characters.
9. You have a ready character with Reckless. Your opponent has an exerted character. You do not want to challenge. Can you end your turn?
Not while that character is ready. Reckless takes the decision away from you.
You can't declare the end of your turn if this character is ready and can challenge an opposing character or location.
Comprehensive Rules 8.7.3
In plain terms: the block hangs on the word ready. A Reckless character can still exert to sing a song or use an ability (8.7.4), and an exerted character is not ready, so singing is the way out.
10. A challenge banishes both characters. You have one triggered ability waiting, your opponent has two, and it is your turn. What order?
Yours first, then both of theirs. The bag checks which players have abilities in it (7.7.4.1), the active player fully resolves any one of theirs (7.7.4.2), and the last player to resolve keeps going until they have none left (7.7.4.3) before it passes to the next player in turn order (7.7.4.4). You never alternate one for one. An ability added to the bag while you are resolving is seen by the very next check, so it can be your next one (7.7.5).
The costly result here is not a miss. It is a hit built on a belief that does not generalise: calling number five safe "because it is drying" is the right ruling from an idea that will cost you a character later.
If your reason was not the rule the answer names, score it a miss and reread that lesson.
Your opponent has a location in play. You have a ready, dry character with 3 Strength. What can you do about it?
- Nothing, until something exerts it. There is nothing to wait for. Locations are never ready or exerted, so the rule about needing an exerted target never applies to them.
- Challenge it now, and take no damage back. Right on both counts. Locations are not considered ready or exerted and can be challenged at any time during the Main Phase (4.6.8.2). They have no Strength and deal no damage back, but they do have Willpower and can be damaged (4.6.8.3).
- Challenge it, but expect to trade damage as usual. Half right. The challenge is legal, but a location deals no damage in the Challenge Damage step, which makes challenging one much cheaper.
What a score here does not tell you
Ten out of ten means you know the ruling in ten situations. It does not mean you would have noticed the situation, which is the harder half and what the later tiers are for. And the format flatters you: a question on a page has already announced that something tricky is inside. Nobody announces it at a table. The repetitions that count are the ones where you stopped yourself.
- Only exerted characters can be challenged. Locations, always.
- Ink and cards ready every turn. The inkwell stays unreadable.
- Damage clears when a character leaves play, never sooner.
- Ward stops choosing, not harm. Reckless stops ending, not singing.
- The bag empties one player at a time, active player first.
Take the one item you missed, write its rule number on a scrap of paper, and keep it beside your play area for one game. You will meet it.
Rules quoted from the Disney Lorcana Comprehensive Rules, version 2.2.0, effective 9 July 2026. Every ruling above was checked against that document, and the numbers are printed so you can check them too.
Next: What a deck actually is. You know the rules well enough to be the person who is right, so the question now is what all those cards are meant to do together.
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