Tier 2 · Learn the Table · Lesson 10 of 11
The bag: how triggers really resolve
There is a zone in Lorcana that is not on your playmat, that you cannot see, and that almost nobody explains. It decides who wins close games. It is called the bag, and once you understand it you will notice you have been playing it wrong.
The problem it solves
Play a character with "when you play this character, draw a card" while your opponent has something that triggers "whenever an opposing character is played." Two things want to happen at the same moment.
Which goes first? It matters. Sometimes it decides the game.
Lorcana's answer is a holding area for triggered abilities that are waiting to resolve.
Triggered abilities wait to resolve in an additional zone called the bag. The bag isn't a physical zone, but a place where triggered abilities are held when their conditions are met.
Comprehensive Rules 1.7.4
In plain terms: nothing happens the instant it is triggered. The ability is set aside in a place that holds no cards, and it waits its turn.
How it actually works
Three things, and the third is the one people get wrong.
- A condition is met. Something happens that a card cares about. That ability does not fire immediately. It goes into the bag.
- Everything finishes first. The action that caused the trigger completes fully before anything in the bag resolves.
- You choose the order of your own triggers. If several of your abilities are sitting in the bag at once, you decide which resolves first. This is a real decision and it is free value that most players hand back by resolving them in the order they happened to notice.
And there is a subtlety worth knowing, because it comes up in tournaments:
Triggered abilities that occur as a result of a game state check are added to the bag when their condition is met but won't resolve until after the game state check or checks are completed.
Comprehensive Rules 1.8.2
In plain terms: when a character is banished and that banishment triggers something, the game finishes tidying up first. Everything that was going to be banished is banished, and then the triggers go off. This is why two characters trading can produce triggers that resolve after both are already gone.
Step 3 above covers your own triggers. When both players have abilities waiting, they do not take turns one for one. The bag empties one player at a time, in this order:
- The bag checks which players have abilities waiting (7.7.4.1).
- The active player, the one whose turn it is, picks any one of their own and resolves it fully (7.7.4.2).
- That same player keeps choosing and resolving until they have none left (7.7.4.3).
- Only then does the next player in turn order start on theirs (7.7.4.4, 7.7.4.5).
So on your own turn you go first, and you clear all of your own triggers before your opponent begins. If one of your triggers creates another while it is resolving, the next check sees it and you may choose that one next (7.7.5).
You control the order of your own triggers. If one of them draws a card and another asks you to choose a target, resolve the draw first. You will be choosing that target with one more card of information.
That is not a trick. It is the same principle the whole of Tier 5 is built on: take information before you take commitment.
Where people lose games to this
Resolving triggers in the order you noticed them. The most common one. You have two things in the bag, you resolve the interesting one first, and then the boring one turns out to have needed a target that is now gone.
Assuming a trigger stops something. It does not. The action completes, then the trigger resolves. A "when this is banished" ability does not save the character. It happens afterwards, because the banishment already finished.
Forgetting the opponent's triggers are in there too. They do not interleave with yours: the active player empties their own first, then the next player begins (7.7.4.2, 7.7.4.4). Work out what is in the bag before you commit to the play that fills it.
A concrete example
You play a character. Two of your abilities trigger: one draws you a card, one lets you deal 1 damage to a chosen character. Your opponent has two damaged characters on board, one at 1 willpower remaining and one at 3.
Resolve the damage first and you pick the obvious target: the one you can finish off.
Resolve the draw first and you might reveal a card that removes that one anyway, in which case the damage should go somewhere else entirely.
Same two abilities. Same board. The order is worth a whole card, and it costs you nothing.
Your character with "when this character is banished, draw a card" gets challenged and banished. Does the draw ability save it?
- Yes, the trigger resolves before it is banished. Backwards. A triggered ability waits in the bag until the action that caused it has finished. It cannot reach back and undo the thing that triggered it.
- No. It is banished first, then you draw. Right. The action completes before anything in the bag resolves, so the banishment has already happened by the time the trigger goes off. "When this is banished" abilities are consolation, never protection.
- Only if you resolve it before the game state check finishes. You do not get that choice. The ability sits in the bag while the game runs its checks, and only once no condition is met does anyone resolve anything from the bag (1.8.3). Lorcana has no priority system, so there is no moment to squeeze into.
Why this is worth learning early
Most of Lorcana's difficulty is in judgement calls that take a long time to develop. This is not one of those. The bag is a rule. You can learn it in ten minutes and it will pay out for as long as you play, because a meaningful number of your opponents do not know it.
The honest limit: on most turns the order changes nothing, because there was only ever one sensible target. It pays out on the close turns, which are the only ones that were ever in doubt.
- Triggered abilities wait in the bag instead of firing at once.
- The action that caused them finishes completely first.
- You choose the order of your own triggers.
- The active player clears their own triggers first, then the opponent.
- A "when this is banished" ability never saves the character.
Any time two of your abilities trigger at once, stop and say "I choose the order here." Then ask the only question that matters: does one of these give me information the other one needs?
If yes, that one goes first. Every time.
Rules quoted from the Disney Lorcana Comprehensive Rules, version 2.2.0, effective 9 July 2026. We check every rules claim on this site against the current document rather than quoting from memory, because rule numbers change between versions.
Next: Rules gauntlet. It puts ten real board situations in front of you and asks you to call the ruling before you read why.
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