Tier 3 · Build the Table · Lesson 4 of 8
The curve
Your ink goes up by one a turn, and nothing in your hand speeds that up. The curve is how you make sure every turn has something worth doing in it. Get it wrong and you lose while holding excellent cards.
The curve is a consequence, not a preference
Most deckbuilding advice sounds like taste. This does not. It falls out of two rules.
The first is the ceiling on how fast your ink can grow.
This turn action is limited to once during the active player's turn.
Comprehensive Rules 4.2.3
In plain terms: one card into your inkwell per turn. Drawing a brilliant card does not buy a second.
The second is what happens at the start of every turn.
The active player readies all their cards in play and in their inkwell.
Comprehensive Rules 3.2.1.1
In plain terms: the ink you spent last turn comes back, and it does not pile up. Each turn you have as much ink as you have cards in your inkwell.
Put those together and your ink is a staircase. One on your first turn, two on your second, and upward from there. You pay a cost by exerting that many ready ink cards (4.3.2.4).
So a card costing 5 cannot be played before your fifth turn. A few cards change what you pay (4.3.2.3), but that is the exception you build towards, not the floor you start from.
What a curve is, and what the card pool gives you
Your curve is one count per ink cost: how many of your cards cost 1, how many cost 2, and so on. There is no maths beyond counting.
The card pool is already shaped that way. On 9 August 2026 we counted every uniquely named card legal in Core. There are 1,026.
- Cost 1: 121
- Cost 2: 232
- Cost 3: 230
- Cost 4: 186
- Cost 5: 124
- Cost 6: 75
- Cost 7 or more: 58
The middle cost is 3, and roughly 57 in every 100 cost 3 or less. A game where ink arrives one piece at a time needs cheap cards. Those counts expire with every set, so treat the list as a dated snapshot.
A shape to start from
No rule tells you what your curve must be. The only deck rule here is the 60-card minimum (1.10.1.1). What follows is a starting point. Move off it once you can say why.
Move any one of those numbers by two or three and nothing breaks. Move the whole shape up by two and your first four turns go quiet. The heavy part sits at 2, 3 and 4 because those are the turns you reach in every game.
The curve on paper is not the hand you hold. You open with 7 cards (2.2.1.4), and if you go first you skip your first draw (3.2.3.1). By your third turn you have seen 9 or 10 cards, and three of them are now facedown in your inkwell.
Every card you ink is a card you never play, and cheap cards are the easiest to give up. That is how a deck with a correct-looking curve still spends four turns doing nothing.
How to see your own
Three checks. None of them needs a spreadsheet.
- Lay it out. Sort the 60 cards into piles by cost, cheapest on the left. The pile heights are the curve, readable from across the table.
- Look at the left two piles. If they are thin, deal an opening hand of 7 and name your first three turns. If the honest answer is "ink a card and pass", the left is too thin.
- Look at the far right pile. Ask how many turns your games actually last. If your most expensive cards arrive after that, they are not really in your deck. They are in the box.
The deck builder on this site draws the same picture. One bar per cost from 1 to 8, redrawn as you add cards.
Your deck is legal at 60 cards, but the cheapest card in it costs 4. You go first. What happens on your first three turns?
- You reach 4 ink on your third turn, because your inkwell readies each turn. Readying returns the ink you already have, it does not add any (3.2.1.1). Three turns of inking leaves you with 3 ink, not 4.
- You put one card into your inkwell each turn and pass, three times. Correct, and that is three turns of your opponent scoring lore unopposed. This is the failure the curve exists to prevent, and no single card looks responsible for it.
- You draw extra cards to make up for having no play. Nothing gives you that. You draw one card per turn, and as the starting player you skip your first draw (3.2.3.1).
The honest part
A curve is a summary, and summaries hide things. Two decks with identical curves can play nothing alike. A 2-cost card that sits there is not the same as one that draws you a card.
Some strong decks break the shape on purpose. A deck built on Singer wants expensive songs, because Singer lets a character sing a song as though it cost less (8.11.1). Your curve calls those songs unplayable. That deck has an answer the numbers cannot see.
A good curve wins nothing on its own. It removes one way of losing. If you fix your curve and still lose, that is normal. The rest of this tier is about the other ways.
- Your ink goes up by one a turn, never more.
- Your curve is how many cards cost each amount.
- A card costing 5 waits until your fifth turn.
- Cards you put into your inkwell are cards you never play.
- Count your curve in piles, or in the deck builder.
Open the deck builder, pick any two inks, and add cards until the counter reads 60. You are not building a real deck. Then look only at the bars, and notice which one you overfilled without meaning to. Once, and change nothing.
Rules quoted from the Disney Lorcana Comprehensive Rules, version 2.2.0, effective 9 July 2026. Card counts derived from our own card database on 9 August 2026, counting uniquely named cards legal in Core.
Next: The inkable ratio. Every number here assumed you ink on every turn, and only some of your cards may go into the inkwell.
No account needed. Sign in and your progress follows you anywhere.