Tier 3 · Build the Table · Lesson 1 of 8
What a deck actually is
You will never pick a card out of your deck. You will only ever be handed one, from the top, at random. What belongs in the 60 follows entirely from that one fact.
A deck is not a collection of cards you like
Most first decks get built the same way. You spread out everything you own, you pull out the cards you like the look of, and you stop when you reach 60.
The problem is not your taste. The problem is that a deck never hands you the card you like. It hands you whatever happens to be on top.
You shuffle before the game starts (2.2.1.2), and from then on the deck is closed to you.
The deck is a private zone. The cards in a player's deck remain facedown at all times and in a single pile. Players can't look at or change the order of cards in their decks during a game. Players can count the remaining cards in any player's deck at any time.
Comprehensive Rules 7.2.2
In plain terms: once the game has started you may not search your deck, sort it, or look at it. To draw is to take the top card and nothing else (1.12.1).
So a card in your deck is not a play you are going to make. It is a chance of a play. A game shows you only a fraction of your 60. A single copy of something is a card you may never draw at all.
The floor and the ceiling
A deck has a floor and a ceiling. The floor is how many cards it must hold. The ceiling is how many copies of one card you may pack in. Both come from a single rule.
In the Constructed format, each player's deck must contain at least 60 cards, can't contain more than two ink types, can't contain more than 4 cards with the same full name, and can't contain any banned cards.
Comprehensive Rules 1.10.1.1
In plain terms: 60 is a minimum and not a target, and no card may appear more than 4 times. Constructed simply means a deck you built before you sat down, which is the kind this tier is teaching you to make (1.10.1). The ink type cap and the banned card line are the next lesson.
4 copies of what, exactly
The limit counts full names, and a full name is 2 lines on the card rather than 1. A character's name and its version together make up its full name (5.2.6, 5.3.6.1).
Elsa - Snow Queen and Elsa - Spirit of Winter share a name and nothing else. A deck may hold 4 of each. That is 8 cards called Elsa, and it is legal.
The same rule runs the other way, and this is the half that quietly costs people cards. Elsa - Spirit of Winter appears 3 times in our card database. Each printing carries different art, a different collector number and a different rarity symbol, and one of them is Enchanted.
None of that changes the full name. Art is not used for gameplay (5.2.4). The rarity symbol is ancillary information, and the rules say the same about that (5.2.10, 5.2.10.6). So 3 ordinary copies plus 1 Enchanted copy is 4 copies. You are full.
Nothing else in a deck is capped. Classifications are not counted, so you may run as many Princess characters as you can fit.
Every card is doing a job
Here is the shift that makes the rest of this tier work. A slot is not somewhere to keep a card you like. A slot is a job you are paying for.
Ask 2 questions of every card: what does this do for me, and when. A short list covers most of the answers.
- Ink. A card you would be content to turn face down on turn 2.
- Something to do early. A play on turns 1 to 3, so your ink is not sitting idle.
- Lore. A way to actually gain the 20 you need.
- An answer. A way to handle the thing your opponent put down.
- More cards. A way to reach the rest of your deck faster.
A card that does none of those is not a bad card. It is a card taking a slot from one that would. That is what roles rather than favourites means.
You finish at 60. Then you open a pack, you like something, and 60 is only a minimum, so in it goes. Next week you add 2 more. Nothing ever comes back out, because taking a card out feels like losing it.
A deck at 68 is perfectly legal and slightly worse. Each of those 8 extra cards made the card that actually wins your games harder to draw. Adding is a decision about all 60, never about 1.
Your deck is finished at 60 cards. You find a card you like and put it in, making 61. What have you actually done?
- Nothing that matters. 61 is legal, so the deck is unchanged. Legal is correct. Unchanged is not. The rule sets a floor of at least 60 cards and says nothing about what a 61st card does to the 60 already there.
- Built a legal deck in which every other card is now slightly harder to draw. Correct. You draw from the top of a shuffled pile you are not allowed to sort, so every card competes with every other. One more competitor lowers the share each one holds.
- Broken the rules, because a deck must be exactly 60 cards. The rule says at least 60 cards, not exactly 60. Deck size above the floor is your own decision, and it is a real one.
Where this way of thinking runs out
Three honest limits, because a card doing a job is a way of thinking and not a rule.
First, it tells you what is missing and never which card fills the gap. Naming the job is the easy half. Choosing between the cards that all claim to do it is the next 5 lessons.
Second, that list of jobs is ours, not the rulebook's. Nothing in the Comprehensive Rules says a deck needs early plays or answers. Those are conclusions drawn from how games tend to go.
Third, this advice has a version that makes the game worse. Cut every card you enjoy and you end up piloting something correct that you do not want to play. Keep 2 or 3 slots for cards you simply like, and know that is the trade.
- You draw from the top of a shuffled deck.
- A deck holds at least 60 cards.
- At most 4 cards share the same full name.
- A full name is the name line plus the version line.
- Every card you add makes the others harder to draw.
Take 10 cards from any deck you own, or from a starter deck. Write 1 job beside each: ink, early play, lore, answer, or more cards. Any card you cannot label in 5 words is the first card to look at again.
Rules quoted from the Disney Lorcana Comprehensive Rules, version 2.2.0, effective 9 July 2026. Printing, art and rarity details for the 2 Elsa cards come from our own card database on 9 August 2026. Both are legal in Core.
Next: Formats, and what your deck has to be legal for. You know a deck is 60 slots, so the next question is whose rules those slots have to satisfy.
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