"Dual-ink" in Disney Lorcana means two different things: dual-ink decks (a deck-building choice) and dual-ink cards (a card type introduced in 2025). Both matter when you're picking up the game.
Dual-ink decks
Lorcana has six ink colors: Amber, Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, and Steel. Each ink has a distinct play-style identity:
- Amber: healing, swarming with small characters, supportive.
- Amethyst: card draw, ramp, magical effects.
- Emerald: bouncing characters back to hand, evasive.
- Ruby: aggressive damage, rush-style attackers.
- Sapphire: ramp, items, scaling-resource decks.
- Steel: combat tricks, large-stat characters, songs.
When building a deck, you choose up to two inks. Mono-ink decks (one color) are simpler and have a tight identity. Dual-ink decks (two colors) are the competitive standard because they double your card pool and let you mix complementary strengths: Amber/Steel for healing-plus-combat, Ruby/Sapphire for aggressive ramp, and so on.
Dual-ink cards (introduced 2025)
In February 2025, Ravensburger introduced a new card type: dual-ink cards. These cards have two ink symbols on the cost gem (instead of one) and belong to both inks simultaneously.
The deck-building rule
A dual-ink card can only be included in a deck that contains both of its ink colors. Example: Pascal, Garden Chameleon, is an Amber/Amethyst dual-ink card. To play it, your deck must be Amber/Amethyst. You cannot run it in a mono-Amber deck or in Amber/Steel.
This effectively rewards dual-ink decks with access to a special card pool that mono-ink decks cannot touch.
Counting toward both ink identities
For card effects that reference ink colors (e.g., "draw a card for each Amber character you have"), a dual-ink card counts as both of its colors. So a dual-ink Amber/Amethyst character contributes to both Amber-counting and Amethyst-counting effects.
Standard deck-building rules
Whether you go mono-ink or dual-ink, every Lorcana deck follows the same basic constraints:
- Minimum 60 cards.
- Up to 4 copies of any single card.
- Cards from 1 or 2 inks only.
Building a dual-ink deck
The fastest way to start a competitive dual-ink deck is to copy a tournament-winning list and tweak it. Browse our tournament decklists for the latest winning archetypes, or use the deck builder to assemble one card at a time. Each deck on the decklists page is tagged with its ink colors so you can filter by archetype.