Come with us as we take a trip to the Enchanted Castle and beyond, to sometimes unfamiliar or altered realms – to answer the question: what are Storyborn, Dreamborn and Floodborn in Disney Lorcana?
Disney Lorcana is shaping up to be one of the most exciting Trading Card Game releases in years.
With the weight of the Disney brand name behind it and a century of characters, stories and settings to draw from, Lorcana is hitting the ground running in terms of featuring immediately recognisable cards and lore.
Yet that doesn’t mean that the designers of the game have lazily mashed up Disney characters from countless franchises to simply face off against one another in the card game.
In fact, Lorcana has its own lore and an already fascinating, in-universe justification for how each character is summoned and brought to the titular realm.
What Is Storyborn?
As each glimmer is being summoned from various realms outside Lorcana using magical ink, there’s a possibility that they can be altered in some way upon arrival in the game’s world.
Storyborn are characters which have remained unaltered after summoning; if you were to watch the movies or read the Disney stories they emerge from, they would be entirely identical in nature to their counterpart in the Disney Lorcana game.
Storyborn cards are not necessarily the ‘weakest’ version of a character; rather, they look and function exactly as you’d expect them to from their original appearance.
What Is Dreamborn?
The Dreamborn characters in Disney Lorcana, unlike Storyborn, have been altered in some way by the summoning process – so they aren’t entirely identical to their original counterpart characters.
The changes may be minor and may play upon already established facets of the character or their stories, but they are in some way transformed – in a way that the Storyborn characters are not.
One thing is for certain with Dreamborn cards – this designation allows for some creative, unique twists on familiar characters, with abilities that also place an unusual spin on the nature of each character!
What Is Floodborn?
So, finally, what is it that’ll lead to a character being classified as Floodborn?
Floodborn characters are reimagined – they’re characters whose stories seem to have turned out very differently to the tales we’re familiar with!
At present, all Disney Lorcana characters with the Floodborn designation also have the Shift keyword.
The Shift keyword allows you to essentially evolve a Storyborn or Dreamborn character with the same name as your Floodborn card – much as you would a Pokemon card in the Pokemon TCG, for example.
Doing this enables you to get the card into play for a reduced Ink cost, with the lower Ink value noted next to the Shift keyword.
Floodborn cards – at least currently – appear to be the most powerful incarnations of the character they represent.
Can A Character Be More Than One Type?
Though you’d expect the answer to be no – each character card can only be one of Storyborn, Dreamborn or Floodborn, after all – it is possible for a named character to appear in different forms in Lorcana, with numerous characters appearing more than once in the game’s collection of cards!
So yes, despite the fact that there can be only one ‘born’ type per card, numerous variants of characters are possible – for example, in the first Lorcana set release, there are seven different versions of Mickey Mouse!
There are two Storyborn Mickey Mouse cards, four Dreamborn and one Floodborn – each of which has different strengths and abilities.
The most immediately impressive of these cards – Mickey Mouse, Brave Little Tailor, pictured above – features on our list of the most expensive Disney Lorcana cards, which reveals that certain early versions of cards have been selling for eye-wateringly high prices!
What Is The Basis Of Lorcana’s Story?
The realm that the game is set in is named Lorcana, which the players have been summoned to by the Great Illuminary.
Lorcana’s Great Illuminary is the centre of the world, in which an open book resides.
Above this book are a swirling stream of colourful stars, each of which contains pieces of different Disney stories.
It’s from these stars that players – in the role of Illumineers, armed with magical devices known as Inkcasters – will summon characters and other items, represented by cards drawn from their Disney Lorcana decks.
What Are Glimmers?
In the most basic terms, glimmer is the fancy, in-universe name for a card in Disney Lorcana.
You can check out our Disney Lorcana: The First Chapter card list for a better look at each card revealed for the game so far.
Though if you want to know the in-universe explanation for what a card – or glimmer – is, we’ve got you covered.
Using the Inkcaster found in the Grand Illuminary, Illumineers are able to use Ink to create ‘glimmers’; these are versions of famous Disney characters and familiar objects, which will aid the Illumineers in their quest to protect the fragmenting lore of the realm of Lorcana.
Glimmers are formed of inks – of which there are six: Amber, Amethyst, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire and Steel.
It’s also worth noting that, only are characters categorised by their ink type, but they’re further separated by one of three subtypes: Storyborn, Dreamborn and Floodborn.
In the above example, you can see that Mickey Mouse, Brave Little Tailor is Dreamborn.
However, let’s first take a look at what exactly a Storyborn character is – and then we can move on to Dreamborn and Floodborn too.
What Other Subtypes Can Characters Have?
In the image above, you’ll see that Maleficent, Monstrous Dragon is Storyborn, Villain and Dragon.
That’s because, in addition to being either Storyborn, Dreamborn or Floodborn, characters are also classified by different Alignments and Classes.
A character can be aligned as Hero, Villain, Ally or Mentor.
Then there are Classes; these are the most numerous and varied of a character’s available subtypes – and typically describe a character’s species or, if human, their role.
These are: Alien, Broom, Captain, Deity, Detective, Dragon, Fairy, Inventor, King, Musketeer, Pirate, Prince, Princess, Queen, Sorcerer and Tigger.
That’s right – both ‘Broom’ and ‘Tigger’ are, amusingly, entire classification keywords!
Be sure to check out our How to Play Disney Lorcana: Trading Card Game for further information on the game’s rules.
