One of the best things that all Players love is about Trading Card Games is the excitement of opening Booster Packs. I know there are cases where buying Single cards is preferred in order to finalize your collection or your decks, but pulling cards out of a few packs is always a thrill. In order to make opening Booster packs even more captivating, Players have been creating gaming formats which allow the players to use the random cards they pulled from the packs to compete against each other.
In most TCGs, this takes the form of “Sealed” of “Draft” events. In both cases, Players receive a number of Booster Packs (for example six) and they compete against each other using a deck made with the cards they pulled from those packs. In the sealed format, Players can use all the cards they find while in the draft format they take turns in selecting one card from their own pack and passing the rest to another player until all cards have been picked and all packs opened.
The Game Developers at Disney Lorcana, however, came up with a very peculiar format tailored to this game and they called it “Pack Rush”. This format was introduced quite early in the game and it is one of the best format to use at release events or conventions as it requires a minimum investment of time and money but it is very fun to play and can be turned into an opportunity to meet a lot of new friends.
In order to play Pack Rush, each player buys two packs and opens them without looking at the cards. This is a very important aspect of the format as players play their decks without knowing which cards they pulled. In order to avoid damaging any precious card (Enchanted for examples), players are recommended to sleeve their decks before shuffling them although they should do it without looking at the cards.
When all players are ready and the decks of 24 cards have been shuffled, they all draw an hand of five cards and start their match. Considering the deck is much smaller than usual, Pack Rush uses slightly different rules you can find on the official Disney Lorcana website. The main aspect to consider are:
1) Each player adds the two puzzle cards they find in their Booster Packs to their Inkwell at the start of the game. These two cards count as usual thus each players can ideally play cards up to a cost of three right from turn one.
2) Player starting hand is five cards (and not seven) but players can still Mulligan the cards they don’t want to keep.
3) Each card is Inkable and players can put only one card in the Inkwell as usual.
4) When a player runs out of cards they can shuffle their discard pile to create a new Deck.
5) The first player reaching 15 lore wins the game.
The main reason I love Pack Rush is because you open your packs as usual but then you play without knowing which cards you got. If opening packs is exciting, imagine when you draw your next card in a Pack Rush game and it is a Foil Legendary or an Enchanted!! In addition, Pack Rush can be a very cost efficient format as players can just buy two packs and play through all the event or they can agree to open new packs every few rounds in case they want to collect more cards from the set. Plus, it is a very fast format as you only need to get to 15 Lore in order to win and that’s why it is a perfect format to play in a fun release night! You can also consider to play it after buying a Booster Box to make the best out of your 24 packs. I tried this a few times with other Lorcana Players and it can be a lot of fun. Have you also tried Pack Rush before
