Lorcana Illumineer’s Quest: Palace Heist review — Lorcana perfected

I’ve been a fan of Lorcana since it launched at GenCon in 2023. Waiting in line in the pre-dawn hours to snag some cards was a blast, and the anticipation of the crowd was electric. Lorcana was a huge release and has continued to sell out everywhere in my area. Since then, I have played every chapter, and while I love the game, I’m somehow still terrible at it. Somewhere along the way, I just never learned the strategy behind being good at competitive card games. The great news is that the theme, artwork, and all-around friendly atmosphere of Lorcana make every game fun, even if I lose most of them. Now, what if we could bottle up all of the best things about Lorcana and make it so we can truly play together rather than against each other? Enter, the Illumineer’s Quest.

The Illumineer’s Quest is a cooperative battle against a big, bad villain. Palace Heist is the culmination of the last three Lorcana chapters, which have all been pointing to a confrontation with Jafar. The box includes cards to play with 1-2 players, but the game mode can support up to 4 players with additional decks. While the villain has a custom deck that can’t be used outside this box, the players are all using regular Lorcana decks. The two decks included have been preconstructed to fight Jafar, but you can customize them to suit your playstyle or replace them completely with your own decks. In fact, if you want to take on the Hard or Extreme difficulties, you will definitely need to construct a deck specifically built for the challenge. 

Jafar plays very similarly to a regular player with some tweaks to card drawing and Ink to accommodate for him not being a real person. As you take on the increased difficulty levels, he will draw more cards sooner and generally make it harder for players to react to his plays. The flow of his turns is very similar to a real player, and the included rule book explains everything clearly. After just a few turns, you will be able to run the game smoothly. 

Palace Heist is the second Illumineer’s Quest to be released for the game, but it does one major thing differently than the first box, Deep Trouble. Palace Heist comes in a board game-style box that packs everything up nicely and stores the Illumineer’s Quest-specific cards and tokens for future games. Compared to the Deep Trouble box, which was not functional for storage or really reusing at all, Palace Heist stands out as the better of the two. It’s a more realized standalone product. You can buy Palace Heist and play it like a board game without ever getting into Lorcana any further. 

You may have noticed above, but another thing that the Illumineer’s Quest enables is solo play. I typically don’t enjoy solo gaming and find the flow charts and admin required to be tedious and unfun. The Illumineer’s Quest runs so similarly to a regular game that all of the typical work is done away with. There are no decision trees, and the admin of managing Jafar’s turns is so minimal that you are back to puzzling out your own turn extremely fast. 

The degree of challenge you have to deal with during the game is somewhat dependent on the difficulty of the level you choose, but also comes down to a lot of randomness. A key part of the game is the ability to hold onto the Hexwell Crown. It generates free Lore, and you need it in hand to win the game. Jafar has quite a few cards that will steal it back from you and Location cards that prevent you from stealing it back from him. During my first game with my niece, Jafar took the crown back immediately every time we grabbed it and was able to put down several locations in a row that we ultimately couldn’t overcome fast enough. A few games later, I tried it out solo and was able to rush out 20 lore and win the game before I saw a single Location in Jafar’s deck. Of course, this mirrors the randomness of shuffled decks and the unknowable mind of a real opponent, but if you’re the type of gamer who hates randomness in games, you should know the boardgamification of Lorcana doesn’t remove that aspect of the game. 

I’m the type of player who likes to build thematic decks that aren’t optimized and play at my kitchen table with friends and family. I’ve never played competitively at a store, and with my family being the priority for most of my free time, I don’t plan on doing that anytime soon. Lorcana is already great for kitchen table playing, but the Illumineer’s Quest takes it to a new level. My younger kids can play with me now, and we can enjoy this great hobby together. For me, there is no better way to play Lorcana. 

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