Disney Lorcana · Illumineer's Quest

Deep TroubleQuick Reference

Ursula has taken the Trident and turned Lorcana's own glimmers against you — entangled, corrupted, and answering only to her. One to four Illumineers dive in together against a deck that plays itself. A co-op scenario played with ordinary Lorcana decks.

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You winEvery player has 20 or more lore at the same moment. Nobody can bank lore for anyone else.

You loseUrsula reaches 40 lore, or any one player must draw from an empty deck.

Setup

≈5 min

Set her draw tokenPlace Ursula's draw counter on the playmat according to how many players are facing her — see the table in section 2. This is the engine that eventually buries you.
Pick a battlegroundChoose one of the four battlegrounds (two double-sided oversized cards). This is your difficulty, and it sets which Illumineer abilities you can buy with lore.
Plant the TridentBefore shuffling, search her 50-card scenario deck for Ursula's Stolen Trident and put it faceup as the first card on the left of her row. Shuffle the rest and place it on her deck space.
Zero the trackersSet the lore trackers to 0 for Ursula and for each player. Ursula does not start with a hand.
Ready the IllumineersEach player takes a 60-card deck (use the two included decks or your own), shuffles, draws 7, and may mulligan once — put any number on the bottom and redraw that many.
Ursula goes firstShe takes the opening turn, and her first act is to draw.

The Basics

Core Lorcana, refreshed

Reading a card

⬡Cost top-left — ink to play ۞Inkwell ring — may be inked

⚔Strength — challenge damage 🛡Willpower — damage it survives ◇Lore — gained per quest

Six inks: Amber · Amethyst · Emerald · Ruby · Sapphire · Steel. Types: Character, Action (Songs are Actions), Item, Location.

Your turn — “Ready · Set · Draw”

ReadyUn-exert all your cards: characters, items, and ink.
SetResolve start-of-turn triggers; gain lore from your Locations.
DrawDraw 1 card.
MainThen act freely, in any order, as long as you have ink ↓

All Illumineers take this turn at the same time — coordinate out loud.

Main phase actions

Ink (1×)Once per turn, put one card bearing the inkwell ring face-down into your inkwell.
PlayPay a card's ink cost by exerting that many ink. Any ink pays for anything.
QuestExert a dry character to gain its lore.
ChallengeExert a dry character to attack an exerted enemy (or a Location).
AbilityBuy a battleground ability by spending your own lore — no ink required.

No end step — your turn ends when the table chooses to stop.

Quest vs. Challenge

♦ Quest

Exert the character → add its Lore to your total. Safe, but exerting leaves it open to being challenged.

⚔ Challenge

Both characters deal Strength damage at once. Damage ≥ Willpower → banished to discard.

Ink must dry: a character can't quest, challenge, or use ⟳ abilities the turn you play it — unless it has Rush (challenge only). Damage stays across turns; it vanishes if the card leaves play.

Keywords at this table

Bodyguard — may enter exerted; enemies must challenge it first if able. (All three of hers do.)

Evasive — only Evasive characters can challenge it.

Rush — can challenge the turn it's played.

Ward — opponents can't choose it (except to challenge it).

Resist +N — reduce damage it takes by N.

Challenger +N — +N Strength while challenging.

Support — when it quests, lend its Strength to another character this turn.

Singer N — exert it to sing (play free) a song costing N or less.

Shift N — play it onto a same-named character for the Shift cost.

Entangled — the classification on every card in Ursula's deck. Not a keyword; it does nothing on its own, but her cards refer to it.

Her scenario cards carry only Evasive (2 cards) and Bodyguard (3 cards). Nothing of hers has Ward — targeted removal always finds its mark.

The Depths

What Deep Trouble changes

Everyone needs their own 20

Win: the moment all players are simultaneously at 20 or more lore. There is no pooled total — a runaway player at 30 does not carry a teammate at 12.

Lose: Ursula reaches 40 lore, or any single player fails a draw. One player decking out loses it for the whole team.

A player already past 20 isn't finished — they stay in, keep blocking and banishing, and should be spending their surplus lore on battleground abilities, because lore above 20 does nothing else for the team.

Her three items

Ursula's Stolen Trident (0 ⬡, starts in play) — It's My Power Now: ⟳ Gain 1 lore.
The Hexwell Crown (3 ⬡) — Perks of Power: ⟳ Draw a card. The same crown Jafar reforges in Palace Heist.
Ursula's Contract (0 ⬡) — Sweeten the Deal: opposing players can't use battleground abilities. Minor Stipulation: at the start of her turn, banish it and gain 3 lore.

The Contract is the card to fear: it switches off your only lever on her board. Items are also the one thing Infinite Wrath's return-to-hand rule doesn't protect — banish them on sight.

Running Ursula's turn — “Ready · Set · Resolve · Draw · Reveal”

ReadyReady (un-exert) all of Ursula's cards.
SetResolve her start-of-turn effects. Where an effect needs a choice, the players decide together.
Resolve the row — left to rightEach of her characters quests if it can, and she gains its lore. Exert items that want exerting — the Trident is first in the row for a reason. Exert each card as you finish it.
DrawDraw cards equal to her draw token (plus any battleground bonus).
RevealTurn the drawn cards up one at a time. Ursula never spends ink. If her inkwell already holds enough ink for the card, she plays it free; if not, the card goes face-down into her inkwell instead. Characters and items fill her row from the left; Actions resolve at once and go to her discard.

Her deck can't run out. When she has no cards to draw, her discard pile is shuffled into a new deck — you cannot mill Ursula, and trying it risks decking yourself, which loses the game for everyone.

After she finishes, all Illumineers take their turn together, simultaneously, each as a normal Lorcana turn.

Her draw token

Players	Base	Draws one more when her lore reaches
1	2	20
2	2	10, then again at 30
3	3	20
4	3	10, then again at 30

The Lair and Infinite Wrath each add a flat +1 on top of this. The Encounter removes the lore-threshold increases entirely — she just draws her base.

Spending lore on abilities

Each battleground lists Illumineer abilities with a lore price. Any player may reduce their own lore total by that amount to fire one, at any point during the players' turn.

Once per ability, per turn — for the whole table. If one player buys the 2-lore ability, nobody else can buy that same ability until the next turn. The other listed abilities are still available.

It comes out of your 20, so a timed ability is a real cost. The player nearest 20 — or already past it — should be the one paying.

Battlegrounds

Difficulty & abilities

Four battlegrounds across two double-sided oversized cards. The battleground sets how fast Ursula draws and what help you can buy. Note the shape of the difficulty curve: the easy boards hand you three tools, and the Extreme board hands you one.

EasyThe Encounter

UrsulaDoesn't draw additional cards for lore each turn — her draw token never climbs.

Spend lore →
1	Remove up to 2 damage from a chosen character.
2	Ready or exert a chosen character.
3	A chosen player draws 2 cards.

NormalA Dark Realm

UrsulaNo extra rule — the baseline fight. Her draw token climbs at the usual lore thresholds.

Spend lore →
1	Chosen character gets +2 Strength this turn.
2	Chosen character gains Resist +1 until the start of your next turn.
3	Each player except Ursula draws a card.

HardThe Lair

UrsulaDraws 1 more card each turn, on top of her draw token.

Spend lore →
1	Deal 1 damage to a chosen character.
2	Ready a chosen character.
3	Each player except Ursula puts the top card of their deck into their inkwell, face-down and exerted.

ExtremeInfinite Wrath

UrsulaDraws 1 more card each turn — and whenever a character of hers is banished, she returns that card to her hand.

Spend lore →
2	Ursula discards a card at random.
This is the only ability the Extreme board offers — and killing her characters just hands them back. Removal stops being an answer; sustained pressure and item destruction are what's left.

Start at The Encounter until you've found your footing. Reviewers consistently report the two included decks handling Easy and Normal, and struggling badly from Hard upward — custom decks are close to a requirement past A Dark Realm.

What She's Holding

50 cards · 31 unique

Her scenario deck is 16 characters, 12 actions, 3 items — and no Locations. Gold-backed, Entangled, and not legal in any other format. You will meet these repeatedly; knowing which ones end a board is most of the skill.

Board wipes & sweepers

⬡	Card	Effect
7	Tsunami	Banish all opposing characters.
6	Riptide	Banish all opposing characters, items and locations of cost 2 or less.
5	Typhoon	Return all opposing exerted characters to their owners' hands.
4	Whirlpool	Exert all opposing characters; they can't ready at the start of your next turn.
4	Crushing Wave	Deal 2 damage to each opposing character.
3	Choppy Waters	Deal 2 damage to each opposing player's highest-cost character.
2	Tentacle Swipe	Deal 1 damage to each opposing character, then it inks itself.

Typhoon punishes a whole team questing out at once — the standard reason a promising board evaporates.

Disruption & lore theft

⬡	Card	Effect
6	Lightning Storm	Each opposing player loses 3 lore.
2	Lash Out	Each opposing player chooses and banishes one of their own characters.
2	Entangling Magic	Each opposing player discards a card; then it inks itself.
0	Fortunate Hit	The players together choose one of your items and banish it.
3	Capsize	6 ink or less: she inks her top 3 cards. 7+: each player banishes a character.

Lightning Storm is the worst card in the deck for this format — every player needs their own 20, so 3 lore off everyone at once costs the team far more than it would in a duel.

The entangled glimmers — what to expect

Jafar, Double-Crossing Vizier — 7 ⬡ · 9/9/3, no abilities. The biggest body she has, and no way to stop it but math.

Minnie Mouse, Wild-Eyed Diver — 7 ⬡ · 6/7/2. On play, each opposing player loses 2 lore.

Bodyguards ×3 — Flotsam (4 ⬡ 5/5/2), Hercules (4 ⬡ 3/7/2), Prince Eric (1 ⬡ 2/5/1). All enter exerted via Ursula's Sentry, and all wall your challenges.

Hercules, Manipulated Hero — the exception clause: during the players' turn you may together pay 3 lore to banish him outright.

Evasive ×2 — Anna, Ensnared Sister (6 ⬡ 5/6/2) and HeiHei, Peckish Pal (3 ⬡ 3/2/1). Only your own Evasive characters can touch them.

On-play punishers — Bruno mills each player 3; Jetsam pings every character for 1; Gaston hits your cheapest for 4; Shark hits every already damaged character for 2; Tamatoa makes you banish an item or location.

No card in her pool has Ward, Challenger, or Resist — and despite the rules sheet's "unless it has Reckless" clause in her Resolve step, no scenario card printed in this box actually has Reckless either. Her whole defense is raw statlines plus three Bodyguards.

★

Dive Tips

Don't try to mill her — she recycles her discard, and you're the only side that can deck out.
Kill her items on sight. The Contract locks out your abilities; the Trident is a free lore every turn.
Watch the slowest player. The team's clock is whoever is furthest from 20, not whoever is ahead.
Don't quest the whole board out at once — Typhoon and Whirlpool are waiting for exactly that.
Anyone past 20 should be spending lore on abilities every turn. Surplus lore is worth nothing else.
Banish rather than trade: her characters carry high willpower, so songs and removal beat combat math.
On Infinite Wrath, stop killing her characters — they come straight back to her hand. Race instead.
Her behavior is scripted. Anything that stops a character questing throws her whole engine off.

Where this page is thin

Ravensburger doesn't publish the Deep Trouble rules sheet online, so the procedure above is compiled from the boxed sheet as reported by guides, plus per-card databases and retail transcriptions of the battleground cards. Two specific gaps:

The TridentNo source states whether players can ever take or banish it. In practice she appears to keep it — and its free lore each turn — for the whole game.
Draw countsThe table above is the draw token by player count. The exact interaction with a battleground bonus at high lore is reported consistently but never printed in one place.

The rules sheet in your box outranks this page on any disagreement.

Created by

Questions or corrections · steve@commonplay.io