Winterspell transforms Lorcana’s Boost mechanic into a meta-defining strategy

Boost debuted in Whispers in the Well, but Winterspell full commits to it

One of Disney Lorcana’s most underutilized mechanics is Boost, a keyword mechanic that lets you put the top card of your deck facedown under a character when you pay its boost cost. Originally introduced in November 2025’s Whispers in the Well set, there are only 18 characters with Boost and another handful of characters or items that interact with it. That’s all about to change when Winterspell launches later this month.

My two best pulls from Winterspell preview packs provided by publisher Ravensburger were both Ruby cards with Boost: There was an epic-rarity borderless foil Hercules – Spectral Demigod, a one-cost 0/3 with a Boost cost of two. His Superhuman Strength ability means that when he’s Boosted, he gets +3 strength, earning you a net 3/3 by round two. Nice.

Then there’s the legendary-rarity Wreck-It Ralph – Raging Wrecker. He costs seven ink for a base of 3/4 with Boost 1 that picks up one extra strength for each card under him. So his power scales over time with no cap. Then there’s his bottom ability, Who’s Comin’ With Me?, which banishes all characters with strength equal to or less than his when he’s banished. (Playing Candy Drift from Reign of Jafar on him essentially results in a guaranteed full board wipe of all characters). Even as a relative newcomer to the game, I recognized this as a powerful card.

Most named abilities in Lorcana cluster around ink types. Resist is exclusive to Steel, and it’s the same for Reckless and Ruby. Other keyword abilities, like Alert or Evasive, pop up on two or three different ink types. Since the beginning of Lorcana, Shift has been spread evenly across all types, allowing you to pay less ink to play a character on top of another with the same base name. Boost is the only other mechanic that appears across all ink types. Some Boost cards have always been strong, like Cheshire Cat – Inexplicable, which moves damage counters around. With Winterspell, Lorcana introduces a lot more cards that support decks focusing on Boost.

Winterspell is poised to roughly double the number of Boost cards in the game — and it’ll introduce the first Actions and Locations. In Ruby alone, I pulled multiple copies of two other characters, an item, and two locations that interact with the mechanic. (Oddly enough, they’re all from the 1983 Mickey's Christmas Carol starring Scrooge McDuck that I grew up watching every year.) The Scrooge’s Counting House location gets plus one willpower and lore every time you Boost for two ink. My other location, Graveyard of Christmas Future, doesn’t explicitly name Boost, but you can put a card under it every time you move a character there. Then, at the start of your turn, you can banish it to put all cards under it into your hand — a great move if you know your opponent is about to challenge the location. The Scrooge McDuck – Ghostly Ebenezer character card also gets an additional strength and willpower for each card under him, an even better scaling than Wreck-It Ralph's.

Over in Amethyst, there wasn’t nearly as many Boost cards. However, I did get Genie – Magical Researcher, who adds one lore for each card under him. Whereas a number of cards — like the aforementioned Hercules — have one-off effects granted from Boost, Genie’s power scales with the number of cards under him.

During a special Lorecast livestream in January, Game Design Manager Lukas Litzinger spoke about how the Lorcana design team is evolving Boost with Winterspell: “We were really excited to continue the Boost mechanic in Winterspell, because we felt like there was more to do with it,” he said, noting that Genie – Magical Researcher was indicative of how the team wanted to push the mechanic further. “In the previous set, you just had a binary state where you had a card underneath you, but in this set, we are scaling the effects for the first time.” Later in the livestream, he also noted how Boost was expanded in Winterspell beyond Whisper-type characters and applied to some Ghost types, like the Emerald Goofy – Ghost of Jacob Marley.

The big surprise in Amethyst is Come Out and Fight!, one of the very first action cards that interacts with Boost. It puts all cards from under a character, item, or location on the bottom of that player’s deck in a random order — and you also draw a card. You can target one of your own characters or that of an opponent, disabling their Boost effects. Since all the cards under a Boosted character go into discard when the character is banished, you might as well cast this on one of your own characters that’s about to get challenged and eliminated. Similar to Graveyard of Christmas Future, it’s all about timing.

In my experience, Sapphire has a lot of great synergy with Boost — enough to warrant me building an Amethyst Sapphire deck around it. Like the Graveyard location, Mickey Mouse – Bob Cratchit doesn’t name Boost, but it has huge utility in terms of over-Boosting another character. Every time he quests, you put the top card of your deck under him. When he’s banished in a challenge, you can move all of those cards under another character or location of yours. In theory, this Mickey can quickly ramp up the power of Scrooge McDuck or Wreck-It Ralph. The Visiting Christmas Past action also seems overpowered: pay three ink to put any number of cards from under your characters and locations into your inkwell facedown and exerted. In the early- or mid-game, this can be a huge boost to your ink stockpile.

Until now, the biggest problem with Boost has been pacing: You can only activate the ability once per character per turn. Winterspell instead offers a number of methods to ramp up that pace. Once the Lonely Grave item is in play, you can exert it and banish a chosen character of yours to then put a card under a character or location with Boost. Similarly, Sapphire has Roo – Little Helper, a 1/1 that costs one ink with an ability that lets him exert to then slide under a character with Boost. There's also Tamatoa – Seeker of Shine with Boost 2 and Ward, as well as a special ability that increases his lore until the end of your turn whenever you put a card under a character or location.

If you’re in a position in the late-game to suddenly Boost a lot of cards at once under your locations and characters, then quest with Tamatoa, you can earn a huge amount of lore in one turn. So this new take on the giant crab from Moana feels like a natural replacement for Tamatoa – So Shiny! from The First Chapter with fun new mechanics. The So Shiny! version functioned similarly, increasing his lore based on the number of items instead of cards underneath him. The interactions feel the same, yet here we get an alternative with a new focus on Boost.

Winterspell hits prerelease on Feb. 13 with a global launch on Feb. 20. If my sampling is any indication, then Boost has the potential to emerge as a powerful new cornerstone of the game’s evolving meta. It also has me wanting to grab some Whispers in the Well booster packs to flesh out my Boost deck to see just how powerful it can be when built right.