I’ve been eagerly anticipating the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed, a set taking us back to a setting we haven’t seen in nearly twenty years, and in the lead-up to its release, you could almost feel that Wizards was just as excited as we were, and for good reason. I’ve been to a lot of prereleases in my time, but the energy in the room for this one felt a bit different. Was it Universes Beyond fatigue? Maybe. But everyone was clearly giddy to crack their packs and get started.
If you’re not familiar with prerelease events, you’re given a small box of six booster packs, a life counter die, and a promo card. You then have an hour to sift through the cards you opened and build a 40-card deck (half of which will be lands, most likely). It can be a bit stressful if it’s your first time looking at a lot of these cards, especially since you’re looking through almost a hundred cards trying to find some synergy to build a good deck (or two) around. My good rule of thumb is to separate everything by color, then by monsters and everything else (sorceries, instants, artifacts, etc.). That way, you can see how many creatures you have per color, and how many spells you have to support those creatures. Oh, and you’ll likely be running dual colors since you’ll likely not get enough cards in a single color to make a mono deck.
I think I spent most of my hour knowing I was going to use white for sure in my deck since I was enjoying some of the life-gain cards, but was struggling to decide on the other color. Blue was out of the question since I barely got any cards in that color, and I kind of ignored green since I don’t normally play it, so it was between red and black. Red had some solid sorcery cards to use, but I wasn’t excited about the creatures (mostly elementals), which would be fine if I had more elementals in white (I mostly had kithkin). Black, on the other hand, had some amazing spells that seemed too good not use, like Bloodline Bidding, which returns all creature cards of a type I choose from the graveyard back to the field.
So in my head, I definitely knew I wanted to stick with a majority creature type to make use of that card. The issue is that most of the creatures in black had the new Blight mechanic, which adds -1/-1 counters to your creatures (in exchange for various benefits), but none of them had any way to remove those counters, which was the issue. With only ten minutes left on the clock, I went back to look at my white cards to see if there was something that would spark inspiration for my second color, and boy, did it.
The card that immediately caught my eye was Kinscaer Sentry, which (when attacking) lets me put a creature card from my hand onto the battlefield for free if its mana cost is equal to or less than the number of creatures I have attacking. And considering kithkin are usually pretty cheap, that meant there was a good chance I could play most of the cards in my deck for free as long as I had enough creatures attacking.
I also noticed that I had Dawn-Blessed Pennant, an artifact that gives me life every time a creature of a chosen type enters the battlefield. It was at that point I started looking in my other colors to see if I could create a full kithkin deck and lo and behold, the green pile I had previously ignored had plenty of those little guys to fill my ranks with. I tossed in a few changelings like Rooftop Percher and Changeling Wayfinder (since Changelings are every creature type) to help out with their helpful abilities of gaining me life and letting me search my deck for lands. So that was it, with barely any time to spare, I had decided on a white/green kithkin deck, and it was time to start playing the damn game.
The first game in a prerelease is always a fun learning moment as you sit and see if the deck you spent an hour on actually works, and whether it’s worth retooling or even straight-up replacing entirely. I’ve seen some players willingly take the L on their round just to have extra time to sit and remake their deck. Thankfully, while I lost both games in my first round, they were both close enough that I could tell my deck was working as intended, and one I’d have won if I had only drawn more lands sooner.
Lorwyn Eclipsed Feels Like a Slam Dunk
Integral to the deck ended up being the combo of Brigid’s Command and Thoughtweft Imbuer. The latter made it so any card that attacks on its own gets +1/+1 for every kithkin I have on the field, and considering all of my cards are kithkin that I was bringing in cheap (or for free thanks to Kinscaer Sentry), I had a LOT of those little guys. Add Brigid’s Command to the mix. I used it to create a 1/1 kithkin token (bumping up my kithkin total), but most importantly, I used its second ability to copy Thoughtweft Imbuer, doubling its ability.
My opponent dropped out of our game in the second round, so I was left twiddling my thumbs for an hour, but the third round is where I came in, fully understanding how to make use of my army of silly little guys. In that first game I was able to use Thoughtweft Imbuer to boost my Rooftop Kinscaer Sentry to a 10/10, which with its lifelink ability (that gains me life equal to its power when it deals damage), I was able to completely turn the game around after playing the patient game and letting my opponent swing at me so I could safely set up my board. Which was an incredibly spicy move, mind you, since I was left at 1 life till I was ready to start swinging with the Kinscaer/Thoughtweft combo. In the second game of that match, I was able to search my library for a kithkin, which Brigid’s Command is thankfully a kithkin sorcery, and was able to use it and Thoughtweft Imbuer to boost a Rooftop Percher to 19/19, which, being a flyer, allowed me to instantly deal lethal to my opponent since they had no way to block it.
Even though one of my wins was due to a dropout, Dominic Toretto would remind me that a win is a win, so I felt good leaving my prerelease ranked 14 out of 50 with my 2-1 score.
All in all, I’m in love with Lorwyn Eclipsed. And I didn’t even touch on how gorgeous the art is, and as a person who loves freaky lil dudes, this set is filled with ’em. The abilities of all the cards are all really fun too, as I left wanting to really hone in on a kithkin deck but also wanting to play with some of the elemental cards and see how well the Blight mechanic would work in a deck. Lorwyn Eclipsed feels like a slam dunk of a set and a great start to the year for Wizards, so I’m really eager to play more with it when it fully releases this week.
