It’s been a month since the release of the highly anticipated return to the world of Lorwyn and Shadowmoor in Lorwyn Eclipsed, and I’ve been deep in that world, trying out everything the set has to offer. From the two commander and standard decks, to overall impressions on the set as a whole, read on to see our thoughts on Magic the Gathering’s Lorwyn Eclipsed.
A Whimsical Return to Lorwyn
If you read my impressions on Lorwyn Eclipsed during its prerelease, you’ll know I came into this set with pretty high praise. Since then, getting to mess around with the set has only grown my love for it. I quickly fell for its almost whimsical setting, and I don’t think there’s a single card where I didn’t love the art for it, but I especially love the new Blight and Vivid mechanics.
Blight makes it so that when a creature with that ability enters, you’ll put a certain amount of -1/-1 counters on a creature you control. This might sound like punching yourself, but there are a variety of cards that take full advantage of this. Grim Poppet for example is a 4/4 with the ability to remove -1/-1 counters from itself and put them on any creature, including your opponents. So you kind of want to use a card like that to stack negative counters on so you can fling them over to enemy creatures instead. It’s a really fun and new way to play once it clicks.
The second new mechanic for the set is Vivid, which is a bit more to the point than Blight. Vivid about how many colors you control on the field, so something like Shinestriker makes it so when it enters the field, you can draw cards equal to the amount of colors among your permanents. Shinestriker is blue, so you’ve automatically got that covered, but the usefulness really kicks in when you have hybrid cards like Muldrotha, the Gravetide, which has three colors. One card can really help give you a booster to getting all the colors needed to maximize a Vivid usage.
Now new to Magic as a whole is the Draft Night box, a package that contains twelve booster packs, a stack of lands, and a collector’s booster. The idea is that it’s a way for friends to play a pick-two draft at home, without having to wait for your local card shop to run it. I (admittedly) hate the pick-two draft and have usually had lousy experiences with it, particularly because most of the times I’ve played it were just people swiping the rares from the packs and not trying to play the format correctly. Thankfully, I had a better time this go around since it was with friends, and having a collector booster as a prize for the winner is a nice touch for the package, so I can definitely see these Draft Night boxes really taking off.
Blight and Elementals Shine in Commander
Dance of the Elements is the first of two commander decks in Lorwyn Eclipsed, and it’s all about creating and duplicating your elemental creatures to activate their trigger abilities multiple times and fill the board with an army.
Ashling the Limitless is your main commander for this deck, and they’re key for starting up your duplication engine. Ashling states that all elemental spells have Evoke (4), which means you can cast them for four mana of any color, with the caveat being that they’re sacrificed when it enters. Thanks to Ashling, that’s no problem, since anytime an elemental is sacrificed, a token copy is immediately created, which means you get to trigger ETB abilities twice. That token is sacrificed on your next end step if you don’t pay one mana of every color, but with all the enchantments and artifacts in this deck, it’s very easy to make it so you’re able to cover every mana base, assuming you can’t already do so through normal means.
Don’t sleep on the secondary commander, Mass of Mysteries, though, because honestly, I think I might like it more sometimes. It costs one of every mana color to bring out, but its ability is worth it. It states that whenever another elemental is attacking a player, Mass of Mysteries gives that card Myriad, which means it creates a token duplicate for every other opponent at the table that they are immediately attacking. If you’re playing in a pod of four, that three additional creatures swinging for free, that are also triggering ETB abilities on top of that.
One particular nasty combo I enjoyed pulling off involved Vernal Sovereign and Mass of Mysteries. The first has an ability where, when it enters or attacks, you can create a creature token with power/toughness equal to the amount of creatures you control. So immediately upon being cast, it’s creating that token, and there were at the time eight creatures, which made it an 8/8. The real joy came when it attacked, and I targeted it with Mass of Mysteries to create three more copies of i,t which meant I had four Vernal Sovereigns out, all creating these powerhouse token creatures. There are a few cards in this deck that maybe don’t super synergize, like I’d replace Faeburrow Elder with another elemental to stick to the deck’s theming, but that’s such a nitpick in what’s a super fun deck to play.
Blight Curse is a really fun deck that has one goal and that’s spreading -1/-1 counters across the battlefield and using those to combo off of. You do this with a new ability called Blight that adds -1/-1 counters to creatures you control, or with Witcher which makes it so that creature deals damage in the form of -1/-1 counters.
The deck features a freaky little goblin called Auntie Ool, whose main shtick is that when a -1/-1 counter is placed on a creature, if it was on one of yours, you’ll draw a card, but if it was on an opponent’s, then they lose one life. It initially doesn’t seem too crazy on its own, but when you start slinging -1/-1 counters all over the place and you’re constantly pinging your opponents for 1, that’s when she becomes a problem. Wickersmith’s Tools, in particular, is a nasty card since it gets a charge counter anytime a -1/-1 counter is placed on a creature, and you can eventually sacrifice the artifact to then create X 2/2 scarecrow tokens, where X is the amount of charge counters you have. Considering how often you’ll be Blighting, if you play the long game and your opponents don’t notice, then you can surprise them with an army of scarecrows.
One of my favorite things I did involved the Oft-Nabbed Goat which makes it so that for one mana, your opponents can take control of the goat and draw a card off it, at the cost of applying a -1/-1 counter to itself. The kicker here is that it’s in their best interest to have it die as soon as possible because once it dies, depending on how many -1/-1 counters were on it, its owner draws that many cards, and every opponent takes that much damage. My friends indulged me by taking it twice with the intention of having it killed next chance they got, but I had other plans. The moment it was my turn again, I put out Soul Snuffers and Dread Tiller which immediately applied a -1/-1 counter to Oft-Nabbed Goat, and I finished the job with Archfiend of Ifnir that applied the final counter needed to kill my goat and deal 5 damage to everyone. That wasn’t it, however. I also had my commander, Aunite Ool, out, which meant the controller of the goat took a point of damage, and I also had Lasting Tarfire out, which deals 2 damage to everyone at the end of my turn if I placed a counter on a creature. Job’s not finished though, as I also had Necroskitter on the field at the time, which meant that since Oft-Nabbed Goat died with a -1/-1 counter on it, it came back to the field under my control and I basically used it as a Blight machine while also partnering with Lasting Tarfire for a free 2 damage to the whole table. It was a really satisfying combo to pull off, and I fully deserved the bullying I got from the table after that. Overall, I had a blast with Blight Curse. I was pretty hesitant on the mechanic during the prerelease, but I recognized that it was because I likely wasn’t seeing the full vision of what the mechanic is capable of, and I’m now a Blight believer.
Standard Decks Make a Comeback
I admittedly fell back in love with Magic the Gathering after being introduced to its (new to me) commander format. I was just getting tired of standard and the effort it needed to keep up with all the recent sets, but thankfully, Wizards is taking the work out of that with their latest standard decks. They come in two themes, Pirates & Angels, and feature cards from recent sets like Aetherdrift, Bloomburrow, Lost Caverns of Ixalan, and even Lorwyn.
The first of these, Angels, sees you filling up the board with a multitude of angels that just keep powering each other up. Giada, Font of Hope, for example, gives +1/+1 to other angels on the board for every angel you already have on the battlefield. The more angels you have, the stronger your army of flyers will get as they swoop over your opponent’s creatures to attack them directly. Adding cards like Chomping Changeling, which is every creature type thanks to it being a changeling, means even cards that aren’t officially angels can still benefit from creature type boons. One of my matches in particular benefited heavily from Llanowar Elves, which tap to give you one forest mana. I was lucky enough to have three in my hand, and by turn two, I was capable of tapping for up to five mana, putting me a significant head start on getting my bigger creatures out.
The other deck, Pirates, on the other hand, is built around discarding your cards. The main focus of this deck is discarding cards so that you can bulk up Marauding Mako and Scrounging Skyray, who both gain +1/+1 for every card discarded. Cards like Inti, Seneschal of the Sun, help significantly with this by letting you discard one card every time you attack, along with adding an additional +1/+1 counter on the attacking creature. But things can really snowball if you have Fearless Swashbuckler out, who makes it so that if you attack with both a pirate and a vehicle, you can draw three cards and discard two. Get all of these on the board, and your opponent is in for a pretty rough time.
Also, not gonna lie, I love Commander, but these decks reminded me how nice it can be to have a game that lasts only 10 to 15 minutes. I think we knocked out a half dozen rounds in the time a usual commander game takes. I’ve been pretty exclusive to Commander since getting back into Magic, but messing around with these decks has reignited my love for standard and got me thinking of other standard decks I could try building. If you’re new to Magic or maybe haven’t ever played standard before, it’s hard not to recommend these decks.
The Final Word
If it wasn’t already apparent, I think Lorwyn Eclipsed is an absolute slamdunk of a set, and probably one of my favorite sets of all time from Wizards. The setting is ripe with storytelling and whimsy, the new mechanics like Blight and Vivid add fun new layers to the game, the two Commander decks are probably some of my favorite precons ever, and the new standard decks are great introductions for new players to magic or to the format in general.
