Legendary Lorwyn Eclipsed Treefolk Breaks Classic Commander Archetype

Last updated on February 6, 2026

Doran, Besieged by Time | Illustration by Carl Critchlow

An unexpected Lorwyn Eclipsed commander has emerged as a powerful Commander for the popular Rat Colony archetype: Doran, Besieged by Time. Though Doran cards are traditionally designed for toughness matters strategies, the new one’s unique anthem works perfectly with Rat Colony’s buff and expands the color identity to strength the archetype.

Creating Massive Rats

Rat Colony | Illustration by Suzanne Helmigh

The key synergy between Doran, Besieged by Time and Rat Colony is the power boost the treefolk provides to creatures with imbalanced power and toughness. Ostensibly designed to improve defenders with no power and high toughness—for example, The Walls of Ba Sing Se get +30/+30 when it attacks—it works just as well with creatures that have very high power and very low toughness, and few creatures meet that criteria like Rat Colony.

Imagine you control five copies of Rat Colony. Each of those gets +4/+0 because you control four other rats, resulting in 6/1 rats. When they attack, the difference between their power and toughness is 5, so Doran, Besieged by Time gives each of those rats an additional +5/+5. That’s a lot of additional power—11 each—but also shores up a weakness of the rats: They bite hard but die to anything. Since they get a significant toughness boost, trading in combat becomes much harder for your opponent. No longer need you fear random token generators blanking the rats.

More Colors, More Power

Doran, Besieged by Time | Illustration by Carl Critchlow

Magic cards are balanced around the concept of the color pie which, put simply, assigns each colors effects it can and can’t do. These can change over time. As a general rule of thumb, decks with more colors are more powerful because they have more options, at the cost of consistency in the mana base. A mono-green deck doesn’t need to worry about color screw, but it also can’t just Bolt the Bird.

Rat Colony commanders are generally mono-black. At least, the popular ones, like Marrow-Gnawer and Karumonix, the Rat King. This provides ample flavor, and Marrow-Gnawer is an incredibly potent finisher, since giving your rats fear functions similarly to making them unblockable. But being strictly black comes with downsides, like a lack of access to artifact destruction (unless you break out that Gate to Phyrexia) and, more importantly, very little protection for your Rat Colony.

Black can protect a single creature well. You can simply Reanimate it, or use a Raise Dead variant, or one of a million combat tricks like Not Dead After All that return the creature to play right after it dies. But it doesn’t protect a wide board very well, which can be a pinch point for the Rat Colony deck: It wants to flood the board with creatures, yet has little recourse against Wrath of God besides a prayer.

That’s where Doran adding white and green comes into play. With them come not just some protection spells, but the best in class options like Clever Concealment, Akroma's Will, and Heroic Intervention. They also offer additional recursive resources, like Raise the Past and Bloodbond March to mass reanimate your rats. These resources make board wipes far less frightening, and even open the possibility to unique builds; perhaps a Rat Colony deck that utilizes self-mill and cheap mass reanimation.

There are other benefits to these colors, like typal payoffs such as Everything Comes to Dust or Realmwalker and access to better removal and ramp than black does. These big creatures also benefit from green’s many trample granters, like Garruk's Uprising.

All this raises an important question: Is Doran the best Rat Colony commander? It certainly lacks the flavor of Marrow-Gnawer and loses some of the all-in potential. But all that protection and recursion sounds exquisite in a format known for its frequent board wipes. The most likely answer is the simple one: It’s just another good commander for players who want to give their friends a quick taste of the Black Death.