The Ultimate Lorwyn Eclipsed Limited Set Review

Last updated on January 22, 2026

Celestial Reunion | Illustration by Justin Gerard

Hello everybody! 2026 is going to be kind of a strange year (here’s looking at you Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), but I’m really excited for what’s on the horizon. Marvel Super Heroes and Star Trek have a lot of potential, and I can’t wait to see how they shape up.

But for now, our first set of the year is Lorwyn Eclipsed. When I started playing back in 2009, the original Lorwyn and Shadowmoor blocks were just on their way out of the Standard rotation, so I didn’t get much chance to play with the cards outside of Eternal formats. Many of Magic’s best-known staples were first introduced in these blocks, including Ponder, Thoughtseize, Cryptic Command, Bitterblossom, and everyone’s favorite, Mulldrifter. To say I’m hyped for what this set could bring us is one hell of an understatement. Today, we’ll look at every card that you can find in Play Boosters and how they’re likely to play out in the Limited format.

As always, this is a review based on my initial impressions of the cards. It’s hard to figure out how these cards will play out without knowing things like the speed of the format or the relative power levels of the colors and archetypes. Many cards will under- or overperform based on initial impressions as the format takes shape. My reviews are largely based on the card’s quality in a vacuum or the assumption that the archetype they belong in is playable.

The Grading Scale

Morningtide's Light | Illustration by Mark Poole

I use a comparative rating system on a scale of 0-10. Here’s a rough guide to what each rating means:

10: The absolute best of the best. 10s make a meaningful impact on any game, especially when playing from behind, and they’re extremely tough to beat.

Examples: The Legend of Kuruk or The Legend of Yangchen.

8-9: Extremely good cards, usually game-winning bombs and the most efficient removal spells, though not quite good enough to be a 10/10. Could also be the mythic uncommon of the set (though these are harder to predict).

Examples: Raven Eagle or Invasion Submersible.

5-7: Important role-players. These are typically going to be great uncommons that really drive you towards playing a particular color, like build-arounds and good removal, as well as very powerful commons.

Examples: Aang, the Last Airbender or Heartless Act.

2-4: The average Limited card. Most commons end up in this range, and most of your Limited decks will be made up of these.

Examples: Compassionate Healer or Messenger Hawk.

1: These cards are weak and you hope never to play them in your main deck, though they’re still just about playable if you need them in a pinch.

Examples: Foggy Swamp Hunters or Foggy Swamp Vinebender.

0: Virtually unplayable in every scenario, and you should never put these cards in your main deck. Typically cards that were designed with Constructed or Commander play in mind but are awful in Limited. Examples: Elemental Teachings or White Lotus Tile.

Set Mechanics

This set contains some new and some returning mechanics that call back to the main themes or the Lorwyn and Shadowmoor blocks. They’re pretty simple, but let’s have a quick look at each of them.

Blight

Shadowmoor swapped out the traditional +1/+1 counters for a very heavy focus on -1/-1 counters. Blight is a new mechanic that highlights this perfectly. If you’re instructed to “Blight N”, then you have to put N -1/-1 counters on a creature you control.

Cards in this set might ask you to blight as an additional cost to do something, or they might even ask your opponent to blight, allowing you to kill their creatures. We actually saw a lot of this style of play back in Amonkhet, where putting -1/-1 counters onto creatures with a lot of toughness was a common theme in green and black, but it didn’t play out especially well. I’ll reserve judgment on it for now, but these effects are really going to have to be worth going for, because shrinking or killing your own creatures is an extremely big downside in Limited.

Convoke

Convoke is a classic mechanic that dates all the way back to Ravnica in 2005. We’ve seen it return many times, and although it isn’t really a main mechanic of Lorwyn Eclipsed, it still appears on a few cards that will be very important for us Limited players.

Convoke spells can have their costs paid for by tapping creatures you control, almost as though they tapped for mana. These are a great way to pay you off for having lots of creatures in play at once, so this naturally slots very nicely into a set with such a heavy creature focus as this one. Keep an eye out for ways to help enable these spells, like token creators.

Kindred and Changeling

Lorwyn was best known for its focus on specific creature types. The set focused on elementals, elves, faeries, giants, goblins, kithkin, merfolk, and treefolk. All eight creature types are back in Lorwyn Eclipsed, and five of them are Draft archetypes for you to build around.

To support these, kindred cards make a return. Kindred is a card type (formerly known as “tribal”) that allows card types other than creatures to carry creature types. What does that mean? It means that when you search your library for a “goblin card”, you can search for Tarfire. It means that when Spellstutter Sprite counts up the number of “faeries you control”, it counts the Bitterblossom you have in play. There are all sorts of interactions with these that are likely to come up, and that has historically made them a lot stronger than they appear to be. So much so that WotC said they were unlikely to ever bring them back in the future.

In addition to kindreds, we also see the return of changelings, which are creatures (or kindreds of course) that are treated as every creature type at once. This basically means that they can slot into any typal deck and work with the synergies of that deck. These are extremely important for the Limited environment and should allow for great flexibility when drafting.

Behold

Returning from last year’s Tarkir: Dragonstorm, we have the behold mechanic. To behold, you need to reveal a creature/kindred of the requested type, either from your hand or battlefield, usually as an additional cost to cast a spell. This is used on a handful of cards in the set as a callback to some designs from the original Lorwyn set, like a cycle of rares that use behold as a riff on the champion mechanic.

Vivid

Another major theme of Shadowmoor block was a focus on the colors of cards (it was in fact a Draft set where you most often drafted mono-color decks). To highlight that, we have the new ability word, vivid. All vivid abilities are different (just like landfall or exhaust abilities), but the common thread they all share is that they all care about the number of colors you have among the permanents you control. Most often, this will just be one or two, but thanks to things like hybrid mana, it’ll be very possible for even a 2-color deck to have all five colors on the table at once. If you have some powerful payoffs with this mechanic, you’re going to want to prioritize picking up various hybrid cards to enable them, or even consider playing more colors if you really have to.

Draft Archetypes

Source: WotC Lorwyn Eclipsed Prerelease Guide

Lorwyn Eclipsed has 10 draftable themes across all 10 color pairs. However, there’s a twist. Five of these have more focus than the others, as they’re typal themes from the original block. While all 10 are draftable, these five have a little more support, including gold signpost uncommons. The five typal themes are:

• Azorius (White/Blue ): Merfolk + Tapping creatures
• Rakdos (Black/Red ): Goblins + -1/-1 counters and sacrifice
• Selesnya (Green/White ): Kithkin + Go wide aggro
• Golgari (Black/Green ): Elves + Graveyard recursion
• Izzet (Blue/Red ): Elementals + 4 or higher mana value spells

Then, the remaining five archetypes are:

• Dimir (Blue/Black ): Faeries + Flash
• Gruul (Red/Green ): Big creature ramp
• Orzhov (White/Black ): Toughness matters with -1/-1 counters
• Simic (Green/Blue ): Vivid ramp
• Boros (Red/White ): Aggro

White

Adept Watershaper

Rating: 5/10

Indestructible is a somewhat misleading ability, because while it sounds unbeatable, it really isn’t that relevant. Your creatures are still going to be small and won’t be able to attack profitably into big blockers, and they also still die from having 0 toughness. Still, Adept Watershaper has a great stat line, and this ability might come in handy every so often.

Ajani, Outland Chaperone

Rating: 9/10

Step one for any planeswalker is that it has to have a way to defend itself. Both of Ajani, Outland Chaperone’s abilities do just that. In fact, Ajani harkens back to classic planeswalker designs, with a removal ability for its minus loyalty ability and some card advantage for its uptick. These designs have always been strong, and Ajani looks like no exception. Also, it only costs 3 mana, so it could start to pose a threat as early as turn 3! Its ultimate ability isn’t that great, but it’s more than good enough to just churn out kithkin turn after turn and occasionally kill a creature if you get the chance.

Appeal to Eirdu

Rating: 2/10

Four-mana combat tricks aren’t exactly enticing, but here’s where convoke should shine. This often costs just 1 or 2 mana, and you have a fair bit of control over that. I’m not a fan of tricks like Appeal to Eirdu that can buff two creatures at once, but convoke spells tend to be very powerful, so I’m interested to see where this lands.

Bark of Doran

Rating: 4/10

Bark of Doran is a pretty unique piece of equipment, of course calling back to the very popular Doran, the Siege Tower. Naturally, the card’s power varies greatly depending on which creatures are in your deck, but if this gives what’s essentially +3/+1 or better to enough of your creatures, it should definitely be worth playing.

Brigid, Clachan’s Heart / Brigid, Doun’s Mind

Rating: 6/10

Right off the bat, Brigid, Clachan's Heart is a 3/2 plus a 1/1 for only 3 mana, which is a great deal. From there, transforming it into Brigid, Doun's Mind is fine, though if you don’t have much to spend its mana on, Brigid might not be that useful. It’s still worth doing this though, because you can then transform it back to the Clachan’s Heart and get another free token. Brigid overall is fine, though just not that exciting. You’ll play it happily enough without access to green mana, but I’d really want at least a little bit of it to unlock this kithkin’s full potential.

Burdened Stoneback

Rating: 4/10

Burdened Stoneback looks like it could have been a premium 2-drop, but the fact that you can only activate it at sorcery speed really limits its potential. It’s kind of cute to load this up with additional counters thanks to blight, but there are much better ways to do that in this set. Still, this can be a 3/3 on turn 3 that you’ve cast on turn 2, which might just be good enough in some games, so I’m not going to say no.

Champion of the Clachan

Rating: 9/10

Champion of the Clachan is the first in a cycle of “champions”, which use behold as an updated version of the champion mechanic from the original Lorwyn. Some of these champions are quite powerful, and our kithkin champion is no exception. It’s a very simple design, but one that’s incredibly synergistic with the go-wide strategy of this creature type. Flashing this in after your opponent has lined up some nice blocks for them is going to be devastating, or you could even flash it in to block one of their attackers. The only way you go wrong is if you just have too few kithkin.

Clachan Festival

Rating: 4/10

Three mana for two 1/1s isn’t the worst deal, but we can usually do a little better. Clachan Festival does a good job of giving you some extra value on top of that: Not only does it let you spend excess mana, but it’s also a kithkin itself, which is bound to be useful at some point.

Crib Swap

Rating: 3/10

We’ve seen a lot of these sorts of cards in recent sets, and they’re usually extremely bad or unplayable. Crib Swap is likely to be a cut above the rest, as being a kindred spell of all creature types is a huge boon. Now, you have a removal spell that many typal decks should be able to utilize. If you have no such synergies, then its value goes down a fair bit, but this still has a lot of potential.

Curious Colossus

Rating: 10/10

Curious Colossus might not actually destroy any creatures, but turning all your opponent’s creatures into virtually useless 1/1s is an incredible effect. Not only that, but you get an enormous 7/7 at the same time? Note that this effect lasts indefinitely, it doesn’t wear off at the end of turn like most triggers would. Even if you deal with this creature, it doesn’t change the fact that your creatures have all been permanently nerfed. This is a card I’m going to be eternally scared of in this format, and I can’t imagine it’s possible to win if your opponent plays this in most situations.

Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn / Isilu, Carrier of Twilight

Rating: 9/10

A 5/5 with flying and lifelink is always a great deal for 5 mana, and getting a mana discount on your creatures might come in handy depending on when you get to cast Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn. What really impresses me about this mythic is the ability to transform it into Isilu, Carrier of Twilight, because giving persist to all of your other creatures is going to make it incredibly hard for your opponent to get into combat with you. Isilu is essentially a must-kill threat, while Eirdu is just a big body, so I’d strongly recommend that you squeeze a little black mana into your deck to enable this, if you can.

Encumbered Reejerey

Rating: 6/10

Encumbered Reejerey may enter as a measly 2/1, but it’ll attack as a 3/2 right away. If that’s not good enough for you, I’m sure you can find ways to tap it to your other effects and take more counters off before you get into combat. The fact that this is very easy to turn into a 5/4 for just 2 mana makes me really excited to have this as part of my early curve.

Evershrike’s Gift

Rating: 3/10

Since you can get Evershrike's Gift back after your enchanted creature has died, it’s rarely that bad of an investment. The problem for me is that blight 2 is quite a big cost to bring it back. This simply isn’t worth getting back if you have to kill a creature to do so. I do like this in the right deck though, where maybe we have plenty of high-toughness creatures that can give us further uses for the counters.

Flock Impostor

Rating: 6/10

The ability to flash in a creature and save one of your others from removal has proven itself time and time again. Flock Impostor is incredibly flexible in its application, allowing you to mess up combats, reuse enters the battlefield triggers, and all sorts of other potential plays. Throw in the fact that this is a flying changeling and you have one heck of a powerful uncommon.

Gallant Fowlknight

Rating: 3/10

We’ve seen plenty of Inspiring Captain variants in the past, and they’re always fine. Gallant Fowlknight looks a fair bit stronger than those when you’re drafting kithkin. I’d assume most white aggro decks will be happy enough to play this, but it’ll really shine in white/green especially.

Goldmeadow Nomad

Rating: 3/10

Goldmeadow Nomad represents two creatures for one card, which plays very nicely with the kithkin theme. While it’ll be worse than your typical 1/1 that dies into another 1/1, because you need to spend mana, it’ll end up being a lot stronger if you have ways to mill or discard it and get some free value.

Keep Out

Rating: 4/10

Four damage to a tapped creature basically lets you destroy an attacking creature, which is not bad at all. White has better removal, and you won’t really want to play this often in an aggro deck, but Keep Out looks like it’ll definitely have a place in the format.

Kinbinding

Rating: 10/10

The bare minimum that Kinbinding is going to be for you is a Glorious Anthem that creates a free 1/1 every turn. That would already catch my attention, but add in the fact that this could give +2/+2 or +3/+3 for the turn if you play some other creatures that turn, and suddenly this looks like an incredible bomb rare for the right deck.

Kinsbaile Aspirant

Rating: 6/10

I definitely wouldn’t recommend playing Kinsbaile Aspirant in a deck with very few kithkin, because it’s atrocious to cast this for 3 mana. But casting this turn 1 on the play and attacking for 3 damage on turn 2 is a very scary opening for any aggro deck, so this card’s stock goes way up when you’re heavy in kithkin.

Kinscaer Sentry

Rating: 7/10

Kinscaer Sentry could honestly just be a 2/2 with first strike and lifelink and it’d already be excellent. Yet, the ability to cheat creatures into play like this (a callback to Preeminent Captain, I believe) pushes it way over the top. Kithkin are very good at going wide and making lots of tokens, so attacking with several creatures at once shouldn’t be too difficult. Even just cheating in a 2-drop when you need to is more than good enough to justify this card.

Kithkeeper

Rating: 6/10

Kithkeeper is very reminiscent of the classic Cloudgoat Ranger, a card that even saw Constructed play back in its day. To make the 7 mana worth it, you’re really going to want to be able to enable vivid for at least three colors, which should be very possible if you splash this in a blue/red elemental deck, but that’s the only thing you need to do to make this a busted end to your curve.

Liminal Hold

Rating: 6/10

Liminal Hold is essentially just a more expensive Banishing Light, but the effect is strong enough that even at 4 mana it’s still worth playing. The extra 2 life that we get is a nice bonus too, so I just look at this as a premium removal spell for any white deck.

Meanders Guide

Rating: 4/10

Meanders Guide is kind of weird for a 3-drop, because it’s going to suck on turn 3, but it gets a lot better when you draw it later in the game and have better creatures to reanimate. That’s absolutely fine to see, and you can definitely play it as an early vanilla creature if you need to.

Moonlit Lamenter

Rating: 7/10

I like pretty much everything about this card. Maybe the rating I’ve given is a little too high, but I’m loving this idea of putting -1/-1 counters on a creature and then turning those counters into value, which Moonlit Lamenter is perfect at doing. Even without those synergies, it’s essentially 5 mana for a 2/5 that draws a card, which I’d be very happy to play in a controlling deck. This might be my favorite white card in Lorwyn Eclipsed and I hope I get to play it a bunch.

Morningtide’s Light

Rating: 0/10

Editor's Note: The writer's initial read of this card missed that this spell could remove opposing creatures for a turn, so it likely plays out better than a 0. We'll leave the initial text intact, but note that the card does have proactive uses.

This is a sorcery? I’m sorry, but you print a mythic rare flicker spell, and you can’t even make it an instant? Morningtide's Light is a massive disappointment to me. If this were an instant, it could be considered a fringe playable in some decks, but at sorcery speed I think it’s just unplayable.

Personify

Rating: 5/10

I don’t know how often we’ll be able to gain some worthwhile value from the Flicker effect, but getting a free 1/1 changeling out of the deal is more than enough to make this worth another look. Now, even blocking with something and flickering it out of the way sounds like it’s worth playing Personify, and then we might get a lot more if we can stop a removal spell or reuse an ability.

Protective Response

Rating: 5/10

We’ve seen very similar cards to this in the past like Cut Short and Devouring Light, and they’ve always been pretty strong. Protective Response is a great control card, though it’s somewhat lacking if you’re trying to play the aggro game.

Pyrrhic Strike

Rating: 5/10

Blight 2 is a really hefty cost just to be able to do both of these modes at once, but I’m already happy with a 3-mana spell that can destroy any 3-mana creature or better. Pyrrhic Strike is just good, efficient removal, and the possibility of that two-for-one swing, even though it's rare, isn’t something to overlook.

Reluctant Dounguard

Rating: 2/10

A 4/4 for 3 mana isn’t exactly bad, but having to work for it and that be your reward isn’t exactly inspiring. I’m sure we’ll play Reluctant Dounguard from time to time, but it looks like your typical, below average 3-drop.

Rhys, the Evermore

Rating: 7/10

Granting persist to a creature at instant speed can be incredibly powerful. If this card were just an instant spell, it would be far too narrow to see any play, but Rhys, the Evermore is a lot better than that because it’s also a solid creature in its own right. Rhys can even take the -1/-1 counter off the creature after it persists, you can Flicker it to reuse the ability, and there’s plenty of other ways to utilize it to make Rhys a great card all round.

Riverguard’s Reflexes

Rating: 2/10

Riverguard's Reflexes is white’s main combat trick of choice, but it’s not particularly good. Two mana for just +2/+2 and first strike is kind of mediocre. Even more so, combat tricks are mostly used when you lack removal, but white is inundated with solid removal spells so I doubt you’ll need to play this very often.

Shore Lurker

Rating: 2/10

I like 3/3 fliers for 4 mana a fair bit more than other Limited players do, but I have to admit they’ve fallen out of favor more and more in recent years. Surveil 1 isn’t enough of an upside to make up for the fact that Shore Lurker just isn’t big enough in modern Limited, though being a merfolk might come in clutch for some decks.

Slumbering Walker

Rating: 8/10

The fact that Slumbering Walker can trigger on the same turn you play it is the clinching factor for me. Assuming your opponent has no instant speed removal, this’ll be a 3/6 plus another free creature for just 5 mana, and then it continues to provide you great advantage and board presence on further turns. Better yet, if you have access to blight, you can continue to put extra -1/-1 counters on this and continue to trigger it. While you do need to have the right creatures to reanimate, the potential here is incredible.

Spiral into Solitude

Rating: 5/10

Pacifism doesn’t need any extra help to be worth playing for the most part. Yet, what Spiral into Solitude does is give you a blight 1 whenever you want it, which we should be able to use in a positive way. This is just great removal in white, though there are a fair few bounce and flicker cards in Lorwyn Eclipsed that you should be wary of.

Sun-Dappled Celebrant

Rating: 4/10

You can curve a 2-drop into a 3-drop into Sun-Dappled Celebrant on turn 4, which sounds pretty damn good to me. Each time we’ve seen convoke in the past, there’s usually some 5- or 6-mana creature with convoke that performs really well because you can cast it ahead of schedule when you curve out properly, and this new one is no exception.

Thoughtweft Imbuer

Rating: 6/10

Don’t sleep on Thoughtweft Imbuer. When you have a bunch of 1/1 tokens and your opponent has a few bigger creatures that you can’t attack into, effectively giving them all exalted is a great way to continue attacking. Plus, as a 0/5, this is a great host for all those extra -1/-1 counters that you need to distribute for blight. This is a great way to break board stalls while only ever risking your weakest creatures.

Timid Shieldbearer

Rating: 3/10

Water Tribe Captain ended up being surprisingly good in Avatar, as it was a great way to pay you off for creating a horde of 1/1 ally tokens. Here, Timid Shieldbearer is probably going to be a similarly strong way to utilize all of the 1/1 kithkin and shapeshifter tokens we’re going to make.

Tributary Vaulter

Rating: 3/10

Tapping Tributary Vaulter should be pretty trivial, and turning a 1/1 into a 3/1 is a pretty good effect to help you attack into big blockers. It’s still a very minor effect, so this isn’t exactly exciting, but it looks like a fine common 3-drop.

Wanderbrine Preacher

Rating: 3/10

These sorts of 2-drops always find a home somewhere. Not only is Wanderbrine Preacher a decent creature to start the curve in an aggro deck, but you can usually find other ways to tap it and get some free value, like with convoke spells.

Wanderbrine Trapper

Rating: 7/10

The classic Master Decoy and its variants used to be a common mainstay of many a Limited format, but they were kind of annoying and have since only appeared very sparingly. Wanderbrine Trapper might be the best version of this that we’ve seen since Gideon's Lawkeeper back in M12. While it’s a downside to require a second creature to tap, merfolk like to be tapped, so you also get to trigger all of your abilities while tapping your opponent’s best creature each turn. Not only that, this is also a 1-mana 2/1, so it’s the perfect aggressive 1-drop for your deck.

Winnowing

Rating: 1/10

I’m sure Winnowing has some promising applications in Constructed, but in a set based on creature types, this is going to miss way too often for me to want to play it. Five of Lorwyn Eclipsed’s Draft archetypes are built around a specific creature type, and this board wipe won’t do anything against them unless they have a random one-off creature in play of a different type. Conversely, this does mean that if you’re a kithkin or merfolk deck, you can turn this into a one-sided sweeper. I could be wrong here, but I think you should start this in the sideboard. It’s dead in your hand too often to be a main deck card, but in some matchups it’ll be absolutely devastating and definitely worth boarding in.

Blue

Aquitect’s Defenses

Rating: 2/10

Aquitect's Defenses is part protection spell, part combat trick, but it isn’t that good at being either of them. Blue doesn’t typically want combat tricks very often, and 2 mana is often quite a lot to leave open to protect a creature from removal. I’d hope not to play this most of the time, but it at least has enough flexibility to make the cut every now and again.

Blossombind

Rating: 5/10

It seems the days of Claustrophobia are long behind us. Blossombind is one of the best versions of this effect that we’ve ever seen, and it’s only a 2-mana common. This isn’t the best removal that blue has to offer (we’ll get to that), but having multiple very strong options makes me very optimistic for the color’s chances in Lorwyn Eclipsed.

Champions of the Shoal

Rating: 9/10

Merfolk getting access to a 4-mana Frost Titan was definitely not on my bingo card for ECL. Champions of the Shoal has a truly broken effect for a very cheap cost, and it really benefits you to find ways to tap it whenever you need to. Merfolk looks like a very tempo-oriented control deck, and this is the perfect rare for that strategy. I’m very close to giving this a 10/10, but the fact that it’s possible to draw this and not be able to cast it keeps me from doing it. Oh yeah, it’s also got 6 toughness, which allows it to dodge basically every piece of damage and toughness-based removal in the set, just for good measure.

Disruptor of Currents

Rating: 8/10

Man-o'-Wars don’t often come with flash, but it’s a huge upgrade on the usual formula. Not only can you play Disruptor of Currents as a great tempo swing, but flash allows you to disrupt combats, to save creatures from removal, and to unlock plenty of other nasty plays that it wasn’t able to do at sorcery speed. Oh, and it has convoke for good measure, too. What a sweet card!

Flitterwing Nuisance

Rating: 7/10

For a start, Flitterwing Nuisance is just a 1/1 flier for 1 mana, which we’re usually quite happy to see in Limited. If you can run this out on turn 1, it represents a fair bit of free damage. Then, not only can you upgrade it into a 2/2, but you might also get to draw multiple cards when you do so? This looks pretty great to me, and blue has plenty of fliers to enable this card even further.

Glamer Gifter

Rating: 5/10

Blue combat tricks tend to be a little bit suspicious, but every now and again they do just enough to keep our attention. Glamer Gifter sadly can’t target itself with its ability, but the ability to potentially mess up a combat and leave behind a relevant body for just 2 mana is quite strong. I’m a big fan of Faerie Duelist, and this looks like it might be even stronger than that while it accomplishes the same goal.

Glamermite

Rating: 4/10

Glamermite is a cool throwback to Lorwyn’s Constructed all-star Pestermite. Thankfully, Splinter Twin obviously isn’t in Lorwyn Eclipsed, but even as a little tempo play this is still good. You can flash Glamermite in whenever you like, maybe even to tap a merfolk you control to get it to trigger, or even untap a big blocker in the middle of combat for a free bit of value. This is a nice, tricksy card that should fit in a few different decks.

Glen Elendra Guardian

Rating: 8/10

Glen Elendra Guardian is an interesting design, very similar to the incredible Glen Elendra Archmage. It’s cheap enough that you could cast it in response to an annoying spell and still have the mana available to counter the spell. While having your opponent draw a card isn’t great, most counterspells don’t have 3/4 flying creatures attached to them, so I’d say that’s actually a fair trade. Better yet, just flash this in on turn 3 or whenever you have spare mana, and rest safe in the knowledge that most of your opponent’s answers can be countered by it, which makes this a very annoying creature to deal with.

Glen Elendra’s Answer

Rating: 6/10

When was the last time we saw a mythic rare Counterspell? We’ve basically never had one in a Standard set, so this is pretty exciting. Glen Elendra's Answer is particularly strong when you get to counter multiple things, like a storm spell, an Eldrazi, or some situation with a bunch of triggers all at once. Sadly, we don’t see many of those in Limited, so this is often just going to counter a single spell and leave behind a 1/1 flier. That’s still pretty good, but it’s just not going to do much more than that.

Gravelgill Scoundrel

Rating: 4/10

I can’t imagine a better 2-drop common for a merfolk deck. Gravelgill Scoundrel is basically always unblockable while it also trigger your merfolk abilities whenever you attack. I’m pretty sure I want this in every merfolk deck.

Harmonized Crescendo

Rating: 1/10

Harmonized Crescendo is a big draw spell with a lot of potential. However, while it’s easy to fantasize about how great it’ll be to cast this with, say, five merfolk or elementals in play, to draw five cards for just 1 mana, you have to balance that with all the times this barely draws anything because your board just isn’t suited for it. You need to draw at least three cards to make the mana cost worth it, and I don’t think that’s going to happen often enough for my liking.

Illusion Spinners

Rating: 4/10

With conditions on both of Illusion Spinners’s key abilities, it’ll often just be a vanilla 4/3 flier, which isn’t quite good enough. You’re going to want to make use of the flash more than anything else, so I think this is a decent build-around card for the blue/black flash deck, and I probably wouldn’t play it elsewhere.

Kulrath Mystic

Rating: 1/10

A 3-drop that is only a good enough size some of the time is a textbook example of a card that doesn’t belong in most main decks. Kulrath Mystic isn’t unplayable, but it still isn’t something I’m ever going to be excited to get.

Loch Mare

Rating: 9/10

Loch Mare is everything I ever want in a mythic blue creature. Just consider the possibilities available to you when you activate its abilities on the same turn. It’s a 4-mana 2/3 that draws a card, a 6-mana 3/4 that draws two, or even an 8-mana 4/5 that draws three! You can even play it as a 5-mana 3/4 that taps and stuns a creature right away. I think the strongest mode might be when you play it on turn 2, then stun your opponent’s 3-drop on the next turn to attack for 3 damage. The possibilities are endless, and I haven’t even mentioned how great it is to dump a few extra counters on it with blight. What an awesome card!

Lofty Dreams

Rating: 5/10

If you’ve read any of my previous reviews, you may know my disdain for auras. However, Lofty Dreams goes well beyond your average crappy aura by not only giving a great bonus in +2/+2 and flying, but also by replacing itself with an extra card when it resolves. Five mana is a lot, but I’m assuming we’ll convoke a couple of creatures to help mitigate that.

Mirrorform

Rating: 3/10

Mirrorform is quite a spicy card, though clearly something that was designed more with Commander in mind. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very powerful effect, but it’s incredibly situational and has a lot of possible downsides. While you turn all your nonland permanents into the best creature on the board, you can’t do this with a legendary creature, you won’t get any enters triggers, and you need a good number of permanents to make it worthwhile. I want to get this to work at some point, especially with some of the oversized creatures that enter with -1/-1 counters, but I think it’s just a little too narrow to be that good.

Noggle the Mind

Rating: 2/10

These effects used to be straight up unplayable (looking at you Kasmina's Transmutation). Then, a couple of them were printed that were pretty decent, but they still haven’t been that good. Noggle the Mind doesn’t look good. Flash does change the equation somewhat, but blue has much more effective removal at its disposal.

Oko, Lorwyn Liege / Oko, Shadowmoor Scion

Rating: 8/10

Oko has five abilities in all, and the one that stands out to me the most is Oko, Shadowmoor Scion’s -3 ability to create two 3/3 elk tokens. The others are all pretty mediocre, but a pair of 3/3s is incredible for the mana investment that Oko requires to get there. As such, Oko, Lorwyn Liege is very much a blue/green gold card, because you need to transform it to make it worthwhile. The play pattern of casting Oko, shrinking a potential attacker, then transforming it next turn and creating your tokens sounds like it’ll be very powerful. If Oko survives that, then even better, so you can change it back to the blue side and maybe start to build up to two more tokens in a few turns.

Omni-Changeling

Rating: 6/10

WotC seem to like printing Clone variants, because we appear to get new ones in basically every set. Omni-Changeling is very good, but especially in merfolk. Not only is it a merfolk itself, but convoke is very synergistic with the deck and copying any creature on the board means this should always be the best creature at any time that you play it.

Pestered Wellguard

Rating: 6/10

Creating a free token, especially a 1/1 with flying, is one of the best payoffs you can get for any Draft mechanic. Pestered Wellguard is the strongest tap trigger that we have access to until we get to the set’s rares, so this has to be a priority whenever you draft the merfolk deck. In fact, seeing this soldier early in a draft is the sort of card that I want to take and then build a merfolk deck around. It’s a 4-drop, which is a little on the expensive side, but that shouldn’t hold it back by too much.

Rime Chill

Rating: 5/10

I’m pretty happy to cast a card like this for about 5 or 6 mana, which is actually what it’s most likely to cost in your average deck. If you have a vivid deck though, Rime Chill might even cost as little as 2 or 3 mana, which makes it a massive tempo swing, and that’s likely to be where this shines the most.

Rimefire Torque

Rating: 0/10

So, you play Rimefire Torque early and pick your main creature type, then playing three creatures should be pretty simple. But then, your payoff is that you can copy an instant or sorcery spell? What if you don’t happen to have one? Did you just give up your second turn for no value? This card is a massive miss, and you should never put it in your deck.

Rimekin Recluse

Rating: 7/10

Sure, because Man-o'-War just wasn’t good enough as a 2/2, right? Rimekin Recluse is incredible, and ECL is very well set up to support it, with plenty of ways to bounce and recur your creatures. While this is an elemental, I’d be very happy to play this in every blue deck, and so should you.

Run Away Together

Rating: 4/10

We’ve seen Run Away Together printed quite a few times now, and it often performs very well. Pairing it with good enters triggers makes for a very strong tempo swing, but just like with flicker effects, bouncing a blocker, or something targeted by removal, or anything else can be well worth it, especially when you’re also bouncing an opponent’s creature.

Shinestriker

Rating: 3/10

While it’s easy to draw comparisons to everybody’s favorite elemental, Mulldrifter, I have a feeling Shinestriker is far closer to Sinuous Benthisaur, a card that fell way short of the playability mark. Obviously, it’s possible to draw five cards off this, but it’s also possible to draw only one. Even two cards doesn’t seem particularly worth it given that you have to invest 6 mana into casting it. It’s not like me to discourage anyone from trying to draw more cards, but I think this will flop.

Silvergill Mentor

Rating: 5/10

This is a callback to Silvergill Adept, one of Magic’s strongest merfolk and one that I’ve played a ton of in my time. Instead of drawing a card, Silvergill Mentor simply creates a 1/1 token, which isn’t quite as good, but certainly not a bad thing to do. You really want to be heavy on merfolk for this though, because while this is a bargain at 2 mana, 4 is way too expensive.

Silvergill Peddler

Rating: 3/10

Silvergill Peddler is a bit on the small side, but it easily makes up for it with its ability. Assuming you have ways to tap it, because it won’t be very reliable to attack with it, this should be a great way to smooth out your draws and make sure you get the cards you need at the right times.

Spell Snare

Rating: 1/10

Spell Snare is a very welcome reprint for Standard and Pioneer, but I doubt it’ll make much of an impact in Limited. While it’s true that many decks tend to contain a lot of 2-drops, the fact that this is usually dead when you draw it later in the game is too much of a downside to play this in the main. It seems like a reasonable sideboard option for aggro decks though.

Stratosoarer

Rating: 3/10

Given that the theme for elementals is to cast spells that cost 4 or more, giving it access to a pair of basic landcyclers is a pretty neat idea. Stratosoarer is the blue one here, and it’s nothing particularly special, but a card that’s potentially a 5-drop or can fix your colors for 2 mana is well worth playing.

Summit Sentinel

Rating: 4/10

Summit Sentinel is a great defensive option for any controlling deck. This reminds me a lot of Outlaw Medic from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, a card I liked a lot in that format. This can basically just sit on the board and block a lot of damage for you, and then you can cash it in for a free card on a later turn, which is just awesome.

Sunderflock

Rating: 9/10

Nine mana is a lot, even for a card this powerful, so you need to have plenty of decently big elementals in your deck, of course. That said, given that Sunderflock could bounce your opponent’s entire board in one go, even paying 6 or 7 for this will feel easily worth it. And if it can cost less than that, you’ll feel like you just got away with something. Sure, against another elemental deck it can’t bounce much, and it can’t bounce any changelings, but even if you can only play it as a 5/5 flier, it’s going to have an impact on the board.

Swat Away

Rating: 6/10

As we’ve seen time and time again, 4 mana to spin a creature to the top or bottom of the deck is good removal for blue. Swat Away isn’t just a lot better at removing an attacking creature, but it also works as a Memory Lapse-esque counterspell. This card is awesome, and it’s worth noting that it’s always a spell with a mana value of 4, so it triggers your relevant elementals even when you get the cost discount.

Sygg, Wanderwine Wisdom / Sygg, Wanderbrine Shield

Rating: 7/10

Sygg, Wanderwine Wisdom is an excellent card all on its own. Two mana for an unblockable 2/2 that can sometimes draw you a card when it enters is very good, you don’t even need the white mana to transform it. If you do, then Sygg, Wanderbrine Shield is still an unblockable 2/2 that can essentially make one of your other creatures unblockable for the turn, too, which isn’t bad at all. Then, you can draw another card when you transform Sygg back, because now it can target itself to guarantee the card draw. Sygg is a pretty strong card, and I’d be very happy to run this in a mono-blue deck. The white mana doesn’t offer a lot, but the ability to flip Sygg over and over again is certainly good.

Tanufel Rimespeaker

Rating: 6/10

Like with Shantotto, Tactician Magician, drawing a card whenever you cast a big spell is clearly very good. It’s a little awkward to cast Tanufel Rimespeaker on 4 and then wait until the next turn to cast something, but thanks to the cost reductions and convoke in Lorwyn Eclipsed, you might be able to cast something in the same turn for some free value. Perhaps you can cast the next card right away….

Temporal Cleansing

Rating: 6/10

When we last saw Temporal Cleansing in March of the Machine, it overperformed and was one of the best commons in the set. This card slots so nicely into blue here, both as a cheap spell that triggers the elementals while it also taps your merfolk for value. This is still extremely powerful, and I expect it to be blue’s best common.

Thirst for Identity

Rating: 5/10

Thirst for Identity is the fourth card in the “Thirst for” series which began with Thirst for Knowledge back in 2003’s Mirrodin. Drawing three cards and discarding one for just 3 mana is a proven formula and every deck has access to some creatures. There are some creatures that are better to discard, like Goldmeadow Nomad, but even just discarding two excess lands is still fine with this.

Unexpected Assistance

Rating: 4/10

Speaking of drawing three and discarding one… Unexpected Assistance is a little expensive, but of course convoke allows you to reduce that cost significantly. If you can reliably cast this for about 2 or 3 mana, it’ll be very good, and it helps to trigger many of blue’s themes while you’re at it.

Unwelcome Sprite

Rating: 6/10

It’s hard to go wrong with a 2-mana 2/1 flying creature. The blue/black archetype actually looks pretty well-supported, and Unwelcome Sprite looks like a great little payoff for that deck and one of the best ways to start your curve.

Wanderwine Distracter

Rating: 3/10

Common 4-drops tend to be on the weak side, but this one actually looks very good to me. Given its size, I think you’ll trigger Wanderwine Distracter most often by attacking, and the ability itself will often make that attack a lot safer at the same time. If you have a way to trigger it at instant speed though, your opponent will have a hard time attacking you when they know you may have the ability to shrink their attacker.

Wanderwine Farewell

Rating: 7/10

While 7 mana is a lot to pay, the effect of Wanderwine Farewell is absolutely incredible. Bouncing two annoying permanents is already worth about 5 mana on its own, so when you factor in the two free 1/1 tokens and the fact that you can reduce the cost with convoke, this looks like an immensely powerful spell for any merfolk deck.

Wild Unraveling

Rating: 3/10

The base rate on Wild Unraveling is that it’s just a Cancel, which I’m sure a few decks will be happy to play anyway. Having to blight 2 to get a 1-mana cost reduction doesn’t sound great, but if you have something that can use those counters to your advantage, then it’s going to feel like a huge bonus.

Black

Auntie’s Sentence

Rating: 4/10

We’ve had quite a few variants on the formula of “2-mana hand disruption with an alternate mode”. The issue is always that hand disruption is at its worst in Limited. However, -2/-2 to a creature is perhaps the best alternate mode we’ve ever seen, which makes this just a good removal spell for the early game, and that’s what we’ll rate it as.

Barbed Bloodletter

Rating: 2/10

+1/+2 isn’t too bad of a bonus to have on an equipment, and getting to flash it in with a free equip is a pretty nice bonus. Still, Barbed Bloodletter isn’t all that impactful, and I don’t think it’ll make the cut all that often. I wonder if the wither ability will make the difference.

Bile-Vial Boggart

Rating: 4/10

Given that the goblin theme is that they like to pick up -1/-1 counters and die for value, Bile-Vial Boggart is the perfect 1-drop for such a strategy. Obviously, you can use this ability to shrink or kill an opponent’s creature, which actually allows this to trade one-for-one with most 2-drops, but it’s not out of the question to want to shrink your own creature. We’ve seen plenty of creatures that like having -1/-1 counters on them, which gives this a lot of extra utility.

Bitterbloom Bearer

Rating: 8/10

Did you ever ask, what if Bitterblossom was a creature? Well, Bitterbloom Bearer is the answer. While being a creature makes it a lot more vulnerable, especially with only 1 toughness, you get to at least flash it in at the end of your opponent’s turn and then get your first token as soon as you start your turn. Even if all you get from this is a pair of 1/1 fliers for 2 mana, that’s still incredible, and if your opponent can’t answer it, then you’ll run away with a game pretty quickly.

Blight Rot

Rating: 5/10

Three mana for four -1/-1 counters makes Blight Rot an incredibly fair and balanced removal spell. Not only that, but I’d love the ability to turn this into extra card advantage by targeting something like, say, Moonlit Lamenter.

Blighted Blackthorn

Rating: 3/10

Common 5-drops are some of the most replaceable cards in any Limited deck, but Blighted Blackthorn literally draws a card when it enters or attacks, which I think makes it a lot stronger than previous cards for this slot. On its own, this creature isn’t that good, but if you have a host for its -1/-1 counters then it starts to look quite good.

Bloodline Bidding

Rating: 8/10

Elves and goblins are both pretty good for putting a bunch of creatures into the graveyard to enable Bloodline Bidding, very reminiscent of Patriarch's Bidding. Eight mana is very uncastable in most Limited decks, but 6 is very reasonable, and it shouldn’t be too hard to convoke this sorcery for that much. As long as this puts at least three creatures into play, it should be game-breaking and very much worth playing in the black typal decks.

Boggart Mischief

Rating: 7/10

Giving goblins their very own Bastion of Remembrance sounds quite dangerous. Goblins in Lorwyn Eclipsed like to be killed off for value, and Boggart Mischief looks like a perfectly designed card to both enable this strategy and pay you off for doing it, all while being a goblin itself for any effects that pay you off for that.

Boggart Prankster

Rating: 3/10

In the early game, Boggart Prankster can simply attack and give itself the +1/+0 buff, letting it attack as a 2/3. Later in the game, when that’s not good enough, you can give that bonus to something else while this sits back and picks up -1/-1 counters so that you can pay blight costs. This is just a very solid 2-drop that a few different black decks will be happy to play.

Bogslither’s Embrace

Rating: 5/10

Getting to cast Bogslither's Embrace for the measly cost of 2 mana plus a -1/-1 counter is incredibly efficient and powerful. Then, you also have the 5 total mana backup cost, just like all other modern Bone Splinters variants. While this is best suited for goblins and the toughness-matters decks, this is powerful enough for any black deck to want to play.

Champion of the Weird

Rating: 9/10

It’s wild that the only restriction on Champion of the Weird’s ability is that you can only activate it at sorcery speed. It means that your opponent can disrupt it with removal a little bit, but if they can’t deal with this, you can just keep activating this berserker as long as you have creatures to blight onto. Just on its own, you can use this ability three times, and if you have any other creatures out then that number starts to go up. Add in the fact that goblins like to die, and suddenly this can turn into a virtually one-sided board wipe for 4 mana, which is absolutely incredible.

Creakwood Safewright

Rating: 4/10

Unlike some of the other similar creatures we’ve seen with this design, Creakwood Safewright is kind of slow to remove its counters and is also quite conditional. It shouldn’t be too bad, but this is more of an elf deck payoff than a generically good -1/-1 counter creature, which just limits the number of decks you can play it in.

Darkness Descends

Rating: 6/10

We tend to see variants on Infest in just about every set these days, and Darkness Descends might be one of the best ones we’ve ever seen. Costing 4 rather than 3 isn’t too bad, but upgrading the -2/-2 to counters is well worth that extra cost. Not only is that a permanent debuff for your opponent’s creatures, but as I’ve been saying a lot so far, we might have ways to utilize those counters on our own creatures.

Dawnhand Dissident

Rating: 8/10

Dawnhand Dissident is an interesting design of a card. For starters, it’s really interesting that because it has only 2 toughness, you can’t blight 2 onto it and have it survive, so you need some other creature to host those counters for you. Still, if you can find something to enable that, then this can effectively let you cast a creature out of your graveyard on most turns of the game. This reminds me a fair bit of Bloomburrow’s Osteomancer Adept, which ended up being a great card in that format, and if you can get this going it should be just as good.

Dawnhand Eulogist

Rating: 2/10

You’ll probably have an elf card in your graveyard by the time you play Dawnhand Eulogist, so it’ll nearly always hit the 2 life point drain ability after you mill the three cards. Despite that, it’s not the most exciting 4-drop you could play, even in a dedicated elf deck.

Dose of Dawnglow

Rating: 5/10

You’ll notice that most 5-mana reanimation spells aren’t instants for a very good reason. That is, reanimating in the middle of combat and blocking something essentially turns them into Nekrataals. It’s appropriate that you need to blight 2 to do this, but it shouldn’t be too hard to set this up and get a great tempo swing from it.

Dream Seizer

Rating: 4/10

This is a pretty cool throwback. Dream Seizer is essentially the faerie from the original artwork of Thoughtseize. Even at 4 mana, a creature that forces your opponent to discard something when it enters is very good, and hopefully we can find a better host for the -1/-1 counter so that this can be a 3/2 flier on its own.

Gloom Ripper

Rating: 9/10

The trouble with trying to fill your graveyard is that milling cards is incredibly random, and you’ll never know how many elves you might end up with from one game to the next. Fortunately, Gloom Ripper’s got you covered, because it also counts the elves you control on the battlefield and turns that number into a very powerful Nekrataal-style ability. Killing a creature and getting a potentially huge combat swing in the same turn is absolutely fantastic, and it makes this one of the best elf payoffs in Lorwyn Eclipsed.

Gnarlbark Elm

Rating: 6/10

It should be no secret by now that I love the concept of this treefolk/toughness deck, and Gnarlbark Elm also looks like an incredible payoff for that strategy. On its own, it costs 6 mana total for a 3/4 plus a free kill on a small enough creature, which is already very good. Then, it’s an excellent host for more -1/-1 counters to allow you to kill off even more creatures as the game progresses.

Graveshifter

Rating: 7/10

Ever since it was first printed in Odyssey, Gravedigger has been one of the best Limited card designs that you can get. Four mana for a 2/2 and a free creature from the graveyard is excellent, especially because this is also something that you can bounce, flicker, or otherwise recur. Graveshifter is a sweet upgrade from the first Modern Horizons which goes above and beyond by being every creature type we care about, so it synergizes with every typal archetype and is just an exceptional creature on its own.

Grub, Storied Matriarch / Grub, Notorious Auntie

Rating: 7/10

Just by itself, Grub, Storied Matriarch is simply a Gravedigger for goblins and that’s excellent. Assuming you have red mana, transforming it back and forth should generate you quite a bit of card advantage if it’s allowed to live, although Grub is relatively easy to deal with if it becomes too much of a menace.

Gutsplitter Gang

Rating: 5/10

Gutsplitter Gang is kind of a weird one, because despite having very high stats, it’s not something that you want to blight onto. After all, its only advantage is its size, so shrinking it is counterintuitive. However, you can always pay 3 life to keep it around and hit hard, or you can blight onto something that you don’t mind shrinking. Better yet, if you have access to any of the creatures that let you turn -1/-1 counters into card advantage, this just keeps enabling them turn after turn and no longer has a downside.

Heirloom Auntie

Rating: 3/10

Given how frequently I’m expecting to kill off my goblins, Heirloom Auntie should become a 3/3 very soon after you play it. At that point, it’s a pretty decent card that pays you off a little bit every time you have a goblin die, while it’s also a decent host for your other -1/-1 counters.

Iron-Shield Elf

Rating: 6/10

I didn’t expect to see a color-shifted Seasoned Hallowblade in ECL, but that’s exactly what Iron-Shield Elf is. This isn’t only an absolute menace in combat, but it’s also a discard outlet to enable some of your elf synergies. I’m downgrading this from the 7 or 8 that it usually performs at because it so easily dies to a single -1/-1 counter, but other than that it’s going to be awesome.

Moonglove Extractor

Rating: 4/10

The base rate that you hope for with Moonglove Extractor is the ability to attack, draw a card, and trade off with something in combat. Though ideally, you can use your removal spells to make sure that it can attack unimpeded and hopefully draw even more cards off of it. We’ve seen this design before and it was great back in the day, so I’m hoping it’s still strong in 2026.

Moonshadow

Rating: 7/10

Playing a Moonshadow on turn 1 is absolutely ridiculous in the right deck. This is very much at home in the black typal decks, where it triggers and grows any time you mill yourself in elves or kill off a nontoken goblin. The later you draw it, the worse it gets, but if you can high-roll it early enough it’ll run away with a game if your opponent doesn’t deal with it.

Mornsong Aria

Rating: 0/10

No thanks. Giving your opponent the best card in their deck before you get any benefit from Mornsong Aria isn’t going to win you any games of Limited. Just save this one for Commander and move on.

Mudbutton Cursetosser

Rating: 6/10

The death trigger on Mudbutton Cursetosser is extremely powerful, so while you’d obviously prefer to cast it for 1 mana, it’s certainly still good at 3 if you need it to be. In this case, the 1 toughness is kind of an upside, making it extremely easy to kill off whenever you need to.

Nameless Inversion

Rating: 7/10

Nameless Inversion is one of the strongest kindred spells for Limited. It’s a powerful, efficient removal spell that also counts as every creature type, which allows for all sorts of synergies within the set. In fact, so much so that I can see this being splashed in all sorts of decks to enable those synergies.

Nightmare Sower

Rating: 6/10

Nightmare Sower gives you a pretty decent trigger for casting spells on your opponent’s turn, though just a single -1/-1 counter for each spell might not be that good against certain decks. The flash deck looks pretty sweet overall, and this is something that definitely makes me inclined to give it a try.

Perfect Intimidation

Rating: 3/10

Funnily enough, I can sometimes see wanting to remove all the -1/-1 counters from one of my opponent’s creatures every so often to stop them from turning them into extra cards or something like that. Though of course, we’ll ideally use Perfect Intimidation to grow one of our own big creatures while we also take a couple of cards out of the opponent’s hand, and that’s not a bad deal at all.

Requiting Hex

Rating: 5/10

One mana to kill any 2-drop is a great deal, so we’ll pretty much always play Requiting Hex. Gaining 2 life is a laughably pointless bonus ability, especially when it costs a blight to get it. But we’ve seen lots of ways to turn -1/-1 counters into positives, so the blight might even be the real upside of this spell.

Retched Wretch

Rating: 4/10

The fact that this comes back right away makes Retched Wretch the perfect host for a blight ability or two. While this clearly shines in goblins, I’d be happy with it in any deck that uses -1/-1 counters.

Scarblade Scout

Rating: 3/10

Two mana for a 2/2 with lifelink is just good already, but Scarblade Scout also helps out with a free mill to start our graveyard shenanigans off, so what’s not to like?

Scarblade’s Malice

Rating: 3/10

I usually don’t like mediocre black combat tricks like this, but Scarblade's Malice isn’t just very cheap and efficient: It helps to enable all of the death triggers we have in Lorwyn Eclipsed. I can definitely see this finding a home in the right deck.

Shimmercreep

Rating: 4/10

I just don’t know what to make of this card. The vivid decks in this format don’t appear to be black, which means that Shimmercreep will have to be a splash in the decks that can best make use of it. Most decks are bound to use an off-color hybrid card or two, which might go towards enabling this, but I don’t think I like it if it’s unlikely to hit at least 3 points of life drain. This will be an interesting one, though it’s notable that blue/red elementals can splash it very easily.

Taster of Wares

Rating: 7/10

Taster of Wares kind of reminds me of Bloomburrow’s mythic uncommon Thought-Stalker Warlock. While not quite as strong, there’s a lot of additional potential if you can snipe a powerful spell and get to cast it yourself. I don’t think I’d ever not play this in any black deck, but it clearly excels in a goblin deck and should be a high pick for that deck.

Twilight Diviner

Rating: 4/10

Twilight Diviner’s main draw is an ability that we have only very few ways to actually trigger. Sadly, that means it’ll be little more than a 3/3 that surveils 2 when it enters, which is definitely playable, but nothing special.

Unbury

Rating: 4/10

A 2-mana instant speed Raise Dead isn’t too bad of a card already, but getting to buy back two creatures makes Unbury quite a good card. Also, if you happen to have any changeling in your graveyard, it shares a creature type with the best creature in your graveyard, so it’s always a free rebuy, even if none of the other creatures in your graveyard share any types.

Red

Ashling, Rekindled / Ashling, Rimebound

Rating: 3/10

Ashling, Rekindled feels incredibly weak for a rare. You really need access to the blue mana to transform it before it feels good enough, but Ashling, Rimebound is just a mana dork. It’s a very good one, but you need to have invested two colors of mana to get there, which makes this incredibly clunky for Limited. I really like Ashling for Constructed, but I don’t see it coming together all that often here.

Boldwyr Aggressor

Rating: 4/10

Boldwyr Aggressor seems a little out of place here. There are so few giants in Lorwyn Eclipsed to begin with, so most of the time it’s only going to be a 5-mana 2/5 with double strike. It’s pretty nice with changelings I guess, but it's definitely lacking in the context of this set.

Boneclub Berserker

Rating: 3/10

You can’t go too wrong with Boneclub Berserker as a 4-drop in a goblin-heavy deck. I can’t imagine it’ll be that hard to get this up to an 8/4 or a 10/4 in most games, kind of like a Goblin Piledriver.

Boulder Dash

Rating: 6/10

Did you ever wish your 3-damage burn spell could split its damage and kill two creatures at once? Well, now you can! Boulder Dash is a functional reprint of Arc Trail, which was a phenomenal card back in its day. The creatures in ECL are quite small on average, so you should be able to find a good spot to deploy this for a sweet two-for-one.

Brambleback Brute

Rating: 4/10

I actually really like the look of Brambleback Brute. It’s quite expensive to remove the counters, but getting to ignore blockers is extremely powerful and is absolutely huge for a creature that does this. This is something I want to blight onto and get aggressive with.

Burning Curiosity

Rating: 1/10

“Impulse draw” effects like this are extremely hit or miss, with the emphasis on miss. Burning Curiosity is far from a Divination, as you never know if you’ll actually be able to play the cards you draw, especially if you draw expensive or situational cards. I also just don’t think you need to run this, there are plenty of better effects in Lorwyn Eclipsed.

Champion of the Path

Rating: 5/10

Champion of the Path is the least impressive of the champion cycle by far. Seven power looks impressive, but with 3 toughness and no keyword abilities, it’ll just die very easily. That said, if your opponent can’t dealt with it, this champion represents quite a lot of damage without even attacking, so it could be dangerous if you have plenty of follow-up for it.

Cinder Strike

Rating: 6/10

While we prefer our burn spells to be instants, 1 mana for 4 damage is too efficient to complain about that much. Cinder Strike is extremely powerful in any deck, but especially in a deck that has ways to turn that -1/-1 counter into a benefit.

Collective Inferno

Rating: 1/10

Damage doublers don’t have a great track record in Limited. Given that, my instinct is not to give Collective Inferno a second look, but convoke stands out to me. If we can maybe get this down for a lot cheaper and still get a good attack in on the same turn, then perhaps there’s something to this. I’m not hopeful, but perhaps it’ll happen.

Elder Auntie

Rating: 4/10

I say this time and time again, but 3 mana for two bodies, a 2/2 and a 1/1, is very good. Even more so given that Elder Auntie and its token are both goblins, perfect fodder to kill off for value in the goblins deck.

End-Blaze Epiphany

Rating: 6/10

Red X burn spells are very reasonable, as they can scale with the game and deal with virtually any creature your opponent plays. The problem is that they aren’t very efficient, though getting to “draw” something good from your top however many cards should be enough to make End-Blaze Epiphany a strong card.

Enraged Flamecaster

Rating: 3/10

There are definitely worse ways to pay you off for doing the elemental thing. Enraged Flamecaster is quite an aggressive 3-drop that can just keep hitting the opponent even without attacking, which really puts a clock on that has to be dealt with.

Explosive Prodigy

Rating: 8/10

I’m having a hard time seeing the vivid decks coming together, but Explosive Prodigy is easily the best payoff for that deck. Even without much vivid support, your average deck should have two colors of permanents available to it and maybe three thanks to off-color hybrid cards, and that’s more than enough to make this card incredible. This is in the running for the set’s mythic uncommon, and I’m excited to give it a try.

Feed the Flames

Rating: 4/10

Five damage for 4 mana is a very reasonable rate on return. This burn spell slot used to always cost 5 mana and be very replaceable, so I like that Feed the Flames is a little bit cheaper while not sacrificing quality.

Flame-Chain Mauler

Rating: 3/10

Flame-Chain Mauler is hardly setting the world alight, but it’s a solid 2-drop that should be a reasonable start to your mana curve while staying relevant later in the game.

Flamebraider

Rating: 7/10

I suppose they could have just reprinted Smokebraider, but why not make it a 2/2? Two-drop mana dorks are very good in Limited, and although Flamebraider can’t help you cast every spell, the fact that it gives you 2 mana towards elementals not only lets you cast 5-drops on turn 3, but it lets you cast any color of elemental, too! Imagine getting to cast Vibrance on turn 3 with both colored modes and no green fixing needed! That’s what I plan to do in Standard anyway, and similar plays are very possible in Limited, too.

Flamekin Gildweaver

Rating: 2/10

It’s a bit weird for a 4-drop to give you a Treasure, as you’ve already got access to 4 mana, so you don’t need much else. I don’t think Flamekin Gildweaver is all that good, but at least it triggers some of your elemental abilities and isn’t embarrassingly small.

Giantfall

Rating: 5/10

Giantfall is simply an instant speed bite spell, and that’s more than good enough. Red has its fair share of big creatures to go with this, so most decks should be interested to run it. The Shatter mode is welcome, but there are very few artifacts in Lorwyn Eclipsed, so I don’t see it coming up very often.

Goatnap

Rating: 2/10

Goatnap is of course a funny variation on your typical Threaten, giving you a nice little buff if you ever steal a changeling creature. That said, ECL has no sacrifice outlets, giving us very few ways to kill off the creature we steal before giving it back. We can blight onto it, but it’s going to be very difficult to use that to remove a bigger creature. I just don’t think this set is going to need or want this.

Goliath Daydreamer

Rating: 8/10

Goliath Daydreamer is a pretty sweet spell payoff. The play pattern is fairly straightforward, too, as you can just run this out, then cast a spell on your next turn and immediately attack to copy that same spell. If you do this with a removal spell, removing two creatures helps to clear the way so that this survives the attack and can rinse and repeat on the next turn. Plus, if you don’t have a spell handy, it’s not like a 4-mana 4/4 is all that terrible to just run out. Your opponent might even kill it on sight in anticipation of a powerful spell that you don’t have.

Gristle Glutton

Rating: 4/10

By itself, Gristle Glutton can sit back and rummage a few times before dying, but it can also turn into an engine that blights your other goblins or whatever host creatures you might have to make use of those counters. I like that in some decks, you can use this as an engine to keep generating -1/-1 counters and then turn those counters into various advantages, all while you filter through your cards and improve your draws.

Hexing Squelcher

Rating: 5/10

There aren’t too many counterspells in Lorwyn Eclipsed, so that part of Hexing Squelcher is basically irrelevant. Giving this annoying ward cost to each of your creatures, though, is quite good. In theory, your opponent can just kill this first, but what if they have only one removal spell and you have a much better creature? The life they pay needs to matter, so this is going to slot perfectly into much more aggressive decks where that life loss is going to feel like a real cost. If you can get that going though, this is a pretty solid card.

Impolite Entrance

Rating: 3/10

Given that Impolite Entrance cantrips for 1 mana, it’s never going to be a bad card to just slot into your deck. That said, it’s probably never going to be all that good either. You’ll never need to prioritize this in the draft, but every now and again it’ll be nice to include.

Kindle the Inner Flame

Rating: 3/10

One thing that I was hoping to see for a “4-mana value spells matter” archetype is a spell with a mana value of 4 that we can cast more than once. Kindle the Inner Flame is exactly that card, but unfortunately it sucks. The Heat Shimmer effect just isn’t something that we care too much about in Limited. I hope that between the two shots of it and the fact that it’s a kindred spell that this might actually be playable, but I’m not sold on it just yet.

Kulrath Zealot

Rating: 3/10

This is the better of the two landcyclers for elementals in my opinion. Even without the landcycling, Kulrath Zealot is a pretty defensible 6-drop and one that we’d be happy to play in our big spell elemental decks.

Lasting Tarfire

Rating: 5/10

As far as “do nothing” enchantments go, I’m actually on board with this one. Lasting Tarfire can only deal 2 damage per turn, but it actually triggers in every end step, so you can deal the damage on your opponent’s turn as well as yours. Given the many sources of blight we’ve seen, this should be fairly simple to enable, and the damage it deals adds up fairly quickly.

Lavaleaper

Rating: 6/10

I’m very unsure about Lavaleaper. On the one hand, you’d never even dream about putting Mana Flare in your deck, but on the other, a 4/4 haste creature for 4 mana is pretty good. It even gives all your other creatures haste to make your successive turns even more devastating. You could even wait until you have six or seven lands in play and use the mana bonus to dump a bunch of haste creatures onto the table and win in that turn. There’s clearly some potential here, but I’m not sure if giving your opponent a bunch of mana will be enough of a downside to hold it back.

Meek Attack

Rating: 0/10

Dedicating a mythic slot to a pun on Sneak Attack is something I can get behind, but Meek Attack is purely a combo card and not one that we’re ever going to be interested in. Might be nice with Famished Worldsire in Standard though.

Reckless Ransacking

Rating: 2/10

+3/+2 for 1 mana isn’t that great, and it’s even worse at 2 mana. The Treasure you get back isn’t quite enough to make Reckless Ransacking an exciting card. Still, combat tricks are a reasonable replacement for when you don’t get enough removal, and this is red’s only option, so it’ll see some play.

Scuzzback Scrounger

Rating: 5/10

You can’t really go wrong with a 2-drop 3/2 with no downsides. Once again, getting to blight every turn feels like a downside, but there are lots of ways to turn that into a positive ability, which can turn Scuzzback Scrounger into a card advantage machine with the right setup. At the very least, killing off a goblin for some value each turn while generating extra mana is also a great way to use this card.

Sear

Rating: 6/10

Do I really need to explain this one? Four damage for 2 mana at instant speed is incredible removal. Sear is bound to be one of red’s best nonrare cards, and it’s something you should always pick highly.

Sizzling Changeling

Rating: 4/10

You get enough time to use the card that Sizzling Changeling exiles that it’s basically just a 3/2 for 3 mana that draws a card when it dies. Add in the fact that it’s every relevant creature type, and this just looks very solid.

Soul Immolation

Rating: 10/10

You need a little bit of setup to make this work, but Soul Immolation is a ridiculous one-sided board wipe. It’s worth noting that while the X you choose is capped at the greatest toughness you control, the blight X can be put on any creature. If you have a creature in play with 5 toughness, you can select X=5, blight the five -1/-1s onto a 1/1, then deal 5 damage to your opponent and their entire board. That’s absolutely incredible. It’s kind of reminiscent of Chandra's Ignition, another great Limited card, but this one is a lot stronger and should win a lot of games almost by itself.

Soulbright Seeker

Rating: 5/10

This is a cool reference to Soulbright Flamekin. What Soulbright Seeker can do is spend 3 red mana and get 4 of it back in return, essentially ramping us up to some bigger spells. As such, if we can cast this on turn 1 or 2, we can then cast a 4-drop on turn 3, which makes this quite a potent mana dork. It also allows us to give trample to anything we play, which makes it very difficult for our opponents to defend against us. This is quite the powerful little creature.

Sourbread Auntie

Rating: 7/10

Beetleback Chief is already a very strong card, and Sourbread Auntie is basically that but with upside. You can always blight onto it, but if you can blight onto something a little less valuable, then you get a 6/5’s worth of stats across your three bodies for just 4 mana. This is an incredible rate, especially considering that goblin decks want to kill off as many little goblins as possible.

Spinerock Tyrant

Rating: 8/10

Spinerock Tyrant is a pretty cool design, but somewhat limited in power level. Doubling up your burn spells while giving them wither is incredibly powerful, but you actually need spells for it to copy, otherwise it’s basically just a vanilla 6/6 flier. That’s always going to be good, and it’ll be ridiculous when you get to copy removal spells, but it’s not guaranteed to always be that strong.

Squawkroaster

Rating: 5/10

If you can reliably access a third, fourth, or fifth color, then Squawkroaster turns into a legitimate threat in its own right. Though, the power of a 5/4 double strike with no way of protecting itself is somewhat limited, especially if it can be chump blocked.

Sting-Slinger

Rating: 6/10

I really like Sting-Slinger. Starting out as a 3-mana 3/3 is just good, and it may be able to get a good few hits in when played early enough. Once it’s outclassed, it doesn’t care, it just sits back and keeps hitting the opponent turn after turn. This looks like one of the better blight enablers to me, so hopefully you can find plenty of ways to use those counters profitably.

Tweeze

Rating: 5/10

Three mana for a Lightning Bolt is still a good enough deal for a Limited removal spell and Tweeze even sweetens the deal by letting you rummage away a card if you need to. Great card.

Warren Torchmaster

Rating: 3/10

Getting a -1/-1 counter and giving a creature haste are really at odds with each other. Warren Torchmaster isn’t bad by any means, but haste isn’t that big of a deal and there are better ways to make -1/-1 counters.

Green

Assert Perfection

Rating: 5/10

While I’d prefer my bite spells to be instant speed so that the timing for them is more flexible, the +1/+0 buff is a very welcome addition to help guarantee that Assert Perfection can kill something relevant whenever you cast it.

Aurora Awakener

Rating: 9/10

While I’m afraid of casting this and only hitting lands off the top, the high-roll potential of hitting a bunch of good creatures can’t be ignored. Aurora Awakener is a brutal payoff for vivid decks, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to enable this for at least three colors by the time you get to cast it.

Bloom Tender

Rating: 5/10

I’m sure that Bloom Tender is a very welcome reprint to see if you’re a fan of Commander. While it can tap for a bunch of mana, the most common scenario is that it only taps for green, because you control no other permanents. It’s kind of awkward when it can’t really fix your colors and only provides you with more mana of the colors you already have, but hybrid permanents should enable it pretty nicely. At the end of the day, while this isn’t exactly a payoff for a vivid deck, mana dorks are just good in Limited, so you’ll always want to play it.

Blossoming Defense

Rating: 5/10

Blossoming Defense is a very powerful reprint here. Not only is it a defensible combat trick for 1 mana, but protecting any creature from removal is often very valuable, especially with the number of high quality removal spells we have in Lorwyn Eclipsed.

Bristlebane Battler

Rating: 6/10

Kithkin decks should be very good at putting lots of creatures onto the board, meaning these counters will come off pretty quickly. At least that’s the hope. You could always use Perfect Intimidation to take them all off at once, too. There are lots of ways to enable Bristlebane Battler, and it can get really annoying in a matter of just a few turns.

Bristlebane Outrider

Rating: 4/10

Kithkin decks should be pretty good at making sure they’re playing a creature every turn, and so are elves actually, which makes this essentially a 5/5 that’s hard to block. I don’t mind that at all, and I reckon Bristlebane Outrider can find its place in ECL Limited.

Celestial Reunion

Rating: 1/10

I’m very excited about Celestial Reunion for Constructed, but creature tutors leave a lot to be desired in Limited. For starters, adding the creature you search for to your hand is obscenely bad, so we need to have the additional cost enabled for this to be any good. However, if you have a dedicated typal deck and a great bomb rare or two that would be worth cheating into play, then I could see this being good. That’s a lot to ask though, so most decks shouldn’t bother.

Champions of the Perfect

Rating: 8/10

Our final champion, Champions of the Perfect, packs one heck of a punch. A 6/6 for 4 mana is the biggest of all the champions, and giving you a permanent Glimpse of Nature effect while it’s on the battlefield is an incredible payoff. It’s not as strong as some of the others, as it doesn’t do a lot in a vacuum, but most elf decks should have no problem in utilizing it and getting a ton of free value.

Chomping Changeling

Rating: 4/10

Having access to a changeling version of Reclamation Sage is pretty sweet. There are a few particularly annoying enchantments in ECL for this to deal with, so I’d probably start it in most decks, though a 1/2 is quite a bit worse than a 2/1, so maybe it’s best off starting in the sideboard. I suppose we’ll see as the format progresses.

Crossroads Watcher

Rating: 4/10

Three-mana 3/3s do need a little bit extra to be good enough these days. I’d say that trample and the ability to often attack as a 4/3 or a 5/3 is more than enough to make us interested in Crossroads Watcher. In fact, this is one of more aggressive 3-drops that we have access to in this format, and I’m sure it’ll see quite a bit of play.

Dawn’s Light Archer

Rating: 3/10

Vanilla creatures like Dawn's Light Archer are rarely good enough to see the light of day, but the flash ability changes the equation a little, I think. Now, we can view this as almost a removal spell that kills an attacking creature, even a flying one, with the upside of being an elf and attacking for a sizable chunk of damage when we need it to.

Dundoolin Weaver

Rating: 6/10

I’m a sucker for a good two-for-one. Dundoolin Weaver does a good impression of Eternal Witness for just 2 mana. It may come with a non-trivial restriction, but the payoff is more than enough to hold it back and try to only play it when you can get a powerful card back from your graveyard.

Formidable Speaker

Rating: 7/10

Jean-Emmanuel Depraz is a very exciting card for Constructed, but also a pretty interesting one in Limited. The simple fact that the elf deck wants to make sure there’s an elf in the graveyard to enable some of its best cards makes Formidable Speaker a great enabler for doing exactly that. Not only can it set something up in your graveyard, but it also searches up your best creature at the same time. This is a great card for a great world champion.

Gilt-Leaf’s Embrace

Rating: 2/10

I used to like these flash auras that can function as combat tricks, but a lot has changed. Gilt-Leaf's Embrace is very good at being a combat trick, but 3 mana is a lot to leave open for that. Even if you get to kill a pesky blocker, you probably won’t be able to make another play that same turn, which is often too big of a downside.

Great Forest Druid

Rating: 6/10

Great Forest Druid is a mana dork that does it all! It fixes any color, it blocks a lot of damage since it has 4 toughness, and it’s also a great host when you need somewhere to put your -1/-1 counters. This is likely going to be green’s best common, and I hope to draft it fairly often.

Luminollusk

Rating: 6/10

The vivid decks are going to be slow, trying to ramp into big payoffs while trying to stay alive. As such, I’m all in for a 2/4 deathtouch that gains me a bunch of life. Luminollusk is a great defensive creature that should buy you a ton of time so that you can get to your big creatures more often.

Lys Alana Dignitary

Rating: 4/10

I really don’t understand the design on Lys Alana Dignitary. Getting a 2-drop mana dork that taps for 2 mana is obvious excellent when you play it on turn 2, but you’re not going to have an elf in the graveyard yet. Maybe next turn you can put something in the graveyard first, giving you enough mana to cast a second spell, but there’s a lot of moving pieces here and it won’t come together all the time.

Lys Alana Informant

Rating: 4/10

As with Wary Watchdog in Duskmourn, Lys Alana Informant should be a very solid 2-drop. Not only is 3/1 a good stat line, but getting a couple of free surveils helps to smooth out your draws and load up your graveyard to enable your elf synergies.

Midnight Tilling

Rating: 3/10

Milling four cards and getting one of them back is a tried and tested formula at this point. Elves want to fill their graveyard, and Midnight Tilling is a somewhat reasonable way to enable their synergies.

Mistmeadow Council

Rating: 4/10

Five mana feels a little too expensive for Mistmeadow Council, but any good kithkin deck will be very happy to play it as a 4-drop. Four mana for a 4/3 that draws a card is a pretty good deal and a great way to help keep your pressure up in an aggressive deck.

Moon-Vigil Adherents

Rating: 6/10

If you play a simple Scion of the Wild, then your opponent can easily shrink it by killing your other creatures. Fortunately, killing your other elves doesn’t do anything to Moon-Vigil Adherents, unless of course they’re exiled. The later you get to play this, the better it gets. It’s not unreasonable to assume it might even be a 10/10 trampler at some point, and it’s easy to recur and keep beating down your opponent with it.

Morcant’s Eyes

Rating: 7/10

A 2-mana enchantment that surveils each turn wouldn’t really cut it, but Morcant's Eyes can do so much more than that. This Spider Spawning-style ability is a huge payoff for filling your graveyard with as many elves as you possibly can. Then, consider the fact that this is a kindred enchantment, which actually means that there are ways to recur it from the graveyard, just in case creating around a dozen 2/2 tokens wasn’t good enough to win the game for you.

Mutable Explorer

Rating: 7/10

While it isn’t fixing your colors, Mutable Explorer still ramps you when you play it while also being a changeling for all your typal synergies. The Mutavault token you create is also great for attacking and helps to make up for the fact that this is just a 1/1. This is also a great card to bounce/flicker/recur, since the Mutavault tokens have a lot more value than a regular basic land.

Pitiless Fists

Rating: 4/10

A fight spell that grants a permanent +2/+2 aura is a decent removal spell, but 4 mana is quite a lot to have to pay. Not only that, but when you spend so much mana at sorcery speed, it’s much easier for your opponent to blow you out with some kind of removal on your fighting creature. Pitiless Fists is still a solid card, but there are some very clear downsides that we need to bare in mind when playing it.

Prismabasher

Rating: 4/10

Prismabasher’s ability looks very impressive, but it requires a little too much setup for my liking. Not only do you need several colors among your permanents to increase the value of X, but you also need that many creatures to get the full benefit. There are some boards where this’ll be absolutely devastating, but there are some where it’ll just fall flat. I hope I see more of the former.

Prismatic Undercurrents

Rating: 1/10

I’m a big fan of ramp decks in general, but this ramp spell looks very weak. We want our 4-mana ramp spells to enable our other plays, not for our other plays to enable our ramp spells. Hell, if you cast a 2-drop mana dork and play Prismatic Undercurrents on turn 3, the most ideal timing for a spell like this, it only finds you one land! I think this is terrible, and I think you should generally avoid it.

Pummeler for Hire

Rating: 5/10

Given how few giants there are in Lorwyn Eclipsed, Pummeler for Hire is mostly just going to gain 4 life. Is a Sentinel Spider that gains 4 life when it enters a good card? Yeah, I can get behind that.

Safewright Cavalry

Rating: 4/10

Removing double blocks from the equation makes Safewright Cavalry a really annoying attacker to deal with. Usually, as good as a 4/4 for 4 might be, it struggles against a pair of 2/3s or similar. This creature doesn’t have to worry about any of that, and leaving its activated ability open makes it very difficult for anything to block it at all.

Sapling Nursery

Rating: 8/10

If you’ve picked up Sapling Nursery, you’ll ideally have your deck lean towards green, because the cheaper this gets, the better it is. Ideally, you can reduce it to about 5 mana, after which you should be able to create multiple 3/4 treefolk tokens. Five mana for two of those tokens would be a great deal already, so getting three, four, and so on starts to look broken. This requires a little setup, but that work is very much worth it.

Selfless Safewright

Rating: 6/10

Heroic Intervention seems to be on every bonus sheet these days (it’s going to be on the Marvel Super Heroes bonus sheet three times!) and it’s just a bad card in Limited. However, slap that same text onto a creature and I’m a lot more interested. Flashing Selfless Safewright in after blocks or in response to some removal is a pretty simple way to pick up a two-for-one in this format. That setup cost holds it back ever so slightly, but I think this looks pretty good.

Shimmerwilds Growth

Rating: 5/10

Utopia Sprawl is a phenomenal ramp spell, and it’s still very playable when it costs 2 mana. Turns 1 and 2 are the most optimal time to play a ramp spell, which makes Shimmerwilds Growth one of the best ways to start any game with a green deck. I wouldn’t play this in a kithkin deck, but the other green decks will be very happy to use this to fix their colors.

Note that it also gives the land its attached to a color, so it's even better in vivid decks.

Spry and Mighty

Rating: 6/10

This isn’t too difficult to set up, but it’s easy to disrupt. While Spry and Mighty doesn’t target the two creatures, your opponent can still use removal to limit your options. The best creature to pair with this has to be Great Forest Druid. Zero power makes for a nice big difference between it and any other creature, but you can pile up to three -1/-1 counters on it and increase that difference even more (yes, the game tracks its power when it drops below 0, and it will matter for this card). Like I say, this requires a fair amount of setup, but there’s a lot of potential from the payoff, enough to balance it against the times when you can’t play it.

Surly Farrier

Rating: 3/10

Surly Farrier is a fine 2-drop for any kithkin deck. It gets to attack reasonably well when you play it early, then it can stay relevant through to the late game by buffing other creatures that you attack with. I wouldn’t want this outside of kithkin, but it seems pretty good for that deck.

Tend the Sprigs

Rating: 3/10

I already mentioned that ramp spells are most effective when they cost 1 or 2 mana, which makes Tend the Sprigs a fair bit weaker than other ramp spells. However, it really excels when you draw it later in the game, something that ramp spells are typically very bad at. I quite like that balance, and I think this is a solid card overall.

Thoughtweft Charge

Rating: 4/10

Giant Growth for 2 mana is fine, but not exciting. But if you throw in an extra card for free, I’m very interested. The need to have had a creature enter the battlefield is quite an annoying condition to satisfy, and it essentially means that it’s only going to be live on your turn, but the kithkin deck in particular should be able to enable Thoughtweft Charge whenever it needs to.

Trystan, Callous Cultivator / Trystan, Penitent Cultivator

Rating: 6/10

Trystan, Callous Cultivator is a pretty good way to fill your graveyard because you get to keep milling three cards every turn if you keep transforming it into Trystan, Penitent Culler and back. Sadly, that’s about it, as the additional payoffs aren’t all that interesting. It’s a 3/4 with deathtouch for 3 mana though, so you’re always playing this in a green deck, even without the elf synergies.

Unforgiving Aim

Rating: 1/10

Unforgiving Aim covers a lot of bases, but each of them is far too narrow. This isn’t something you should main deck, but it’s an extremely useful sideboard card to bring in for the right matchups.

Vinebred Brawler

Rating: 3/10

A 2-toughness creature isn’t the best to carry the text of “must be blocked if able”, but that’s exactly what Vinebred Brawler is. This might have potential to be an annoying creature, but it’s just too small to have any meaningful impact.

Virulent Emissary

Rating: 5/10

I do love my 1/1 deathtouch creatures for 1 mana. They can come down early, help to enable your bite spells, and can then trade for just about anything later in the game. Virulent Emissary ups the ante a bit, doubling up as an Essence Warden, another great card.

Wildvine Pummeler

Rating: 4/10

I’m pretty happy with 5 mana for a 6/5 with trample and reach, which Wildvine Pummeler is very likely to be. Of course, it also has the awesome potential to cost as little as 2 or 3 mana, and then you’re really winning with it.

Multicolored

Abigale, Eloquent First-Year

Rating: 7/10

Abigale, Eloquent First-Year is a really cool and unique design. It’s essentially a mini-Baneslayer Angel that turns something else into a Baneslayer when Abigale enters. Given how many creatures there are in ECL with great enters triggers that do little else afterwards, Abigale should have plenty of good places to put its keyword counters. You can technically use it to turn off the abilities of an opposing creature, but I don’t see that as a winning play in Limited most of the time.

Ashling’s Command

Rating: 9/10

Here, we have the first in a cycle of kindred commands for each of the five main typal archetypes. Notably, all of them have the same first mode, to create a token copy of something with the same type, then they have a variety of other modes to choose from. Ashling's Command looks absolutely disgusting to me. You’re always able to draw two cards, and then whatever other mode you choose is a bonus. You can create a token copy of something at instant speed or use the one-sided Pyroclasm to completely blow out your opponent and pick up a four- or five-for-one. This card is incredible, and honestly it’s close to a 10/10 if not for the fact that it doesn’t do much to win the game by itself.

Boggart Cursecrafter

Rating: 6/10

Not only is a 2/3 with deathtouch an incredible rate for 2 mana, but Boggart Cursecrafter has the perfect ability to pair with an aggressive goblins deck. We’ve been talking about how goblins want to kill off their little goblins for value, and pinging your opponent every time you do that is the perfect way to apply pressure. This is great, and it’s a really good way to incentivize you to draft this deck.

Bre of Clan Stoutarm

Rating: 8/10

In a callback to Brion Stoutarm, Bre of Clan Stoutarm packs a real wallop. First, it allows you to apply a lot of pressure by giving flying and lifelink to any of your other creatures, but then once you’ve gained some life, you’ll at the bare minimum get to draw the top spell of your deck. Even better, you sometimes get to cast that spell for free, too! Bre is a very powerful bomb, though it’s possible that its color combination might hold it back. I hope not, because this is a sweet card to play.

Brigid’s Command

Rating: 7/10

While nowhere near as powerful as the elemental counterpart, Brigid's Command has a few nice applications. You can give +3/+3 to something and then have it fight a creature. You can create two kithkin. You can fight and make a token of some sort. You can usually get some kind of two-for-one depending on whether the boards line up for it, but this one is a lot more situational. Particularly because the kithkin are all quite small, so you’ll usually have to pair the fight mode with the +3/+3 mode. That said, I could easily see non-kithkin decks play this simply because it’s a good fight spell.

Catharsis

Rating: 8/10

One thing that started in Lorwyn is the cycle of big elementals with single-word names. We had Purity, Guile, Dread, Hostility, and Vigor in Lorwyn, then we got the much more well-known cycle from Modern Horizons 2 of Solitude, Subtlety, Grief, Fury, and Endurance. In Lorwyn Eclipsed, the cycle are all two colors, notably the color combinations that don’t have typal archetypes built around them, and they all have evoke and abilities that trigger when you spend their appropriate colors of mana on them.

Catharsis is a pretty decent start to the cycle, as casting it for 6 mana with both colors represents 8 haste damage on its own. It’s also great just to evoke for 2 white mana and get the pair of 1/1s upfront.

Chaos Spewer

Rating: 3/10

Just playing out Chaos Spewer on 5 mana isn’t exactly good, so you obviously want to blight with it actively. We’ve seen a lot of ways to use -1/-1 counters as well as quite a few cheap creatures with 3 toughness that would be reasonable hosts for these, and getting to run this out on turn 3 seems like a good way to take an early lead.

Chitinous Graspling

Rating: 3/10

Four mana for a 3/4 with reach is something we’d have loved to play about 15 years ago. Nowadays, it’s sadly not that good. That said, the fact that Chitinous Graspling is a changeling and costs only a single hybrid mana makes it incredibly flexible, and I’m sure it’ll see a good amount of play.

Deceit

Rating: 9/10

Deceit is our blue/black mythic elemental, and it’s extremely strong. Its abilities pair up very nicely so if you can cast it for , you can bounce a big creature to your opponent’s hand and then discard it right away, essentially turning this into a big Nekrataal. I don’t like the abilities individually quite as much, so I don’t think the evoke cost will be used very often, though bouncing something for 2 mana can come in clutch sometimes. I’d also play this in any blue deck, but the black side of it is much worse, so I wouldn’t play it in a random black deck.

Deepchannel Duelist

Rating: 6/10

Anyone who’s played merfolk in an Eternal format knows just how powerful Lord of Atlantis can be. Yes, islandwalk matters a lot, but 2-mana typal lords are incredible. Deepchannel Duelist is an interesting signpost, because rather than giving you a reason to tap your merfolk, it lets you untap one of them each turn so you can tap them again. That’s a reasonable ability, but not one that’s always going to matter. Still, it’s a typal lord, and that’s very good by itself.

Deepway Navigator

Rating: 6/10

This card is unnervingly similar to Deepchannel Duelist, and I really don’t like that. Sure, Deepway Navigator is pretty strong and an interesting play to make during combat, but could it not have been a completely different design?

Doran, Besieged by Time

Rating: 7/10

The classic Doran, the Siege Tower is a much-beloved legend by this point, and now Doran is back! I’ve already spoken about how high I am on the black/white toughness-matters deck, and this looks like an incredible payoff for that deck. It’s a third color, granted, but giving +4/+4 to Great Forest Druid, +3/+3 to Moonlit Lamenter, or even +5/+5 to Doran, Besieged by Time is a brutal bonus to have access to. You just won’t ever be able to get into combat with this deck, and it also kills the opponent very quickly.

Dream Harvest

Rating: 0/10

The gimmick with Dream Harvest is that if you’ve exiled 4 mana’s worth of cards, then you always get whatever the next card is, regardless of cost. However, with this costing 7 mana, even casting 8 or 9 mana’s worth of random spells isn’t worth the initial cost of resolving a 7-mana sorcery. The miss rate on this card is incredibly high, so I won’t play it. But hey, it’s a fun card to resolve, so I really hope I’m wrong.

The Eclipsed Cycle

Rating: 6/10

While I could review these separately, they’re all remarkably similar to each other. Plus, I love to get a bit of value. Each of these creatures follows the same design. They’re essentially colorless in their respective dedicated 2-color typal decks, and they all look at your top four cards to find a card of the same type or a basic land of their colors. A good version of each of these typal decks will probably have about three quarters of their decks be viable cards to hit, so the miss rate should be very low. Each of these is great in their own right and a perfect card to take when you know that you’re already playing that kind of deck. They smooth out your draws, give you a simple two-for-one, and just make games better.

Emptiness

Rating: 9/10

Emptiness was the first of this mythic cycle that we saw in the spoilers, and it really helped to build up hype for Lorwyn Eclipsed. Double black for three -1/-1 counters is a card you’d always want to play, so the evoke cost is very relevant. Of course, you really want to hold out until you get to 6, and if you do get to cast this for , reanimate a creature and kill another, it’ll be the easiest three-for-one you’ll ever see.

Feisty Spikeling

Rating: 4/10

Two mana for a 2/1 first striker, even if that’s only on your turn, is a tried and tested stat line for any aggressive deck. Feisty Spikeling is also a kithkin, a goblin, a merfolk, and an elemental, and it slots very nicely into each of those decks. I think we’ll play this card quite a lot, and it’s like the glue that holds these archetypes together.

Figure of Fable

Rating: 9/10

Oh dear, here we go. The first two levels on Figure of Fable are pretty reasonable at the early points of the game, but then this card becomes potentially problematic. Six mana is a lot to invest, especially if your opponent has a way to disrupt it, but resolving it is akin to winning the game. “Protection from each opponent” essentially means that Figure can no longer be blocked, dealt damage, or targeted by anything your opponent plays. If you’ve ever played against True-Name Nemesis, you might have an idea of how rough this can be.

Flaring Cinder

Rating: 3/10

Flaring Cinder should be a really nice middle-of-the-road creature for elementals. Rummaging is a powerful ability to smooth out your draws, and you get one right away when you play it. Even if you only get that one before it trades off, you still got a little bit of value, and you can’t expect too much more out of a 3-mana common.

Gangly Stompling

Rating: 3/10

4/2s kind of bother me. They hit hard, but they’re so easy to trade with in combat. Though, Gangly Stompling having trample and changeling should be more than enough to make it see play. Four of the five typal pairs can play this and have it be good, and that’s very important for ECL.

Glister Bairn

Rating: 2/10

As a blue/green enjoyer, I hate this card. Blue/green vivid should be a ramp deck that grinds out advantage and makes use of the various big elementals with cool abilities, so why does Glister Bairn have a combat-related ability? A lot of our creatures are likely to be big enough without picking up a +3/+3 or so buff at the start of combat. Plus, this is a measly little 5-mana 1/4 that can’t pump itself. Yeah, I don’t like this at all, what a disappointment.

Grub’s Command

Rating: 9/10

Once again, Grub's Command has a lot of different modes that are going to be relevant at different points during the game. The most common mode is of course going to be to destroy a creature. If you pair that with the first mode, this is basically just a 5-mana Ravenous Chupacabra. That’s your base rate, and it has so many more applications beyond that.

High Perfect Morcant

Rating: 10/10

This was another card shown off quite early in ECL’s spoilers, and it has already generated a ton of hype. Frankly, it’s not hard to see why. Getting to remove a single creature would already be broken, but High Perfect Morcant is capable of so much more. Once you’ve blighted once, you can use your elves to proliferate that counter over and over until the creature dies, then blight something else and repeat. This also perfectly punishes the various cards in Lorwyn Eclipsed that like to have counters on them, as you can often proliferate twice or even thrice per turn, not to mention all of the extra counters you get whenever you play a new elf. This card is brutal to play against, and I hope I never have to.

Hovel Hurler

Rating: 5/10

This creature is kind of interesting. While Hovel Hurler is designed to have -1/-1 counters on it, unlike some of the other similar creatures in ECL, it requires another creature for you to use those counters. It doesn’t just work on its own merits like something like Moonlit Lamenter. Still, this guy is absolutely massive, and even at 5 mana, it’s bound to make a big impact on most boards.

Kirol, Attentive First-Year

Rating: 5/10

Kirol, Attentive First-Year is a pretty interesting design, but it doesn’t do anything by itself. Copying a triggered ability comes up more often in some decks than in others. Elementals for example overlap in Kirol’s colors, and they have a lot of good triggers for you to copy. What’s also nice about Kirol is that if you copy the enters trigger of a creature, you could always tap that creature and Kirol, so the ability’s not too hard to use. Kirol is going to be quite strong, but it really needs the right deck to be built around it, otherwise you’re stuck with a pointless vanilla creature.

Lluwen, Imperfect Naturalist

Rating: 7/10

Up front, as a 2-drop that mills you, Lluwen, Imperfect Naturalist is kind of weak. In fact, it’s quite a bit weaker than something like Satyr Wayfinder. However, Lluwen can win the game all by itself thanks to its spellshaper-style Worm Harvest ability. It doesn’t sacrifice itself, so you can just activate it turn after turn, assuming you have the lands to discard to it, exactly like if you retrace a Worm Harvest. If you get to that point in the game, which certainly isn’t trivial, it shouldn’t be too difficult to put a win together.

Maralen, Fae Ascendant

Rating: 8/10

Maralen, Fae Ascendant has quite a lot going on. It’s a 3-color legend which isn’t exactly trivial to cast, but it should be well worth it. When it or another elf or faerie enters, you steal the top two cards of your opponent’s library and presumably get to cast one of them each turn for free. If you only get one free spell, Maralen is still a huge flier that draws you a free card, and it can do much more. You might even be able to mill out your opponent if you can make enough elves, which sounds like a fun achievement for this format. Maralen is ultimately very powerful, but with a lot of moving pieces and costing three colors, it likely won’t live up to its full potential.

Merrow Skyswimmer

Rating: 4/10

If you can pay about 3 mana to get this 2/2 vigilance flier plus a 1/1 token, then you’ve been easily paid off. Merrow Skyswimmer cost 5 though, so even with convoke, it’s very unlikely to get to do that on curve on turn 3 (though not impossible). Still, even casting this later in the game is pretty good, and tapping your creatures is often a positive thing for your merfolk deck.

Mischievous Sneakling

Rating: 3/10

A 2-mana 2/2 with flash isn’t very good at all, but the fact that Mischievous Sneakling is every creature type and works in so many archetypes is enough to make it very playable.

Morcant’s Loyalist

Rating: 6/10

It’d of course be better to get something back when this enters, but given that Morcant's Loyalist is already a typal lord, there’s no way we could expect it to also be a Gravedigger. Both effects are excellent, and they play really well with the themes that elves try to enable in Lorwyn Eclipsed.

Noggle Robber

Rating: 3/10

Red/green barely has a theme in ECL, but I guess Noggle Robber can be a good way to accelerate you into a 5-drop? I mean… it’s a very simple card and red/green doesn’t really have anything going on, so sure, it’s playable.

Prideful Feastling

Rating: 3/10

Prideful Feastling feels a little weaker than the rest of this common cycle, but it’s still a very key piece of the puzzle. Again, four of the five typal archetypes can use this if they need to, which makes it a lot more flexible than most of the other cards in Lorwyn Eclipsed.

Raiding Schemes

Rating: 0/10

Casting a 5-mana enchantment that doesn’t do anything is a tall order already, but you also need to set it up by having creatures in play and the corresponding noncreature spells to cast and then conspire? No, we won’t play Raiding Schemes any time soon. It’s a cool card though, so hopefully it finds a home somewhere in Constructed.

Reaping Willow

Rating: 6/10

Here we go, another great treefolk with a bunch of toughness, some -1/-1 counters, and a great ability to utilize them. Granted, you need to have creatures in the graveyard that you want to reanimate, but anything will be fine. Then, Reaping Willow is a huge lifelinker that you can get into combat with or just sit behind and be happy to have it block for you.

Sanar, Innovative First-Year

Rating: 7/10

Sanar, Innovative First-Year’s ability is just ridiculous, but not in a good way. It’s excessively complicated for what essentially amounts to getting to draw either one or two free spells each turn. Don’t get me wrong, this is very good, but I hate how needlessly drawn out the ability is when this design could be so much simpler.

Shadow Urchin

Rating: 6/10

It’s a little disappointing that Shadow Urchin isn’t a goblin, since it plays perfectly into the goblin strategy. Every goblin that you kill off with -1/-1 counters turns into card draw, which is pretty awesome. Though, in true Rakdos () fashion, it comes with a bit of a drawback. You have to use those drawn cards in the same turn, and sometimes you might exile far too many. Imagine if your opponent hits you with Darkness Descends and you have to exile six or eight cards to it. I doubt you’ll actually deck out with this, but it certainly might get you very close.

Stoic Grove-Guide

Rating: 3/10

Five mana for a vanilla 5/4 isn’t the most exciting thing you can do, though discarding or milling this for some free value sounds like a great idea. Elves want stuff to do out of its graveyard, and Stoic Grove-Guide is a very reasonable thing to do.

Sygg’s Command

Rating: 6/10

Sygg's Command is the weakest in this command cycle, mostly because the second and fourth modes are only very situationally good, which really limits the ways in which you can play it. Copying a merfolk and drawing a card is a fine base rate, and the stun mode can turn this into a reasonable tempo play if it lines up well. That’s a couple of nice ways to play this, but it just lacks the flexibility that the others in this cycle have.

Tam, Mindful First-Year

Rating: 6/10

A 2-mana pseudo-Giver of Runes is an interesting choice to be honest. If you hold open Tam, Mindful First-Year, it’s going to be extremely difficult for your opponent to do any kind of interaction with you, unless they kill Tam first. That’s a pretty annoying spot to put them in. Add to that the fact that Tam can immediately enable the full effects of your vivid abilities, and I think you’ve got a really solid card here.

Thoughtweft Lieutenant

Rating: 7/10

While this might not trigger on some turns, the turns it does trigger are going to be sweet. +1/+1 and trample for each kithkin you have enter is the kind of buff that helps you to apply a lot of pressure. Imagine curving this into a Clachan Festival on turn 3, attacking for 4, and then having these extra tokens to buff and attack with on the future turns. You need to have creatures to play after a Thoughtweft Lieutenant, but this should be what kithkin are good at, so I don’t think we have anything to worry about.

Trystan’s Command

Rating: 10/10

Despite being the most expensive of the command cycle, Trystan's Command hits the hardest of them all. The best modes are naturally going to be to destroy a creature and get two creatures back from your graveyard for the easy three-for-one. Though, the times when you copy a great elf or get to Overrun your team are going to feel particularly broken. There’s just not a bad way to cast this. It’s always incredible.

Twinflame Travelers

Rating: 6/10

It seems that the common thread linking a lot of these elementals is that they have triggered abilities, so getting to double them up sounds pretty sweet to me. Does anything else need to be said? Twinflame Travelers isn’t too bad at all, and it’s even a decently sized creature to attack with.

Vibrance

Rating: 10/10

The goodest boy in the whole set, Vibrance has so many excellent ways to cast it that it’s hard to go wrong. We’d obviously like to cast it for and get both triggers off (and Flamebraider is very good at enabling that), but even just casting it as a 2-mana Lightning Bolt or a way to find your second color is still very good. Even more so, the fact this wonderful little card can be all of those modes at once is just the icing on the cake. What a great card, probably the best of this whole cycle.

Voracious Tome-Skimmer

Rating: 6/10

I want to believe in the blue/black flash deck, and a card like Voracious Tome-Skimmer is exactly what I want to see for it. Getting to draw a card for every spell you cast outside of your turn, even at the cost of some life, is a perfect payoff. I’m a little skeptical given that it’s not one of the main typal archetypes, but at least this gives me a little bit of hope to hang onto.

Wary Farmer

Rating: 2/10

As loathed as I am to admit, 3 mana for a 3/3 vanilla just isn’t good enough anymore. Wary Farmer kind of has an upside, but what annoys me is the fact that it doesn’t trigger itself, so you can’t get the surveil when you curve this out on turn 3. I don’t like that, and kithkin has access to way better 3-drops.

Wistfulness

Rating: 6/10

Five mana for a 6/5 that draws two and discards one on entering? Yep, done. No notes. Wistfulness feels like more of a Constructed card, where its green ability is a lot more relevant, but the blue side is still good on its own, especially when you have access to the evoke cost. It’s nowhere near as good as the others in the cycle, simply because it does the least to affect the board, but I’m still not passing it up.

Artifacts and Colorless

Changeling Wayfinder

Rating: 6/10

Changeling Wayfinder is my early pick for best common in ECL. We’ve seen Skittering Surveyor and similar cards fill a very important role in many sets in the past, and this new version goes above and beyond that by also being a changeling. This fixes your colors no matter what color combination you happen to be without giving up cards or board presence to do so. This card is incredible, and I love to see it here.

Rooftop Percher

Rating: 2/10

Rooftop Percher is pretty interesting. As a colorless changeling, any of the typal decks could pick this up as a late addition that bolsters their synergies. It’s also nice to have access to this out of the sideboard to hate on the graveyard when you need to. This isn’t a good card by any stretch, but it has these niche applications.

Chronicle of Victory

Rating: 8/10

Even just playing Chronicle of Victory in a dedicated typal deck and having it be a +2/+2 anthem that also grants first strike and trample sounds very good. Six mana is a lot, but the impact of that should be worth the cost. But just in case you need a little more, you may even get to draw some extra cards to sweeten the deal. Awesome card.

Dawn-Blessed Pennant

Rating: 2/10

The additional lifegain that Dawn-Blessed Pennant provides isn’t going to be relevant, but an artifact that lets you rebuy a creature for 3 total mana isn’t unplayable. It’s just a little too expensive for this kind of effect.

Firdoch Core

Rating: 3/10

With Dragonstorm Globe as a key exception, 3-drop mana rocks just aren’t good in Limited. Being a kindred artifact with every creature type is interesting though, as is the ability to animate into a 4/4 in the late game, so I’m sure that Firdoch Core might find a home in the format.

Foraging Wickermaw

Rating: 4/10

It’s easy to brush past the common artifact creatures in a set and assume they suck, but Foraging Wickermaw actually looks really good to me. For a start, 2-mana 1/3s are pretty decent early blockers, then on top of that it filters your mana and turns itself into an additional color to enable vivid. All of that is pretty decent, and I reckon this will see a good amount of play.

Gathering Stone

Rating: 1/10

Gathering Stone is a pretty cool design, essentially like a new Herald's Horn. Limited cards need to do a lot more to affect the board for 4 mana, but there’s at least some potential here. You get a free surveil every turn, and sometimes you get to straight up draw a card, which is definitely not the worst. I just don’t know which of the set’s creature types is going to be excited to use this.

Mirrormind Crown

Rating: 0/10

This was clearly designed for Commander. To use Mirrormind Crown, you need to spend 4 mana to do nothing, then another 2 mana to still do nothing, then happen to have a way to create tokens. That’s just not remotely worth it.

Puca’s Eye

Rating: 3/10

Getting to all five colors sounds like it’ll be quite difficult, but Puca's Eye sounds like a sweet enabler to give you immediate access to your least common color and add to all of your vivid counts. Plus, it replaces itself, so it’s never a bad card to run out.

Springleaf Drum

Rating: 1/10

Springleaf Drum is quite a powerful card that has seen a ton of play in many decks across the competitive formats, but it falls massively short in Limited. While a 1-mana artifact that adds mana sounds good at first, needing to tap a creature to do so is too high a price to make this useful. It is, however, a nice way to enable the abilities of the merfolk in the set, so it could be a nice addition for them. I just wouldn’t play it anywhere else.

Stalactite Dagger

Rating: 2/10

At first, I thought that Stalactite Dagger automatically attached to the token, which would make it a great card. As is, I think it falls well short of the mark and is far too expensive to play.

Lands

The Shock Lands

Rating: 5/10

Dual lands are always great to pick up. If you happen to be in the right colors for one of these, you might as well pick them up and make your mana base that little bit better. But you just rarely ever need to prioritize them. The fact that the shock lands can come in untapped whenever you need them to is just a nice bonus.

Eclipsed Realms

Rating: 2/10

Eclipsed Realms is a very sweet land for Constructed, but we’re not so desperate for fixing that we’ll likely want a land that only fixes for one type, and not for our random off-type creatures or other spells.

Evolving Wilds

Rating: 4/10

We see Evolving Wilds in most sets these days, and it’s always good. You should always play it whenever it’s in your pool, unless you’re an incredibly streamlined aggro deck. The only question is how early to pick it during a draft, and the answer is typically to take it over most medium-level commons but not over strong playables.

Special Guests

It feels like we’ve had bonus sheets in basically every set recently, but this time we don’t. We do however have some Special Guest cards again, which seem to simply be a thing that will appear in every set that isn’t Universes Beyond. This set features 20 of these cards, many of which are reprints from the original Lorwyn/Shadowmoor blocks, and while they’re quite rare (1 in every 55 packs), they’re still worth giving a little attention to.

Idyllic Tutor

Rating: 0/10

Cards like Idyllic Tutor are just bad in Limited. As strong as some enchantments might be, paying 3 extra mana for them is nowhere near good enough.

Kinsbaile Cavalier

Rating: 3/10

By itself, Kinsbaile Cavalier is a 2/2 double striker for 4 mana, which is fine, but pretty over-costed. A kithkin deck is likely to have at least one or two knights in it, and all changelings work with this, too, but you’re going to need those cards to support this because it’s not good enough without them.

Mistbind Clique

Rating: 7/10

Faeries aren’t a hugely supported type in Lorwyn Eclipsed, so it might be a tad difficult to find something to champion, but the blue/black flash archetype should have a few of them, and that deck will be very excited to play this. Mistbind Clique was a pretty busted card back in its day, and some of that power is likely to show through here.

Wanderwine Prophets

Rating: 4/10

I’ve never had the pleasure of playing with this, but it sounds far too difficult to get going. Six mana for just a 4/4 that has to champion a merfolk and then find a way to connect with the opponent. That’s so many hoops to jump through, and I just don’t see Wanderwine Prophets coming together, as much as I’d love to take some extra turns. On the plus side, once you’ve taken one turn, your opponent is likely still vulnerable to another attack, allowing you to keep chaining these turns together to close out the game. I just think it requires too much work.

Bitterblossom

Rating: 8/10

At this point, the legacy of Bitterblossom is pretty well known. This was once the most highly sought after card in Standard, and the most important card in the format’s best deck. Of course, times have changed, and ECL has very little to combo with it, but churning out a free 1/1 flier every turn is still an incredibly good ability. The life loss is a very real downside, but even when your life looks low, you can use the tokens to chump block and save damage you wouldn’t have been able to block otherwise. If you ever get lucky and can run it out on turn 2, you’ll overwhelm your opponent very quickly.

Faerie Macabre

Rating: 1/10

I can’t imagine you’ll ever need graveyard hate enough to justify playing Faerie Macabre. It’s a 3-drop 2/2 flier, but costing double black is far too prohibitive to make that an upside.

Goblin Chieftain

Rating: 6/10

Typal lords have existed in Magic literally since Alpha and Goblin Chieftain is one of the better ones that still sees some play. They’re also very strong in Limited, so this looks exceptional if you’re already drafting goblins.

Goblin Sharpshooter

Rating: 8/10

“Pingers” like Prodigal Sorcerer used to be a mainstay of Limited, but they aren’t printed anymore due to being so overpowered. Goblin Sharpshooter is a tricky one, because not untapping each turn is quite problematic. However, untapping whenever anything dies is just ridiculous. Not only can you sacrifice (or blight) your own creatures to get extra pings out of it, but it also untaps whenever it happens to kill something. This card single-handedly wipes out all X/1 creatures your opponent has out, and doesn’t even break a sweat. This is a dangerous card in the format, and one I hope I never have to play against.

Heat Shimmer

Rating: 0/10

I often use Heat Shimmer as a reference point whenever we see a card like this. It isn’t playable. It just costs too much for a card that doesn’t usually affect the board in a meaningful way.

Devoted Druid

Rating: 6/10

Devoted Druid has been a combo enabler for many years. While we won’t do any combo shenanigans with it in Lorwyn Eclipsed, mana dorks are still very strong, and this even lets you get 2 mana out of it one time by untapping it with its ability.

Helix Pinnacle

Rating: 0/10

Helix Pinnacle has always been one of my favorite random card designs. It’s not remotely playable in Limited, but it’s fun to have a dream of it finally working.

Leaf-Crowned Visionary

Rating: 7/10

Typal lords are quite strong in Limited. Not only that, but Leaf-Crowned Visionary can draw a lot of cards for very little extra investment. I know that if I see this across the table from me, I’m not going to win a long game if I can’t kill it on sight.

Regal Force

Rating: 9/10

Seven mana is quite a lot, but when you’ve gone wide with elves and have access to a lot of mana, I can’t think of many better payoffs than a Regal Force. There’s a reason this card has seen play in Legacy elf decks of the past.

Manamorphose

Rating: 2/10

Manamorphose has long been a mainstay of competitive combo decks, but it doesn’t do anything that we care about in Limited. It’s essentially a 0-mana cantrip, so it’s definitely not unplayable, but it’s just not worth prioritizing for your deck.

Risen Reef

Rating: 8/10

Coiling Oracle is literally my favorite card in all of Magic, so what could be better than a 3-drop one that also turns all of your elementals into Coiling Oracles? Risen Reef was absolutely busted last time we saw it, and although elementals are focused in blue/red in ECL, splashing this is well worth the extra cost.

Slippery Bogle

Rating: 1/10

I’m wary of underestimating 1-drops in Limited, but hexproof is one of the least relevant abilities to have on a 1/1 for one. Slippery Bogle is the perfect host for a pile of auras or equipment, but that’s not going to come together in Limited.

Dolmen Gate

Rating: 0/10

No thanks. Dolmen Gate makes all your creatures invincible in combat, but they still can’t attack profitably into bigger creatures and can still be chump blocked, so don’t bother playing this.

Door of Destinies

Rating: 1/10

There’s a lot to like about Door of Destinies. Once it starts to give +2/+2, +3/+3, or even more, it’s going to be the most relevant permanent on most battlefields. However, it’s too much work to get there. You just don’t have the time to set this up in modern Limited formats.

Painter’s Servant

Rating: 0/10

This is a very welcome reprint, as it was hovering around the $50-70 mark, but Painter's Servant has no text that we care about in Limited. It’s kind of cute when paired with vivid abilities, but not enough to be worth a whole card.

Thousand-Year Elixir

Rating: 0/10

Thousand-Year Elixir is a cool design and a powerful Commander staple, but it does virtually nothing in a game of Limited, so let’s leave it there.

Wrap Up

Temple Garden | Illustration by Adam Paquette

How does Lorwyn Eclipsed look to you? This Limited format looks very weird with a few new things being tried out, so hopefully they come together. If it doesn’t, then at least we only have a couple of weeks until the next set rolls around. Head to your local store for a prerelease and give this a go!

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Until next time, take care of yourselves!