The 21 Best Lorwyn Eclipsed Commanders Ranked

Abigale, Eloquent First-Year | Illustration by Mark Zug

New sets always bring new commanders, but Lorwyn Eclipsed (ECL) is a breath of fresh air. It has a bunch of interesting, unique commanders, and they’re all in-universe, which gives them excellent flavor.

The set has a generally low power level and probably won’t shake up the format the way sets from 2025 like Final Fantasy did, but many of these commanders have abilities worth building around and taking the time to cultivate. Let’s see which is right for you!

How Many Commanders Are in Lorwyn Eclipsed?

Grub, Storied Matriarch | Illustration by Jesper Ejsing

Lorwyn Eclipsed has a staggering 33 commanders, including reprints, all of which are legendary creatures—no vehicles or spacecraft here. Excluding reprints, ECL granted us 21 new commanders.

This is an incredible decline compared to recent sets—Avatar: The Last Airbender had 65 commanders, and Marvel’s Spider-Man had 79, despite being a smaller set than ECL. This can be attributed to the difference between in-universe sets and Universes Beyond. Because Universes Beyond sets need to adapt properties and highlight players' favorite characters, you end up with lots of legendary creatures, even at the uncommon level, like Master Pakku. Some sets, like TLA, even print multiple cards that depict the same character. But in-universe sets don’t need to cram so many legends and characters into a single set, so they often end up with fewer legends and commanders.

The new commanders in ECL cover a range of abilities, in part because there are lots of throwbacks; this is Doran, the Siege Tower’s home plane, so we need a new Doran, but one that also cares about toughness; and Brigid is a familiar face, so we need to do something with kithkin or tokens, and so on.

This list ranks the new commanders with reprints from Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander (ECC) to give you an idea of where they stack up against the current options.

#21. Ferrafor, Young Yew

Ferrafor, Young Yew has decent flexibility: Since it cares about any type of counter, not just +1/+1 counters, it works well with fungal decks that build up spore counters, and mass creation of Saproling tokens offers synergies. But it still might be best in green +1/+1 counter decks, because it’s so easy to amass them these days. Still, this has a good impact for a 7-mana commander.

#20. Lluwen, Imperfect Naturalist

Lluwen, Imperfect Naturalist gets bonus points for being an extremely cheap commander. I’m not quite sure why we needed Worm Harvest on a stick but it isn't horrid, as commanders go. If you mill enough cards, it can become a serious threat, and Golgari exploits tokens extremely well between sacrifice outlets and mass pump effects. It’s cute if you don’t mind a design that begins and ends with “wasn’t this old card really cool?”

#19. The Reaper, King No More

The Reaper, King No More basically puts Necroskitter in the command zone, with an enters ability to justify three colors. Which is actually pretty fun; Necroskitter is one of the coolest -1/-1 counter payoffs, so access to it every single game could be a draw to the archetype, and Jund () has access to plenty of synergies and proliferate effects to make it work.

#18. Abigale, Eloquent First-Year

Abigale, Eloquent First-Year has potential as a powerful stax commander. Modern creatures, especially in Commander, are often played for their strong textbox rather than size. Stripping cards like Orcish Bowmasters, Kaalia of the Vast, and Vivi Ornitier of the abilities that make them threatening is well worth a few keyword counters. To get the most from Abigale, you’ll need to build around flicker effects to make it enter frequently and handle threats.

#17. Mass of Mysteries

While Mass of Mysteries lacks the raw power of Ashling, the Limitless, it still has potential as an elemental commander. Most good elementals are good because they have powerful enters abilities, like Mulldrifter, Shriekmaw, and Risen Reef; myriad breaks those perfectly. It’s also worth considering that any commander that costs loves a Jegantha, the Wellspring companion, and it would be extremely appropriate in this archetype.

#16. Doran, Besieged by Time

Doran, Besieged by Time takes an interesting stance on toughness-matters commanders. You’d often expect them to assign combat damage based on toughness—that’s what gave the original Doran its fame—but this simply rewards higher toughness. You don’t need to go all-in on 0/6s and the like, and cost reduction has lots of potential for a strong commander. This might be too niche to become big, but I appreciate the attempt to do something different in the toughness archetype.

#15. Maralen, Fae Ascendant

Maralen, Fae Ascendant takes a stab at making a strange typal-theft commander, blending together multiple themes into a single Sultai card (). Maralen wants a balance of elves and faeries for the second ability; plenty of faeries have flash, which lets you cast spells on opposing turns. Mixing faeries with green ramp like Seedborn Muse and Wilderness Reclamation sounds delightful.

#14. Grub, Storied Matriarch / Grub, Notorious Auntie

Grub, Storied Matriarch is okay, but all the spice of this commander rests in Grub, Notorious Auntie, a powerful token machine. Creating hasty, temporary token copies has been part of red’s color identity for a while, and it provides both value and aggression. The best targets are often creatures like Fanatic of Mogis and Gray Merchant of Asphodel with strong enters abilities, but Rakdos opens unique possibilities—Master of Cruelties, maybe?

#13. Selvala, Heart of the Wilds

Selvala, Heart of the Wilds sees frequent play as a mono-green commander. Bundling the ever-vital resources of mana and card advantage into a single commander always creates something powerful. While Selvala isn’t utterly broken, it’s a great card to make your Timmy dreams come true. It’s great to pair with Ghalta, Primal Hunger!

#12. Kirol, Attentive First-Year

A once-per-turn restriction makes Kirol, Attentive First-Year less exciting since you can’t go infinite, but copying triggered abilities is still fantastic. While the enters abilities on cards like Solitude will be common targets, copying the abilities off haymakers like Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon and Otharri, Suns' Glory creates dominant board states with little effort.

#11. Maelstrom Wanderer

If you want a big mana commander, Maelstrom Wanderer is one of the most fun. Cascade twice gives you a massive advantage, especially if you take advantage of top-deck manipulation with cards like Sensei's Divining Top or Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Green provides ample ramp to cast the Wanderer early and often, with blue and red to support you with a variety of splashy spells.

#10. Brigid, Clachan’s Heart / Brigid, Doun’s Mind

The newest iteration of Brigid is all about the backside. Brigid, Doun's Mind holds most of the power here; it’s nice that Brigid, Clachan's Heart makes a token, but you want the Gaea's Cradle on a stick. Selesnya () excels at going wide and has more than enough untap effects like Formidable Speaker and Seedborn Muse to make it a serious issue for your opponents.

#9. Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons

Prior to Lorwyn Eclipsed, few would argue with Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons as the best -1/-1 counter commander. With Auntie Ool, Cursewretch, that’s unlikely to be the case—that’s just what happens when a commander that combines a given archetype with card draw is printed. But I wouldn’t call Hapatra obsolete. There’s still merit to making a bunch of snake tokens and chucking them to sacrifice outlets like Skullclamp and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician. It has a distinct enough play pattern to still be worth sleeving up.

#8. Sanar, Innovative First-Year

Izzet () almost always filters into spellslinger, and spellslinger decks want card advantage, which is where Sanar, Innovative First-Year comes in. It draws at least one card a turn, perhaps two, and it’s entirely self-sufficient since Sanar has both colors itself. While that’s strong in spellslinger, it’s important to note that Sanar doesn’t actually restrict you to that archetype. It’s a generalist commander that provides card draw for whatever you want, even if spellslinger seems ideal.

#7. Bre of Clan Stoutarm

I’m a big lifegain hater, mostly because few lifegain commanders have payoffs worth building around. But Bre of Clan Stoutarm makes lifegain impactful with its cascade-inspired end step trigger. It’s a great payoff, especially with red cards like Passionate Archaeologist that care about casting spells from exile. It even enables itself with the activated ability, which encourages aggression.

#6. Muldrotha, the Gravetide

Muldrotha, the Gravetide has long been one of the most popular graveyard commanders. While newer entries have surpassed it in popularity, it’s still a power card. Few commanders offer such rare card advantage; the ideal Muldrotha turn sees you play two, three, even four cards from the graveyard. Who needs Ancestral Recall when Stitcher's Supplier can “draw” six cards?

#5. Ashling, Rekindled / Ashling, Rimebound

Commanders that make mana tend to be quite strong, so Ashling, Rekindled and Ashling, Rimebound have a big edge. If Ashling comes down turn 2, you can transform it and start to ramp on turn 3, which provides a strong start to the game. Even with a restriction, 2 additional mana each turn is a massive advantage that spirals out of control quickly, and it makes this a promising spellslinger commander.

#4. High Perfect Morcant

There was no world where Wizards returned to Lorwyn-Shadowmoor and didn’t provide new commanders for the four core creature types. High Perfect Morcant puts the cruelty of Lorwyn’s elves on full display with its powerful blight trigger that controls the board as you amass an army to win with. The proliferate ability makes blight better and opens the commander to more than just elfball—you can play +1/+1 counters, superfriends, even infect.

#3. Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn / Isilu, Carrier of Twilight

Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn and Isilu, Carrier of Twilight each have powerful abilities that make them worth building around. White’s focus on tokens provides plenty of fodder for convoke, and it takes nothing to turn team-wide persist into an infinite combo. While either side of this legend would be fine, pairing them together seems at least a little broken. It’s also just a stellar use of a transforming card to enable storytelling, with the twin aspects literally being two sides of the same coin… er, card.

#2. Auntie Ool, Cursewretch

Auntie Ool, Cursewretch does cool stuff with -1/-1 counters, and I really appreciate the flexibility of the ability: It rewards putting -1/-1 counters on anything, which neatly ties together the two types of -1/-1 counter payoffs: those like Nest of Scarabs that reward you for putting counters anywhere, and those like Channeler Initiate or Carnifex Demon that enter with -1/-1 counters.

#1. Ashling, the Limitless

Ashling, the Limitless will go down as one of the most powerful elemental commanders, and potentially one of the strongest typal commanders. Giving any elemental evoke is busted. You can “scam” your opponents by flickering the evoked elemental and getting to keep it, plus another enters ability. Since the ability costs generic mana, cost reducers like Animar, Soul of Elements go extremely hard with it.

But Ashling keeps going with the ability to copy sacrificed elementals, including those evoked to its ability. That’s right: gets you two Avenger of Zendikar triggers, lets you get all the cascades and the attack from a Maelstrom Wanderer, and so on. Sacrifice outlets become a sort of temporary protection from spot removal or source of extra enters triggers, and so on.

Commanding Conclusion

Ashling, Rekindled | Illustration by Ilse Gort

By some metrics, Lorwyn Eclipsed was relatively tame. It doesn’t have many commanders, and none of them—with the possible exception of the new Ashling—are poised to make a massive splash on the format. But it’s nice to have just a few options to sort through, and the commanders we got generally look quite strong. Our next Universes Beyond set will likely bring us back to the 50+ commanders mark, but I don’t mind chiller sets like this.

Have any ECL commanders caught your eye? Are you planning to build any? Let me know in the comments below or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and thanks for reading!