Lorwyn: Eclipsed Spoilers - The Legends of Lorwyn

Hello and welcome back. Lorwyn Eclipsed spoilers have started and even though we are getting a shorter preview season than normal it is nevertheless chocked full of interesting and power legends you can use as your commander. Old characters return from a long time ago and new characters bring a fresh new twist. Either way I’m very excited for these designs, so let’s get going!

COMMANDER PRECON LEGENDS

ASHLING THE LIMITLESS

Leading legend of the five color elemental typal deck, Ashling can give you a discount and “sneak attack” an elemental from your hand into play via the Evoke mechanic. This means that you get the elemental into play, but it is sacrificed as a part of the ability.

This is interesting in a few ways, both specifically connect to her second ability and not. First, the Evoked creature gets a trigger to sacrifice that you can respond to, so there are ways to keep your creatures around if you want via cards that could blink them or sacrifice them for some other effect before they go away and get extra value.

Second is Ashlings second ability, which nets you a token copy of the elemental you Evoked with haste whenever you sacrifice an elemental. This is somewhat of an important distinction, because you need to sacrifice the elementals instead of having them leave the battlefield or dies, so having some way to sacrifice your creature is a must for extra value. In five colors, the deck can surely find a way.

MASS OF MYSTERIES

The secondary legend of the elemental precon works well with Ashling, giving you even more value for those hasty tokens she can create by giving them Myriad. This gets even more enter triggers for you, and helps pressure all of your opponents.

As a stand alone commander, it is a good typal commander that doesn’t need a lot of support outside of sticking to a type of creature. Granted, it’s not the most exciting design, but the value is certainly there if you commit even one Muldrifter to combat.

AUNTIE OOL CURSEWRETCH

This card kind of reminds me of someone telling you a story that is so long winded that you begin to feel fatigued listening to them. I’m not sure why that is, but that’s the vibe I get.

This isn’t to say it’s a bad thing. Likely you are the person grinding your opponents down with advantage, one way or another. I do think and it is likely that the card draw side of things is the way to go. Make sure you have small creatures around for easy advantage and some good death triggers and start looping value. Putting counters on your opponents creatures is fine and does push you towards winning the game, it’s just less effectively than card avantage in a vacuum. That said, you CAN win the game with that engine alone, so I’m not discounting putting -1/-1 counters on your opponents creatures. This can be especially effective against a wide board and using something like Black Sun’s Zenith, which comes in the deck. You could easily halve someone’s life total or better. This will be a good commander no matter where you put the counters because it is flexible.

THE REAPER, KING NO MORE

The Squash Lord squashes no more and is out for… everything? There are actually two thieving legends in the Lorwyn roster, but this one comes in the precon. The Reaper here used to be The Reaper King, but has apparently lost White and Blue and got grabby about it. Using -1/-1 counters, it can steals creatures that die with them once a turn. The counters themselves don’t have to cause the death, they just have to be present on the creature when they die.

This makes thieving the creatures a lot easier. Small effects that put -1/-1 counters on a creature can be followed by removal or a bunch of edict effects like Dictate of Erebos to help net you a bigger board from your opponents’ commitment to it.

I think this will be a fun and somewhat unique commander, but having a repeated effect that puts counters on opposing creatures will be key to its success.

MAIN SET LEGENDS

EIRDU CARRIER OF DAWN // ISILU CARRIER OF TWILIGHT

Previewed a while ago, this dual god of Lorwyn and Shadowmoor allows for convoke for your creature spells and persist to keep your creatures around. I’m not sure how well the two sides work together, but being able to keep creatures to help cast more creatures is decent.

This could work as a token and sacrifice matters deck since you can get the creatures discounted and they can come back from sacrifices and death. The colors certainly support such a strategy.

TAM MINDFUL FIRST-YEAR

Tam here offers board wipe protect with hexproof, culminating in hexproof from each color if you have a five-colored permanent on the board. Otherwise, she can make something all colors until end of turn. As a commander, there isn’t much there but as a support in the 99 this can be an absolute blowout against opponents removal and abilities. It really would depend on your meta and playgroup to decide how powerful Tam is and if she is needed in your decks.

MARALEN FAE ASCENDANT

The other thieving legend of the set, Maralen allows you to exile the top two cards of an opponent’s library when you get a faerie or elf creature into play. This is an intersting ability and doesn’t care if those creatures are token or not, which means this can trigger a LOT with these kindred types. This can also lead to some possible combos to exile someone's entire library. Keep your friends.

The second ability lets you cast a spell from among the cards you exiled per turn as long as the spell’s mana cost is less than or equal to the number of fae or elves you control, which should usually be a decent number. This isn’t the most powerful theft commander ever but this will be a favorite of players I’m sure. It’s definitely in the top five legends for me from the set so far.

LLUWEN IMPERFECT NATURALIST

Hear me out. This and 99 of the most busted lands you can put in the deck. Okay and maybe Life from the Loam.

I’m half serious. As a face commander it does do enough to lead a deck but not enough to hamstring it into a specific strategy outside of getting some lands into the graveyard. I really like that in a design because it allows you to run anything from full self mill to landfall or reanimation, or a mix of everything or anything you want. While it’s not “powerful” in the traditional sense Lluwen here seems a good commander for a good deck all around and I might build it as 99 lands to start with as a “bracket 1”

BRIGID CLACHAN’S HEART // BRIGID DOUN’S MIND

The front side of this legend gets you a token. Neat, and it’s a repeatable token generation as well.

However, the backside of the card is where the power lies. As long as you control another creature, you can add an amount of White or Green mana, where that amount is equal to the amount of other creatures you control, which in Green and White can be HUGE. White and Green also have some great untap creature effects, if few, so that amount of mana you could generate out of nowhere is going to be pretty ridiculous.

ABIGALE ELOQUENT FIRST-YEAR

The flavor of this card is fantastic. A creature loses itself in the poetry of an aspiring Silverfang student and is inspired to gain flying, first strike and lifelink. The ability itself is interesting in that the creature you target loses all abilities and gains the others but even aspiring Death’s Shadow-like cards can be lifted to new heights.

ASHLING REKINDLED // ASHLING RIMEBOUND

Ashling also makes an appearance in the main set with this card. The front side provides some early card selection. The back side gives up some free mana for spell that cost 4 or more mana. Taking the legend in total it’s an interesting if slightly slow way to ramp into a five drop card easily enough.

As a commander to lead a deck, Ashling can be used as a value engine to support larger spells. This leaves the deck wide open to what you want to do as long as the spells are on the slightly large side. It should also be kept in mind that a new set featuring Strixhaven is coming later this year and unless they completely change what each school does the Prismari in particular like their big mana Blue and Red spells, so there may be some more to look forward to here for Ashling.

BRE OF CLAN STOUTARM

A call beach to Brion Stoutarm, extraordinary pitching arm that he has, this card isn’t quite doing that same as that card. As an activated ability, this legend gives another creature you control lifelink and evasion until end of turn. It does have to tap to use the ability as well as pay some mana, so having some way to untap her or copy the ability might be useful if you want to do it more than once.

The second ability is a kind of pseudo-Discover that depends on how much life you gained during your own turn. Unfortunately it wont trigger when it isn’t your turn, so getting the value on other’s turns by untapping Bre is less necessary. You do get to cast the card you reveal for free, or put it in hand if you can’t.

She also doesn’t have to be the source of lifegain via her ability, so just gaining life during your turn from any source works. 

DORAN BESIEGED BY TIME

The flavor text on this card hits too hard.

Beyond that I’m so excited we got a new Doran that still cares about toughness, though this one has more going for it than the original Doran (but does not outshine the OG). First it gives a slight discount to creature spells that have a higher toughness than power. That’s a lot more cards than you think it is and so is a very relevant discount.

His second ability gives a buff whenever you attack with a creature that doesn’t have the same power and toughness number, so a 4/4 doesn’t get anything. However, the buff gives X where X is the difference in the toughness and power. So a 1/5 gets a +4/+4 buff, but it works the other way too. If you attack with a 6/1, that creature gets a +5/+5 buff!

While Doran here doesn’t provide the near generic advantage some other legends will, the amount of cards the will synergize with him like Doran the Siege Tower, Colfenor the Last Yew and Felothar the Steadfast will make him a dangerous lingering presence if not dealt with.

GRUB STORIED MATRIARCH // GRUB NORTORIOUS AUNTIE

Being a three drop, you would think that might be a bit early for recursion of a creature. This isn’t true if you’re using goblins. Also being a potential commander, the front side of the card being able to come back and get you more value is pretty good.

The back side of the card has a high ceiling, being able to copy a creature to get some extra value is always good. Unfortunately or fortunately, you have to attack with Grub to get the copy, which means that it might die in combat (but benefits the front side a bit) and it leaves staples power houses like Etali Primal Storm out of the value stream. It work better with some goblins obviously. You do sacrifice the token copy you make at the end of turn, so getting some nifty death triggers are also on the table.

As a commander it’s a good card and can lead a deck that doesn’t have to be exclusively goblins.

HIGH PERFECT MORCANT

One of the earliest legends previewed, she has been well covered already. Elves are popular and she pairs well with Flourishing Defenses which got a reprint in the Black, Red and Green precon Blight Curse (“unfortunate” for those who bought them up beforehand).

Outside of that potential with -1/-1 counters, you can tap three untapped elves to Proliferate, which is a very good ability because of how Elf decks usually work and helps add other cards that you may want to include like sagas or planeswalkers, not to mention any inclusion of +1/+1 shenanigans.

KIROL ATTENTIVE FIRST-YEAR

Another Red and White legend for the set that bring a unique ability along with it. This young (?) vampire allows you to copy triggered abilities you control, which has a lot of interesting implications across a number of strategies. Not all of those want to tap down their creatures to do it, but having some doubling around is a good thing for most decks.

You can only use the ability once per turn, but that’s on every turn and not just your own. Luminarch’s Ascension could be even dumber. Perhaps you like more damage from Sulfuric Vortex. Maybe Arabella needed to be more scary.

As far as leading a deck, I can see Kirol doing so, but it would probably have to be a dedicated strategy. I’d say they’re better in the 99 usually.

RHYS THE EVERMORE

Straight out as a commander leading a deck I’d say I’m hard pressed to imagine a deck where he is best in the lead or even worth considering.

However as a piece in the 99? Absolutely golden. He helps you rebuy a creature that may be dying and has the added utility of taking counters of a creature you control. That doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider cards that help you reuse creatures via counters like Cauldron of Souls and the Saga creatures from Final Fantasy the extra utility starts coming into play and value can be gained.

He won’t go in tons of decks but Rhys definitely has homes to visit.

SANAR, INNOVATIVE FIRST-YEAR

So, this card is a little variable. If he leads the deck, you get to reveal two cards and cast cards with mana value two or less from among those if there is a Red one and a Blue one. You still have to pay the mana for them.

At the lead of a deck, I could see this working is a semi-storm style of deck, where you just want some advantage and a low mana value curve. I see Sanar working better in the 99 of some other decks, like Narset Enlightened Exile or Niv-MIzzet Reborn. Add some more colors for vivid and some cards that card about having different colors and this can potentially be a very good inclusion for a bit of card selection.

SYGG WANDERWINE WISDOM // SYGG WANDERBRINE SHIELD

A merfolk legend that doesn’t need islandwalk because he simply cannot be blocked. It also provides some card draw when a creature hits a player when he enters the battlefield or transforms, and because he doesn’t exile himself to transform that can potentially be himself that nets you that card.

The backside gives protection from each color when it transforms, so you get to play around a bit using both sides to block, get a hit in, protect a creature you need, all potentially on himself. While not too powerful, Sygg is a self contained engine of value.

I could see him leading a deck just for the consistency he provides overall, and he doesn’t care about Merfolk specifically which lends him to the commander role. He’d also be great in the 99 of some decks, maybe especially in some that need to hit for damage like Daxos of Meletis or extra support in decks like Jin Sakai Ghost of Tsushima. Being a legend, he also supports that archetype.

TRYSTAN CALLOUS CULTIVATOR // TRYSTAN PENITENT CULLER

Trystan here is an elf that cares seemingly only about himself. A new character to Lorwyn, I’m not entirely sure of their personality or motivations, but if the card is any indication maybe don’t be his friend.

As for the card itself, both side card about milling cards and seeing elves hit the yard, so this seems like a quintessential reanimation commander. Elves tend to be small though, so mass reanimation spells like Patriarch’s Bidding or Living Death might work best here if you go fully into the mill side of things.

When you mill, you do get to gain some benefit depending on which side you have at the time. Frost side gains you life. Backside takes life from your opponents if you exile an elf from your own graveyard. Each gives some incremental progression to the game, keeping you in it and taking your opponent slowly out of it.

As a commander, I don’t see him leading many decks. Elves have many powerful legends that do more with less hoops to jump through. Maybe he could be in the 99 of some lists, but the milling will have to be something the deck wants. I’m think in deck where he could go, maybe a quarter of them would consider him outside of +1 elf to list scenarios.

STORIED TIME

That’s the legends of Lorwyn… for now. Spoilers are still coming so I’m probably going to miss a few from this article. An observation is that there are many less legends this set than prior ones, and that’s actually refreshing. We can spend some time on the Vorthos side of things to discover why they are in the story and on the Commander side we can enjoy them longer playing at the table.

I’m quite excited for the set, and I think right not it will have a few sleeper cards for commander, but that’s another Top Ten article for later.

Until next time, embrace the duality you have.