Preview season for the next Magic: The Gathering set, Lorwyn Eclipsed, is in full swing. On Jan. 6, Wizards of the Coast published the official decklists for the set’s two preconstructed Commander decks, along with a 36-minute video showcasing each deck and explaining the core mechanics of each. The names of the precons — Dance of the Elements and Blight Curse — and their respective Commanders, were first revealed as part of a Lorwyn Eclipsed world debut on Jan. 5, but this is the first look we get at the rest of the included cards (both new designs and reprints) and the strategies of the decks.
Each deck focuses on a specific mechanic present within the wider Lorwyn Eclipsed set. Dance of the Elements leverages “Evoke” to cast creature spells for cheap and then sacrifice them as soon as they enter, which essentially turns creatures into sorceries (with some clever loopholes to exploit). Meanwhile, Blight Curse, fittingly, is all about Blight counters that give creatures -1/-1 counters, but Lorwyn Eclipsed complicates how blight gets used enough that things are far more interesting than they might seem at a glance (get ready to blight your own creatures, and love it).
Particularly when adjusted with cards from outside the set, these Commanders and their decks have huge potential — but the playstyles of each couldn’t be more different.
Dance of the Elements
Ashling, the Limitless is the default Commander for Dance of the Elements, a five-color deck that’s all about elementals. Ashling gives all elemental spells in your hand evoke 4 (you can cast them for four colorful mana, but they’re sacrificed upon entering the battlefield). At face value, that’s really only useful for elementals that cost more than four mana by default and have solid abilities that trigger when they enter. But Ashling’s second ability changes things: Whenever you sacrifice a nontoken Elemental, create a token that’s a copy of it. That token gets haste and is sacrificed at your end step unless you pay one of each mana color. Functionally, that means you can double-cast any elemental for four mana of any color, and if you can pay to keep it, the copy stays on the board.
The biggest trick here, however, is the inclusion of lots of creatures with encore, an ability that lets you exile a creature from your graveyard in exchange for one token copy per each opponent. Those tokens have haste, must attack their respective opponent, and get sacrificed at the end of your turn. Essentially, you’re racking up even more enter-the-battlefield triggers and hitting your enemies for tons of damage each time you encore a creature. Plus, your graveyard will be full of creatures that are ready to roll thanks to the evoke mechanic.
The alternate Commander is Mass of Mysteries, another elemental that costs one of each mana color (five total). It’s a 5/5 that comes with first strike, vigilance, and trample. During combat, it gives another target elemental myriad, meaning that whenever it attacks, it creates a token copy that’s tapped and attacking each other opponent. Whereas Ashling can function in any game format in an elemental-heavy deck, Mass of Mysteries is obviously geared towards four-player Commander formats. Fittingly, the deck comes loaded with all sorts of elemental creatures with various ETB effects for some seriously explosive potential — as long as you have the mana to cover evoke costs.
Blight Curse
Previous Lorwyn-Shadowmoor sets utilized -1/-1 blight tokens as well, but the black-red-green Blight Curse Commander deck proves Lorwyn Eclipsed looks to complicate that strategy. That’s on full display in Blight Curse, led by Auntie Ool, Cursewretch. First off, her ward cost is blight 2, meaning that any opposing player that targets her has to put two -1/-1 counters on creatures they control. With Auntie in play, you get to draw a card if a blight counter is put on one of your creatures. If a blight counter is put on an enemy creature, that creature’s controller loses one life. She can leverage using blight counters on your creatures as a draw engine or use them to wipe out enemy creatures while damaging opponents. In other words, get you an auntie that can do both: Auntie Ool.
The alternate commander, called The Reaper, King No More, is a scarecrow that puts a blight counter on up to two creature when it enters. Whenever an opponent’s creature with a blight counter dies, you can put that card on the battlefield under your control (but only once per turn). At large, Blight Curse interacts with far more than just blight counters, which is another interesting complication that feels surprising. Cards like Ferrafor, Young Yew can tap to double the number of each kind of counter on a creature. That could be an easy way to destroy a creature if half its toughness has already been chipped away by blight.
Whether you want to turn elementals into a revolving door of explosive ETB triggers or grind the table down with a web of blight counters and stolen creatures, Lorwyn Eclipsed’s Commander decks present two very enticing options. Taken together, they capture the heart of Lorwyn’s return in depicting a chaotic world where familiar mechanics come back twisted just enough to feel dangerous again.
