Some Thoughts on Lorwyn Eclipsed

With Spotlight Series Toronto in just a few days, I’ve been spamming drafts and a bit of sealed to try to really understand Lorwyn Eclipsed on a fundamental level. While I struggled initially, I learned a couple things, changed my strategy, and have now battled back to a solid 65% winrate in the arena BO1 queues over 25 drafts as of writing.

I attribute my success mostly to draft navigation/deck construction. I think the gameplay is a lot easier in this format than other recent ones, but the drafts are treacherous and pick order is contextual.

Trainwrecking is not an uncommon experience, and neither is building decks that look solid but have structural weaknesses that prevent them from actually killing the opponent. In theory the limitation of fewer archetypes should make drafting easier, but in practice you get punished hard for committing to a lane a few picks too early or late.

Before we understand how to draft a good Lorwyn deck, it’s important to understand the context of the format and how games are won.

Chapter 1: Set Overview

Lorwyn is a pretty confusing place.

At first glance it’s a typal set, so I assumed that it would be fast and combat centric. But it’s actually really slow and the damage pushed in the first few turns is often unimportant. The creatures, especially at common, are not good attackers. Evasion is rare, and the tricks are anemic.

It takes effort to run your opponent over with an aggressive curve, and there is little meaningful ‘reach’ to make going down to a low life total scary in the long term (especially given the large amount of life gain available). A traditional limited aggro deck is rarely viable in this format.

Advantages live on the board.

Given that aggro isn’t prominent, you might conclude the games are not board centric, but instead revolve around draw/removal spells. But this would be wrong again, as the set is board centric, and removal spells are less important than in most sets.

The mechanical themes of the set are all aligned towards making your board presence important. All the typal synergies reward a greater density of creatures on the board, in the yard (in case of elves), or in hand (behold/champion). Blighting requires a creature on board, and gets better the more options you have for counter distribution. Convoke provides mana advantage for putting creatures in play, and vivid benefits from the breadth of your board presence as well.

Beyond this, there are few ways to accrue card advantage outside of the board. There is one draw spell in the set, unexpected assistance, but its efficiency is deeply reliant on convoke. Many of the other card advantage engines are built around recurring creatures instead of drawing cards.

Off the board interaction is poor, as there is only one counterspell at lower rarity, Wild Unraveling, and it’s pretty sad.

As a result, having less than 14-15 creatures in your deck is troubling on a structural level, and control decks are not really viable in the format. Every deck is a flavor of creature based midrange.

Bombs are everywhere.

ECL is a bomb-centric set. The lack of aggression means games are rarely volatile enough to beat an opposing bomb without an answer or powerful synergy/bomb yourself. ECL also just has a really high density of bombs due to myriad incredibly broken gold typal cards such as Morcant’s Loyalist, Deepchannel Duelist, and the entire Eclipsed Cycle. There are other cycles of powerful rares such as the flip legends, evoke elementals, commands, champions, etc.

ECL limited is less about the quality of your curve or whether your role-players are C- vs Cs, and much more about jamming as many of these powerful cards into your deck as possible.

Removal matters less than usual.

This is bound to be controversial, I can’t stress enough that deprioritizing removal was the number one realization that led to me winning more.

Given how bomby this set is, removal initially looked essential to me. And truth be told, the quality of removal spells we got in ECL is some of the highest we have ever gotten at common. Blight Rot, Blossombind, Cinder Strike, Spiral into Solitude, Bogslither’s Embrace and Liminal Hold all look like cards you would be happy picking early in the draft. However, when we look at 17lands data, not a single one of these cards record data above a C level.

I initially assumed the data was somewhat inaccurate because I viewed all of those cards as premium. But I wasn’t winning as much as I hoped, so I began to take the data that removal was bad at face value for science.

I deprioritized removal, going from my usual target of 5-7 spells to a more modest 3-5 pieces of interaction and picking solid role players in my tribe over removal. I started winning noticeably more, my decks felt more synergistic and cohesive, and somehow, I wasn’t losing to bombs any more than I was before. This was deeply confusing at first, but the two functions removal usually fulfills are uniquely unimportant in the context of ECL.

Removal answers bombs. However, that’s a simplification, it answers a subset of bombs that resemble Baneslayer Angel. When the bomb is completely board dominant but doesn’t leave much material behind like Spinerock Tyrant, removal spells are a massive reversal in tempo and are often the only out. However, many of the bombs in ECL provide so much immediate value that removal interacts unfavorably.

The eclipsed creatures and the evoke elementals generate a clean and powerful two for one on ETB, the commands are similarly unanswerable, and cards such as Sunderflock, Gloom Ripper, Taster of Wares, Kinbinding, and Bloodline Bidding all accomplish everything immediately and laugh in the face of removal. This set has two planeswalkers and almost no removal that hits them.

When you face one of the myriad bombs in the set that immediately go up massively on cards, you need to establish your own synergies to fight back in the value war. The removal spell in your hand becomes a liability since it is a card that is trying to create a small game.

Removal is a haste attacker or immediate blocker. Much of the value removal brings is being proactive on both offence and defense. It enables and prevents attacks more effectively than another creature would when the board is already established because it can break stalls for new attacks immediately, or effectively neutralize threats much more reliably than a blocker does. This set is not really about tempo, damage, or combat so removal is subsequently less important.

Removal spells are also mostly not permanents for vivid. They don’t convoke or turn on typal synergies. You can’t behold them, or champion them, or recur them, or blight onto them, or grab them from an eclipsed card. While they break up some aspects of your opponent’s synergies, enough of these synergies happen immediately on etb or on zones other than the battlefield that this isn’t always profitable.

You definitely need some removal spells, but broadly they exist to answer specific threats from your opponent, and they don’t create the same kind of advantages or efficient exchanges you often see in other sets.

Chapter 2: Draft Navigation

Finding a lane

Lorwyn is remarkable in that there are basically only 5-6 decks. There’s the five main tribes, and a vivid deck that is arguably an extension of the elementals deck. Drafting straight Gruul, Orzhov, Simic, Boros or a monocolor deck will occasionally happen but I don’t enter drafts expecting to do so.

We are left with few options for color pairs, and nearly every card in the set is actually a secret gold card that is much better in one archetype than all others. Most common creatures only play well in their own tribe, and the few generic cards, such as removal spells, are usually not high picks. What this means is that drafting in ECL is not about finding an open color in pack one, and is instead about navigating towards the best archetype for your seat at all costs.

Bombs are essential

In most sets, drafters prioritize building a deck with no bad cards, emphasizing a good curve and plenty of interaction. While bombs and high leverage cards are nice, they are more of a luxury than a necessity. However, in ECL, building a deck composed mostly of commons is usually a disaster and high leverage bombs are the only reliable way to create advantages.

There are a couple reasons for this. The first of which is that this set both contains roughly double the amount of bombs of a normal set, and most of the bombs aren’t easily answerable with removal. This means that your opponent will have some number of bombs, and that the best way to deal with these bombs is to produce a comparable amount of value on your side, not try to interact with them.

The most important reason that you need bombs, is that they are the only way to attain meaningful synergy in your deck. The payoffs at common are marginal, with some of the better ones being the one mana discount on Mistmeadow Council, or the two life drain on Dawnhand Eulogist.

If you draft a typal deck that’s almost all commons, you will find that you didn’t actually draft a typal deck. Without uncommon and rare payoffs, you’ll have plenty of the tribe members without any good reasons to care about them.

As a result, typal decks care much less about the density of tribe members, and much more about the quantity of strong typal payoffs. Many of the typal payoffs don’t necessarily care about how many of your tribe you have, but that you have at least one. Your elves deck doesn’t need to have seventeen elves, it needs to have twelve elves and three or four bomb level payoffs for playing elves.

Locking in at the right time

Staying open is difficult, and you often end up drafting multiple disjoint decks through pack one because the commons are only good in one archetype. The best path is frequently to start by trying to amass as many powerful payoffs and bombs as possible, with little mind given to staying in the same lane as your previous early picks.

Once I get two powerful payoffs for the same archetype, I am likely to soft lock there and start biasing towards picking up solid role players for that deck. Once I have three or more powerful payoffs for the same archetype, I am willing to fully commit myself to that lane.

I’m happy to start with an Eclipsed Elf, then take a Deepchannel Duelist, then take a Flamebraider. While none of these cards will ever go in the same deck, I will at some point pick up another powerful payoff for one of these archetypes. When that happens, I’ll be up to two impactful payoffs and can consider myself in the lane.

Weird things can happen; sometimes you will get three powerful payoffs but the lane will dry up and you’ll be forced to pivot or awkwardly include subpackages. Trainwrecking is an expected part of this format, but by trying too hard to stay open, you’ll induce it more than you avoid it.

Chapter 3: Archetypes Deep Dive

Elves

Elves, when uncontested, are the best tribe. They have more typal cards than other tribes, and have a disproportionate share of the best rares, best uncommons, and best commons. As a result, elves are fiercely contested, with somewhere between 2-3 drafters per pod.

Stylistically, elves are an assertive graveyard deck. The creatures are well statted enough to force reasonable trades, and many of the elves payoffs such as Moon-Vigil Adherants and Creakwood Safewright reward you with yet more stats. The elves lack evasion or disruption, play a ton of creatures to achieve graveyard synergies, and gain lots of life. All this means that elves will frequently create board stalls intentionally or inadvertently.

The good elves decks are the ones that can grind enough in these stalls to reliably convert them to wins. The good elves decks are really good. The recursion and dig inherent to the archetype means you will see your bombs not only almost every game, but frequently multiple times per game. The bad elves decks are abysmal, and are just piles of bodies that will eventually lose to your opponent assembling a stronger engine, evasion, or milling out first.

Unfortunately, these bomb parity breakers are all at uncommon or higher rarity, and as a result, few of these cards will be opened. Those opened are distributed among the many elves players and even non-elves players who will be speculating on the archetype. As nice as Scarblade Scout and Dawnhand Eulogist are, no amount of these cards is going to fix an elves deck that lacks a grinding engine and top end.

If elves are not immediately open in pack 1, it is rare that they will open up later on. There are numerous first pick-worthy elves in the set, and the probability that nobody in your pod opened them is low. Some people in neighboring colors will open the bombs in pack 2 and be tempted as well.

You need a premium level card to get into elves. Do not get into elves because you saw a pick six Iron-Shield Elf or a pick nine Midnight Tilling.

Kithkin

Kithkin are remarkably unremarkable. While many of the other decks in ECL are trying to accomplish something angular or especially synergistic, the kithkin operate as a generic assertive midrange deck.

They get the strongest common payoff in the set, Mistmeadow Council, which cares about you having a two or three drop kithkin in play before turn 4. This card is phenomenal because of how little it asks of you. You don’t need fifteen kithkin in your deck to enable it, you just need ~seven at the right spots on the curve.

There are other premium payoffs, but ones like Eclipsed Kithkin and Kinsbaile Aspirant also have modest demands on the number of kithkin you include. There are three cards in the entire set that pay off going wide with kithkin, but Thoughtweft Imbuer is the only one worth going all-in on kithkin for. As a result, Imbuer decks play and are built differently than every other kithkin deck.

Kithkin isn’t a lane you’ll generally feel compelled to actively pursue, but it’s a good lane to default to when you start base green or white but the more contested tribes aren’t open.

Because you can afford a lower count of tribe members, generically nice tribeless cards like Pummeler for Hire, Reaping Willow, or Moonlit Lamenter are natural fits. The low kithkin requirements also make subthemes quite common in kithkin, often incorporating small elements of elves or vivid to pay off particularly strong cards.

Goblins

Goblins are the worst tribe in Lorwyn, and it’s not close. There are a couple of really powerful goblins payoffs, but the overall quality of goblin roleplayer creatures is low.

Goblins looks like it wants to play an attrition based aristocrats strategy, but the creatures are so poorly-statted that they almost never have profitable attacks. Poking in and draining your opponent down from eight in the late game is an enticing idea. Unfortunately, you’re pushing so little damage with your piddly 1/3s and 2/2s that your opponent will be far from drained out.

The lack of flying creatures or big blockers for your opponent’s threats means this deck does need a lot more removal than other archetypes, and the deck desperately desires card advantage it can’t easily find at common (sorry Blighted Blackthorn).

Goblins exemplifies the ‘bombs first’ strategy more than any other archetype, even elves, mostly because you need sufficient incentive to draft the deck, but also because the commons have powerful synergies with the rares and premium uncommons.

Gristle Glutton goes from a weak card to an amazing engine when combined with a Dawnhand Dissident or Reaping Willow. Churning through your entire deck and sacrificing all your creatures has a genuine purpose when you have a Boggart Cursecrafter, Boggart Mischief, or Bloodline Bidding. Eclipsed Boggart and Grub provide the redundancy and card advantage you need to ensure your engines come online.

I would take goblins cards considerably lower than every other archetype. Even if you open a Grub’s Command p1p1, the odds you end up in the deck are maybe 50%. That being said, goblins is one of the highest upside archetypes when it comes together, and once I do have a couple premium payoffs, I will gladly hop in. Because you will likely be the only goblins drafter, the goblin commons come cheaply and you can be relatively certain you’ll find enough to flesh out your curve.

Merfolk

Despite having many of the most powerful uncommons and rares, fish are the only tribe in which you can end up with a totally solid deck purely on the back of commons that nobody else wants at all. As a result, merfolk are the tribe that will most consistently assemble a powerful deck given an open lane.

The first ingredient in the deck is a core of individually laughable cheap commons that synergize really nicely. Tributary Vaulter, Silvergill Peddler, Wanderbrine Preacher, and Gravelgill Scoundrel are rough by themselves, but work excellently with each other and combine for some of the only scary curveouts in the set. The scoundrel is the most important, partially because it’s a 2 drop which is always more premium. It enables your other tap synergies before you start convoking and directly synergizes well with the other fish commons and uncommons, which care more about getting tapped.

The other ingredient is 4-6 convoke cards which both reward the density of your twos and threes and continue to enable tapping synergies even when good attacks aren’t present. Merrow Skyswimmer is premium, but Unexpected Assistance and Temporal Cleansing are also high picks. Because your common creatures are terrible in other archetypes you should be able to get them later, and I would prioritize picking these convoke cards earlier in the pack.

This simple blueprint will win a lot of games, even against decks that are doing more powerful and synergistic things.

The one caution I have with fish is that you really need the lane to be open, and the deck can’t be carried by a couple of premium cards the way other decks can. You need a much denser curve than other decks at the 2-3 drop slot to enable convoke, and you’re really going to feel it if the majority of those creatures aren’t fish. Drafting merfolk is a leap of faith that the commons will keep coming, but the lack of reliance on bombs makes this deck a safe late pivot for a lot of confusing seats.

Elementals/Vivid.

It’s difficult to discuss Vivid or elementals individually because the archetypes are so frequently intertwined. I’ll do my best.

Elementals Basics

There are relatively few reasons to care about the elemental type, and these payoffs care about elementals in different ways. Flamebraider and Kindle the Inner Flame are notable because they truly care about you having a ton of elementals in your deck. The other payoffs Sunderflock, Twinflame Travelers, and Eclipsed Flamekin don’t necessarily care about random elementals throughout the curve, and reward collecting a good number of higher cost elementals with impactful vivid triggers.

You can have a synergistic elementals deck that only has 8 elementals if your payoffs belong to the latter category, so your deck will often be more powerful if you play the better off-tribe cards instead of trying to fit in every card that says elemental on it. This archetype is a natural home for the many giants and treefolk in the set that are solid on rate but don’t necessarily fit into a heavily typal deck.

The elementals deck has a bit of a 2 drop problem. The common two drops, Summit Sentinel and Flamechain Mauler, aren’t the best for this strategy and the archetype doesn’t often care about their type. Because of this, and the four or more cost subtheme that incidentally rewards a higher curve, I’m really not looking to run more than four or five two drops in my elemental decks. Premium twos such as Flamebraider are even higher priority, but I don’t really care what common twos I end up with.

Vivid

Vivid decks tend to follow one of two different compositions, one more defensive build that utilizes five color fixing, and one more zoo oriented build or subtheme that uses the common hybrid changelings and more aggressive payoffs.

Five Color Vivid

ECL has excellent five color fixing, with a couple copies of Foraging Wickermaw and Great Forest Druid making it trivial to play any card you see. Tend the Sprigs, Firdoch Core, and Shimmerwild’s Growth can also work in a pinch, but these cards are really poor on rate. Removal that sticks on the board such as Blossombind, Liminal Hold, and Spiral Into Solitude gains a lot of value; it both disrupts the opponent and contributes difficult colors to Vivid. (White in particular is often hard to hit in these 5c shells).

While the mana is a pretty easy problem to solve, five color decks face another issue. Many of the best cards in the set require typal synergies. The hybrid changelings do an alright job for this, but they don’t fit well into the structure of a soupy value deck since they’re statted assertively. Because the best fixing is in the two drop creature slot, this deck combines nicely with elementals. The elementals deck lacks two drops they are excited about playing, and can easily accommodate your fixers.

The archetype often combines with other tribes as well. Much of the skill in drafting the Vivid deck is from understanding what your base colors are, and what tribes you might want to dip into for specific payoffs.

Vivid Zoo

Vivid can also be a smaller subtheme in typal decks that are mostly two colors, but are already enabling a splash and playing some of the hybrid changelings. Kithkin already likes to play Prideful Feastling and Gangling Stompling, so a Prismabasher or even a Glister Bairn ends up being incidentally nice.

Including a vivid subtheme isn’t that strong in any of the tribes, but it’s useful when your tribe is clearly being cut and you’re looking at a potential trainwreck.

Chapter 4: What Lorwyn is really about.

Lorwyn Eclipsed is a set about assembling value, but value is hard to come by and scarily committal during the draft. The games are less demanding in terms of combat navigation and technical play, and often go really long. As a result, having a high-quality and structurally sound deck is substantially more important to success than in most sets.

My favorite thing about ECL is that the set is highly contextual. There are few universally good or bad cards. With a deep understanding of the format, there is often a creative way to elevate your draft deck or sealed build beyond the sum of its parts.

The quickest way to understand the contextual value of cards is to look at the winrates of cards by archetype on 17lands. I learned that Reaping Willow, while a C+ overall, is broken at a B+ in goblins. Goldmeadow Nomad, while only a D+ in kithkin, is a C- in merfolk, because of how valuable 1 drops are to convoke.

It’s critical to understand which decks Dawn-Blessed Pennant is a D in, and where it improves to a C+. Knowing the baseline winrate data of the cards is insufficient here, you’ll gain a lot more from combing through the data and interrogating your assumptions.

Whether you’re going to Spotlight Series Toronto, playing to win some boxes on arena, or just looking to spike your FNM, I hope you took something away from this article.

Much love to Seedcore, Scrapheap, and my frequent collaborators/editors Zev Goldhaber-Gordon and Liam Etelson who have helped push me back into form in Limited.

Thanks for reading,

Neil Estrada