Lorwyn Eclipsed Prerelease Guide: New Mechanics, Archetypes, and Top Picks

Aye Aye, Boggart Brute! You’ve come to the right place if you are looking for the best tools to raid your Lorwyn Pre-Release and escape with lots of treasure from the arrogant Elves! 

I’ll give you an overview of the mechanics, archetypes and the best ways to approach Sealed for your Pre-Release. Let us dive in and return to the realm of Lorwyn together starting off with the Mechanics, cause there is a lot to talk about!

Lorwyn Eclipsed Set Mechanics Overview

If you want to read deeper into the mechanics of the set specifically, check out this piece by Skura!

Vivid (New) and Hybrid Mana (Returning)

Vivid is an ability that cares about the number of colors among permanents you control (from 0 to 5). It’s the “five-colour good stuff” mechanic of Lorwyn. The more colours you dip into, the more powerful your Vivid cards will be. The ability is featured on 14 cards in total ( 6 green cards, 2 blue, 2 red, 1 white, 1 black, 1 blue-green, 1 blue-red). Predominantly a green ability, which makes sense if you consider that green is best at fixing and splashing for more colours. Noteworthy about this mechanic is the synergy with the many hybrid-mana cost permanents in the set. 

Theoretically, you can be a blue-green deck without any splashes and achieve Vivid 5 by having a blue-white, blue-black and a red-green hybrid creature in play. Prioritizing two and three-mana hybrid cost plays is important to enable Vivid payoffs consistently and on time. Many of the Vivid payoffs provide a colour or, in some cases, even two colours by themselves to give you a bonus even without anything else in play, but to really push the powerlevel on those cards, you want upwards of three different colours in play. Certainly a fun-looking mechanic that will lead to interesting draft and deckbuilding decisions.

Blight (New) and -1/-1 Counters (Returning)

Blight is a new keyword action that converts your own creature’s stats into a spendable resource. To blight N, you put N -1/-1 counters on a creature you control. Blight often appears as a cost, so you’re choosing when to “pay” with your own board. The key rules nuance is that the creature receiving counters is not targeted (the target is chosen on resolution of the trigger, which means it can’t be fizzled by a removal spell in response), and you can put more -1/-1 counters on something than it would take to kill it (which matters when you’re happy to “cash in” a small creature). Blight is featured on a whopping 25 cards in total (10 black cards, 8 red cards, 3 white, 2 red-black, 1 blue, and 1 green-black card). 

In addition to blight, a major theme of this set is creatures that enter with -1-1 counters already. They often have an ability that removes their -1-1 counter/s for a positive effect. These creatures pair very well with Blight, as you can spend their -1-1 counters for a bonus and keep going by using Blight to build up their counter supply over and over. There are 16 creatures in total that enter with -1-1 counters on them in this set (5 white, 4 black, 3 blue, 1 red, 1 green, 1 black-white, 1 red-white). This ability is slow and usually gives you understated creatures to begin with, but the payoff is high. If you remove the counters, you get a great deal of value out of them. The mechanic looks great in slower settings like Sealed. 

Changeling (Returning)

Changeling returns with Lorwyn as the mechanic to glue your typal decks together in Limited. A card with changeling is every creature type, everywhere (hand, library, graveyard, battlefield). This matters far more in Sealed than players expect, because Sealed pools often land in the uncomfortable zone of “I’m close to enough Merfolk/Elves/Goblins, but not quite.” Changeling turns “almost” into “functional,” and it increases the reliability of creature-type checks across the set. They are the perfect fillers for your typal deck. There are a whole lot of them to help out in that department; the Changeling mechanic is featured on 14 cards in this set.

Kindred (Returning)

Kindreds return as a card type that lets noncreature cards have creature types. The practical effect is straightforward - you can increase your typal density without overloading on mediocre bodies, and you can satisfy creature-type checks using permanents that are not creatures. Just like changeling, kindreds are creature-type cards in zones like your library and graveyard to increase the consistency of your typal synergies. In my personal view, one of the most fun mechanics in Magic. 

Convoke (Returning)

Convoke lets you tap creatures to help pay for a spell, either paying {1} per creature or producing colored mana if the creature matches the symbol you’re paying. Convoke allows you to turn board presence into mana to create Tempo. But you do have to be careful not to tap down all your blockers and let your defense slide. Convoke cards want to be paired with cheap creatures and/or cheap token generators. Convoke is the theme of the blue-white Merfolk archetype, which has plenty of creatures that benefit when they are being tapped. Convoke is featured on 16 cards in total (7 blue, 5 white, 1 blue-white, 1 green, 1 black and 1 red).

Behold (Returning)

Behold is a creature-type check. When a card asks you to behold something, you either choose a matching permanent you control or reveal a matching card from your hand. Behold is essentially a typal payoff mechanic. Behold cards want you to be heavily invested in their creature type. Changeling cards can higher your consistency at enabling the Behold cards on time. 

If you are looking to commit to let’s say Elves and enable your Elves with Behold properly, you are looking to play a minimum of 9 Elves/Changeling. There is a rare cycle in this set, one for each major creature type, that is asking you to behold and exile the card instead of just revealing it or having it in play. Those cards want you to be very heavily invested into the archetype. Be careful not to put them into a deck without enough enablers!

Limited Archetypes in Lorwyn Eclipsed

Lorwyn Eclipsed Limited features five main archetypes - Rakdos Goblins, Golgari Elves, Selesnya Kithkin, Azorius Merfolk, and Izzet Elementals. The other five color combinations are not even mentioned as Archetypes on the official website, but I assure you, there is support for them. I will talk about all ten archetypes, not just the main five. This is not relevant for Sealed, but for Draft I would presume that two players at one table can comfortably be in one of the main five, but only one player should be in the other five. 

If you'd like to read more about universal tips how to approach Sealed and Pre-Releases especially check out this evergreen guide by Hall of Famer Martin Juza here!

Azorius Merfolk

Merfolk wants you to play to the board to enable Convoke spells and utilize the bonuses many Merfolk give you when they are being tapped. The Archetype is a tempo-oriented, low-to-the-ground strategy that gains late-game power by drawing cards and combining various tap-for-profit synergies. 

Selesnya Kithkin 

Kithkin’s are back and they seem to be the premier aggro deck of the format. Wanting to play to the board and curve out with creatures to trigger their most common theme, which gives bonuses to your creatures whenever a creature enters the battlefield. They seem to have the ability of both going wide and going tall with various buffs. 

Rakdos Goblins

Blight being the Goblins mechanic makes this deck archetype similar in style to Rakdos Sacrifice. You are happy to blight onto your Tokens or Goblins that have “When it dies” triggered abilities. Multiple Goblins payoffs for your synergies deal damage whenever Goblins die, making you want to attack your opponents life total while accumulating value with the various Blight cards. Removal seems important to pick apart opposing typal synergies, which red-black as per usual has plenty. Multiple removal spells use the Blight mechanic, which makes them fit right in with the Boggart bunch.

Golgari Elves

The Elves in this Set care about the number of Elves in play and in your graveyard. It looks to be a grindy Midrange Strategy that trades off your creatures in combat to get bonuses by having more Elves in your graveyard. There are a good number of mill effects in green and black to help fill up your graveyard. These synergies strike me as decent in a format like Sealed, in which grindy and value-producing deep into the late game is a place you want to be, so keep an eye out for that when building your Sealed Pool.

Izzet Elementals

The signpost blue-red uncommon tells us Izzet cares about double triggering its Elementals, which goes hand in hand with another subtheme of the archetype - “Whenever you cast a spell with mana value 4 or greater, good things happen to you” making you prioritize higher costed cards when going to draft or build this deck. I will say with a strategy that wants you to play expensive spells, I would be cautious to make sure you are still playing plentiful 2 and 3 cost cards to have your defenses for the early game secured, so you are able to get to that powerful end game alive.

Orzhov -1-1 Counters

Orzhov, like the other lesser supported archetypes, does have a hybrid costed signpost uncommon that tells us what this archetype is about. It cares about -1-1 counters and to a degree about Blight, as those two mechanics go very well together. Many of the creatures with -1-1 counters are understated to begin with, but with enough time and mana, turn into formidable creatures.

The strategy seems to be very midrangey and value oriented, trying to buy enough time to get the most out of your creatures and use Blight in the lategame to gain even more value by re-using their abilities. There is a small Treefolk subtheme going on here, but there aren’t actually any Treefolk synergies in Orzhov. You could splash Green for Doran, Besieged by Time to make the high toughness matter, that’s about the only Treefolk synergy I could find. Again, an archetype with many mana sinks and a strong endgame, potentially great in Sealed.

Dimir Flash Faeries

Dimir is all about casting spells in your opponent's turn. Many of the creatures are Faeries with Flash. The Faerie creature type does not have many synergies, there are only two cards that care about the creature type Faerie, which are Illusion Spinners and Maralen, Fae Ascendant. This deck wants to play a tempo game and keep up tricks, removal and flash creatures to always keep your opponent guessing what could happen next. Sounds like a fun archetype! 

Boros Aggro

Boros is a little harder to identify, it seems to be an aggro deck. The signpost Uncommon cares about attacking, but is a five mana giant with -1-1 counters. The hybrid common gold card is a 2 mana 2/1 first striker. Generally speaking I would be a little careful with an archetype that shows little obvious support. In addition to that Boros is historically speaking a weak colour pair in Sealed as it lacks lategame and without clear, strong synergies to make up for the missing top-end, I would caution against going for Boros at your Pre-Release.

Simic and Gruul Vivid

I am going to group these two colour combinations together cause they seem to be doing the same thing, perhaps often making you go Temur with Hybrid off-colour cards that you can get your hands on, as you are already incentivised to go for multiple colours in the first place. A good amount of fixing, lower curve hybrid creatures/permanents of different colours to enable the powerful, higher cost Vivid cards and splashing for cheap removal is how you want your deck to look. I am excited to play with this strategy, and I would give this my pick for the best archetype in Lorwyn Eclipsed Sealed.

Mana Fixing in Lorwyn Eclipsed Limited

In terms of Dual Lands we have the rare shock land cycle and Evolving Wilds to fix our mana. Colourless fixing comes in the form of Changeling Wayfinder, Firdoch Core and Springleaf Drum. Green offers two ways of making your mana better at Uncommon and two at common, special shoutout to Great Forest Druid (card looks fantastic for the Vivid archetype).

Pre-Release Sealed Tips

• Going into your Pre-Release, you need an open mind to build whatever your pool dictates you to build. Synergy-driven decks are harder to come by than in Draft, as you don’t have any control over what your pool will look like. If you are lucky enough and you open a synergistic deck with a decent curve, go for it. If you are not, try to build the deck that utilizes the highest amount of quality cards: the best removal, rares, and ways to generate card advantage. 
• Sealed tends to be slower than Draft, which allows you to play more card advantage and higher cost cards on average.
• Unconditional removal is really important in Sealed due to the high amount of bombs you will face. If you have the fixing, splash for unconditional removal. 
• In Lorwyn Eclipsed, Vivid seems like the strongest deck in Sealed on average, but of course, you never know what your packs will bring, and perhaps you open the really strong Elves deck and can go for that. 
• Don’t underestimate your opponent's ability to be aggressive in Sealed. Make sure you have enough cheap plays on curve to prevent losing the early game, especially in a creature-centric format like Lorwyn Eclipsed.
• Utilize your sideboard. Bring in counterspells for powerful plays by your opponent or disenchant effects for annoying artifacts or enchantments your opponent shows you in Game 1 or 2.
• Be patient with your unconditional removal spells; you don’t want to waste them early and lose to a bomb or important synergy kindred payoff creature.

Best of luck at your Pre-Release!