Lorwyn Eclipsed Prerelease 1-2

A slightly auspicious start to our Two-Headed Giant experience, as I got a paper cut while I was opening my box! Fortunately for me, Rebecca had a narwhal band-aid for me, so no blood hit the floor. 

I built a RW deck using blight counters and heavy on removal-I had a ton of spells to remove or incapacitate creatures. 

We also opened 3 copies of Maralen, Fae Ascendant so why not try an elves and faeries deck with lots of flash creatures? Rebecca took that one. 

Round 1 vs. Brian and Brian

They were running UW merfolk & RG elementals. And I'm pleased to say that our decks did things in the early game...but Brian (no, the other one) cast 3 Run Away Together  on consecutive turns. That's right; every turn we cast creatures, they got bounced. 

That took our creatures out of the action long enough for them to build tempo & use the Champion of the Path to take us out. I drew one removal spell that game, and I was reluctant for Rebecca to run out a flash blocker. Lesson definitely learned: flash creatures can sub as removal. 

Round 2 vs. Steven & Eli

They had a cheap UW fliers deck with a BR goblins that worked together well to overwhelm us. We had some removal, and the Lasting Tarfire I cast did some WORK but we couldn’t get enough creatures onto the board to hold off the creatures coming at us. Lasting Tarfire did all our damage, while at one point, they swung for NINE in the air. 

Round 3 Jacob & Harold

Jacob had a BG elves deck, and Harold a UWR Elementals deck.

Unfortunately for them, after a Keep Out on Jacob’s Shimmerwilds Growth, he had to spend time getting his colors fixed, slowing him down considerably. Harold had some Summit Sentinels, but apparently drew dead when he blocked with them, while Rebecca sent fliers over to swiftly end the game.

Despite the record, we both came away from the prerelease with very positive impressions of the set! I am looking forward to playing this set and seeing what decks it has to offer. 

Thanks as always to Red Castle Games for a well run event. 

Preview Season

The Lorwyn Eclipsed pre-release was this weekend--and do you know what WotC did all weekend?

If you said: preview cards from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set, then collect your prize!

Sigh. Why are they ignoring the product I'm about to give them money for, product that I had in my hands this weekend to play, for product that doesn't even exist yet?

I don't know; maybe a mistake was made and the cards were leaked early but it just seems like WotC doesn't care to allow us to enjoy things.

Set Review: Lorwyn Eclipsed

Mechanics article. 

Set list here. 

Added bonus; the behind the scenes creation of the Lorwyn Eclipsed trailer!

Let's get cracking with the mechanics.

I'm not sure Vivid is a mechanic, but it's a very intuitive thing to understand and that's always good. 

Hybrid mana feels less like a mechanic and more like a feature. Cards don't do something because of hybrid mana, they just become a little more versatile to cast. Still; good feature to have in any set, and it is a good signal boost for Shadowmoor.

Blight is something I'm definitely interested in, as "drawback" mechanics provide inspiration to do something unusual. -1 counters let WotC turn some different knobs on creature abilities, and they wisely did not include +1 counters to avoid confusion. Dig it.

Changeling & Kindred: Kindred is something I think players have been hoping for since the original Lorwyn, so it's nice to see that codified. Changeling has been around long enough that I don't feel like it's adding anything new to the game but it still finds a good home here.

Finally, double-faced cards offer a pretty neat way to illustrate Lorwyn/Shadowmoor's duality. Do I wish there were solutions beyond DFCs? Yes, but the game is this way now. Might as well howl at the moon. 

However, in the I don't like it column, we have Behold. There are a couple reasons for this. 

First; to do what they did for Lorwyn Eclipsed, the templating on the mechanic changed. The mechanic in Dragonstorm provided you with a bonus if you did it and was a "may" effect. One card in Lorwyn Eclipsed mirrors this: Celestial Reunion. None of the other cards have that conditional on them. Why do that? Now they aren't even consistent within the set. 

Second: with the other new cards, you cannot chose not to pay the Behold cost: either you pay it or in the case of 5 spells (6 if you include Flashback on one), you cannot play the card, in the case of 5 spells you pay an additional 2.

The mechanic is a drawback one and now it feels different: again, I think this inconsistency is a bad thing.  

Set thoughts overall:

This time, I'm finding hard to do color breakdowns. The cards feel "flatter" from a power stance, and not interconnected in the way Bloomburrow cards were-another typal set. Likely this is because Lorwyn Elipsed has a lot more heavy lifting to do, to represent two different blocks. The blatant interactions are just that, but there isn't anything that feels unusual here. Little that catches my eye to do something new or different. 

I'm not saying the set is bad, more that it may take some time to reveal itself for what it is, providing a lot of possible options for players to make decks work in Limited environments. Certainly there's a soft nudge towards making three-color decks, with Vivid and hybrid mana, and at least a couple possible 'go wide' options in goblins and kithkin. 

How it interacts with the larger ecosystem of Magic is harder to predict but my guess is that it doesn't overthrow any old decks or create new ones. Instead, it offers options and gives newer players cards that are good, but might be overlooked by more established ones.

All in all Lorwyn Eclipsed seems like something that doesn't have an immediate right answer or obviously powerful thing to do. There's some cool cards, and the opportunity for a lot of interactions and that feels great. The more the set can reveal itself through play, the more engaging it is. 

Late To The Party: Arranger

I had Arranger on my list of games to try for quite some time due to a review I read on the Escapist, before that website had a break and now just looks like blue Kotaku. 

Speaking of; does anyone know of a good gaming review site? With written reviews? I don't mind the occasionally playthrough but I do not need 10 fucking minutes of a game review that isn't done by Yatzhee Croshaw. Three minutes is about what is needed for a video review that isn't a discussion between people.

Anyway; Arranger has some really great upsides; a charming story and presentation and a puzzle system that is almost too intuitive it's so easy to grasp. I feel like you could set anyone in front of this game and they would grasp the basics almost immediately. 

Unfortunately, it also has one really big drawback; the lack of a map. So if I took a break between games, even if it was just a week, I would come back to the game and have no idea where I was or where I needed to go. This lead to me inadvertently backtracking, then getting to a new spot with no idea what I should do next. 

It also meant that there were some puzzles that just baffled me and I had to go online to get help with. This sort of frustration put a kibosh on any fun I was having, which felt like a shame. There was so much going for Arranger, yet I just felt too stymied to continue. 

However, maybe it is for you! There is a lot to like so it's at least worth trying. 

Off With His Head

 

I think I've got it, and am happy to settle here.

4 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Cranial Ram

3 Junk Diver
3 Myr Retriever
4 Broadside Bombardiers
2 Rottenmouth Viper
2 Syr Ginger, the Meal Ender
3 Hullcarver

4 Weapons Manufacturing

3 Shrapnel Blast
3 Deadly Dispute
2 Demand Answers

4 Glimmervoid
3 Great Furnace
2 Swamp
3 Mountain
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Drossforge Bridge

3 Tezzeret, Cruel Captain

It needs a sideboard and I'm not sure what that would consist of. I'm also strongly considering removing Syr Ginger (who I dig) for Syndicate Tracker. I'm also considering Lotus Petal, but for now: this deck is in a completed state.

The real 'aha' moment came with Tezzeret, Cruel Captain. It isn't a sacrifice outlet the way Claws of Gix is but it can turn Munitions tokens into robots that explode. That seems like a pretty neat idea. 

The Legend

 John Avon is retiring from Magic art and I just think y'all should take a moment to appreciate the man's work. 

As great as so many of the early artists were, I'm fairly certain that without Avon's majestic landscapes, many of which set the standard for people, Magic wouldn't be the same game. Not to overlook his other contributions! The man clearly works hard to bring exceptional art to us. 

So for that a moment of gratitude. 

Sigh

If there's one overwhelming problem with this game, this cartoon has outlined it well. 

I came across it because of this video and how it spotlights the comment from the Mothership that 'we meant what we said at the time' as an excuse for why something they said was true in 2015 isn't true now. (About nine minutes in.)

And yes, ten years is a long time-long enough for the playerbase to know that we are going to get screwed over in order for Hasbro to make money. 

That their word is not bond.

Which is why it gets all the weirder when it comes to things like the Reserve List. And it shores up two notions for me personally: I am going to ignore as much of Universes Beyond as I can and I'm going to proxy cards if they get too expensive. 

My entertainment time is worth more to me than the effort they put into obfuscating the truth. 

Ah well. On to 2026. See you next week!