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.
