Lorwyn Eclipsed draft strategy rewards going all-in on creature types

There's only one way to win, and it's to never get creative

Magic: The Gathering’s beloved flop Lorwyn put a heavy emphasis on creature types when it debuted in 2008. So it’s no surprise that 2026’s first set, Lorwyn Eclipsed, puts a similar focus on the eight types of creatures (elemental, elf, faerie, giant, goblin, kithkin, merfolk, and treefolk) that exist in the dual plane of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor. “Nothing defines Lorwyn more than typal themes,” Magic Head Designer Mark Rosewater wrote in a Jan. 5 blog post about the set. He also wrote a week later in another post that the original Lorwyn “went overboard” with this, leaning into “deeply linear” archetypes where all drafts tended to play out the same.

After spending a few hours with Lorwyn Eclipsed as part of a Magic: The Gathering Arena preview, it seems that core problem remains. In my first draft, I was excited to see Sapling Nursery available on my first draw, which has a great landfall ability that generates a 3/4 treefolk token every time you play a land. You can also exile it to give all of your treefolk and forest lands indestructible until the end of turn. The drawback here is that it costs eight mana (two forests and six colorless), but it does have affinity for forests, so it costs one colorless mana less for each forest you control.

Okay, so we’re going for a treefolk deck, I thought. A little later, I grabbed a second treefolk in Blighted Blackthorn, making my colors green-black. But there was a problem. Lo and behold, the entire set only has a total of seven treefolk. So I started picking up some elves and as many changelings (which have all creature types) as I could find, along with different cards with interesting mechanics that might help me. I even found a second Sapling Nursery!

I struggled through a single win and was then absolutely destroyed by an opponent with an overwhelming black-white kithkin deck that focused on generating kithkin tokens and ultimately playing Champion of the Clachan, which gives all of their kithkin +1/+1. (There are 21 kithkin cards in the set.)

Not long after, I went up against a merfolk deck with Champions of the Shoal as its headliner. Every time it tapped to attack, it also tapped down my best creature — and gave it a stun counter. They also had a Deepchannel Duelist in play that gave all of their merfolk +1/+1 and it untapped a merfolk at the end of their turn.

My poor little treefolk deck never stood a chance.

If I’m being honest, I’m probably just jealous these people did so well in their drafts. But based on what I’ve seen in my experience so far, all the good decks that thrive quite simply just focus entirely on a single creature type. There’s no wiggle room to flex in different directions for a more subtle playstyle, and there really aren’t that many cards I’ve seen that offer anything interesting outside that framework. This makes Lorwyn Eclipsed feel really insular, with a lot of cards that you wouldn’t use outside the set itself. (Unless you plan to build a merfolk Commander deck.)

There are plenty of exceptions to this, like the aforementioned Sapling Nursery, which I’m already thinking about using in other decks. (Hello earthbending!) There are also a ton of elementals, 34 in total if you count both creatures and the kindred instants and sorceries. Many of these, especially those with vivid — an ability that scales based on the number of colors among permanents you control — can work really well in just about any five-color deck. (But let’s be honest, building a five-color deck in draft or sealed is extremely difficult unless you open an incredible amount of mana fixing.)

At the same time, for all the emphasis on these typal themes, the set is wildly unbalanced across those eight creature types. Like treefolks, giants and faeries feel a bit neglected with only 11 cards each. Meanwhile, there are 23 goblins and 29 elves in the mix, both classic Magic creature types with a huge amount of representation across the history of the game. I would have liked to have seen more equity in terms of representation.

After only a few hours experimenting with the set, it seems like the only way to win at Lorwyn Eclipsed is to go all-in on one creature type (and choose the right type at that). Otherwise, there really isn’t much else going for this set mechanically.

Maybe that’s the appeal for some players. There’s comfort in being told exactly what your deck should be. But because of this, Lorwyn Eclipsed so far feels a bit stubborn: This set knows exactly what it wants you to do and refuses to let you do anything else. For a return built on nostalgia, maybe that’s the point. But isn’t that the kind of design philosophy that Magic has spent the last decade trying to escape from?