Following the Marvel Superheroes Preview Prologue, we thought we were all done with 2025. Well, we knew the story chapters for Lorwyn Eclipsed would continue, but that was only expected to be fantastical story goodness. Yesterday, however, Wizards of the Coast gave us a real surprise, debuting three new Lorwyn Eclipsed spoilers.
Out of this trio, High Perfect Morcant is the big new legend everyone is talking about. Utilizing the new Blight mechanic, this new Elf Typal legend looks like a scary Commander build-around. At worst, this new Elf can make your opponent’s creatures a lot weaker and keep you ahead. At best, however, there’s some serious combo shenanigans to exploit.
MTG Flourishing Defenses
First printed 17 years ago in Shadowmoor, Flourishing Defenses creates a new, almost infinite combo with High Perfect Morcant. Helpfully, this combo is incredibly easy to activate, too, as you only really need Flourishing Defenses in play first. From here, simply playing Morcant will dish out a -1/-1 counter to an opposing creature, which triggers Flourishing Defenses.
This, in turn, will create a 1/1 Elf Token, which then triggers High Perfect Morcant. This loop will continue until every single creature your opponents control dies. Notably, since Morcant dishes out -1/-1 counters to everything, this even works against Indestructible, Hexproof, and even Shroud.
Essentially, this two-card combo is a devastating one-sided board wipe. As if that wasn’t already good enough for effectively five mana, you even get a ton of Elves for your trouble. With a card like Elvish Archdruid in the mix, this also means tons of mana for more shenanigans. Even without Haste, this two-card combo should easily win you the game.
Technically, this isn’t the first time that MTG players have been able to exploit this combo. That said, previously, this combo needed three cards and some extra steps to function. Using the classic combo of Ivy Lane Denizen and Devoted Druid, you can easily create infinite mana and Elves with Flourishing Defenses. While this combo is strong, sadly, it’s not really enough to make this card popular.
To date, this three-card combo has been where Flourishing Defenses has seen most of its play. While it’s definitely useful, Flourishing Defenses only appears in around 3,750 decks, according to EDHREC. That, however, is about to change next year.
The Spike
Thanks to its incredibly low play percentage, Flourishing Defenses has long been a cheap MTG card. This isn’t surprising at all, as it’s only really good within Elf Typal Commander decks. Even then, these decks would need to have a strong -1/-1 Counter theme to really make the card work.
Now, while only seen one card with Blight, it looks like we’re getting both of those things in Lorwyn Eclipsed. This has caused demand for Flourishing Defenses to absolutely skyrocket to a comical degree. Before yesterday, only 15 copies of Flourishing Defenses had been sold in the past month. On December 11th, however, a whopping 264 copies were sold in one day.
Unsurprisingly, this has completely stripped the market of supply and caused an absolutely obscene price spike as a result. Previously, near-mint non-foil copies of Flourishing Defenses were selling for around $0.38 on average. Now, the market price has shot up to $21.76, and it might not even stop there.
Currently, on TCGplayer, near-mint non-foil listings for Flourishing Defenses start at $22.99. With only 26 copies available at this price and beyond, there’s no denying this card is now rather expensive. This is especially true for foil copies, which have sold for upwards of $50, but are now listed for $99.95!
Unfortunately, even if you don’t care about the condition of your cards, there’s barely any savings to be had. Currently, the cheapest copy of Flourishing Defenses on the market is a $21.30 moderaetly played copy. Given how quickly sales have been happening, even this incredibly high-priced option might not last long, especially since Shadowmoor isn’t the most widely printed set in the first place.
Risk of Reprint?
For better or worse, there’s a real risk that buying Flourishing Defenses now is a terrible investment. While we can’t guarantee anything, it does feel like this MTG card could easily be reprinted. In theory, this might happen in the main Lorwyn Eclipsed set, but putting a turn five combo into Standard doesn’t seem ideal.
Even when ruling out the main set, we already know we’re getting a Commander precon with a -1/-1 Counter theme. This deck, Blight Curse, could easily contain a copy of Flourishing Defenses as a flavorful and fitting reprint. Potentially, this could push the deck over the edge, power-wise, but that’s far from guaranteed.
So long as this precon doesn’t contain a card like High Perfect Morcant, Flourishing Defenses would only be a decent value engine. Personally, due to this, I wouldn’t at all be surprised for Flourishing Defenses to be reprinted within Blight Curse. If this happens, the price of this card is bound to absolutely crash, as new supply will flood the market.
Even if this doesn’t happen, there’s also the question of where this two-card combo will sit in the Commander brackets. Technically, it’s just about slow enough for Bracket Three, and isn’t a guaranteed win, but it’s also not exactly fun. Wizards has long stayed away from -1/-1 counters for exactly this reason, so many MTG players might not want to play with, or against, it.
Ultimately, with the future of Flourishing Defenses very much up in the air, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Thankfully, we won’t have to wait too long, since Lorwyn Eclipsed spoilers start on January 5th.
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