With Lorwyn Eclipsed releasing on MTG Arena today, and fully in paper this Friday, we’re right on the cusp of seeing how well this set does once out in the wild. As befits the first set of a new year in Magic, there are a lot of cards here that players have high hopes for. As is always the case, however, others were missed in the early hype rush. If you look beyond the big boys, you’ll find that there are a ton of underrated MTG cards in Lorwyn Eclipsed, many of which can be had for very little at their pre-release prices.
5 | Dream Harvest
Dream Harvest is the kind of card that gets better and better the more times you read it. At seven mana, most early reactions compared it to cEDH powerhouse Etali, Primal Conqueror. This is an apt comparison in some ways, but in others, Dream Harvest is much, much better than that.
First of all, Dream Harvest can net you multiple spells per opponent. If the first nonland card exiled from an opponent’s library costs less than five, Dream Harvest just keeps on going. There are some serious high rolls possible here, where you hit four mana worth of spells followed by a big eight mana bomb afterwards. With three opponents to plunder in Commander, the chance of going over on value like this is fairly high.
On top of this, Dream Harvest gives you much more control over your spell timing than Etali. You don’t have to cast your stolen spells right away; instead, you have the rest of your turn to spread them out. This means counterspells you hit aren’t totally wasted, since you can hold them up to protect your other spells.
While Dream Harvest lacks Etali’s body, and therefore its easy recurrability, there are still ways to get it back from your graveyard over and over. Even without those, the raw value potential here makes this one of the must-have cards in the set for Commander, especially at its current $0.67 price tag.
4 | Adept Watershaper
Adept Watershaper tricks you into thinking it’s a Merfolk support card with its typing and artwork, but really it’s one of the most widely-applicable white cards we’ve seen in a while. The ability to grant all of your tapped creatures Indestructible, regardless of type, is incredibly exciting for a range of decks.
At an absolute base level, this makes your attackers Indestructible during combat and during your opponent’s turn as well. This lets you crash in without fear and force awkward blocks on your opponent’s part. I expect Mono-White Aggro decks in Standard to try the card out for this reason alone.
Beyond that, there’s also a lot more synergy to be had. With Convoke instants such as Chord of Calling or Lethal Scheme, you can tap down and protect your board in response to a wipe or removal. You can also clone Watershaper fairly easy thanks to its reasonable cost, at which point both copies can protect each other.
As long as your deck has an instant-speed way to tap creatures, such as a Vehicle or an Enduring Vitality effect, you can get a ton of value out of Adept Watershaper. With how well it shrugs off removal and even board wipes, it should put in work in both Commander and constructed.
3 | Soul Immolation
When it comes to underrated cards from Lorwyn Eclipsed, few are more so than Soul Immolation. Right now, you can pick up this brand-new mythic rare for just under $4. When you consider the sheer range of things it can do, that sounds like the bargain of the century.
For starters, Soul Immolation is just the best red board wipe we’ve seen in years, possibly since Blasphemous Act. You do need a high-toughness creature to get it going, but once you do, it hits only your opponents’ creatures, which is a huge upside. You don’t even need to give that creature up, either, since you can Blight onto something else after choosing the maximum blight amount. This line honestly feels like a mistake, given that Immolation doesn’t disrupt the rest of your board at all.
On top of that, Soul Immolation also deals its damage directly to your opponents’ faces. In most cases, this will just be a nice bit of incidental burn. In the right deck, however, it can be a quick way to close out a game. With something like The Walls of Ba Sing Se in play, you can wipe out three-quarters of every opponent’s life immediately. There are also plenty of ways to build up a big creature yourself, whether you’re playing Voltron or a counters deck.
The best thing about Soul Immolation, however, is that it doesn’t really need these specific synergies to thrive. In an average deck, with average-sized creatures, it’s still an incredible new board wipe. If you’re planning to play red in Commander any time soon, this is a slam-dunk pickup for sure.
2 | Brigid, Clachan’s Heart/Brigid, Doun’s Mind
Thanks to Mark Rosewater’s teaser article, we knew we’d be getting a creature version of Gaea’s Cradle in Lorwyn Eclipsed. Even with this early simmering hype, however, Brigid, Clachan’s Heart has seemingly fallen off the community’s radar over the last week. Copies of this new legend can be had for just $1.25 right now, which seems criminally low.
While you do have to wait a turn in order to access it, Brigid offers the best new take on a Gaea’s Cradle effect since the original. It can produce white mana instead of green, for a start, which opens up a range of avenues. Additionally, the fact that it comes attached to a creature makes untap combos incredibly easy. Brigid goes infinite with a bunch of different cards, from Staff of Domination to Gauntlets of Light.
Whether you’re winning on the spot or just ramping out an early Craterhoof Behemoth, Brigid goes incredibly hard in Commander. Throw in some potential in Standard Selesnya Landfall lists, and Brigid is a clear highlight of Lorwyn Eclipsed.
1 | Meek Attack
Meek Attack is, hands down, the most wildly underrated card from Lorwyn Eclipsed right now. As soon as it was spoiled, players noted its similarities to the iconic Sneak Attack, and its ample combo potential. Alongside Famished Worldsire, the card opens up some truly absurd turn four wins in Standard. Go back further, and it becomes a way to drop an early Agent of Treachery or Hornet Queen in Pioneer. It can even drop the Kiki Jiki, Mirror-Breaker/Deceiver Exarch combo on turn four at instant speed in Modern, giving it some potential there, too.
Admittedly, the card is less exciting for Commander. Sneak Attack is unrestricted in the format and is better than its Meek cousin in nearly every respect. That said, decks that want one may well want both. Meek Attack’s lower cost gives it value in more aggressive decks, too, where the size of the creature is less relevant than simply getting it down quickly.
Despite this huge potential, Meek Attack is currently sitting at just $3.37. That’s low for any new mythic, but particularly one as exciting as this. Given how well the card performed in the Lorwyn Eclipsed early access event, this is a surprising turn of events, and one I expect to resolve itself very soon post-release.
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