Yesterday’s Lorwyn Eclipsed previews, while unexpected, were nevertheless incredibly welcome. Combined with the batch we saw during MagicCon: Atlanta back in September, they give us a fairly strong picture of how the set and its mechanics are going to play out. Thanks to the reveal of the Blight mechanic, in particular, we know that -1/-1 counters are coming back to MTG come January.
This is an exciting development in itself from a design perspective, since Wizards has previously expressed a distaste for -1/-1 counters. It also means that a lot of existing cards, which synergize with the maligned mechanic, could be in for a new lease of life. If you plan to board the Blight bus next year, these are the tools you’ll want in your belt.
Potent Uses For The MTG Blight Mechanic
Blight is a new MTG mechanic in Lorwyn Eclipsed that makes each of your opponents place a number of -1/-1 counters on each of their creatures. The only example we’ve seen so far has been High Perfect Morcant with Blight 1, which forces the placement of a single counter. While it’s unclear how big a part of the set it’ll be at present, the fact that there’s a number attached is a good sign.
What this means is that we’ll be getting some new cards that place -1/-1 counters soon, and possibly a lot of them. This, in turn, raises the stock of a number of interesting cards from the past. With Spitting Dilophosaurus, for example, each Blight trigger will remove three potential blockers from the board in Commander. Considering Dilophosaurus can place more -1/-1 counters when it attacks, this makes it very easy to render opposing defenses useless.
Another great beneficiary of an uptick in -1/-1 counters is Crumbling Ashes. As long as there are creatures with the counters in play, this is essentially a hard removal spell every single turn. Your opponents can play around this to an extent by putting their -1/-1 counters on their weaker creatures, but the potential value here is still fantastic. For two mana, this will likely be an easy auto-include in any Blight deck.
Players online have also been discussing the potential resurgence of Mutated Cultist in light of Blight’s reveal. While not a direct -1/-1 synergy card, this is still undeniably great in a world where they’re running amok. Getting to remove the debuffs on your own creatures and nab a mana boost is great, and you can leverage it in Blight decks where you’re placing a ton of counters yourself, too.
Death On The Wind
Beyond these bangers, the addition of the Blight mechanic to MTG also boosts a number of cards that care about creatures with -1/-1 counters on them dying. With Blight putting out three counters at a time, the odds of all of these effects triggering go way up.
Perhaps the most devious card in this genre is Blowfly Infestation. This allows you to place an extra -1/-1 counter each time a creature with one dies, which can quickly get out of hand in a Blight deck. One of the major downsides of the mechanic is that it gives your opponent a choice in where the counter goes, meaning they can “chump block” it by offering up 1/1 tokens and the like. With Infestation, however, they’re discouraged from doing so, since that will just lead to more counters.
It’s a sneaky way to bump up the mechanic’s power, and one I expect most Blight decks to try out. In a similar vein, The Scorpion God rewards you with extra draw when becountered creatures die. This, again, encourages your opponent to place counters on their “real” creatures, thus maximizing your value. With the Blight Curse Commander precon hinting at a Jund color identity for Blight overall, The Scorpion God could make a fantastic addition to the deck, if it doesn’t get a straight-up reprint there.
With these cards pressuring your opponent into weakening their big boys, Necroskitter really gets to step in and shine. This is one of the best -1/-1 counter payoff cards in all of Magic, letting you fully steal any creature that dies with one on. It makes a brilliant combination with Crumbling Ashes, and it’ll be fantastic with Blight in general, since each trigger will create three potential new bodies for you to harvest.
Commanding The Contagion
If you really want to maximize Blight in MTG, you’ll want to pick a Commander that really leans into its power as well.
The most obvious approach here is to run Blight as a Proliferate deck, under a Commander like Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice. Since Blight spreads -1/-1 counters around so efficiently, you’ll be able to keep the table under control with ease in such a strategy by Proliferating several creatures at a time. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is another great option for this style of play, albeit a more restrictive one, color-wise. You can also try Maha, Its Feathers Night, which doesn’t Proliferate but does allow for a similar style of Stax-y play.
If you want to get a bit more weird with it, Blight is also incredible with Volrath, the Shapestealer. Placing three -1/-1 counters gives him three new creatures to copy, which can allow for all kinds of shenanigans in the right board states. Volrath placing -1/-1 counters himself also makes it easy to pick off creatures this way, if they’re more use dead than alive. This is a pretty niche Commander, but Blight could be the boost it needs to see some serious play.
Overall, Blight has a ton to offer in the MTG Commander format. With players uncovering infinite combos with the mechanic’s first card already, I expect the mechanic as a whole to be very formidable indeed.
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