The final days of 2025 are proving to be much more eventful Magic-wise than most players hoped for. Not only did we get a bunch of Marvel Superheroes previews in Tuesday’s Weekly MTG, but today we’ve actually been given some early Lorwyn Eclipsed spoilers as well, in the set’s latest story article. Clearly, someone at Wizards is in the Holiday spirit.
These new cards are particularly interesting, too, as they give some welcome insight into the mechanics we’ll be seeing in our return trip to this popular plane. One of these, in particular, is a big surprise from a design perspective. If these mechanics are all fully realized in the main set, then Lorwyn Eclipsed should be every inch the in-universe palate cleanser so many hope it will be.
High Perfect Morcant
High Perfect Morcant is an exciting card on a number of axes. For starters, it introduces a brand-new mechanic in Blight. This appears to be a scaling mechanic, in that it has a numerical value attached, that forces your opponents to place -1/-1 counters on their creatures. If a card makes your opponent Blight 1, for example, they’ll place a single -1/-1 counter on one of their creatures.
As mechanics go, this feels a bit underwhelming at first glance. Punisher effects like this, which give your opponent a choice, tend not to perform very well in constructed Magic. That said, there’s less of a range of options here than we saw on past punisher mechanics like Tribute. Your opponent is always going to have to weaken their board state with this, which makes it somewhat consistent at least.
In Morcant’s case, you get to Blight each of your opponents for one each time any Elf enters, which could easily make it a one-sided board wipe in Elf Typal decks. If your Blight triggers alone don’t quite get you there, you can also Proliferate by tapping three Elves, potentially including Morcant itself, to push things further. Elf Typal isn’t really a thing in Standard right now, but this should be an excellent new Elves Commander.
Playability aside, it’s surprising to see -1/-1 counters on a new main set Lorwyn Eclipsed card. We knew the mechanic was returning in the Blight Curse Commander deck, but seeing it in Standard again is another story. Mark Rosewater has spoken before about R&D not liking -1/-1 counters due to their grindy play patterns, but clearly an exception has been made here.
Perfect Intimidation
While it would be easy to dismiss -1/-1 counters as a major mechanical theme of Lorwyn Eclipsed based on Morcant alone, Perfect Intimidation, another of today’s story spoilers, seems to reinforce it further. This modal spell lets you remove all counters from any creature, which could serve as a valuable way to undo Blight damage your opponent has done.
This effect has a bunch of other uses, too. You can strip an opponent’s creature of all its +1/+1 counters, for a start, which is more relevant than ever with all the token granting and doubling effects we see these days. You can also deal with more unusual counters, like those that grant keywords, Shield counters, etc.
Even if you don’t have any counters you want to hoover up, this card can do work via its hand attack mode. Exiling two cards is pretty nasty stuff, especially with how graveyard-reliant a lot of decks are these days. You can do this alongside the counter removal, too, since the card says “choose one or both.” This lets the card be a niche counter to counter strategies while also rarely being truly dead thanks to the first mode.
Unfortunately, Perfect Intimidation’s mana cost pretty much prices it out of any constructed format. Four is just too much to ask for such a low-tempo play in today’s Standard, never mind anywhere else. In Commander, it has some combo potential, since there aren’t many cards that remove counters en masse like this, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up. This seems like a Limited signpost and little more.
Unexpected Assistance
If you didn’t think Izzet was Wizards’ current golden child yet, then Unexpected Assistance might just convince you. This is yet another fantastic piece for the Izzet Looting and Lesson decks that are currently storming Standard.
Thanks to Convoke, you should easily be able to cast this for just three mana in most scenarios. Between Stormchaser’s Talent tokens and cheap creatures like Gran-Gran, that seems totally reasonable. If you can, this becomes a better Winternight Stories for the most part. The fact that tapping Gran-Gran to Convoke this out triggers her looting ability seems like a pretty strong synergy, too.
Outside of Standard, this card might actually have a shot in Pauper as well. Mono-Blue Terror remains the best deck in the format, and this does a lot for the strategy. You’ll often have a couple of creatures out to make it reasonable to cast, and it lets you pitch either a Deep Analysis or Sleep of the Dead to recast later. Against Exhume decks, it can even pitch a Tolarian Terror or Cryptic Serpent to throw off their plan.
On top of the card’s clear playability, the presence of Convoke here seems to imply it’ll be a big mechanic in the set as well. While we’ve seen the mechanic used sparingly in cameos over the past few years, those tended to be on high-rarity cards. The fact that this is a common may hint at it being a broader mechanic in Lorwyn Eclipsed, which I for one would very much enjoy.
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