General [ECL] Lorwyn Eclipsed

[MilesOfficial]

Why can't they print that in paper ffs

I get that there are some impracticalities to doing so, but I wish when they realized that, yes, if you make Magic cards, they should be available to players. Period! While I thought the outrage towards mechanically unique box toppers and Secret Lairs was silly, those aren't a fraction as anti-player as these. I'm not asking for legality in Legacy or Commander, I'm just asking for the Mystery Booster 2 treatment where there is a printing.

Who do Alchemy cards benefit? Arena players by-and-large prefer proper Magic cards and formats that have a 1:1 equivalent with real-life, as both the first-party data and that I'm able to suss out have represented time and time again. There's "novelty" in digital only cards, but it's fundamentally just self gratification for designers doing it because they can, which is fine I guess for the sake of exploring new areas of design, but they don't really do that any more. The digital-only mechanics that are hardest to capture in paper are the least compelling, and the designs have become closer and closer to what's printed in real-life every new expansion, as evidenced here.

I understand these are developed much later than the main set, and done so with the hindsight of the set's design to support them. Great! Print them a set or two later, exclusively in promo packs to encourage in-store play. Or make them a recurring Secret Lair that no one feels compelled to buy unless they're in for it. Or have them show up in Collector Boosters on rare occasion. Magic has so many product releases that I find it unfathomable that they can't find one to slip this in.

 

[StrionicAdventurer]

Why can't they print that in paper ffs

Massive bummer. Sometimes I think the community gets so busy hating UB we don't reserve enough venom for hating Alchemy. It's bad enough to take a normal card and screw it up with a "perpetually" ability for no reason, but cards like this one hurt the most.

 

[ravnic]

I'm gonna prox it up. I think it might be a perfect occasional for my cube, a buildaround that makes for unique decks. Drafted this pretending I had Providence of Night to see how viable it is:



Sweet little mardu blink/sac deck that basically only splashes red because you need to be in a wedge to cast Providence, but it doesn't look too different from a regular version – yet I could easily get 8 spells to copy, with even 2 more in the sb.

 

[MilesOfficial]

If this were printed in a secret lair or something I would 100% come to Commander nights / Cube draft with a numbered deck of all 59 options in a deck box ready to go.

 

[Brad]

Why can't they print that in paper ffs

Pisses me off when they do literal paper cards as digital. Even cards that are easy to convert is annoying. Save the digital designs for digital cards. Limitless Rekindling gets the digital-only idea right.

Hell, this card's Commander bait and they didn't even put it in paper.

 

[KeithCubes]

I get why this one can't see print, but this would actually be pretty easy to play in person if you brought some spare Goatnap's. You could even rewrite it to use 'Goat' counters like Omo, Queen of Vesuva's 'everything' counters, but I think it's clearer without that.

What a cool card though! It can't do anything the turn it comes down, but threatening to steal your opponents best creature every turn and head butt them with it is strong.

I like the flexibility he has of either making your opponents creature's goats to hit back with them harder, or goat your own creatures to discount all your spells (including the goatnap).

There's even a secret mode here where he goats himself and then you goatnap him to untap and hit for 6 on an empty board.

And since is usually big on sacrifice, there's all kind of synergy here that will just let him kill a creature each cycle.

 

[LadyMapi]

There's "novelty" in digital only cards, but it's fundamentally just self gratification for designers doing it because they can, which is fine I guess for the sake of exploring new areas of design, but they don't really do that any more.

As someone who used to play Hearthstone a bit, I feel like most of the Alchemy cards are very generic "we have digital cards now I guess" designs vs. things that actually leverage Magic's more distinctive mechanics or do wacky things with set mechanics. I guess we got the Mapping the Maze cycle and the travesties that were the Specialize cards?

 

[Seeker]

You could even rewrite it to use 'Goat' counters like Omo, Queen of Vesuva's 'everything' counters, but I think it's clearer without that.

go full Obsidian Fireheart and write "the creature continues to Goat..."

 

[StrionicAdventurer]

Not sure if anyone else is running a budget cube in here, but Figure of Fable is like 35c at the moment and I'm really, REALLY happy about it.

 

[ravnic]

I'm a bit sad about all the sweet mechanics they decided not to revisit for this set in full scale: retrace, persist, conspire and of course evoke all would've liked some new represantatives.

 

[MilesOfficial]

I'm a bit sad about all the sweet mechanics they decided not to revisit for this set in full scale: retrace, persist, conspire and of course evoke all would've liked some new represantatives.

This is the reason why, of all products they could make, I wish they'd do more commander cards / decks. they can make a few key cards for every forgotten favorite that are hard to justify in "normal" products, and they don't even have to worry about balance this way. I really liked when they added mechanically unique legacy/commander only cards to the collector boosters for a little while there.

Doing 4-5 for every set only feels like overkill because we have 7 sets this year, and they've been doing an extra cycle outside of that too. but commander decks? Very easy to skip. In the same way, I would've loved to see a treefolk commander deck to get another 10-12 new cards in that vein.

 

[gaytransmulldrifter]

Not getting any Evoke creatures at common is definitely the biggest bummer of this set (which looks pretty good fwiw, probably the first retail set I'm gonna bother drafting irl in years lol) but c'mooooooon where's my evoke Man O' War. Instead we got "Man O' War but it's a 3/2". Snooooooze.

 

[Chris Taylor]

Modern Common shriekmaw must yet wait for another time
(or you can make one)

 

[LadyMapi]

Not getting any Evoke creatures at common is definitely the biggest bummer of this set

I had "new Evoke creatures" on my list of desired things from the set from the moment it was announced, and having it only show up on five mythics is honestly pretty annoying. I'm also kinda bummed that the only nod to Conspire (which is a really cool mechanic that's held back by only being on cards that are kinda awful) is an overpriced Commander-bait enchantment.

 

[MilesOfficial]

Looks like the rest of the Arena cards are now available. There's two I love:



Elvish Elegy is a pretty good Mulch equivalent that benefits greatly from being hybrid. Makes it really easy to fix your mana and fill your graveyard. I think this is fine without the perpetual text too, but it's no small thing.


I probably wouldn't play this as written because I don't want to mislead my drafters into thinking Merfolk are a supported deck with the first ability, but I do like this, and not just for the nostalgia Stonybrook Schoolmaster tokens provide. This feels very much in line with something like Chivalric Alliance or Glimmer Lens, both of which I like. A token that itself makes tokens is very silly, but in a good way, I think. The price is right. If they ever do make a physical version of it, I'd at least play it for a little while, I think getting tokens that make tokens out of having two tapped creatures a turn is solid.



I played Sea Gate Stormcaller and liked it just fine. Having a bigger version of it on both sides seems fun, even without the potential upside kicker represented.

Maybe I should just play the Stormcaller again!

Man, I hate cards that could easily be just a normal card.




We have the technology for this in paper via Skullbriar, the Walking Grave but I like this more for Cube purposes, obviously. Cool art, cool card. Would definitely mess with it if I could in paper.

 

[Mown]

That Rimekin looks very strong. Very exciting card, I'm already playing the saga with somewhat similar effect. Blue 3 drops are getting crowded though.

 

[LadyMapi]

This thing is wordy as hell, but I like the idea? I don't think it's good enough to be a self-contained Elemental payoff, but "all of your instants and sorceries are also Elementals" is pretty cool.



This, on the other hand, feels like the kind of spell you can build a mini-archetype out of. Alternatively, it gives a neat alternate flavor to Blink.

You call it a Mulch, I call it a very powercrept Roots of Wisdom.

 

[KeithCubes]

Man, I hate cards that could easily be just a normal card.

Yeah ... it could have just been 'when you next cast an instant or instant or sorcery, copy it ... This ability triggers only once.' ala Acrobatic Cheerleader and would still have the blink synergy and everything. It would also give your opponent some chance to interact with it, compared to this which follows the alchemy formula of getting a 2-1 just for casting it.

What would have been even more interesting IMO is if it read 'copy it if you control a wizard' (you could even keep the boon structure), which creates a little sub game for your opponent of deciding if it's worth killing the Rimekin or not before it can copy anything. And provided you're a dedicated wizard / process deck you earn a second shot at it.

We have the technology for this in paper via Skullbriar, the Walking Grave but I like this more for Cube purposes, obviously. Cool art, cool card. Would definitely mess with it if I could in paper.

This slaps. Notably it's any creature dying when at first glance you'd think it'd just be yours. Pretty cool card, which would benefit even further if it just worked with counters ala Skullbriar.



Makes me wish I ran merfolk. I like when these conjure cards reference other cards most people will actually know. If this was themed for wizards and made a Scalding Tarn I'd be a lot more excited.


Elemental Massacre Girl? (Which quickly turns one sided) Honestly kind of neat.


Pretty cool just for the kindred subtype counting towards delerium and such. I don't love giants piggybacking off of warrior's only unique gimmick though.


Very strong, very clean. Should have just been 'make a forest token' - the conjuring is doing nothing here.


Neat green lands payoff. Would work fine in paper if it just searched for the forests. Vaguely reminds me of Vorinclex, but this card is way more pushed.


This is gross. I guess they were going for a Orcish Lumberjack reference, but it really just turns your artifacts into Black Lotus, which feels weird for . Each creature triggering this is kind of obscene, but at least they made his body a little below rate.

 

[Erik Twice]

I still don't understand why there's nonsense like "boons" when the game already includes the functionally identical, paper-proven emblems.



Elvish Elegy is great, simply because it's one mana. Given the way the game has evolved, two mana card shifting spells like Impulse simply aren't worth the mana anymore. The difference between cards is smaller, removal is worse or, at least, less efficient and getting a board presence is more worthwhile. So it is very worth a look.

For me the biggest issue is that it's a Gravecrawler card but it says "elf" on it. That's going to confuse players, since there's no elf deck in my cube. And if there was, I can't imagine them being interested in this, either.



Reflective Rimekin solves one of the problems with Dualcaster Mage, which is that you don't usually have the mana for both the creature and the spell you want to copy. By letting you play it one turn earlier, the issue is solved. More importantly, it lets you copy rituals and other similar cards in order to gain mana:



Mana is the largest bottleneck in cube combo decks, so having access to plays like this makes a huge difference in their viability. Note, however, that it triggers whether you want it or not! So, you cannot play a counterspell on their turn to protect yourself before going off.

I'm tempted to run this with a slighty change of wording.



This is a great design and probably the only "perpetually" card that makes sense. The condition to return it to play is both fun and feasible and being large, able to block and having menace give it more play value. I'm not sure it's sufficiently different from the alternatives to make it worth playing, but I like it.



This pretty much gives you 2 mana for each three instant or sorcery spells you cast. Sure, there's more to it, but I cannot see it making too much of a difference.

Makes me wish I ran merfolk. I like when these conjure cards reference other cards most people will actually know. If this was themed for wizards and made a Scalding Tarn I'd be a lot more excited.

Oh yeah, if this worked with wizards I would love it. In fact, wizards would be able to use both the spell and the artifact.

 

[Nemo]

Give us a real card instead of Elvish Elegy. A one mana Golgari hybrid with "Mill 3 cards" in its rules text seems like such an obvious card to print now that I see it.

They could very easily print something like Midnight Tilling for if they made it return a creature instead of any permanent. I'd run that card.

There's an example of something that would be very easy to add to the next commander deck that contains any sort of Golgari graveyard element, which I'm guessing is a lot of the decks that contain those colors.

 

[ravnic]

Not Thought Scour
Sorcery
Mill three cards.
Draw a card.