By Terrance Lee
Popular card game Magic the Gathering has recently released its latest edition: Lorwyn Eclipsed introducing a flood of new cards into the game and features a return to a familiar and fan-favorite which brought the concept of tribal mechanics (later renamed to kindred) to the game.
After play testing and theory crafting with the new cards for awhile, here are 10 of the best non-legendary cards introduced this set to look out for.
10. Hexing Squelcher
A re-imagining of the old Vexing Shusher from 2008’s Shadowmoor. Hexing Squelcher is a fantastic answer to some control decks and arguably one of the more annoying cards to play against with the ward cost ensuring no creature of yours is going down without putting up some kind of fight or burning your opponent.
9. Moonshadow
Moonshadow is a rather unique card effectively entering the battlefield as a one mana 1/1 with menace. However its ability to quickly grow via the use of fetch lands, discard and evoke effects, all of which are highly prevalent in this set, will quickly see this small creature become a big threat that can’t be easily walled due to menace. In addition, Moonshadow also acts as an efficient target for one of this set’s new mechanics namely, blight. Moonshadows’s ability to remove the -1/-1 counters gained from paying blight costs means that you won’t need to worry about it long term.
8. Bitterbloom Bearer
Remember Bitterblossom? One of the most powerful enchantments of all time. A card that was so good it was banned from 2011 to 2015. Well it’s back and with extra power to boot. While it’s true that the game has changed a lot since then, with the speed of matches and overall power level of cards ramping up massively over the years. Bitterbloom Bearer seems to be the upgrade this much beloved card needed to return, and once again become a staple of the game.
7. Requiting Hex
Remember how I noted earlier how Magic is becoming faster and cards are becoming more powerful? A large part of this is the increase of new low-mana cost creatures with powerful effects Requiting Hex provides a highly efficient and cheap way to remove said creatures, the added life gain from blighting is negligible but can come in handy versus aggressive decks and may buy you an extra turn.
6.Sunderflock
Due to the prevalence of powerful elementals (more on that later) Sunderflock is deceptively affordable, often entering the battlefield only costing you three or four mana. This low cost can make it a great surprise finisher as on entry it removes all non-elemental blockers your opponent has allowing yours to attack in for damage, even failing this due to your opponent also playing elementals it is still a highly efficient 5/5 with built in evasion through flying which can quickly put a clock on your opponent’s life total.
5. Emptiness
First of the powerful evoke elementals to appear on this list. Emptiness is a part of a five card cycle of evoke-able elementals introduced, Four of which made it onto this list. With small creatures becoming key to many decks, the ability to reanimate or remove them becomes increasingly valuable. Simply put Emptiness has the potential to do both whenever you need it to. However its reliance either you having external resources to load the graveyard with reanimation targets or your opponent having a creature with three or less toughness does make it somewhat weaker than the others on this list, but it’s still useful enough to make it here in the first place.
4. Vibrance
Second of the evoke-able elementals cycle to appear on this list, Vibrance offers powerful utility as both ramp and potential removal/burn, its worth noting that Vibrance allows you to search for any land not just those with the “basic” subtype like most other land tutors, this allows you to find useful utility or dual lands in addition to fixing your mana base.
3. Deceit
Second best of the Evoke elemental cycle, Deceit, offers powerful utility in its ability’s which if combined effectively acts as removal of any non-land permanent. Its best effect, that being, its selective discard, is a very powerful effect as it allows you to preemptively remove a dangerous card from your opponent’s hand effectively acting as both protection and removal. players should expect to see this card a lot in future games.
2. Wristfulness
The best of the evoke elemental cycle introduced this set. The power of Wistfulness’s utility is unmatched even by the others with its ability to exile problematic artifacts or enchantments and should your opponent lack such cards being able to trigger a draw effect allowing you to effectively rummage for better card selection while also loading the graveyard for reanimation effects at an efficient cost.
1. Formidable Speaker
Designed in partnership with Jean-emmanual Depraz winner of Magic’s 29th world championship, Formidable speaker is one of, if not the most, powerful cards released in the set. The ability to tutor for any creature makes it an auto include in creature combo decks that can fit it and even outside those decks the ability to grab whatever creature you need at a given time is invaluable, add to this the fact you are adding a body to the board and it’s only going to become more relevant as new creatures are released in future sets.
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