As the Magic: The Gathering community readies itself for the Lorwyn: Eclipsed launch, I listed five cards from the set that fans can utilize in all commander decks as a fast upgrade to their 99.
This month, Magic: The Gathering returns to the bipolar plane of Lorwyn–Shadowmoor, a plane known for its shifting two-aspect approach shown in practice by the included reprints of the Shock Land cycle. Although Lorwyn and Shadowmoor are in the same place, they’re two separate aspects, with Lorwyn representing the bright and Shadowmoor championing the dark.
This time around, Lorwyn and Shadowmoor return in Lorwyn: Eclipsed, with both sides of the plane represented faithfully under a single banner, including the use of double-faced cards. With much of the attention focused on Elves, Faeries and their darker counterparts, some players may overlook cards that offer strong utility in the Commander format, particularly those without high price tags or immediate, game-changing reputations such as Hexing Squelcher or Bitterbloom Bearer.
It would be easy to highlight obvious, high-impact cards such as Meek Attack or Grub, Storied Matriarch and leave it at that. Instead, this list focuses on more niche options that can slot into a wide range of Commander decks, regardless of hype, cost or reprint status. While Lorwyn: Eclipsed has not yet been released, the cards discussed below could emerge as hidden gems for existing Commander decks, future deck plans, or even draft and prerelease events. Their versatility, combined with relatively modest projected prices, makes them worth considering ahead of the set’s arrival.
Grave Venerations
The first entry on this Lorwyn: Eclipsed hidden gems list is an exclusive card from the Blight Curse preconstructed Commander deck, which is set to release alongside the main expansion. While it would be easy to populate this list entirely with preconstructed deck exclusives, particularly when considering cards such as Abundant Countryside, Grave Venerations stands out for its focused design. Rather than functioning as a universal utility card, it leans heavily into reanimation strategies and the Monarch mechanic.
Grave Venerations allows players to return creatures from their graveyard to their hand while they hold the Monarch, while also providing an additional card draw at each end step. With the growing number of discard-focused cards that offer strong value, including Grab the Prize from Duskmourn, the ability to reclaim creatures after discarding them effectively turns that drawback into an advantage. In decks built around resource cycling and graveyard interaction, this effect comes at minimal opportunity cost.
Returning creatures to your hand from the graveyard after milling them could be considered luck-based tutoring with extra steps, so Grave Venerations is a boon for mill-focused strategies. Recycling sacrifice creatures like Cathar Commando or Accursed Marauder is also possible, letting decks squeeze out extra removal with single creatures. For a card from Lorwyn: Eclipsed that works well with Grave Venerations…
Thirst For Identity
A low-cost instant spell from Lorwyn: Eclipsed, Thirst For Identity fits many deck niches, and adds much-needed cheap costing card draw to the equation at instant speed while helping get cards in the graveyard quicker. Decks that thrive on discarding cards like Norman Osborn, Mayhem/Madness-focused decks, and reanimation decks could be happy to include this option over tried-and-true staples like Brainstorm. Players with Escape-focused cards or elemental incarnations can skip the initial field entry and go straight into the yard this way without them having to be cast.
This also gives the player an option to discard two cards or one card, making it a more versatile option. When Madness cards are paired with cards like Marauding Mako, Thirst for Identity can give the Mako an extra power boost while letting players draw three cards and cast a Madness-equipped card for cheaper. Thirst for Identity is a thirst for combos.
Kinbinding
Kinbinding offers a direct-to-board infusion of power for your creatures, for as many creatures entered that turn, and the best thing is that it doesn’t only trigger one time per turn, and it triggers during opponents’ turns too, so creatures equipped with Flash can help defend your life total. This Lorwyn: Eclipsed card quickly gets out of hand with popular commander infusions like Krenko, Mob Boss or Horn of Gondor, which offer guaranteed creature tokens entering per turn.
If you’re able to amass small armies at once with powerhouses like Twitching Doll, Orcish Bowmasters or Inkshield, can make a single creature a serious threat or playing one creature after the fact would give an army +1/+1, allowing your deck to deal damage that could end the game.
Tam, Mindful First-Year
This new low-cost legendary creature comes with the player option to cast with either blue or green mana and has a similar ability to Mother of Runes. Tam, Mindful First-Year blankets your whole field of creatures in hexproof from mirror-coloured plays, and offers the option to make the hexproof status cover the whole colour pie for one creature when tapped. Tam, Mindful First-Year, can use the hexproof five-colour protection on herself too, which separates her ability from other creatures that specifically designate “another” target (like Giver of Runes).
This versatility makes Tam, Mindful First-Year, a boon in any Simic deck that uses creatures without built-in protection. It’s worth mentioning that although cards like Go For The Throat or Shoot The Sheriff are stopped dead by hexproof, cards like Villainous Wrath will still destroy a field of hexproof creatures. With that in mind…
Personify
Personify works in tandem with many existing high-cost Commander favourites that have an ETB ability (like Atraxa, Grand Unifier), allowing them to cheaply activate their ability once again or quickly escort a creature out of a board wipe situation. This instant can also be used as budget protection to blink a card in trouble out of harms way, or can clean up the Blight -1/-1 counters you give to your creatures as a secondary effect cost in a pinch.
Some of the most common mono-coloured deck-building staples are targeted removal like Chaos Warp or Swords to Plowshares, Personify from Lorwyn: Ecplised steps around these common removal tactics by making a targeted creature leave the battlefield for a moment. Due to Personify’s low cost, this can also work in smaller formats like Pick-Two Draft, or a presealed event, stopping opposing threats like Gnarlbark Elm (or any other card that imperils your creatures) from destroying your plans.
It helps that Personify gives the controller a colourless 1/1 creature as well, which can fit any tribal-deck situation due to its Changeling status and triggers the requirement of your own creature entering the battlefield twice with one instant speed card. With a legendary creature like Galadriel, Light of Valinor or a Shocking Sharpshooter on the field, these ETB abilities will happen twice, getting big returns, getting mana returns. While an argument can be made for Flock Imposter, Personify gets the edge as a 2-cost card.
That wraps the Top 5 Hidden Gems from Lorwyn: Eclipsed list. Of course, this is not the entire list of viable cards from Lorwyn: Eclipsed, just the ones I’ve had my eye on for commander decks heading into its release on January 22. Hopefully, one or more of the cards above have helped create new deck tech for players heading into Lorwyn: Eclipsed. Lorwyn: Eclipsed pre-release events are happening this week, so fans can head to the official WoTC website to check for any events near them.
