Lorwyn Eclipsed releases on January 23rd, 2026 and the presale here at Card Kingdom starts on December 17th. The original Lorwyn-Shadowmoor sets were released between 2007 and 2008, and established Lorwyn as one of Magic’s most popular planes. Despite its popularity, it will have been almost two decades since we last had a set to prominently feature the plane.
As such, I think it’s a good time to do a retrospective on Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Block, as many of today’s players weren’t playing Magic last time we visited the plane. However, everyone who plays Magic today is experiencing a game that was forever changed by Lorwyn, which is one of the most important Magic sets of all time. In this article, I’m going to look at 5 aspects of today’s game that were originally introduced in Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Block.
THE FIRST COMMAND CYCLE
We’re going to start with Lorwyn’s smaller (but still huge for most sets) contributions. That means taking a look at Lorwyn’s Command cycle.
These are modal spells that give you a choice of four options and you choose two of them. Each and every one of these quickly proved to be powerful because they all had great modes where choosing any two of them at a given time gave you a pretty good effect for the cost.
In 60-card formats, Cryptic Command is by far the most prominent of these as it has been regularly played ever since being printed, and still sees play in Modern today. It’s a super flexible counterspell that can easily generate 2-for-1s. In Commander, Austere Command is the most notable since you can make choices to make it hurt your opponents more than it hurts you. But these cards aren’t just important because they themselves see so much play.
These Commands also established a new kind of modal spell, with “Commands” just as common these days as Charms. We have seen Command cycles in Dragons of Tarkir, Strixhaven, and The Brothers’ War. There have also been Commands that aren’t part of cycles, like Kozilek’s Command and Verdant Command. Fittingly, we’ll also be getting a new Command cycle in Lorwyn Eclipsed.
THE TRIBAL/KINDRED CARD TYPE
Lorwyn was the first set to prominently feature the “Tribal” card type, which has since been errata’d to “Kindred.” Kindred cards can derive benefits from payoffs for a given creature type. For example, Faerie Harbinger can tutor up Bitterblossom.
Lorwyn was not actually the first set to feature this type. It appeared on a single card in Future Sight, a set that featured several “previews” of Magic’s future.
While you might think prominently featuring a new card type deserves to appear later in this article, the Kindred type on the whole has kind of been a failure. After Lorwyn-Shadowmoor it was almost never used again, only briefly appearing in Rise of the Eldrazi, and for a long time it was considered a mistake internally. Wizards of the Coast felt it had too minor of an impact on cards to justify using an entire card type on it.
However, it has made some appearances over the last few years, and will also be returning in a big way in Lorwyn Eclipsed, as we already know that it’s going to appear on the set’s Command cycle. It’s possible that the contribution of this little-used card type ends up looking more impressive in the future.
THE GRAND CREATURE TYPE UPDATE
Lorwyn-Shadowmoor has a prominent creature type theme with both race creature types (like Merfolk, Treefolk, etc.,) and class creature types (like Shamans, Wizards, etc.,) getting a spotlight. This prompted Wizards of the Coast to undertake one of the most extensive mass errata of all time, as they went back through all of Magic’s old cards and standardized the creature types.
Where applicable, they made it so old cards all featured the “race class” model, but that’s not all. They also retired several creature types that only appeared on one card, and updated others so that they made more sense. Before the update you literally had creatures with types like “Ali from Cairo” (now a Human) or “Gaea’s Liege” (now an Avatar).
This has had a longstanding impact on the game when it comes to game play, as we still tend to follow the same creature typing convention, and it also made it so a lot more cards could benefit from payoffs for a particular creature type.
THE FIRST PLANESWALKERS
The introduction of the Kindred type may have been a failure, but that’s certainly not true for the other card type introduced in Lorwyn – Planeswalker. While these powerful beings had long been part of Magic lore this is the first time they actually received cards representing them as planeswalkers.
This powerful new card type has had a huge impact on the game in the long run with planeswalkers impacting every single one of Magic’s formats. These new cards were pushed to represent how powerful these beings are, and the fact they can sit around on the board and use an ability every turn allows them to take over games.
When it comes to planeswalker cards, it’s not just the impact on actual gameplay either. The introduction of Planeswalkers helped direct the game’s story going forward, as it became much easier to understand the main characters in the story when they actually got cards that represented them.
And indeed, these original Lorwyn 5 – Ajani, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, and Garruk – all went on to be major players in the Magic story, with most of them still fairly prominent in the lore today.
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What do you think is the most important contribution from Lorwyn-Shadowmoor? Do you think that Lorwyn Eclipsed has the potential to have a similar impact on the game? Let me know your take over on X or Bluesky.
Jacob has been playing Magic for the better part of 24 years, and he especially loves playing Magic’s Limited formats. He also holds a PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma. In 2015, he started his YouTube channel, “Nizzahon Magic,” where he combines his interests with many videos covering Magic’s competitive history. When he’s not playing Magic or making Magic content, he can be found teaching college-level history courses or caring for a menagerie of pets with his wife.