Welcome to snowy Richmond, Virginia, big mana Standard, Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed, and the start of the 2026 competitive Magic season.

The weekend began with a solemn nod to Magic's past with a moment of silence for Kai Budde, a celebration of its present with the presentation of the Kai Budde Player of the Year trophy to 2025 Player of the Year Ken Yukuhiro, followed by a plunge deep into Lorwyn Eclipsed and Magic's future.

That set the scene for Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed as just over 300 players made it to the snowed-out city of Richmond. The weather brought many cancelled flights and missed testing sessions, but by the time Friday's draft began—with viewers watching reigning World Champion Seth Manfield navigate a tricky draft—a week that had been anything but normal settled back into the familiar rhythm of the Pro Tour. The sounds of cards shuffling and players shouting "Judge!" were back, and the 2026 Pro Tour season was officially underway.

We started out watching two-time World Champion Seth Manfield draft. It was a tough one that saw the champion start out with a 1-2 record as we explored a draft format with relatively few "supported" archetypes. Instead of being organized strictly by two-color pairs, Lorwyn Eclipsed is organized around five major Limited archetypes. That set the stage for Limited rounds that seemed straightforward but left several holes for experienced teams to exploit.

From there, it was on one of the most interesting Standard metagames we've seen in many months, as the recently rise of Badgermole Cub stole the headlines as part of the Nature's Rhythm decks that by now have almost fully overtaken Izzet Lessons as the top deck in the format. Opinions on the Standard format varied wildly among players heading into the tournament, and five rounds of Standard play brought the answer to the question posed to every Pro Tour competitor: to ramp, or not to ramp?

When the dust settled, it was Marco Belacca who stood alone at the top. The Italian player shocked the field by not dropping a single game with his Jeskai Control deck that featured just a single creature card, and he will now lead the way into Day Two.

Learning All About Lorwyn Eclipsed

"At first I thought it would be like Bloomburrow, typal on rails, but this was not like that," explained the captain of Cosmos Heavy Play, Anthony Lee. "You can go into the unsupported archetypes very feasibly, and I would draft them relatively often."

Lorwyn Eclipsed certainly offered players a different kind of challenge. Draft always leads the Pro Tour, but given the fact that this draft format was unique–and just released last week–there was more intrigue than usual around the experience. The four most popular two-color archetypes led the way, generally viewed in this order by competitors: Elves, Kithkin, Merfolk, and Goblins. There was also a blue-black archetype represented by Faeries, but without many Faerie payoffs the power level wasn't as consistent as the other creature types.

But with cards like Reaping Willow and Hovel Hurler there were pulls to other combinations—even the difficult-to-draft blue-red vivid deck often has three to five colors. Alexey Paulot did just that on his way to a 3-0 Draft record.

"I'm really proud of my draft," he explained. "I was in a difficult seat, and nothing was open. I drafted five-color vivid, and made it work."

"Making it work" is often the theme of a Pro Tour draft, where the incredibly powerful Limited lists you'll find on MTG Arena or even Magic Online don't exist; the competition is simply too good to pass those kinds of mistakes. The result is that Pro Tour Draft decks often end up as grindy, slow decks. That increases the value of cards, like Burning Curiosity, that excel in grindy games.

"My strategy going in is to try and find a clear open lane. If you can't do that, then look for vivid," explained Drew Debevoise, the captain of Team #LookingForTeam that formed in, you guessed it, the "#looking-for-team" channel in the Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed Discord. "After that, the changeling creatures move up in value, and you go from there. Elves was what we found to be the best."

Debevoise helped organize a testing house for Team #LookingForTeam, another first for many members including the more than half who were attending their first Pro Tour. One of the knock-on effects of that—and the general churn in the competitive Magic community over the last decade or so—many of the players qualified for the Pro Tour had never participated in a timed, called draft event, which it turns out is actually a little bit more complicated than it sounds. So, the team found a video of Simon Nielsen calling a draft on YouTube to practice—at least until an ad plays and messes up the timing in the most comedic way possible.

Fear not, because the team eventually brought in a Pro Tour judge in the days before the tournament began —this squad, at least, was ready to draft on Friday morning. We'll know more about how the format looks after Saturday's Day Two draft, but early results show off a set with more depth than originally imagined.

The State of Standard

Lorwyn Eclipsed shook up a Standard format that not all that long ago seemed figured out. Team TCGplayer seemed like they solved things at Magic World Championship 31 last year with Izzet Lessons. But after dominating that event, things started to change as the rest of the world caught up to Team TCGplayer. The result has been the rise of Badgermole Cub decks over the last month, especially after the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed and Wistfulness helped curb some of Izzet's most problematic board states. In recent weeks, Regional Championships across the world have reflected the fall of Gran-Gran and rise of the Cub.

That set the stage for five rounds of Standard on Friday—and the format did not disappoint.

Introducing Spellementals

"The Boulder" is the name of the team, and Izzet Spellementals is the name of their deck. This sixteen-person testing squad named itself after the famous Sisyphean boulder, and their efforts led them up the tournament's most interesting hill. Using Sunderflock, they crafted Izzet Spellementals, a deck whose name and power level they're incredibly proud of.

Sunderflock

With Hearth Elemental and Eddymurk Crab at the top end, the Sunderflock-focused deck represents the format's next evolution after Nature's Rhythm. At least that's the idea, as every single one of The Bouder's members registered the deck.

"It was a frontrunner early on, Many of us moving to it early is definitely a sign. We thought we had a good unknown deck. There was a crisis of faith among some of us the day before deck submission, but we all came back into the fold," said team captain Andrew Elenbogen, a former Pro Tour champion. "We're at a 65% win rate against Cub deck, and 45% against everything else. We were very happy when we saw the metagame breakdown."

4 Sunderflock 6 Island 4 Eddymurk Crab 4 Opt 4 Burst Lightning 2 Spider-Sense 1 Bounce Off 4 Winternight Stories 2 Multiversal Passage 1 Spell Pierce 1 Into the Flood Maw 3 Spell Snare 4 Hearth Elemental 2 Abandon Attachments 4 Riverpyre Verge 4 Steam Vents 4 Spirebluff Canal 2 Glacial Dragonhunt 4 Sleight of Hand 1 Disdainful Stroke 2 Hydro-Man, Fluid Felon 1 Get Out 2 Annul 1 Abrade 1 Glacial Dragonhunt 2 Pyroclasm 1 Ral, Crackling Wit 2 Soul-Guide Lantern 1 Broadside Barrage 1 Negate

The Boulder believes they have the plan. Of course, as Regional Championship finalist last weekend Mason Buonadonna pointed out, that's also what countless players thought last weekend (when Cub won) and the week before (when Cub won).

Elenbogen's team is far from the only one who thinks they have their matches against Rhythm and other Badgermole Cub decks figured out. Matt Sperling went undefeated with a Gabriel Nassif-led classic Dimir Control list, turning a dismal 0-2 start into a 6-2 Friday finish after being forced to skip Pro Tour Edge of Eternities last year due to a previous commitment.

Other players turned to Day of Judgment decks to solve the board, or to another Lorwyn Eclipsed addition that has powered Reanimator decks in particular. And that brings us to the 2023 Magic World Champion, Jean-Emmanuel Depraz, who is quite busy around the tournament hall this weekend, signing copies of Formidable Speaker and casting it himself.

Whether it's pitching Bringer of the Last Gift to tutor for Superior Spider-Man or digging for a game-ending Craterhoof Behemoth, Formidable Speaker along with the evoke Elemental cycle has brought Lorwyn Eclipsed into the format in a big way, and Depraz wasn't about to miss his chance.

"Everyone expects me to play it, and I really wanted to," Jean-Emmanuel Depraz said of his World Championship card, Formidable Speaker. "But could I play a worse deck just to play it? Fortunately it's very good, and I never had to find out." #PTECL pic.twitter.com/FPEWP5LZrw

— PlayMTG (@PlayMTG) January 30, 2026

In the end, the top of the Day One leaderboard looked nothing like what you would expect from a field that was 30% Nature's Rhythm decks. Instead, there were just two Rhythm players with a record of 7-1 or better, with decks like Elementals breaking through in several flavors, There was Boros Dragons in the hands of Takumi Matsuura, Luis Salvatto on Dimir Excruciator, and even the deck archetype written off by many before Richmond: Control.

1 Cori Mountain Monastery 1 Thundering Falls 2 Mistrise Village 2 Elegant Parlor 1 Abrade 4 Consult the Star Charts 4 Floodfarm Verge 4 Hallowed Fountain 4 Get Lost 4 Jeskai Revelation 2 Spell Snare 4 No More Lies 1 The Unagi of Kyoshi Island 2 Day of Judgment 4 Lightning Helix 2 Meticulous Archive 4 Stock Up 2 Riverpyre Verge 2 Rest in Peace 1 Plains 4 Steam Vents 2 Ultima 3 Sunbillow Verge 2 Tishana's Tidebinder 1 Exorcise 2 Beza, the Bounding Spring 2 Annul 1 Pyroclasm 1 Riverchurn Monument 1 Day of Judgment 2 Voice of Victory 2 Torpor Orb 1 The Unagi of Kyoshi Island

Belacca opened with a perfect Draft record, and then he cruised through Standard with a Jeskai Control deck until he was the only undefeated player left standing. His Jeskai list with just a single copy of a creature card (The Unagi of Kyoshi Island) leaned on Jeskai Revelation to win. Along with Sperling's run and Nassif's going 4-1 with Dimir Control, it's clear the Standard metagame remains far from solved—at least for now.

Looking Ahead

All of that sets the scene as we look toward Day Two. There are 192 players qualified to return for Saturday competition, with another Draft and a final sprint through Standard that will lead us into our Top 8 on Sunday. Coverage for Day Two begins Saturday, January 30, at 11:00 a.m. ET!