Pro Tour Lorwyn Eclipsed is in Richmond, Virginia, this weekend and the players are going to be facing off in Standard and Lorwyn Eclipsed Booster Draft. While Standard is a classic format featuring new cards, the draft environment is entirely new.

In fact, it's particularly new this time around, as the time from the release of Lorwyn Eclipsed on MTG Arena to sitting down at the table on Day One of the Pro Tour is just nine days! This puts the players in a pressure cooker to figure out the format quickly, as the draft rounds make up six of the fourteen Swiss rounds of the tournament.

Drafting on Rails

The good news for the players is that even with the quick turnaround, Lorwyn Eclipsed was designed with a heavy focus on five of the ten color pairs, meaning that the players can focus their energy on those five pairs rather than needing to explore all ten equally.

Each of the five core pairs revolves around a creature type, and that means that drafts for this set are somewhat "on rails."

Since you are rewarded for having a critical mass of a given creature type, once you figure out which archetype you are in, you can kind of hang on for the ride and pick cards of that type for the rest of the draft.

Shinestriker
Eclipsed Boggart
Eclipsed Elf
Eclipsed Flamekin
Eclipsed Kithkin
Eclipsed Merrow

The five color pairs that were focused on are white-blue Merfolk, green-white Kithkin, black-green Elves, blue-red Elementals, and black-red Goblins. There is an additional archetype that focuses on the vivid mechanic, which rewards you for having multiple colors of permanents in play.

Plant Your Flag Carefully

So far, Elves has proven to be the number-one deck, taking advantage of the graveyard as a resource and enabling it to out-grind the other midrange archetypes. This is important because these creature-based sets tend to be on the quicker side, with games often ending due to overwhelming board states eventually ruling the day.

But interestingly, Lorwyn Eclipsed is not like that. Often the games play out as a resource battle where the player who can maintain some board presence while keeping the card economy in their favor will win.

It's a fine balance to hit as the average deck needs to have a critical mass of on-type creatures in addition to having other tools available to draw cards, remove opposing threats, pump up the team, and break open board stalls.

Chitinous Graspling
Feisty Spikeling
Gangly Stompling
Mischievous Sneakling
Prideful Feastling

Filling in the creature gaps are Shapeshifters with changeling, which are generally less powerful but more flexible. If you can cast them, they can be the glue that holds together your deck as they have all creature types.

Elves Immortal

Since I think Elves is the current best deck in the format, I'll use it as the blueprint for how these core creature-type decks operate.

With a creature-focused set like Lorwyn Eclipsed, when do you solidify yourself into a given archetype during a draft? Many of the best cards for a given archetype require a lot of commitment. Picking those early can have tremendous upside, but they also carry significant risk.

The best example of this is the cycle of uncommon Eclipsed creatures, in this case Eclipsed Elf.

Eclipsed Elf

At uncommon, Eclipsed Elf is the perfect (Ha!) example of a category of card which we don't see often in drafts. It's a card that is very powerful but also so narrow that it's essentially only playable in one archetype.

If you try to play Eclipsed Elf in a deck that isn't black and green, you'll be left with a three-mana card that is difficult to cast, sometimes even late into the game.

But if you're both black and green? It's essentially colorless. Beyond just being an Elf, it cares about you having other Elves in your deck. This means that only players who are specifically playing black-green Elves will be getting this card, as any other archetype will be passing on it.

It also means any of these that get opened at the table are very likely to end up in your hands if you're the only Elves drafter at the table (which you probably won't be).

Eclipsed Elf and the other Eclipsed creatures are the prime example of this type of card because they have both a restrictive casting cost and creature type payoffs, but even just the creature type synergy is enough to keep most drafts on rails.

Gloom Ripper
Morcant's Eyes
Morcant's Loyalist
Trystan's Command

Cards like Morcant's Loyalist, Morcant's Eyes, Trystan's Command, and Gloom Ripper all rely on a heavy Elf count while providing tremendous payoffs for it. It's also worth noting that these cards all have the capability of being at least a two-for-one, feeding that grindy, midrange strategy that seems to rule the day on the dark world of Lorwyn.

As for commons, Elves gets the one-two punch of solid on-type creatures that also back up the main game plan. In this case, that's filling up the graveyard for massive payoffs.

Dawnhand Eulogist
Scarblade Scout
Lys Alana Informant
Midnight Tilling

Scarblade Scout and Dawnhand Eulogist are super solid as they both get cards in the graveyard while being above-average creatures on the board. Lys Alana Informant similarly fills the graveyard, and Midnight Tilling has a home in the Elves deck.

Bloodline Bidding
Creakwood Safewright
Moon-Vigil Adherents
Morcant's Eyes
Morcant's Loyalist
Trystan's Command

There are plenty of payoffs for filling your graveyard. Morcant's Loyalist, Morcant's Eyes, and Trystan's Command all clearly want creatures in the graveyard, but Moon-Vigil Adherents goes from just ok to downright nasty with a full graveyard.

Creakwood Safewright will basically always lose a counter at your end step in this deck, and Bloodline Bidding is an astonishingly powerful spell in the late game, capable of reversing nearly unwinnable board states.

Blight Rot
Bogslither's Embrace
Assert Perfection

And, of course, you get some good removal. Assert Perfection is particularly good in this deck because of its low cost and the frequency with which you have big creatures on the battlefield, but the removal suite is generally well rounded and gives you options for every stage of the game.

Kithkin, Merfolk, Goblins, and (Kind Of) Elementals

You'll find that Kithkin, Merfolk, and Goblins follow a similar pattern to Elves, caring about similar things like on-type creatures, their own Eclipsed creatures, creatures that buff other creatures of their type, and even the legendary double-faced card of their creature type.

Each has its own flavor and approach, and each can be powerful and interesting in their own right, but there's a potentially powerful off-the-wall deck I want to cover today: the vivid Elementals deck.

Vivid Elementals

Elementals is actually the blue-red draft archetype, and it is also a fully supported archetype similar to the other creature type-focused archetypes.

It's pretty decent! You can just build a straightforward blue-red Elementals deck, and if you get the good rares and uncommons you'll probably do well.

But a twist on this archetype has caught my eye (and maybe my heart), and that's a multicolor version that leans on big vivid payoffs instead of the more streamlined Elemental payoffs.

Shinestriker

Shinestriker had me at "Hello" as a kind of mega-Mulldrifter. Since we are back on Lorwyn, it made me want to draft this card.

I'm still figuring out the details, but this deck has the foundations of an Elementals deck with the added spice of more expensive vivid payoffs that other decks usually aren't interested in.

For the Elementals, you get a solid core of cards that perform well on their own or within the context of this more greedy version.

Rimekin Recluse
Flamebraider
Sizzling Changeling
Eclipsed Flamekin
Twinflame Travelers

Eclipsed Flamekin does what you think it does, Twinflame Travelers can absolutely turbo charge this archetype assuming it sticks on the battlefield, a Flamebraider on turn two leads to the most broken starts of any deck in the format, and Rimekin Recluse and Sizzling Changeling are both solid value creatures.

So, this makes for a powerful Elementals package that you can build upon. But if you want to push your deck's power level even higher, you can go for the vivid version.

To set it up, you'll need to be able to make mana of different colors but also have permanents of different colors.

Flamekin Gildweaver
Noggle Robber
Foraging Wickermaw
Puca's Eye

Noggle Robber is awesome because it counts as both a red and green permanent, has reasonable stats, and creates up to two Treasure tokens to power out your finishers. Puca's Eye can usually be picked late in the draft, is relatively cheap, replaces itself, and can cover a color you may not have in your deck at all. The activated ability rarely comes up, so don't sweat that too much.

Foraging Wickermaw doesn't have impressive stats, but it does give you a little bonus surveil, fixes your mana, and gives you an additional color for vivid. That's enough to justify it in this deck.

Flamekin Gildweaver fits the Elemental-focused part of the deck just fine but also gives you that critical Treasure token, which can make all the difference in this archetype.

Now, we have our Elemental-based core of cards and some setup cards, but what are the payoffs?

Kithkeeper
Shinestriker
Sunderflock
Shimmercreep
Explosive Prodigy
Prismabasher
Ashling's Command
Sanar, Innovative First-Year

My two favorite cards for the deck are Shinestriker and Explosive Prodigy. I mentioned Shinestriker as the reason I wanted to draft this deck, and it doesn't disappoint. It consistently draws at least three cards, sometimes more. So, basically, pure joy. Explosive Prodigy is the other big draw to this deck. It consistently deals at least two damage and has the potential to do a lot more. It's also an Elemental, so you get the benefits of that here, too.

Kithkeeper is great at stabilizing the board and even finishing the game, while Prismabasher is even better at the latter though it is harder to cast. Shimmercreep does more work than you'd think, but it also isn't the most powerful card of the bunch. It is an Elemental, so you'll get those bonuses, too.

Sanar, Innovative First-Year features wild artwork and a power level that, if left unchecked, quickly takes over the entire game. This is the ultimate lightning rod card. It is a must-kill creature even if you just have two colors. With any more, it gets ridiculous.

Sunderflock is awesome when you get the kind of draw-heavy Elementals deck that this archetype can produce. Sunderflock can erase a lot of your opponent's progress and leave a big body behind.

And, of course, you get Ashling's Command, which is currently the best card in the set. This card goes in any deck that can cast it, and this deck is the best at casting it.

Off the Rails in Richmond

The Pro Tour players have five primary archetypes to focus on, with a little splashing available if the mana allows for it and the payoffs are worth it. Given the shortened testing timeline, the players might be relieved that the baseline archetypes are fairly straightforward. Still, I look to the big testing teams to have the advantage in Limited.

I'll be in the booth with Paul Cheon for both of the drafts, and I can't wait to see you on the stream!

@Marshall_LR