How do two of Wizard of the Coast’s veteran game designers bring a classic plane to a new audience?
Lorwyn Eclipsed hits shelves soon, bringing one of Magic: The Gathering’s most iconic planes and blocks to a new generation. Competitive MTG wouldn’t be the same without Thoughtseize, Bitterblossom and Vendilion Clique impacting the old Extended formats, and even current-day Modern, Legacy and Vintage. With almost 20 years between the release of the original Lorwyn and Lorwyn Eclipsed, it begs the question – what brought Wizards of the Coast back, and what new mechanics and ideas can they bring to the plane?
Luckily, MTG Hall of Famer Luis Scott-Vargas had the fortune of speaking with Bryan Hawley, Director of Game Design, and Mike Turian, Executive Producer, on how they took the original Lorwyn and made some drastic changes to it.
“It’s a very circuitous journey to the set coming to be. In a lot of ways, it’s a similar story to what we saw with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. One of the things that we’ve known for a long time is there are people who deeply love these planes,” Hawley said. “For Lorwyn specifically, I’m very much one of them. It’s a set that I kind of grew up with as a Magic player, but there are things that are really cool and remembered very fondly about those sets in those planes. There were also things that were kind of challenging and, at the time, not wildly popular or successful compared to some of the sets around them.”
A love for the plane doesn’t translate to it being the perfect set, however. Hawley describes seeing the old Lorwyn block through “rose-colored glasses,” and that “there are definitely some things that we needed to solve for and bring up to our current standards of worldbuilding and depth and kind of how we build sets now.”
Designing for a unique plane like Lorwyn can also be challenging. Spanning over four sets – Lorwyn, Morningtide, Shadowmoor and Eventide – Lorwyn basically covers two planes. In the daytime, it’s Lorwyn, but once it shifts to night, it turns into the darker Shadowmoor.
“[Lorwyn] is one of the most challenging planes to return to because really it’s two planes that need to be put together in a way that makes sense,” Hawley said. “How do we think we can merge these things in a way that’s authentic and captures that nostalgia, but also reignites it for the people who haven’t seen it before? My answer is basically it’s been something that we’ve wanted to do for a long time, but it’s tricky.”
The designers of Lorwyn Eclipsed are no strangers to the original blocks either. For Turian, he has fond memories of Mutavault, in all its niche applications.
Mutavault
Morningtide, Rare
“I was the the lead game designer on Morningtide, and one thing I always loved doing when I was leading sets was finding cards that I loved originally, so this was Mishra’s Factory. It’s even an Assembly-Worker!” Turian continued, “with the changeling mechanic debuting with Lorwyn, it was just such a cool opportunity [to see] what would it be like to take a Mishra’s Facotry and and make it a changeling.”
While Hawley wasn’t on the original design team, he still has fond memories of his favorite card from the original sets.
Vendilion Clique
Morningtide, Rare
“My favorite card is definitely a much more personal story because I grew up playing Lorwyn and Morningtide. That was the era that I really discovered local game stores… Lorwyn was the first set where I had a whole box of just that one set up until that point,” Hawley said. “In that box there were two Vendilion Cliques. When I was playing [with it], it was like slowly discovering all of the different things that I could do with this card.”
If you were wondering, Hawley did bounce Vendilion Clique with Karakas – a lot.
Lorwyn Eclipsed may lead into some of the nostalgia of the original block, but it also brings a new spin to the plane. There’s plenty of mechanics, both old and new, that the designers are excited to introduce to a brand-new audience.
“My favorite mechanic has definitely got to be changeling… We have some great new mechanics that we also love dearly, but changeling is one of those really beautiful mechanics in that it’s very simple, but it’s very exciting and aspirational. And it also, quite frankly, just lets us make a set we couldn’t make without it,” Hawley said.
On the other hand, Turian’s a big fan of a niche mechanic, first seen in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, but fully realized in Lorwyn Eclipsed.
“For me, my favorite mechanic from Lorwyn Eclipsed would be behold. It’s a really straightforward mechanic where you’re either, as an additional cost, showing off a creature from your hand or pointing to one on the battlefield,” Turian said. “[Think of] Silvergill Adept. [Behold] didn’t have a name at the time – you just showed the Merfolk or paid three extra mana. It just really works well, plays well and it celebrates creature types in a way that I think is really true to Lorwyn.”
Designers may have a deep love for the sets they make, but even they can have favorites. For Hawley, his pick has to be a new Elemental, packing some serious power, but with a drawback that makes the best use of Lorwyn Eclipsed’s other mechanics.
Moonshadow
Lorwyn Eclipsed, Mythic
“My favorite card in the set – again, just personal preference – is the card Moonshadow. Making a set without +1/+1 counters just removes so many of the normal tools that we have available,” Hawley said. “But there are also some very cool things that it allows us to do with a set. It’s something we do sparingly, but something we definitely like doing, and Moonshadow is a really good example of being able to make a card that we just simply couldn’t make with +1/+1 counters.”
Hawley’s pick offers a new way to play with Lorwyn Eclipsed’s new mechanics, but for Turian, he’s a fan of a new take on an old classic.
Bitterbloom Bearer
Lorwyn Eclipsed, Mythic
“My favorite card from Lorwyn Eclipsed is Bitterbloom Bearer. I don’t think that should be that shocking. As you know, we’ve been talking about how Bitterblossom was part of Morningtide and really one of the the key players,” Turian said. “When you make a card that’s so iconic that it’s then put on to a creature, it’s exciting to have it back.”
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LSV added the rule of Hall of Famer Paul Rietzl – “if the card’s on the packs and you open it, you should probably take it.”
Lorwyn Eclipsed is also coming at a critical part of Magic history. With a record-breaking seven sets this year, many of which use different intellectual properties like Marvel, The Lord of the Rings and Star Trek, it may make a set with such heavy kindred themes an awkward fit. After all, it’s not like Kithkin will be roaming around Middle-earth, despite their hobbit-like appearances. However, Hawley’s confident that Lorwyn Eclipsed will find its footing in the Standard format.
“We wind up planting many more seeds for these kind of cross-set synergies and emergent combinations that actually pan out. And part of that is because we tend to be doing this well in advance of knowing how strong these things actually are and how they are really going to play out in the real world,” Hawley said. “If one in 10 of those [seeds] play out, then we get something cool, and the other ones are just kind of innocuous cards that just sail on by.”
Before wrapping things up, there’s just one question on the mind of every competitive player, one card that’s so iconic and impactful from the original Lorwyn that it reshaped the competitive scene. Simply put, was there any consideration of reprinting Thoughtseize?
Thoughtseize
Lorwyn, Rare
“We looked at everything. We thought about everything,” Hawley said. “Having that effect of targeted discard to pick your opponent’s hand apart on turn one puts such specific pressure on a constructed environment that it makes it really hard for whole classes of decks that are more reliant on certain specific synergies.”
Turian elaborated, “The closest we got to bringing back Thoughtseize was with the Special Guests. A good example here is Painter’s Servant – it’s a card that we do get to bring back. It does show up in Limited. We do get to give it this beautiful new aesthetic. I like the art on that card, it’s just so outstanding. However, it doesn’t reenter Standard, and it doesn’t cause the upheaval that Bryan was referring to of basically being like ‘okay, well, what’s this format about now?'”
Lorwyn Eclipsed may be about an old plane, but the difference is day and night. It still keeps the key mechanics and themes that made Lorwyn such an iconic block, but condensed to a single set, with a deep love of its history and a meticulous design focused on its future. Watch the whole interview, including pack openings, in the video below!https://www.youtube.com/embed/bCHVu3p-Aqs
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Lorwyn Eclipsed hits shelves on January 23, where you can buy Play and Collector Boosters along with Prerelease Kits and Bundles. It also has two exclusive Commander decks covering two of Lorwyn Eclipsed’s biggest themes – the three-color Jund -1/-1 counters deck Blight Curse, and the five-color Elementals kindred deck Dance of the Elements.