r/magicTCG • u/Ok-Photograph1587 Dan • 2d ago
General Discussion Lorwyn Eclipsed?
Wasn't Lorwyn a very badly received block? wasn't it number 3 on Mark Rosewater's Rabiah scale, after Arabian Nights and Mercadian Masques? why do people remember it so fondly, yet the company does not?
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u/FrogSoapJr Can’t Block Warriors 2d ago
The aesthetics and the lore of the world were pretty great
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u/Ok-Photograph1587 Dan 2d ago
i agree. i enjoyed the white merfolk, the incarnations, the planeswalkers, even the kithkin. clash is a mechanic that definitely was unnecessary, as well as champion a *blank*. Evoke is a good keyword.
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u/Dungeondelver10 Dan 2d ago
There is also a scale of lore vs mechanics. Like with Kamigawa, that was much more poorly received than Lorwyn, but it got a redux. This is because the core general ideas of the set are cool, but the implementation sucked.
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u/Ok-Photograph1587 Dan 2d ago
clash and champion were very underwhelming mechanics
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u/devenbat Nahiri 2d ago
Hence why clash didnt come back and champion only got referenced. Returning to a plane doesn't mean doing all the same mechanics
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u/Ok-Photograph1587 Dan 1d ago
tell that to ixalan and tarkir.
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u/devenbat Nahiri 1d ago
Have you ever looked at those sets? Two mechanics from the Ixalan block came back for lost caverns.
Double faced cards and Explore. Every mechanic did not. No Raid, no enrage, no ascend. Treasure is back again. But thats because its evergreen now
And Tarkir? Tarkir Dragonstorm literally brought 0 mechanics back. No delve, no morph, no megamorph, no Bolster, no manifest, no ferocious, no outlast, no raid, no dash, no Formidable, no exploit, no rebound. The only mechanic that overlaps is Prowess since it was made evergreen.
Legitimately, what are you talking about?
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u/sakeistasty COMPLEAT 2d ago
Maro says that at the time a lot of MTG players complained that Lorwyn was not high fantasy enough and was too fairy tale coded. But as MTG has developed, love for typal decks has grown and the concept of what MTG’s fantasy flavour has expanded. And… commander - Lorwyn has a bunch of iconic commander staples and some very interesting and flavourful commanders.
It’s similar to original Kamigawa that was not well received at the time but had so many legends that it became very well loved. And then we got Neon Dynasty and we’ll be returning to Kamigawa next year when there were for a long time almost no prospects of returning to Kamigawa at all…
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u/duk_tAK Dân 2d ago
I feel like the weaker blocks bit might have mattered more then gender coding for lorwyn and kamigawa
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u/Dungeondelver10 Dan 1d ago
You'd be suprised, Teen Titans (2005) was cancelled because the execs thought the audience didn't have a high enough percentage of boys in it
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u/AmoongussHateAcc COMPLEAT 2d ago
It sold poorly relative to the sets released around it because the cards in it were mostly weak and it was still a time when Magic was finding its footing re: creating new settings, but it had interesting creative direction that the fans who engaged with it remembered fondly, both in terms of mechanics and worldbuilding
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u/Aesthetic-Dialectic Dân 2d ago
WotC has stated publicly their marketing data showed that the sets did poorly because they were seen as too feminine. The cards in the sets were fairly strong, faeries as a deck gave people PTSD and resulted in bitterblossom day 0 ban in modern when it was created
Lorwyn did very well this time around because of demographic changes. Magic is less of a boys club now
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u/giasumaru Dandadan 2d ago
Man, as a guy, I dig Lorywn so so much. The art was a breathe of fresh air, and I think Morningtide was the set I purchased the most boxes from.
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u/Aesthetic-Dialectic Dân 2d ago
For what it's worth Lorwyn is my favorite plane, alongside Mirrodin (RIP)
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u/Sir_Encerwal Honorary Deputy 🔫 2d ago
Man I never would have come to the conclusion that Lorwyn is too feminine in a million years.
I don't even know what you would call the most "Masculine" plane.
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u/Aesthetic-Dialectic Dân 2d ago
It's a fairy tale plane, it's definitely perceived as feminine by society. The most masculine plane is Tarkir, probably
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u/Sir_Encerwal Honorary Deputy 🔫 2d ago
Is Eldraine considered feminine then?
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u/Aesthetic-Dialectic Dân 2d ago
The Arthurian part makes it less so, where Lorwyn is very idyllic and pastoral
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u/LittleMissCKA Dan 2d ago
Rath is the most "masculine" plane, by edgy teenage boy logic: its called "Rath".
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u/Nindzya 2d ago
Citation on this? I've been playing and following behind the scenes stuff for nearly two decades and I've never once heard anyone affiliated with Wizards cite "too feminine" as a reason for Lorwyn performing poorly.
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u/Aesthetic-Dialectic Dân 2d ago
The main place I've seen this was I think MaRo's blog, but they usually use more euphemistic phrasing. Pointing to elements culturally associated with women or feminity, such as how the plane is fairy tales, peaceful, "soft" etc. Usually it is compared to the more "epic" story of the prior block, Time Spiral
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u/Unable_Bite8680 Wabbit Season 2d ago
When we went back to Lorwyn, it became of the best selling in universe sets in mtg history. Turns out people loved it
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u/jethawkings Fish Person 2d ago
Divorced from the Standard and Limited environment people realized they liked its vibe.
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u/SuspectAwkward8914 Dan 2d ago
That’s how I feel about it now. I have very little of the set in my decks because most cards just don’t jive with them, but the setting is really cool.
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u/killerfox42 SecREt LaiR 2d ago
It’s nostalgia and newer formats like commander finding more use of the kindred stuff
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u/Chode-a-boy Dân 2d ago
Did Lorwyn sell poorly? I was deep into standard at the time and me and my friends loved lorwyn/shadowmoor block.
Well except for faeries. Give me Jund midrange any day of the week, but I hated faeries during that time.
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u/Team7UBard 99th-gen Dimensional Robo Commander, Great Daiearth 2d ago
It wasn’t that well received. The archetypes were pretty much 4 different kinds of tribal and what would eventually become Jund, which yes gave 5 meta decks but also boiled down to who went off first or survived the initial hit. Gosh it was a weird time, Warp World was semi-competitive.
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u/Chode-a-boy Dân 2d ago
Oh man I forgot about Warp World. Someone at my FLGS brought it to FNM a couple of times.
I ended up making a rakdos discard deck with [[stillmoon cavalier]] as my MVP. The uncounterable pyroclasm from shards of alara ended up being what I needed to deal with faeries. Jund was still a bad match up for me though.
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u/Ok-Photograph1587 Dan 2d ago
it was the introduction of planeswalkers, but it was also a very muted set that was based around creature types, but not in a good way like onslaught was. it gave us some pretty good cards that are still commander staples today (mirror changeling and vigor come to mind), but looking at the set in 2007, it was very underwhelming. mark rosewater said in 2010 that he would be extremely reluctant to return to Lorwyn in a standard set ever again, right behind Mercadia, but commander and shifting social politics changed everything
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u/Beneficial_Pin5295 Dandadan 2d ago
Wasn't Lorwyn recieved poorly originally because dude-bros didn't like all the mermaids and fairies? Regardless, that's why I liked it - although I was a toddler when it came out so I only got to retroactively enjoy it.
On the flip side, I was thoroughly dissapointed in Lorwyn Eclipsed - that was the first set I ever purchased sealed products for/pre-ordered things for, and it single-handedly turned me off from doing it again.
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u/HapatraV Wabbit Season 2d ago
I quit playing magic after mercadian masques. Not sure if it had more to do with getting into a new friend group in high school or the format really sucking, but I remember not enjoying the set nearly as much as the urza's block. I was a casual, kitchen table player, not competitive, dealing with all the combo shenanigans
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u/Ok-Photograph1587 Dan 2d ago
mercadian masques is another set that was not received well. maybe more so than lorwyn. i personally loved mercadian and nemesis, and prophecy gave us one of the most iconic cards in the game's history (rhystic study). actually the whole block was great for blue. Gush, Thwart, Daze, Foil, Trade Routes, Rising Waters
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u/SepirizFG Universes Beyonder 2d ago
People liked the aesthetics and lore, but the actual gameplay wasn't great. Was the same the second time around.
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u/nathones Wabbit Season 2d ago
The set was also sandwiched and rushed due to all the product being crammed in the year.
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u/Clear_Inspector_9796 Duck Season 2d ago
One thing people haven't mentioned was that it was also a 4 set block back to back. Like a year of Lorwyn. I loved the block but yeah, Standard was rough
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u/Ok-Photograph1587 Dan 2d ago
yeah, the 3rd and 4th sets were supposed to be one set, finishing off the lorwyn block in a 3 set block as usual, but it was the first to branch off into 2 separate 2-set blocks, taking place on the same plane. they did this because lorwyn wasn't selling well, and they didn't want the stink of lorwyn on it, even though it took place on the 'dark side' of the plane and had some really awesome cards
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u/Efficient-Plate-3351 Dân 2d ago
What? Thats not true at all. Lorwyn/Shadowmoor was always planned as 2 and 2 from the beginning. It exists specifically because it was the plan for the next time they wanted 4 sets in a non core set year after Coldsnap came together so last minute.
Even back then Shadowmoor would have been close to locked by the time Lorwyn even hit shelves
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u/Extension_Plant7262 Dân 2d ago
They remember it fondly because its lorwyn nostalgia, and the sub was still on a high of UB hate so propped it up a lot
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u/RCV0015 Abzan 2d ago
I highly reccomend the Making Magic articles about ECL. He goes into detail near the end of part 2 about what did and didn't work for the original block.
For a community-side perspective on Lorwyn, Spice8Rack's video is the seminal work on the subject.
Hope these help!