Looking Back to Lorwyn

In late January of 2026, Magic will be making its return to Lorwyn – a world inseparable from powerful spells and one of the most vivid, enduring fantasy aesthetics of any plane - in in Lorwyn Eclipsed. 

So, as we wait patiently for Lorwyn’s return, let’s take a look back to some of the set’s time-test cards.

The Lorwyn Five

First up, we turn to the cycle in Lorwyn which had the greatest impact on the game’s future, despite ultimately being some of the cheapest cards on our list today: The Lorwyn Five.

These five cards – Ajani Goldmane, Jace Beleren, Liliana Vess, Chandra Nalaar, and Garruk Wildspeaker – were Magic’s very first planeswalker cards. Despite the card type first being referenced in the reminder text of Tarmogoyf in the earlier release of Future Sight, set design wound up holding off on the debut of planeswalkers until Lorwyn. 

Flash forward nearly twenty years, and now planeswalkers are often the marquee card of whichever set they appear in – only ever in in-house IP sets, and usually only one or two cards per set.

In terms of present day value, the original Lorwyn Five are essentially only worth their nostalgia, with the most expensive of the list – Liliana Vess – coming in at $11. Not bad for a card with no competitive value and limited Commander demand.

Where the real value for these cards come in, however, is in the foil multiplier. Since these were released before the advent of Project Booster Fun, foils were a much rarer and much more prized commodity. Couple that with the nostalgia factor for these cards, and you’ll find that each of these five cards is (on average) around 3-4 times more valuable as a foil than it is in its regular printing.

The Incarnations

Also a feat of design, Lorwyn continued the Incarnation cycle – rewarding players who devoted themselves to a single color of mana with huge payoff creatures. Another set of five – Purity, Guile, Dread, Hostility, and Vigor – these cards may not have had the same impact on the arc of Magic set design that planeswalkers did, but they have left a notable impression nonetheless. Why? Commander, and their modern sequels.

First off, the Commander significance. In low and mid-bracket Commander, the Incarnations are among the more powerful and more popular game-ending threats players can build around, providing low-color and big-mana decks a way to make their mark. Each costs six mana (three of its color and three generic), has a keyword (save for Guile, which has triple-menace), and a static ability that completely changes how the game is played. 

Destroying creatures that deal damage to you, replacing damage done to your creatures with +1/+1 counters, you get the idea. Resolve an Incarnation, and you’ll be in a much better spot than you were before.

Secondly, the modern iterations. After Lorwyn’s Incarnation cycle, the next time we saw the creature type was in Modern Horizons 2, where we got access to the evoke Incarnations: Solitude, Subtlety, etc. These cards broke formats, and their printing never would have been possible without that initial cycle.

The Enduring Standouts

Last but not least, three of the all-enduring cards from Lorwyn that are synonymous with the set itself: Doran, the Siege Tower, Thoughtseize, and Cryptic Command.

Kicking things off with Doran, it’s important to zoom out for a second and remember that Lorwyn was a typal set with monocolor as a secondary focus. So, while our list so far has been focusing on the monocolored pinnacles of the expansion, the set is equally important for its contribution to the typal world. Chief among those contributions was Treefolk support, specifically through the mechanic of allowing creatures to assign combat damage based on their toughness rather than their power.

Doran, the Siege tower was the first real linchpin for a toughness-matters deck. While it didn’t quite come around to removing the defender mechanic from your creatures (that was a later addition to the strategy), it did present a meaningful leap forward in how players could think about deck construction with Magic’s Walls, Treefolk, and just about any other small-power, high-toughness creatures.

Moving down the line and we come to Thoughtseize, Lorwyn’s ever-present contribution to sixty-card Magic and the card with the greatest difference between its foil price and its normal price (jumping all the way from $15 to $270). Still played occasionally across Modern and Legacy, Thoughtseize is simply the best one-for-one hand disruption to have ever existed in Magic.

Last but not least, Cryptic Command. This card sees less and less play across 60-card formats these days, but it isn’t completely absent. Four mana is a lot to pay for any combination of these effects, but flexibility is key in Magic, and Cryptic Command is arguably the most flexible piece of interaction in the game. Because of that flexibility (as well as the greater tolerance for higher mana values), the card has seen new life in Commander, providing options for board control, card draw, and countermagic, all in one.

Wrap Up

Lorwyn was a foundational set for modern Magic design. Filled to the brim with leaps forward in how cards were built, the set has left a lasting impact on what cards get released today. Who knows what will come out in January’s return to the plane, but rest assured that all eyes will be pointed towards the set.

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