I’ll get to the Lorwyn mechanics shortly, but first, a few comments on the creative aspects of the set. It certainly does not appeal to everyone, but personally, I think the lighter, friendlier, sunnier environment of Lorwyn is refreshing. Magic doesn’t need to always be about preventing or causing apocalypses. The art on Lorwyn cards is, as you’d expect for Magic these days, almost uniformly great, and does an excellent job of conveying the feeling of the world.

Mechanically, Lorwyn in all about tribal interactions. You get a ton of cards that pump up a certain race, trigger whenever a card of that race is played, or count the number of that race in play. In addition, each race has a certain preferred style of play, spanning the aggressive-control-combo trichotomy. Overall, the mechanics are fun – you get more of a sense that your deck is a team working together than a random mish-mash of all sorts of creatures.

Lorwyn for casual

The tribal theme of Lorwyn lends itself very well to casual play. The casual player in me has always wanted and tried to build thematic decks, and Lorwyn specifically enables this. Casual players should be able to have a good time just building decks for the eight races and smashing them against each other. There appear to be some imbalances in power level among the races, but it shouldn’t be hard for a casual player to tone down the power of one or two of them, to level the playing field a bit.

If you are trying to use older cards with Lorwyn to make tribal decks, you’ll have mixed success. Some of the tribes are not well represented in earlier sets (cough . . . Kithkin . . . cough), while others, such as Merfolk, have changed their character substantially.

Lorwyn also has its share of big, splashy bombs, which appeal to many casual players. It gives you creatures that can quickly become obscenely huge (Hamletback Goliath, Immaculate Magistrate), hordes of Merfolk that grow nearly exponentially (Summon the School), or the ability to make a 11/3 trampler with haste on turn four (Incandescent Soulstoke + Nova Chaser). These are the kind of big plays that keep casual players building decks and playing.

Lorwyn in limited

I play more limited than any other format, and I have enjoyed Lorwyn so far. In draft, it is always important to be able to change your card valuations on the fly based on what you have already taken, and this seems to be especially true for Lorwyn. The key to a good deck is good tribal synergy. If you have many effects that care about the number of elves in play, the value of each elf card you are passed increases. But by how much? This is often a very tough question, and makes drafting the format interesting.

The tribes in Lorwyn mostly cut across two colors, so these two-color pairs are the most common target for a drafter. This means that some two-color combinations rarely appear. I have yet to see a white-black deck or a green-blue deck, simply because no race includes these color pairs. I am a little concerned that after more play, this will start to become a problem, as I see the same sorts of decks again and again. Still, it hasn’t bothered me yet

Lorwyn draft decks seem to generally provide interesting and fun games. One problem I have noticed is that there is a slight tendency for games to get bogged down in situations where attacking is a bad decision for both players. This can make the game drag a bit when it happens, and isn’t very fun for either player. The game always breaks out of it somehow, though. The other thing that bothers me a bit about the format is that it seems to push the power level of rares relative to commons, which makes for very swingy drafting. If you open a powerful rare in your colors in packs two or three, you’re in great shape. If not, you had better think about stretching your mana base to accommodate the new color. Don’t count on getting passed a strong rare in your colors, either, since people upstream from you are probably going to be splashing for their strong rares. There’s nothing terrible about this, but it does mean that opening a rare in color (and even better in race) gives quite an advantage.

All told, I have really enjoyed drafting Lorwyn. On the whole, I would say I prefer the format somewhat to Time Spiral, the previous format.

Lorwyn constructed Magic strategy sites are thick with reviews, opinions and arguments over the impact of Lorwyn on the various constructed formats. Many of those articles are written by people much more familiar with constructed magic than I am. Rather than trying to give in-depth power analysis or trading advice, I’ll just provide my initial impressions of the new format.

Results from the recent States tournaments are encouraging. Decks from the previous season, such as Mystical Teachings, Mono-black control and Blink are still around, and incorporated useful cards from Lorwyn. In addition, we saw many new decks, including elves, Doran decks, mefolk and faeries, to name a few. I think it’s great that Lorwyn is linear enough to encourage tribe-theme decks (several of which appear to be of a competitive level), and can simultaneously support non-linear deck design. Furthermore, the new standard format seems to be quite diverse, and looks to stay that way for a while. It seems to me that folks at Wizards of the Coast just get better and better at designing formats, rather than just designing cards.

Everyone is talking about the five new Planeswalker cards, and with good reason. It’s the first real new card type in Magic. It appears that several of them are at a pretty sweet spot in power level; that is, good enough for competitive play, but not completely format-warping. They’re also pretty fun to play with and against. It’s a scary card to see come down against you, and it really does give the feeling that you suddenly have two opponents beating up on you.

Lorwyn has a number of cards that are likely to see play outside of standard, including Thoughtseize (known as “Cashseize” at draft tables everywhere). I don’t know much about these formats, but judging from prices of some Lorwyn cards (Thoughtseize is currently ~$25), there seems to be a great deal of demand for them.

Overall, I think the set has a lot to offer to casual, limited and constructed players. Judging from my local community, I'm not the only one with this opinion, as my store has sold out of Lorwyn at least once, and draft events have been uniformly well attended. If you're a fan of Magic, I'm sure you've already looked at Lorwyn, if not, this is as good a set as any to introduce you to the game.

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