Lorwyn Eclipsed is a Visual Treat
Lorwyn Eclipsed (ECL) has my favourite art in any set that's released since I began playing Magic a couple years ago. Lorwyn's aesthetic combines Celtic mythological influences with a children's fable and blends all the weird, foreign, unknowable weirdness of folklore with all the joyous and awful wonder we lose with age. Within the Magic lorebooks, parallel worlds of eternal day and eternal night, previously separated by eons in the original Lorwyn block sets, are colliding. The visual design of the set reflects this phenomenally well, and pulls from original Lorwyn block with many returning artists and motifs, while diversifying the artistic identity of Eclipsed. It's a resounding success and while I'm still finding it hard to guess how successful ECL's gameplay will be, the art has already electrified the Magic community and really wormed its way into my mind. So in an attempt to put my thoughts into words, and practice the oft ill-fated skill of translating visual art into linguistic thought, lets talk about the art of Lorwyn Eclipsed.
To begin, Lorwyn has three primary frame treatments that warrant discussion. The default frame is everything we expect, the primary special treatment hires children book artists to create lovely and heavily stylized takes on other ECL cards, and the special guest frame offers another stylized take, this time all using papercraft. We'll start by looking at how the two former show the duality of Lorwyn's world and motifs, and then end on the latter.
These treatments each speak to Lorwyn's vibe well, both in terms of being fantastical (and often surreal), as well as being uncannily friendly. Curious Colossus shows an inquisitive giant upturning a poor kithkin family's home, and its effect is similar to the absolutely miserable Humility from 1997's Tempest. In the showcase treatment's art, the colossus is pictured in the midst of a goblin village, with the little goblins running like tiny ants from her house-sized feet. In both cases the art presents a dichotomy of friendly joy (a curiosity, appropriately), while the effect and context surrounding the giant is unsettling and violent. Colossus promises to be an absolute windmill slam bomb in limited, and it will assuredly trample over boards of kithkin and goblins alike, while offering little to no counterplay other than to rebuild and repopulate. Grim, but appropriate!
Lorwyn is also defined by its duality. Literal dueling existences of the characters that change under the light of Morningtide and the darkness of Shadowmoor define the set's gameplay and art, and the showcase treatments give ECL a chance to depict both at once without any clever Double-Faced Card (DFC) usage. Spry and Mighty does this in a rather straight forward way, with the normal art showing treefolk and kithkin lunging forward with branches and bronze, and the showcase art showing a friendly tree holding up the bright eyed kithkin. One is realistic, gritty, and forwardly violent while the other is harmonious and inviting. That said, the showcase art has an ephemeral eeriness to it, with dark mounds around the treefolk being represented by mushroom-like stems and fish-like scales. The outstretched sword of the kithkin also, on closer look, seems to be stuck into a foe's belly which is now dark with blood. It's a great piece that crams so much evocative detail in to such a simple composition.
Changing focus, the special guest papercraft works also add quite a bit as a tertiary spice to the Lorwyn brew. Where the default frame art is largely very traditional (by Magic standards) work, and the showcase frame art leans heavily into the fairytale motif of faeries, giants, and the like, the special guest treatments reimagine older cards (many from the original Lorwyn block) in a style that reminds me of the pop-up books of my childhood. Risen Reef imagined as a coralline duck is wonderfully weird, and the Dolmen Gate's heavy contrast between the dark of the Shadowmoor sky and the light of the gate's destination. These treatments are few (and rarely seen in packs) but they are perhaps the most fantastical of the treatments, and are successful both as reinterpretations of the original cards and as accents that help add to the ephemeral tone of the set.
In sum, Lorwyn Eclipsed has doubled, tripled, quadrupled down on its clear motifs. Unlike in some other recent sets like Aetherdrift or Outlaws of Thunder Junction — which took clear concepts and then diluted them with a confusing degree of references to outside influences, jokes, and factions that had no prior history — Lorwyn Eclipsed knows exactly what it is trying to be, and executes on that concept with splendor. Whether you enjoy the goofy goblin matriarchs, the absentmindedly lethal giants, or the elemental deities that move through Lorwyn's strange environs, you are met with art that invites you to pick favourites and be invited in.