Pioneer: 5 Decks with Lorwyn Eclipsed

Next Tuesday, the first Magic: The Gathering set of 2026, Lorwyn Eclipsed, arrives on digital platforms, opening the gates for players to experience the new cards and test out strategies and new archetypes enabled by the set.

In Pioneer, new possibilities exist around archetypes that still needed support, such as Monument to Endurance variants with the new Iron-Shield Elf, and ways to take advantage of the new mechanics or specific creature types the set brought to the format, like Vivid or Faeries.

Furthermore, established strategies like Selesnya Company or Golgari Ygra received important complements to their game plan, or even pieces that add greater consistency.

In this article, we present five decks to try out in this first week of the release, focusing on the main novelties that Lorwyn Eclipsed offers to the Metagame!

Carnage Monument

The combo of Carnage, Crimson Chaos with Glasspool Mimic and some payoff still needs support to find its place in Pioneer, and perhaps Iron-Shield Elf is precisely what the combo needed to have a home in the format.

The combo consists of having Tinybones Joins Up — whose ability targets any number of players — with Carnage, Crimson Chaos targeting Glasspool Mimic in the graveyard, which will enter copying Carnage and be sacrificed again to the Legend Rule before the copy's ETB, which will be used to return Glasspool again, repeating the loop. For each time it enters the battlefield, Tinybones Joins Up will deal one damage to the opponent and make them mill a card from their own deck.

Now, we can replicate the Orzhov Greasefang tactic, using Monument to Endurance as an alternate win condition alongside the new Iron-Shield Elf, which allows us to discard consistently every turn cycle, and although we have only four copies of it, both Carnage and Glasspool Mimic can serve as additional copies.

Mono Green Vivid

Leyline of the Guildpact considerably amplifies the potential of any card with Vivid from the new set, allowing you to play Wildvine Pummeler for two mana or generate five with Bloom Tender, so we use the green core of the mechanic alongside the Devotion subtheme to accelerate mana, even if we forgo the archetype's classic plan in favor of a bolder proposal.

We've tuned our list to try to extract maximum value from Aurora Awakener as a pseudo-Storm the Festival alongside the Leyline and Tam, Mindful First-Year, allowing us to put five permanents into play at once and, with luck, restart the loop with the next Awakener. But even if that line doesn't work, the ETBs of the creatures with power four or greater alongside Outcaster Trailblazer and Kiora, Behemoth Beckoner will be enough to start another sequence on the following turn.

Dimir Faeries

Faeries was one of the most anticipated tribal decks from Lorwyn Eclipsed, and while there is little to no synergy between the new cards of this type, their individual quality makes up for it: Flitterwing Nuisance is an excellent complementary one-drop that eventually turns all Faeries on the board into a source of card advantage, while Bitterbloom Bearer offers inevitability if we can hold back the opponent's clock, and Glen-Elendra Guardian functions as a Negate on a three-mana body.

For the synergy role, we rely on the combination of Kaito, Bane of Nightmares with the Faeries to generate value and reduce costs, complementing them with Faerie Miscreant, which amplifies the scope of Spell Stutter while also replacing itself in its owner's hand. We also have Enduring Curiosity as a source of card advantage and Brazen Borrower as a complement for board interaction.

Golgari Ygra

Golgari Ygra is probably the best archetype to try out Formidable Speaker, the most powerful card in the new set. Speaker allows us to reduce the "lottery" aspect of mill effects a bit by allowing us to discard one piece to find another, thus facilitating the setup needed to have two Cauldron Familiar and one Ygra, Eater of All, not to mention the "bonus" of untapping Witch's Oven to reuse it a second time.

Selesnya Company

Also complementing already established archetypes, Selesnya Company received Brigid, Clachan's Heart, whose back-face ability generates mana based on the number of creatures we have in play — between its ETB that creates a token and the mana dork we used the previous turn to cast it, it already generates three mana, not counting other complementary threats we might play the same turn.

This extra mana enables us to deploy more Ouroboroid or even explode earlier with cards like Elspeth, Storm Slayer, or cast Collected Company on the opponent's turn while efficiently using our own main phase with other creatures.

Besides her, Kinscaer Sentry also deserves testing for its ability to reuse key creatures every combat, whether it's a Skyclave Apparition to remove a blocker or another efficient hatebear piece that was removed. As a bonus, the Lifelink is essential in an aggressive Metagame like the current one.

That's all for today!

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

Thanks for reading!