Avatar: the Last Airbender is here, and so far appears to be a rousing hit! Not only does it bring a beloved franchise to Magic, but it provides some great Limited gameplay and cards that are impacting a number of formats. It's shaking up Standard quite a bit in the wake of the recent bans, which is making the format look the best it's been in quite some time.

However, not everyone is a fan of it. Many players aren't too eager to jump on board after the monumental flop that was Marvel's Spider-Man. Additionally, the general push to make Universes Beyond a major part of Magic's ecosystem has put a lot of people off from the game as of late. They want more of what makes Magic, well...Magic - the original crafted worlds made within the game's universe.

It's for this reason that many players are opting to instead wait for the first release of 2026. Not only is it an original in-universe Magic setting, but it's one that many players have been eagerly anticipating for a return to for nearly 20 years! That's right, it's time to go back to Lorwyn/Shadowmoor with Lorwyn Eclipsed!

Thus far we've only seen a couple of cards for the set, with Wizards showing some off during the Lorwyn Eclipsed First Look back in September. Despite very little being shown, it was enough to get everyone hyped. Familiar settings, creatures, and characters fill this wondrous world full of whimsy and terror alike. For many, it's shaping up to be a fitting return to form, and an outstanding example of a modern in-universe release.

While I'm excitedly covering Avatar in lore discussion pieces, I don't really have much content prepped in the sense of deck-building or strategy with the set. Instead, I'm opting to take a trip back in time to the original Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block(s) and look at some of the things that made the sets so awesome and evocative.

For the next four weeks, I'll be putting together sweet PreDH decks for four different characters from the block's story. In case you're unfamiliar, PreDH is a Commander time capsule variant that focuses on the format as it was played before the release of Commander 2011. Thus, all sets from New Phyrexia backwards are legal. That provides a much smaller card pool and lets many older cards shine that much brighter - a particular blessing for Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, which came out on the later end of that timeframe.

I'm going to be kicking things off in the first week with a pretty big one: Horde of Notions. Horde of Notions is sweet in that it represents one of only 11 five-color legends legal in PreDH. With three of those being sliver legends, that well ends up being even shallower than it might appear. It also just so happens that Horde of Notions is perhaps one of the better options players can access. Not only is it a huge threat, but it provides ways to reanimate your elementals - many of which go to the graveyard by evoking them anyways.

This plays wonderfully going into Lorwyn Eclipsed. The plane is known for its weird and unique elemental designs, personifying abstract concepts to real form. Deceit and Emptiness are two that we've seen so far, and we also have the primary double-sided card Eirdu, Carrier of Dawn // Isilu, Carrier of Twilight. The elemental god represents the duality of the world and is certain to play a major role in the story as well.

We've also seen a number of art pieces depicting additional elementals, thanks in no small part to the recent release of Lorwyn: First Light for Dungeons & Dragons. It's safe to say we're going to get weird and wild and I for one can't wait.

There are also the other kinds of elementals on the plane too. On Lorwyn, there are a group of more typical humanoid elementals which emit flames from within themselves. On Shadowmoor, they originally were represented with their flames having been extinguished, though now they take on a cooler icy look in Lorwyn Eclipsed. You can see this in the art on the left in the above image. These provide another sweet angle to utilize elementals, often acting more as roleplayers.

So, with that all out of the way, let's take a look at a decklist and get to talking a bit more about what makes these elementals so cool!

Horde of Notions | PreDH | Paige Smith

• Commander (1)
• 1 Horde of Notions

• Creatures (41)
• 1 Ashenmoor Liege
• 1 Ashling the Pilgrim
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Bloom Tender
• 1 Brighthearth Banneret
• 1 Chameleon Colossus
• 1 Cloudthresher
• 1 Cytoplast Root-Kin
• 1 Deepfire Elemental
• 1 Doomgape
• 1 Dread
• 1 Faultgrinder
• 1 Fertilid
• 1 Flamekin Harbinger
• 1 Flame-Kin Zealot
• 1 Forgotten Ancient
• 1 Fulminator Mage
• 1 Hateflayer
• 1 Incandescent Soulstoke
• 1 Ingot Chewer
• 1 Lord of Extinction
• 1 Lotus Cobra
• 1 Meadowboon
• 1 Mirror Entity
• 1 Mulldrifter
• 1 Noble Hierarch
• 1 Omnath, Locus of Mana
• 1 Pride of the Clouds
• 1 Regal Force
• 1 Roil Elemental
• 1 Shriekmaw
• 1 Slithermuse
• 1 Smokebraider
• 1 Spitebellows
• 1 Taurean Mauler
• 1 Thornling
• 1 Utopia Tree
• 1 Verdant Force
• 1 Vigor
• 1 Wispmare

• Instants (5)
• 1 Crib Swap
• 1 Fact or Fiction
• 1 Eladamri's Call
• 1 Path to Exile
• 1 Swords to Plowshares

• Sorceries (8)
• 1 Austere Command
• 1 Buried Alive
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 1 Patriarch's Bidding
• 1 Windfall

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Prismatic Omen

• Artifacts (4)
• 1 Fellwar Stone
• 1 Fist of Suns
• 1 Sol Ring
• 1 Urza's Incubator

• Lands (40)
• 1 Island
• 1 Swamp
• 2 Forest
• 2 Mountain
• 2 Plains
• 1 Ancient Ziggurat
• 1 Blood Crypt
• 1 Breeding Pool
• 1 Brushland
• 1 City of Brass
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Fire-Lit Thicket
• 1 Flooded Grove
• 1 Godless Shrine
• 1 Grand Coliseum
• 1 Hallowed Fountain
• 1 Jungle Shrine
• 1 Karplusan Forest
• 1 Krosan Verge
• 1 Murmuring Bosk
• 1 Overgrown Tomb
• 1 Primal Beyond
• 1 Raging Ravine
• 1 Reflecting Pool
• 1 Rugged Prairie
• 1 Sacred Foundry
• 1 Steam Vents
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Temple Garden
• 1 Twilight Mire
• 1 Vivid Crag
• 1 Vivid Creek
• 1 Vivid Grove
• 1 Vivid Marsh
• 1 Vivid Meadow
• 1 Watery Grave
• 1 Wooded Bastion

Buy This Deck Export text

What I love about a deck like this is just how many cool elementals there are throughout Magic's long and storied history. With this being a Lorwyn/Shadowmoor-focused deck, I did try to lean in that direction. Thanks to the double dose of elementals on that plane, as well as the changelings which are all elementals, it was like I was simply spoiled for choice.

No, seriously. This might be one of the most difficult decks I've had to cut down for an article in quite some time. There were dozens and dozens of awesome elementals that I could've easily included, and boy did I try. Even with the trims, the deck still comes in with a whopping 41 creatures, meaning there's simply not a lot of room for anything else!

Naturally, there are a number of classics in the mix here. It wouldn't be a Lorwyn elementals deck without a large number of evoke creatures! As mentioned previously, these have a ton of synergy with Horde of Notions itself, as you can cast a creature for its evoke cost, send it to the graveyard, and then replay it later for more value.

Several of these are super iconic as well. Mulldrifter is perhaps the best known, as it's a Divination that can also be a flying creature. The rate is great and, best of all, it plays really well with flicker effects. Additionally, cards like Shriekmaw, Ingot Chewer, and Wispmare all help pick off pesky card types that you can expect throughout games of Commander. As such, it provides you a means of handling the board and stabilizing - even better if you can continually get your cards back.

There are also a number of other big elementals that are great for the deck, often bringing with them their own sweet abilities. This is probably where I struggled the most. With so many awesome top-end cards, it was difficult to trim them down. Instead, I brought it to some of the ones I thought would prove the most impactful of the bunch.

There are some veritable classics among these cards many players will recognize. It's not uncommon to pull up to games of Commander and see copies of cards like Avenger of Zendikar, Verdant Force, and Vigor. Each of these is an extremely powerful and classic effect that players everywhere have come to love for their decks, no matter how they're built. Roil Elemental is another classic that can repeatedly steal opposing creatures away merely by playing a land!

There are a few less known ones among the cards, though. I feel like I don't see many people talk about Dread all that often, but it's an awesome version of the Vigor cycle that brings with it a powerful No Mercy ability. Lord of Extinction is one I'm not usually super fond of, but works great alongside that copy of Dread to fill graveyards quickly. You can also simply beat face with a gigantic and hard to take down copy of Thornling!

I also found myself quite partial to some weirdos, such as Hateflayer - a huge creature that can deal absurd damage and dish out -1/-1 counters left and right. I also quite enjoy Cytoplast Root-Kin - a card that distributes a bunch of +1/+1 counters instead. When it dies, you can recast it with Horde of Notions to pump your board that much further. Oh, and did you know that Deepfire Elemental exists? This bizarre uncommon from Coldsnap gives you a great way to deal with artifacts and creatures, provided you have the mana to do so.

There were tons of these kinds of elementals that I ended up leaving on the cutting room floor. For example, cards like Purity, Obsidian Fireheart, Windreaver, and Heartmender are all awesome cards. There's even sweet lower rarity cards like the Hatchling cycle (Voracious Hatchling and friends) as well as Kulrath Knight. That's to say nothing of the various Maro cards too.

I could be here all day rattling off the possibilities, but at some point you have to kill your darlings. What I'll note there is that there are enough good options for you as a player that should you seek to build this, you can easily customize it to your liking.

Now there is one other type of elemental worth looking at: the flamekin. These are much more workhorse style cards. They're generally smaller compared to the massive otherworldly creatures we've looked at up to now. However, they tend to offer solid utility that you might not be able to find otherwise.

For example, Brighthearth Banneret and Smokebraider both allow you to cast your elemental spells with ease. Even just making things cost one or 2 mana less goes quite a long way! So too does the tutoring of Flamekin Harbinger and the board pumping of Incandescent Soulstoke. Soulstoke has some great play with Horde of Notions too, since you can return the creature you put on the board once it's sacrificed.

Most of these cards are Mono-Red, but there are two Rakdos colored cards as well with Fulminator Mage and Ashenmoor Liege. Fulminator Mage is awesome with Horde of Notions, as it allows you to deal with problematic lands repeatedly, but at a cost that's high enough to not make it an issue for most tables. Ashenmoor Liege provides another wide pump effect, though this one is a bit less intense given how most of the elementals in the deck are Green and not Black or Red.

Speaking of, let's take a look at the colors of this deck and how it impacts things like the mana. This deck ended up being more heavily skewed into Green, as is typically the case for many five color decks. Green usually has the best means of fixing mana overall, which is even more true in a format like this that lacks effective Colorless options like Chromatic Lantern. However, this deck also ended up having quite a decent number of Red and White cards as well, with Black and Blue making up distant thirds overall.

As you might expect, I leaned pretty hard into Green's mana fixing effects. Naturally, I included some ramp spells, but debated how far I wanted to go on them. After all, five color decks typically play very few basics and this one is no different, with only 8 in the list. As such, it's not too hard to end up with a Cultivate or Kodama's Reach in your hand with no targets left in your deck.

I ended up compromising with those two ramp spells as well as Fertilid. Fertilid has the benefit of at least being a creature, so even if you have no more basics in your deck, it's not just dead. Additionally, Farseek and Nature's Lore do great work as they can pull nonbasic lands in addition to basics. I excluded Three Visits because there just aren't enough Forests to pull out of the deck.

There are plenty of excellent mana dorks to close the gap, though. Birds of Paradise, Noble Hierarch, and Lotus Cobra are staple ramp effects that just happen to be available in PreDH. With less multicolored mana dorks, it also leans on Utopia Tree - a classic of Invasion-era gaming. Finally, what Lorwyn/Shadowmoor deck would be complete without Bloom Tender, a fantastic dork that does some serious work in a five color deck. If these don't go far enough to fix your mana, you can always lean on the copy of Prismatic Omen to make all your lands every land type - just for good measure!

But the mana base was even thought about to take all of this into account as well! I don't normally talk lands since they're often straightforward, but I'll make an exception here as it's a five color deck. First off, I started out with one of each shock land. It's easy enough of an inclusion and accounts for every color in a modest amount. From there, I added in each of the Vivid lands as well as Reflecting Pool and Primal Beyond. You know - for flavor!

Past those kinds of lands is where things started getting a bit more interesting. Since there were only so many dual land slots, I didn't want to just also include another ten-cycle such as the pain lands or the filter lands. After all, if you just do that, you're not really accounting for the disparity between colors. This can make you have too much of a color you don't really need while you struggle to cast the majority of your deck.

Instead, I leaned more heavily into the lands that produced Green mana. In the case of the filter lands, I went with all of them, as well as Rugged Prairie since Boros is the second most represented color pair. Then, looking at the pain lands, I specifically only included Karplusan Foest and Brushland, just to help even things out. A few other lands like Murmuring Bosk, Jungle Shrine, Krosan Verge, and Raging Ravine help round out these lands in a solid way.

What you end up with is a really sweet deck that's sure to make for a blast at your next Commander night! Best of all, if you want to expand on this beyond PreDH, you have an absurd amount of options. Heck, the Omnath cycle alone will take you pretty far, not to mention the popular Risen Reef as well as the Modern Horizons 2 evoke elemental cycle.

No matter how you build it, it's sure to be a blast. With luck, it'll get you super pumped for Lorwyn Eclipsed. I'm excited as you all are, and can't wait to see what it brings to the table. Hopefully it lives up to the lofty expectations set by the original. I'll be back next week for more excellent Lorwyn PreDH action!

Oh, and one more thing: I couldn't find a good spot to fit this in the article, but I have to mention the cool interaction between Crib Swap and Horde of Notions. Yeah, your commander says elemental spell, not just elemental creatures. Keep casting your removal spell turn after turn like a champ!

Paige Smith

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/themaverickgirl.bsky.social

Twitch: twitch.tv/themaverickgirl

YouTube: TheMaverickGal