Four Weeks of Lorwyn PreDH: Ashling

Posted on December 3, 2025

Generally, I like to think of myself as somewhat of a solid lore expert when it comes to Magic: the Gathering. Throughout the early part of the 2000s, I read just about every Magic novel I could get my hands on. By the time I returned from a hiatus in 2010, the game's lore had started to make its way to web fiction stories instead, making it easier to digest and explore.

Despite this, there was a space of a few years between Ravnica and Alara Block where I just wasn't really paying attention to the lore. I hadn't gotten any of the books and even when I came back to the game, I could only piece together snippets of information about what happened in each book via the good ol' MTG Wiki. While most sets and blocks had fairly straightforward and easy to follow stories, there was one that kind of escaped me: Lorwyn/Shadowmoor.

Funny enough, I happened to play around this time. However, it was the tepid reception to the releases at the time that got me to stop playing for a bit. I mean, the nearest shop to me at the time was 40 minutes away and only five people showed up for the Morningtide release event! That makes it kind of hard to keep engaged if no one else is willing to play it with you, and so I fell off, which includes not reading any of the lore from this era.

This made it a bit of a surprise when I learned that the character I thought of as the main protagonist of the block - Ashling - may not have been that. Truth be told, there's very little I can glean about the story progression around the internet without actually getting through the books. It's my understanding, though, that Ashling - a flamekin elemental - isn't quite the main hero that I thought she was, though she plays a substantial role all the same.

You wouldn't have known this at the time though if you hadn't read the books. It felt like Ashling was all over Wizards marketing of the set and it really felt like her set first and foremost. This has naturally continued as time has gone on, with Ashling getting another card in Modern Horizons 3 (as Ashling, Flamedancer) after her two in Lorwyn and Eventide. Now with Lorwyn Eclipsed right around the corner, she's set to make a new appearance across multiple cards.

Ashling, Rekindled // Ashling, Rimebound

Ashling, Rekindled represents her light side for Lorwyn while Ashling, Rimebound represents the new rimekin version for Shadowmoor. Ashling's Command represents the duality between the two sides in one singular card. This is merely an early look at what the set has to offer as well, meaning it's likely not going to be the only representation of Ashling this time around. That makes it a great opportunity to go back in time and build some decks around her first two versions from the original Lorwyn/Shadowmoor Blocks.

Last week I started a four week run of PreDH articles talking about various Lorwyn legends as a throwback to the original blocks. As such, it's only fitting to build some decks around Ashling. With two different cards, I can put together two completely unique decks for each of them! Both cards are quite different in functionality, which makes for a really fun exploration of how to build them.

In case you missed my explanation in my write-up on Horde of Notions last week, PreDH is essentially a time capsule variant of Commander. It's simply what the format was like - with perhaps an altered ban list - prior to the release of the Commander 2011 precons. That means everything from New Phyrexia backwards is fair game, and still provides a fairly deep pool of cards to pull from.

As I went through the card pool, I found the best place to start between the two legends is easily Ashling the Pilgrim. Longtime Commander fans will probably recognize her from this classic meme deck:

Meme Ashling | Commander

Commander (1)
1 Ashling the Pilgrim

Lands (99)
99 Mountain

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No, you're not reading this incorrectly. It really is one legend and 99 Mountains. It essentially poses a fun thought experiment: how well can you fare in a game of Commander where all your deck does is repeatedly blow up the board turn after turn? Not only that, but it also happens to deal damage to each player as well, resulting in a draw if you don't use Ashling to attack.

While I don't think this is ideal, I do like Ashling having a proper activated ability as a great place to start between the two Ashling cards. This gives a sense of direction for where to take the deck in terms of construction. Given how Ashling, the Extinguisher lacks a real core for deck-building - more on that in a bit - it's better to take the easier build-around and go from there.

Here's what I ended up putting together:

The Red Ashling | PreDH | Paige Smith

Commander (1)
1 Ashling the Pilgrim

Planeswalkers (1)
1 Koth of the Hammer

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As I noted previously, the one real defining feature of Ashling was making her bigger and then making her explode in a blaze of glory. When you remove all the counters from her, she won't just kill your opponents' creatures but yours as well. That includes Ashling herself. So, my first thought was to find ways to stop Ashling, as well as potentially some of your other creatures, from dying as a result of her ability.

The first cards I thought of were pretty simple and straightforward: Darksteel Plate and Shield of Kaldra. Both of these powerful equipment make the equipped creature indestructible, a valuable tool for most creature-based lists. If you equip one to Ashling the Pilgrim, then it won't matter how big or small she is when you make her go "boom!" She'll survive the lethal damage with ease and you can do it all over again on the following turn.

There's a couple other great ways to help mitigate the damage as well. Magebane Armor is generally a pretty forgettable card, even by Commander standards. However, like many cards, when it finds the right home it can be perfect, and here it will allow any of your creatures to negate the damage taken from Ashling's ability. The same is true for Sword of Fire and Ice, whose protection from Red ability also does something similar - not to mention its powerful abilities in general.

The one other card that I like in particular here is Strata Scythe. Personally, I adore this card and think it's quite underrated. If you exile a basic land, it scales up the more people playing that color in your pod. It's best to take advantage of this in a mono-color deck, though, since you can maximize the number of those lands that will likely be on the board at any given time. As a result, it's not difficult to make Ashling big enough to survive her kill blast, even if all her counters get removed.

The next thing that I found myself puzzled by were the creatures I wanted to run in the deck. The problem here is that since Ashling's ability frequently wipes the board - often for three at a minimum - it tremendously disincentivizes playing small creatures. This was a bit of a hindrance, as there were a number of great options with low toughness that I would've liked but ultimately seemed too fragile. This led me to taking two paths on my creatures.

The first path was a simple one: play bigger creatures that are more likely to survive your blast. This led to the inclusion of things like Wurmcoil Engine, Avatar of Fury, Inferno Titan, and Silent Arbiter right off the bat. It also made Eron the Relentless a fun retro inclusion since you could activate the regeneration to make Eron survive. Not a bad way to go about things!

The other way was to play creatures that you didn't mind dying. Sure you might lose your Mogg Maniac to a stiff breeze, but if you can blow up an Ashling on it, it can dish out some extra damage as it gets taken out. The same is true for Coalhauler Swine, though if you play it smart, you can keep that one around longer. Additionally, Anger and Solemn Simulacrum both have great effects for dying, so it's hardly a loss to see them hit the bin. Same with Soulbright Flamekin - a card which will generate you extra mana, so what does it matter that it's dead?

Relying so heavily on bigger creatures led to another conundrum: simply staying alive long enough to get most of them onto the battlefield. After all, they can be pretty expensive to cast, and your Ashling is only going to go so far in the early game. This led to me including a fairly heavier number of board wipes than you might usually find - particularly for a Red deck. Chain Reaction, Earthquake, Comet Storm, and Starstorm all make showings here, many of which scale up pretty easily allowing you to use them as flexibly as needed.

Most of the other cards are fun ways to fill out the deck and are interesting things to think about. One of the bigger challenges I wanted to solve with this list was the lack of reliable life gain. After all, a Mono-Red deck isn't going to have a ton of access to that. I quickly picked up on Loxodon Warhammer for starters. The classic equipment not only makes it easier to attack with Ashling, but you'll gain absurd amounts of life from her activated ability explosion.

I also considered some of the lucky charms, as they're called, with Dragon's Claw. The problem is, there's not really as many Red cards as you'd think in this list so I instead settled on Jeweled Torque to play to the field. You can set it simply to Red if you want, but if there are three other players sharing one different color, maybe go in on that one instead. You can also take the dangerous approach with Basilisk Collar if you'd like, but it will insta-kill your entire board guaranteed with Ashling, so it's something you have to do cautiously.

All of this means that there's a surprising amount of depth to building around what looks on the surface to be a fairly simple and straightforward legend. It also helps with the second legend featured in this article: Ashling, the Extinguisher.

While Ashling the Pilgrim has a neat build-around ability, Ashling, the Extinguisher weirdly does not. You have to deal combat damage with Ashling to get the ability, and it's only a one time kill shot. That's a scarily narrow effect with very little means of playing into it. Evasive cards like Whispersilk Cloak, Trailblazer's Boots, and Filth + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth might get you there, but then what? There aren't many ways to benefit off the death triggers in this pre-Blood Artist era, so it turns into just attack, kill creatures, and fill out the rest of the deck randomly, I suppose?

Well thankfully this is Lorwyn, and that means there is another angle to take. It's just not one on the card itself. Let's take a look at my list and I'll explain what I mean.

The Black Ashling | PreDH | Paige Smith

Commander (1)
1 Ashling, the Extinguisher

Planeswalkers (1)
1 Sorin Markov

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If you look at this list closely, you'll probably notice how much of it takes from the Ashling the Pilgrim deck and mirrors it. This approach plays into the mirrored duality of Lorwyn and Shadowmoor as worlds, as well as the alternate versions of Ashling herself. So you get stuff like a different Sword of X and Y (Sword of Light and Shadow), a different color Praetor (Sheoldred, the Whispering One) and a different Titan (Grave Titan).

Here's a small list of additional parallels in this way:

Prophecy Avatar - Avatar of Woe

Judgment Incarnation - Filth

Rise of the Eldrazi level up creature - Guul Draz Assassin

Lorwyn evoker - Shriekmaw

Kamigawa Dragon Spirit - Kokusho, the Evening Star

Off-color counter magic - Withering Boon

Shadowmoor doubler - Wound Reflection

"Alternate" versions of mana rocks and lands

Black board wipes, including Massacre Wurm to replace Bloodfire Colossus

A Black planeswalker - Sorin Markov

Some others went by vibes or were just ways to fill things out. Naturally, some cards aren't nearly as good in the transition over. For example, Stuffy Doll is great with Ashling the Pilgrim when you can benefit from the creature taking damage from Ashling's ability. There is no such synergy with Ashling, the Extinguisher and thus it's better to find another fun card instead.

You're not going to find much synergy with this Ashling, but you can sort of bend the rationale a little. What I mean by this is using cards like Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni or Chainer, Dementia Master to pull creatures out of your opponents' graveyards once you've killed them. Geth, Lord of the Vault is especially great at this, since not only will he resurrect opponents' stuff, but they'll also have to put even more cards into their graveyard for you to steal later.

Is this a great way to riff off of Ashling, the Extinguisher's ability? Yeah, but it's narrow. There's not much you can do past that outside of maybe Sangromancer's life gain from the creatures being picked off. So, the mirrored approach gives it a little extra identity, but it really requires you to have both of them together to really drive the point home. Otherwise, this list ultimately just looks like a silly pile of good stuff. Which, hey, that may not exactly be a bad thing!

I really found myself having a lot more fun with this approach than I thought I would. I was thrilled to cover Ashling the Pilgrim, but wasn't sure how to approach her alternate Eventide version. Sometimes as you build decks like this, though, ideas have a way of forming. Restrictions breed creativity and all that, and that creative drive is what you should strive for when preparing for your next Commander night.

I look forward to seeing Ashling in Lorwyn Eclipsed. With the story finally getting started next week, maybe I'll be able to follow along better and see how she plays into the lore this time around. It's going to be a blast revisiting a true underrated classic of Magic and I for one can't wait.

Paige Smith

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