Blight Curse Dance of the Elements

Precon comparison · Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander

Which Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander precon should you buy?

If the deck is going into a game unchanged, buy Dance of the Elements. If you're buying cards for it the same week, buy Blight Curse. Ashling cuts most of her box's expensive spells to four mana from the turn she arrives, while Auntie Ool's box holds a complete -1/-1 counters engine on a curve too heavy to start it on time, which is the problem her guide's thirteen swaps exist to fix.

Art, left to right: Daniel Zrom and Kai Carpenter

Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander is two decks, released on 23 January 2026 at $49.99 each, five dollars more than the Edge of Eternities pair the August before. Basic lands aside, they have six cards in common and little else, so the choice comes down to what you'll do with the box once it's open:

• Dance of the Elements (all five colours), to play as it ships. Ashling costs three mana and lets you evoke 23 of the box's 29 cards at five mana or more for four, and every Elemental sacrificed that way comes back as a hasty token copy. Its guide stops at eleven cuts, few for a deck averaging 4.27 mana.
• Blight Curse (black, red and green), if you'll upgrade. Thirteen swaps in its guide take the average mana value from 3.67 to 3.23, a bigger drop than the other guide manages, and the spells costing three or less from 32 to 41. Eleven of the thirteen came to $15.13 at Scryfall market prices in August 2026.
• Either, if you're choosing by mechanic. Blight Curse is -1/-1 counters and Dance of the Elements is Elementals, with almost no crossover: no card in Dance mentions a -1/-1 counter, and only three of Blight Curse's 28 creatures are Elementals.

The two boxes in numbers

Singles value is the TCGplayer market price of the printings each box shipped, summed, as of 23 October 2026. It moves every day, and each deck’s own page carries the current figure and what it means for the price you paid. Both decks cost $49.99 at release. Neither deck sets a bracket floor: no box has a Game Changer or mass land denial.

Lorwyn in one box, Shadowmoor in the other

Lorwyn Eclipsed goes back to the plane of the 2007 and 2008 block that began as Lorwyn and Morningtide and ended as Shadowmoor and Eventide. The two decks divide that history between them. Twelve cards in Dance of the Elements were first printed in Lorwyn or Morningtide, Mulldrifter, Shriekmaw and Horde of Notions among them, and none in Shadowmoor or Eventide. Blight Curse has thirteen first printed in Shadowmoor or Eventide, including Puppeteer Clique, Midnight Banshee and Kulrath Knight, against a single Lorwyn card, Hoarder's Greed.

The mechanics divide the same way. Evoke, the keyword Ashling hands out, is a Lorwyn mechanic, and Shadowmoor is where wither and persist started putting -1/-1 counters on things. Of Blight Curse's 100 cards, 34 mention a -1/-1 counter or blight (this set's word for putting them on your own creature), and not one of Dance's does. Dance has 33 Elementals among its 36 creatures, while no creature type covers even half of Blight Curse's 28. The guides keep to their halves as well: Blight Curse's guide adds Crumbling Ashes from Eventide, and Dance's adds Flamekin Harbinger from Lorwyn and Brighthearth Banneret from Morningtide.

So if the old block is part of why you're looking, the half you liked better is the box to buy.

Dance first to play, Blight Curse first to rebuild

Dance of the Elements: most of a 4.27 curve costs four

Ashling, the Limitless is a 2/3 for {2}{R}. Cast an Elemental permanent out of your hand and her first ability lets you pay evoke {4} for it: four mana instead of the printed cost, and the card is sacrificed the moment it enters. Her second turns that loss around: sacrifice a nontoken Elemental and you get a token copy with haste until end of turn, which survives your next end step only if you pay {W}{U}{B}{R}{G}. Evoked that way, whatever an Elemental does on entering it does twice, for four mana.

That's why the box's 4.27 average overstates how slowly it plays. 23 of its 29 cards costing five or more are Elemental permanents, and with Ashling out none of them needs more than four mana. The six that aren't are five instants and sorceries and Timeless Lotus.

What the box gets wrong is mana. Fourteen of its 40 lands always enter tapped, six more than in Blight Curse, and its guide counts only seven pieces of card draw. The end-step payment is a harder bill than it looks as well. Paying it is neither casting a spell nor activating an ability, and seven sources in the box make coloured mana limited to one or both of those uses, Smokebraider and Ancient Ziggurat among them. None of that mana can pay.

Its guide's eleven swaps came to about $45 at market prices in August 2026, with Flamekin Harbinger the one card near $12. Five Thriving lands go and two untapped lands come in. The spells it brings start with Panharmonicon, a colourless second doubler of enter triggers beside the Yarok, the Desecrated already in the box, and Elemental Bond for cards. The average falls to 3.98, the tapped lands to nine and the draw count to nine. Red and blue finish on 31 sources each, and the guide says plainly that a turn-three double pip wants 36.

Blight Curse: the engine ships, the speed doesn't

Auntie Ool is a 4/4 for {1}{B}{R}{G}. Her ward counters anything an opponent aims at her unless they blight 2, but she has no way to put counters out on her own. Each time a creature gets one or more -1/-1 counters, Ool pays out: a card for you if that creature is yours, and 1 life lost by its controller if it isn't. The other 99 cards supply the counters, and its guide finds the core of a -1/-1 deck already in the box: Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons, The Scorpion God, Blowfly Infestation and Necroskitter.

Speed is the problem. The box averages 3.67, eighteen of its cards cost five or more, three of those cost seven, and its guide counts six pieces of ramp to reach them. Eight lands out of 39 can never come in untapped. Ool's 3.67 is what the deck really costs to cast, where Ashling's 4.27 mostly isn't.

Its guide's thirteen swaps cut all three seven-drops and five lands that always enter tapped, Savage Lands and Path of Ancestry among them. The average drops to 3.23 and three always-tapped lands are left. The money splits in two. At Scryfall market prices in August 2026 the thirteen came to $75.04, and $59.91 of that was Crumbling Ashes and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, two cards the guide treats as standard in any -1/-1 counters list. The other eleven came to $15.13, and the painlands and ramp that fix the deck's speed are all among them.

Black pays for the change. Four of the five lands that leave made black, against two of the three painlands that come in, so black falls from 29 sources to 27, and the guide puts double black by turn three at 76.4%, down from 80.4%.

Owning both

Ashling's identity is all five colours, because the {W}{U}{B}{R}{G} in her rules text counts toward it, so every card in Blight Curse is legal in her deck. Going the other way, 52 of the 83 non-basic cards behind Ashling fit Ool's black, red and green. Legal and useful are different questions, though. Blight Curse has three Elementals to offer Ashling (Necroskitter, Soul Snuffers and Kulrath Knight), and nothing in Dance cares about -1/-1 counters.

The six non-basic cards they share are Command Tower, Exotic Orchard, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Savage Lands and Path of Ancestry. The guides agree on the first four and part ways on the last two, cutting both from Blight Curse and keeping both in Dance. Path of Ancestry shows why. It always enters tapped, and it scries 1 when its mana casts a creature that shares a type with your commander. Three of the 27 other creatures in Blight Curse share one with Ool, a Goblin Warlock. In Dance, 33 of the 35 share one with Ashling, counting Realmwalker, a changeling. Its mana is unrestricted too, which makes it one of the lands that can pay Ashling's end-step bill.

Neither guide adds anything the other box ships, so a second box lends nothing to the first one's upgrade. Both guides do buy Nature's Lore, so upgrading both means paying for it twice.

FAQ

Blight Curse or Dance of the Elements: which should I buy first?

Dance of the Elements, if you'll play it as it ships. Ashling, the Limitless lets you evoke 23 of the box's 29 cards costing five or more for four mana, and each Elemental sacrificed that way returns as a token copy. Blight Curse is the better first buy if you'll upgrade straight away. Its guide's thirteen swaps lower its average mana value from 3.67 to 3.23, more than the Dance guide's eleven lower Dance's.

Why is Ashling, the Limitless a five-colour commander if she costs {2}{R}?

A card's colour identity takes in every mana symbol in its rules text as well as its cost. Ashling's text asks for {W}{U}{B}{R}{G} at your next end step if a token copy is to stay, so her identity is all five colours and her deck can include cards of any colour. That payment is the only part of her text that asks for white, blue, black or green.

Can an Ashling deck use the Blight Curse cards?

Every one of them is legal there. Ashling's identity covers black, red and green, so all 99 cards behind Auntie Ool, Cursewretch fit her deck. Only three are Elementals, though: Necroskitter, Soul Snuffers and Kulrath Knight. In the other direction, 52 of the 83 non-basic cards behind Ashling fit Ool's colours, six of them cards both boxes already ship.

Is Blight Curse or Dance of the Elements cheaper to upgrade?

As whole lists, Dance of the Elements. Its guide's eleven swaps came to about $45 at market prices in August 2026, and Blight Curse's thirteen came to $75.04 at Scryfall market prices the same month. Blight Curse is the cheaper place to start, though: $59.91 of its total went on two cards, Crumbling Ashes and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, leaving $15.13 for the other eleven. Leaving out the Dance guide's dearest add, Flamekin Harbinger, took that list to roughly $33. Each guide shows today's price for its list.

Do the Lorwyn Eclipsed Commander decks have any Game Changers?

No. Neither box has a Game Changer in it, nor an extra-turn card or mass land denial, so neither sets a bracket floor, and no card either guide adds is a Game Changer. Blight Curse does include Devoted Druid, half of a known two-card combo with Quillspike, and its guide leaves Quillspike out on purpose.

Which Lorwyn Eclipsed deck has the cards from the original Lorwyn block?

Both, one half each. Dance of the Elements has twelve cards first printed in Lorwyn or Morningtide, among them Mulldrifter, Shriekmaw and Horde of Notions. Blight Curse has thirteen first printed in Shadowmoor or Eventide, among them Puppeteer Clique, Midnight Banshee and Kulrath Knight, and one Lorwyn card, Hoarder's Greed.