The Draft Night box introduced with Magic: The Gathering’s Lorwyn Eclipsed set is a handy new way to host your own game night. We put it to the test prior to the set’s release.
Magic: The Gathering is on a legendary run at present, thanks in large part to the tremendous success of recent Universes Beyond collaborations. 2025’s Final Fantasy set was the highest-selling release in the TCG’s 33-year history.
Combined with other major wins like the recent Avatar: The Last Airbender crossover, swathes of new players have entered the hobby. Thankfully, for longtime fans of Wizards of the Coast’s original IP, the current Lorwyn Eclipsed set offers a return to one of the more beloved MTG settings.
For seasoned players looking to introduce newer MTG enthusiasts to a classic block and a newer format, you can’t do much better than the Lorwyn Eclipsed Draft Night box. Here’s our rundown.
What’s in the box?
Wizards of the Coast calls the Lorwyn Eclipsed Draft Night box “a draft party in a box”, and the description is an apt one. The product itself includes:
- 12 Play Boosters
- 1 Collector Booster
- 90 Lorwyn Eclipsed Basic Lands
This is everything you need to run your very own Lorwyn Eclipsed draft with four players. The Magic: The Gathering team suggests using the ‘pick 2’ format for faster-paced sessions, and having drafted the set in these conditions, we’d give the same recommendation.
How to use MTG Lorwyn Elcipsed’s Draft Night box
As mentioned above, the Draft Night box is designed to field four players. To begin, all four should take a seat around a table in a formation as close to a circle as you can manage. Each player should then be given three of the Play Boosters included in the Draft Night box.
Once every player has their booster packs, each should open one pack and leave the other two unopened for now. With cards in hand, every player should look through the contents of their open pack and select two cards to keep.
Lorwyn Eclipsed is a highly synergistic set that focuses heavily on tribal archetypes centred around creature types. The core five archetypes center around two-color combos. These are:
- Goblins (Black/Red)
- Elementals (Blue/Red)
- Kithkin (White/Green)
- Elves (Black/Green)
- Merfolk (White/Blue)
If you’re hosting the draft night, it may be best to explain these archetypes to players before they begin selecting their cards. Each player should identify two cards they believe will help form a synergistic deck based on these creature types.
Ideally, one of these will be a powerful rare card they can use as the centerpiece of a draft deck. Once players have selected their two cards, they should set them aside and pass the remaining cards to the player on their left.
The player should then select another two options from the smaller pool of cards they were handed by the player on their right. Ideally, these will be cards that synergise with the two cards they picked previously, or cards with decent universal effects that belong to the color pairing that they’re aiming to build around.
Set these two aside and pass the remaining cards to the player on your left once more. Continue taking two cards from the pool passed to you until there are no more left from each pack.
After this, players should open the second pack and repeat the process. This time, passing to players on their right. Once there are no cards left from everyone’s second pack, repeat the same process with the final pack, once again passing leftover cards to the player on the left.
When selecting cards, it’s important to try to stick with a particular two-color theme and keep your mana curve in mind. There is a guide in the Lorwyn Eclipsed Draft Night box on how many cards to aim for in a given mana range, as well as an ideal ratio for creatures, enchantments, instants, and sorceries.
It helps to have a seasoned player or two to guide newer players through the process. With that in mind, each player should construct a 40-card deck that they can use to play rounds of Magic: The Gathering.
Players can use the included Land cards to fill out their deck, but we recommend having some of your own Lands handy in case multiple players draft the same color or colors. You can decide on your own points system for your mini tournament, and the winning player can be given the Collector Booster as a prize.
Is the MTG Lorwyn Eclipsed Draft Night box worth it?
At a pricepoint of $94.99 USD, we’d recommend splitting the cost of the Draft Night box among the four players planning to use it. At roughly $24 each, you can have a solid night of fun competing for the opportunity to pull some rare cards and bragging rights.
More specifically, the box lends itself quite well to teaching newer players MTG’s draft format in a comfortable setting that doesn’t have the same constraints as a store event. The ability to implement homebrew rules like softer mulligans and the benefit of no time limits make for a significantly more welcoming experience.
All of this with the added benefit of helping to familiarise them with one of Magic’s original settings and expanding their love of the universe. The evangelistic hobby nerd in us can’t possibly say no.
Of course, while the Draft Night box can prepare newer players for the many in-store events that will take place over the life cycle of the Lorwyn Eclipsed set, that’s not to say that four longtime players can’t get together at home and enjoy their own draft night.
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