Sphere of Influence: February 27, 2026

Winnowing | Illustrated by David Palumbo

Welcome to Sphere of Influence, a pre-FNM look at some potential movers and shakers that are worth picking up before their prices increase.

With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles just over the horizon, it seemed right to take another look at Lorwyn Eclipsed to see if any new Commander powerhouses have emerged, particularly if they can be snagged for cheap. Here are the cards we've selected:

Mutable Explorer - $1.50

This new changeling serves as one of the best ramp sources in any typal deck containing green. It creates a token copy of Mutavault, a land that can become a 2/2 changeling creature, when it enters, meaning the card itself represents two creatures of whatever type we're focusing on. The Mutavault creature also remains hidden until it's animated, ensuring it can survive board wipes. Plus, since it's a token, it can be copied much more easily than a land could be copied to produce even more ramp. This one seems like a grower.

Winnowing - $0.50

This typal-focused board wipe is flexible enough to almost guarantee it's going to be one-sided in our favor while costing relatively little mana. The spell can be convoked by tapping our typal creatures, then, when it resolves, we choose one of our typal friends (or, better yet, a changeling) to save most of our creatures, then we can choose whatever random token or dinky guy sitting on our opponents' sides. Odds are, they'll have at least one creature that doesn't share too many types with the others. The creatures then get sacrificed, which gets around indestructible. Pick one up for every white typal deck you own.

Dawnhand Dissident - $0.50

For one mana, we get a versatile dork that acts as a graveyard-filler, a source of graveyard hate, and a recursion engine that fuels itself. To recast our creatures, we can either remove the blighted -1/-1 counters or whatever others we have lying around. All this for only . It takes a minute to get going, but Dawnhand Dissident is not one to sleep on.

Champions of the Perfect - $1

Anyone looking for redundancy for Beast Whisperer and Guardian Project card draw can look no further. For four mana, we get another source of card draw that also stands as an intimidating 6/6. The caveat is that this spell requires us to exile an Elf creature we control or from our hand when it's cast, but even outside of a dedicated typal deck, Elves are abundant. Almost every mana dork is an Elf, and it shouldn't be too hard to find others if we need them.

Kinscaer Sentry - $0.75

A two-mana first-striker with lifelink that puts creatures into play for free... that's an appealing pitch, especially when the size of the creature is dependent on the number of attacking creatures, which is something white specializes in. This card is quite slow, but not too slow that it won't make appearances in lower power metas. Grab one just in case you need it.

Lorwyn Some, Lor-lose Some

Which Lorwyn Eclipsed cards are you digging? Which have you added to your decks, and where? Let me know!