More Shadowmoor previews have popped up this week, both on the official site and in various magazines. If you’re not keeping up with every possible preview, they’re all eventually collected here. This week’s previews demonstrate some of the interesting mechanics showing up in Shadowmoor. Here they are:

Persist is basically a “hard to kill” mechanic, intermediate between normal creatures and, say, the annoying unkillability of everyone’s favorite artifact cockroach, Epochrasite. We’ll have to see if there are any really large, difficult, or annoying creatures in Shadowmoor with Persist. Any comes into play ability would be particularly synergistic with Persist, making it extra painful to try and rid the world of the creature (or, at the very least, enhancing the value of RFG effects).

-1/-1 counters are all over this set. It’ll be interesting to see if this is a cool idea, or if it will crush tempo all over the place as armies of creatures are attritioned into nothingness each turn. Certainly, it reduces the value of all your X/1 utility creatures (although as SSO has pointed out, a lot of utility creatures are X/2s).
The untap symbol appears to be the “Q” that Mark Rosewater was hinting at earlier. I’ll watch this with interest, as having an untap symbol on anything feels like an ingredient for combo — which, of course, is why all the untap abilities probably include costs, such as the single blue mana for Leech Bonder’s ability.

Godhead of Awe doesn’t highlight any new mechanics, but it’s another part of the cycle featuring the Demigod of Revenge. In addition to having creepy art, the Godhead plays well with the -1/-1 counter theme of the set, as it instantly makes every other creature on the board an easy target for counter-based assassination. Godhead into Pyroclasm seems reasonable, though — assuming W/R decks become popular again.
Those are the highlights for now. I recommend checking in with Rei Nakazawa’s latest feature article on the story behind Shadowmoor, including an update on how the Aurora twists all the races of Shadowmoor (except, notably, the Faeries…).

Earlier this week, I looked at Future Sight cards appearing in Shadowmoor, via the Orb of Insight. In this article Robin Russell hits the Orb up with some more search terms. The fun fact? 38 instances of the word Scarecrow. Robin does the P/T breakdown on page two of the article.

The Shadowmoor minisite has gone up. As they did with Lorwyn, Wizards will be using the site to tease you about Shadowmoor with stories and a list of all the cards that have been officially previewed (you can follow “unofficial previews” over at the MTG Salvation spoiler archive).
Most notable today is the story explanation of what Shadowmoor actually is, called Shadow of the Aurora. Turns out, Shadowmoor is Lorwyn overwritten:
Darkness fell. The Great Aurora swept across the plane, transforming it into an eerie world of permanent gloom, and wiping away almost all traces of its former nature. The denizens of the plane have transformed along with it, memories and all, and now only a precious few still remember the name Lorwyn.
The sun has abandoned the world. In the wake of the Aurora, the plane’s formerly lighthearted races have taken on new identities, their allegiances twisted by the shadow. The Aurora also awakened new threats, beings that slumbered, hidden, during sunnier times. Moaning spirits, impish oddities, scuttling scarecrows, and enormous monsters of lore have emerged to roam the land. And Shadowmoor is now the province of demigods, manifestations of dark forces that have slept since the last Great Aurora.
Mind you, there are only two cards bearing the word “Demigod” in the set (but more on that later).
Interesting. On a 100% related note, I happened to walk by a game shop when I was in Italy last week, and the Italian name for Lorwyn was “Lorwyn,” but the Italian name for Morningtide was “Aurora.”
This is an interesting piece of flavor, and it allows for a lot of those obvious mirrorings like Goldmeadow and Mistmeadow. It almost — almost, I say — makes me want to read the fiction. Almost.

As a lead-in to the pending weeks of Shadowmoor previews, Wizards once again put up the Orb of Insight. The Orb is basically a tool that lets you search for words (with “word” here meaning any character string without internal spaces) within the full text of all the cards in the Shadowmoor set. The Orb then returns the number of instances of that word within all searchable text in the set.
For example, a search for the word Kithkin returns a value of 21 — there are 21 instances of the word Kithkin in the set. Interestingly, there are 0 instances of the word Changeling.
To prevent savvier Magic fans from simply text bombing the Orb with every possible string and then trying to reconstruct the set, the Orb employs a captcha that means you have to search the terms by hand — as Magic fans are, no doubt, feverishly doing all the time these days.
One of the most obvious things to check, as far as I was concerned, was which Future Sight “future shifted” cards actually appear in this set. We’ve already seen Future Sight’s Boldwyr Intimidator turn up in Morningtide, where he ensures that Changelings can’t block each other. So, after a little bit of typing, which Future Sight cards can we expect to see? Just two:

Given the Hybrid nature of Shadowmoor, as discussed by Mark Rosewater in one of his Shadowmoor preview articles here, this makes perfect sense. Extensive plumbing of the Orb by other dedicated folks has turned up putative names for red-green, white-blue, white-green, and blue-black Cairn-style lands. I’m going to guess the Cairns will be rethemed, as there are no Sengir vampires (or other family members) running around in Shadowmoor.
Apparently, Mistmeadow is the Shadowmoor analog of Goldmeadow, with Skulks rather than Stalwarts. There’s one other mention of Mistmeadow in the set as well. This also goes toward explaining the freaky, buglike eyes of the Skulk, which was quite visually different from even other Future Sight Kithkin. It’s nocturnal, or at least crepuscular.
Mark Rosewater has more random tidbits in another article here. They’re neat teasers, but I think my “tease into excitement” threshold is higher. I need more information before any of those tidbits really interests me strongly.
Still, Shadowmoor is looking good — but then, that’s just been true of Magic sets for the last several years.