Sorcerer's Castle
This deck is a Ramp-Control deck that aims to win very late in the game through big spells and the card advantage from Sorcerer. The primary way to control the board is through the utilization of the Earth, Air and Generic defensive sites in combination with the vast removal kit and creatures that disable enemies or are really good on the defensive. Moreover the deck is crammed with artifact ramp (thus weak to artifact hate) to basically convert Sorcerer's card draw into mana and shorten the time required to establish good control over the board with the medium and large spells and creatures.
UPDATING THIS PRIMER IS CURRENTLY PAUSED AS THE DECK IS UNDERGOING DAILY AND SOMETIMES DRASTIC CHANGES
Art by Florian Herold
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯SPELLS⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Ramp - Amounting to a total of 13 spells and artifacts that pull us ahead on mana the deck looks to consistently open the game with 1 or 2 of these and draw a 2nd or 3rd throughout the midgame as a way to keep expanding the mana pool while drawing cards from Sorcerer. We can never really have enough mana so drawing any of these late is not that big of a problem as we are drawing a second card every turn anyways. This mana is reliable and fast but it's very susceptible to artifact removal. Wcyd. Chances of seeing at leasat 1 of these cards in opening hand without mulligan is 52% and bottoming all 3 spells bumps it up to 78%. My sites are extremely picky so there's no guarantee I'll have the luxury to aggressively mulligan for a ramp piece, but the numbers don't look too bad.
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- Philosopher's Stone - the best 1 mana rock.
- Cores (Amethyst, Onyx, Aquamarine, Ruby) - We play all 4 because I just want the "pay 1 mana now to have 1 mana every turn later" effect. I think when you're drawing 2 cards per turn not getting the threshold from this is still strong enough.
- Key to the City - Exactly the same as an out of colour core that has an added amazing effect. Could be very useful for ourselves sometimes but I fear the added danger of it being stolen and used against us. I need the 1 mana ramp though, so...
- Shrine of the Dragonlord - Slamdunk ramp, I will gladly pay the extra mana to get the extra threshold. It's no Philosopher's Stone but there won't be another Philosopher's Stone in the game. What's really important with this piece is that it is a monument which means I can cast it away from my Avatar, which means I won't get 2-for-1 by a Disenchant. This is very very strong.
- Four Waters of Paradise - An insanely strong mana silo, paying 2 now will allow us to slam a massive spell and get the tempo back the following turn. Early Craterize or Wreatannis Titans are amazing with this.
- Landmass - Great card for consistency and what I want to see on 3 mana. Unfortunately the double threshold is sometimes a problem for this deck.
- Sow the Earth - A stronger Land Mass, not really fond of the cost, I'd rather keep all ramp below 2 and lose out on all the added benefits here (card advantage) but I haven't played with this enough to cut it yet.
Board - Cards that have no other function than to just fill the board because of good math value.
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- Kettletop Leprechaun - Cheap board that trades for a site in hand which allows us to get to Sorcerer's ability quicker.
- Autumn Unicorn - Heroes III taught me Unicorns are OP xP
- Order of the White Wing - Apart from being a really efficient creature as a 3 mana 3 with Ward, it has an incredibly powerful effect against certain decks like Necromancer. Very strong overall.
- Root Spider - Best creature in Sorcery - sick art, moves below our lands and fills all the holes left from unfortunate placements. If I could run 10 of these I would.
- Tombstone Wardens - Extremely mathematically efficient card. Functionally this is a fighting (and worse of course) Root Spider - it fills the gaps we left with land placements and cheaply protects our Castle.
- Gargantula - Root Spider's mommy, just a spot removal on a stick.
- Pudge Butcher - He fits extremely well - place it at the front row somewhere like on a Mountain Pass or Perilous Bridge - since usually enemies come from the sides he will guard the less powerful side sites. Once we stabilize and get to the lategame looking for the pushback, Pudge + Blink becomes a 2 mana draw a card deal 5 damage to face combo!
- Sir Perceval - This card is here only because he costs only 1 air so he's easy to cast and he's a 4/5 for 4. That's good enough!
- Archangel Michael - Broken card...
- Paladins of Bazia - Just a really powerful unit with protection.
- Talamh Dreig - Every finisher over 5 mana should have some form of innate protection. Talamh's is pretty strong and even though he's slow, acting as a protected delayed Craterize is good enough.
Protectors - These are cards that act as pseudo lifegain and slow the game down if the opponents can't deal with them easily or they just protect our pieces from hate.
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- Amulet of Niniane - Shroud :3
- Royal Bodyguard - Royal Bodyguard is particularly good against other control decks aiming to Craterize us from afar like Archimago...
- Blasted Oak - It's a gimmicky card that protects the many many artifacts we have from spot removal or acts as an umbrella for our Avatar from some spells.
Lifegain - Cheap and extremely mathematically efficient cards to keep us from falling to Death's Door.
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- Divine Healing - Divine Healing is particularly important as the 1 mana cost allows us to get a tempo swing casting it alongside a removal or a creature and we don't really care that we're losing a card just for life since our Avatar prints cards on demand.
- Ring of Morrigan - Ring of Morrigan is just busted, nothing to comment here.
Removal- A list of all cards that effectively function as board control and removal.
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- Bury - Simple spot removal and I'm hoping that 2 Bury, 3 Cave-In, 2 EQ will be enough not to have to run Disenchant;
- Cave-In - Quite expensive but necessary. I'd rather pay the extra mana over Bury so I can hit multiple units that are already forced to be on the same square because of our movement restricting sites. A nice mainboard solution to some artifacts too.
- Earthquake - The best removal in the game probably. Works really well with rearranging sites for our Castle too. And Root Spider survives ^^
- Craterize - This is more of a finisher than a removal but it just does everything we want. If I could play 4 of these in the deck I would.
Traversal - These cards are just utility to help us cheat on the board choke hold we've created.
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- Crusade - The purpose of this card is very simple - it's a 1 off that massively decreases the time to kill other slow opponents like Mago. Since my deck does not have reach in the form of Magic damage Spells aside from Craterize, what this card does is it allows me to summon directly to my opponent's face a horde of minions that otherwise would be slow to get there especially through my own sites; Since I'm a Sorcerer and I can throw many cards at my opponent it will be a constant stream of threats that are powered up; It's a card that flips the narrative of "My deck is full of defensive minions" to "My deck is full of offensive minions that spawn in your base". I think it's really good for what it's here for.
- Blink - This is literally used as a cheap tempo cantrip. It acts as a finisher for Titans and random Gargantulas to get hits in so we can tally up the damage with Craterize and put the enemy on Death's Door; It helps us traverse our own swamps that we've set up and it allows our Avatar to move if necessary while we keep drawing cards. Overall I think it's good and necessary to reliably have a card like this but it's not essential for the core strategy of the deck.
Card Advantage - Even more value cards since more slow sluggish units (Like Conqueror Wurm) are susceptible to removal and end the game too slowly.
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- Orb of Ba'al Berith - Just a huge combo piece that pays itself off basically on the first cast spell. It's easy to park it behind all the swamps away from the enemy to use and with Craterize, Divine Healings and Lightning bolts it works amazing. It's not as good as it would be in a fire deck but I freaking love the flavour and art of this card as well as thematically it ties perfectly with what we want to do. Just one of my favourite cards in the game overall.
- Tithe - Takes care of all site drawing for the rest of the game and is nice fodder for Craterize.
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯SITES⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯
Lands Stax Colorless- The heart of the deck. These are downright broken Castling in exchange for not progressing our thresholds. A big problem for this deck is finding proper ratios but I'm greedy.
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- Bottomless Pit - Insane card, what can I really say... weak against fliers though. This will be a recurring pattern for a lot of my sites.
- Free City - Still a great card after the nerfs and a very welcome trade against cheap minions. It's nice to kill back whatever hits you so you don't have to think about it again. Prevents us from being dogpiled onto.
- Dome of Osiros - A sanctuary for many of our minions, we should be able to get much better value out of this than our opponent and it's also just a free site that cannot be a point of attack.
- Great Wall - Actually a wall and very great. Still also weak against fliers. It's a pattern for our lands.
- The Void - Annoyingly this will help some decks that play in the Void. Don't really care tho as against all other decks this is essentially a battlefield constrictor. It's just one more card in the deck that gives less space for the opponent to play with.
Lands Stax Colored - The heart of the deck. These are absolutely insane as they progress our threshold while also creating our Castle.
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- Perilous Bridge - Colored great walls. What's not to love? Still weak against fliers.
- Gnome Hollows - Amazing vs big units, unfortunately doesn't stop many red aggro units but it gives threshold so it's a must play.
- Mountain Pass - This is great place to put any of our gap closers or create a chokepoint for enemies so that they can't swarm. It's basically a door to the Castle xD
- Mount Ussar Sanctuary - A place for respite for our Avatar.. awesome silver bullet, especially against other control decks that want to snipe you with spells as it gives you extra time to find a Royal Bodyguard, Blasted Oak or kill them back before they take down your ward. This gives threshold bro... It's crazy cool. It's also the banner picture for this deck for a thematic reason. This is where we vibe.
Threshold Lands- Total of 9 lands that do not create obstacles on the board.
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- Windmill - Best site for threshold.
- Rift Valley - My favourite land art in the game... It's close to being cuttable though unfortunately. It's nice and very useful but it's only occasionally strong, most of the time it's just an earth site.
- Fertile Earth - Double earth site since there's nothing better to put in this slot.
- Pillar of Zeiros - Amazing free lifegain.
Misc Lands - Whatever can't fit into the other major categories.
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- Mirror Realm - Can be anything so how can you say no to more options in the midgame?
- City of Souls - Easy 2 mana. I'm really considering City of Glass as well, as well as my favourite Trophy Room, but they will be reserved for a version of this deck that doesn't require so many tresholds I guess.
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Cuts - Cards that were in previous versions of this deck and were cut, including their description for bookeeping purposes;
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- Gift of the Wolf - Not card advantage as printed but it often results in such as it allows our minion to kill something and survive while drawing us a card. It's also nice as a way to just cantrip 2 dmg into an opponent's site as we draw many cards anyways and we have a lot of mana anyways so it speeds up the tempo. Might wanna play a full playset of these eventually.
- Grandmaster Wizard - I wish I didn't have to play 6 mana draw 3 but it's probably just too good to cut.
- Pendulum of Peril - Place it correctly and the game grinds to a halt if they can't remove it. It's obnoxious, it's cool, it's flavourful and most importantly it works really really well.
- Angel's Egg - If you find the breathing room to set this up it puts any opponent with less card advantage (umm anyone basically) on a clock to kill us. You only have to care about board state if this is allowed to put in good work.
- Cage of Sidrak - Mass removal against swarm. Great art.
- The Malleus Maleficarum - Even more card advantage - this is basically a finisher to flood the board with Thunderstorms, Arc Lightnings and use Teleports for direct hits or escapes.
- Midland Army - Functions like a big slow finisher that is also a removal engine. It's the ultimate "Board card" you just set it up and forget and even if it dies you get value out of it. As any other finisher this would be better off just being a Craterize if I could have more.
- Adtonitum - A fast flying dragon that throws lightning bolts. What's not to love with this, it's a perfect finisher for this type of deck.
- Mover of Mountains - Just an extremely strong tool in a deck that has mostly stax lands. It allows us to change the state of the game massively for just 2 mana and if they let him live we can do it over and over again.
- White Hart - White Hart is just a must answer card that will probably get answered but it's nice to have a joker insta win check for such a low cost (If we park it behind a protective site we can be extremely annoying with it)
- Wraetannis Titan - Quite mid but we need some board. Gets staxxed by our own lands fairly easily. Might be cuttable.
- Toolbox - A really nice finisher that searches for direct ping damage after Craterizing our opponent to Death's Door or particular removals that are situational and we're ok paying the extra 2 cost from Toolbox for (Currently Disenchant, Thunderstorm, Arc Lightning). I can't wait to get a spell that efficiently kills fliers so I can use it through the Toolbox as fliers are a problem for this deck's primary control source (the sites). Toolbox can also grab me a Teleport so one of my minions can get on top of the enemy avatar or save myself.
- Lightning Bolt - Cheap spot removal for the early game while there's not much to eat the RNG. Acts as a finisher too while they're on Death's Door. Overall very important for the tempo of the deck.
- Forlorn Keep - Free chump blocker that trades as we keep drawing cards and setting up the board with ramp. Pretty good.
- Myrrh's Trophy Room - We don't really need this card, could just be a threshold generator but I love greedy cards, I love the effect and most importantly I love the fucking incredible art on this and I want a Trophy Room for my Castle. It stays!
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Thank you for reading this primer.
While this deck definitely aims to be strong and I love to compete in tournaments, I personally view Sorcery primarily as a flavour rich game and many choices in this deck are pet cards that I simply love the art of and thematically reinforce the idea of this deck. You might notice some notable powerful exclusions that would fit the strategy (like the Vampires or Pudge or others) but I just didn't feel like they fit thematically or did not enjoy having their art 'pollute' my deck. Moreover I think I've optimized and pivoted its strategy enough to a point where not including certain cards is not that big of a performance hit. Ultimately this deck is consciously attempting to be respectful of both performance as well as flavour as this balance is how I most enjoy playing most games.
