This is the list I played at the German Grand Contest in Gelsenkirchen, where I finished in sixth place. This was my first big event in Sorcery.

With my Fog Tempo Battlemage list, I experienced that my 2-drops got killed way too easily by Vile Imps, Kobolds, and the like. So I decided to get rid of them. But since I wanted to play the Battlemage aggressively and still wanted to play minions, I optimized the Spellbook and Atlas to have a strong Turn 2 play by either playing a Core, of which there are six in the deck, on Turn 1, or playing a Tower on Turn 2 to deploy a problematic 3-drop.

If you can combine a Core with a Tower on Turn 2, you can play an even more dangerous 4-drop.

After your Turn 2 play, you likely want to drop another threat on Turn 3 or bring your Battlemage into action to keep up the pressure.

I tried to optimize those lines by adding six Towers, six dual Water-threshold sites, and many 3- and 4-drops.

The advantage of playing six Cores is that your Avatar does not need to deploy as many sites and can join the battle with its 3 Power and built-in card-advantage engine earlier.

The disadvantages are that you will have some dead draws in the midgame and are more vulnerable to artifact hate and an early Court of Equity.

But back to the event. I played seven rounds of Sorcery, with every opponent being very kind and welcoming.

Unfortunately, I did not take any notes and can’t remember all the details of most of the games. But here are some points I remember:

I played against Simone from Italy with Deathspeaker in Round 1. I won the die roll and started with my typical Turn 2 3-drop start. Which was unfortunally for him a Nelly Longarms which pulls his Avatar right next to mine. From there on, I kept the pressure high so that Simone never got the chance to establish his game plan.

Round 2, I played against my good friend Philipp, who played Earth/Air Imposter. He won the die roll, and I hit him down to 12 while also removing a summoned Pudge Budger. Then he summoned a Vampire out of my reach. The next round, he Grapple Shotted it into action and attacked another minion, bringing himself back to 20. The follow-up was Whirling Blade, removing the rest of my minions while also striking my Battlemage. I’m still calling him my friend, but that was a beating I will not forget too soon.

Round 3, I played against Nikolaus, who was a really nice guy who played I think Air Earth Imposter. I was on the play and had a really explosive start with turn 2 Nelly Longarms threatening his Imposter. He countered it by playing a site to the left and Blinking his Avatar over there. But I had enough pressure and my own blink to get him ober to me so the game ended very fast, and we had a lot of time to get some food.

Round 4, I played against an Earth/Fire Necromancer played by Felix Z. He started the game with a Dual Site into his first Skeleton token. I responded with a Mock Court on Turn 1 and a thread on turn 2. Later in the game he played Arcade of Bones and an Army of the Dead on the following turn. I had a shrink ready but could not target the army because of the Arcade. Luckily for me I also had a shrink ready which pushed the arcade on my site and my Battlemage and the army of the dead on his site. I casted the Shrink and hit it with my battlemage. This was the only game where I was happy holding the court.

Round 5, I played against Marc, who is another friend of mine. He plays Sparkmage, and luckily for me, we had a recent playtesting session, so I knew how to play against his Avatar and respect his ability to race me with it.

I would say the matchup is about 50/50, and Marc started strong with a Turn 2 Hexham Haunts. My plan was to deploy a Turn 3 Orm Infestor, but with Haunts in the realm, this no longer made sense. So I played a ramped A Fate to flood his Wuthering Heights with a Sturmgeist on it, limiting the reach he could gain through flying minions from Heights and getting my Infestor into action.
Marc also found a Dagger and started to ping my minions, but I sealed the win thanks to my Battlemage, charge minions, and my own Wuthering Heights, which allowed me to place my minions in relatively safe positions and give them pseudo-charge.

Round 6, I played against Pascal with Earth/Fire Imposter. Pascal is also such a nice guy and we had a good time in contesting the realm. I started the game with Phil-Stone on Turn 1. Then I pressured his life total with multiple minions, crossing my fingers that I wouldn’t get hit by Poison Nova.

Then he infiltrated my Sir Pelleas. I played Scatter to push his Avatar into my Battlemage’s reach and Sir Pelleas on top of my opponent’s Spider, which broke its stealth. Then I played Blink to teleport Sir Pelleas back onto his Avatar and seal the deal.

Round 7, I played against Iso B. with Mono-Fire Sorcerer. I won the die roll and made my typical Turn 2 3-drop play.

But Iso also started strong with Vile Imps, Dragonettes, Gift of the Snake, Ring of Morrigan, and Monstrous Lion.

I had two really cool turns. First, I played Scatter to push the Ring, Sorcerer, and Core to the site where my Battlemage was waiting to pick up the artifacts and hit his Avatar.

The next turn, I played a Hyperparasite followed by a Tactical Move to move the Hyperparasite into his back row, joined by my Battlemage. The Hyperparasite then picked up his Dragonettes, which were handled by my Battlemage. The game was very close since his river of blood hindered me healing with his ring but in the end I was a turn faster.

Quarterfinals:

I played against Jean-Baptiste from France, who later lost in the finals. He played Archimago, and while looking at his decklist, I saw three Border Militia, three Gnome Hollows, and a Mirror Realm.

I decided to mulligan aggressively for a Shrink or Atlantean Fate. I kept a Failed Mutation, a Mock Court, and a Tower, so I needed double Water threshold and some tricks to play around possible Hollows.

With the scry on the draw, I saw a Deep Sea and was slightly optimistic. As it turned out, my opponent had the Gnome Hollow and a Mirror Realm, with which he put my Battlemage in a prison he could not escape from all game, since I drew neither Shrink nor AFate.

On top of this, he had an Archangel Michael, two Earthquakes, a Gargantula, and Root Spiders to get rid of all the threats I presented.

At one point, I picked up his warded Michael, threatening his Wizard’s Den. But Jean played his Spider under my Mutation, forcing it to drop his Michael and then burrowing my poor Mutation. He finished me later with two Craterizes.

This game didn’t even felt close to winnable, since I never got a chance to bring my Battlemage into action.

Anyway I had a blast playing Battlemage and I had a lot of luck with my draws during the tournament.

My MVP-Card was and always will be Scatter. Playing Scatter is like solving a puzzle and if you play it right you feel like a genius. Second best performing card was Nelly Longarms which works very well with the forced movement and the ramp.
The deck felt very streamlined and did most of the time what I expect it to do. It struggles with airborne minions like Michael and Daperyl Vampire and Minions with 5 or more power like Pudge Butcher.

Shoutouts to my teammates from TWA, who supported me as always, and to the organizers of the event, who did a great job organizing a lovely event close to my hometown.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to comment, and have a good day.