Some decks rely on precision, others thrive in the chaos of the waves!
At the Australian Crossroads in Melbourne, Jarrod “Scrivs” Scriven did both, navigating the shifting tides of Sorcery’s evolving meta with his deck Bearly Afloat, a Water Druid deck that turns the battlefield itself into a weapon.
Explore Jarrod’s Melbourne Crossroads winning list here.
How long have you been playing Sorcery, and what drew you to the game?
Jarrod: “I started playing in March 2024 after my friend Nick (Wyvern from Mirror Realm) backed the Kickstarter. I already had over 30,000 hours in Path of Exile (Erik’s last game), so when Sorcery came along, we figured, why not give it a try. I enjoy creating new decks for each event and min-maxing them as far as possible. I do this with my teammate Nick, and we do long-form YouTube content together about all this Sorcery."
What was your goal with “Bearly Afloat”? What kind of deck is it?
Jarrod: “Bearly Afloat (Bearly spelled wrong as a druid pun) is a midrange deck built around powerful effects that interact with a body of water."
What are your primary goals when piloting this deck?
Jarrod: "The goals change throughout the game, and you need to know when you are the beatdown and when you are the defensive player. In the early stages, you are generally just aiming to not die and move into the mid-game in a reasonable position. Once you reach the point of the game where you are the beatdown, the deck really switches gears and can push very large amounts of damage quickly, often pushing Death's Door over 1 or 2 turns quite easily."
Which cards are essential to the deck’s success?
Jarrod: "Bower of Bliss is one of the best cards in the game for the current meta and warped all of our testing for this event. We can leverage the "downside" with our Pirate ships turning off the waterbound. Ruler of Thul was the one anti-synergy card we decided to include with it, as the potential upside it has when you don't draw the bower is worth the risk of drawing them together.
Swap is the best card in the game currently, and it's not even close. With this in mind, we decided to find the best home for it. Tawny makes it very easy to always have an easy swap target, while Mariner's Curse leverages the extra minion movement to its fullest.
Mariner's Curse is a very powerful effect when combined with Riptide, Undertow, Maelstrom, and Swap, and is the main card advantage engine."
"While not a single card, they mostly all fall into the same category, and that is the site package forming the body of water. Every site in the deck either has water threshold or in the case of Sinkhole can be replaced by another site with water threshold, "fixing" possible breaks in the body of water. The one other exception to this rule is Bower of Bliss, but its upsides are so great that it's worth making your life harder for the free wins it generates."
Are there any unique combos or tactics you love to use?
Jarrod: "The deck overall is less combos and more general overlapping synergies. That said, there are a couple of cool combos with Plague of Frogs.
Pnakotic Manuscript + Plague of Frogs - each frog picks up the book and taps to effectively sacrifice itself as every card in the deck can kill a frog to draw a card, turning it into a draw 7 combo. You aim to play them anytime you draw them together.
Snowball + Plague of Frogs can be a nice little burst damage combo, adding in 7extra damage to the snowball, setting up for another angle of surprise burst for 20.
Mariner's Curse + forced enemy movement effects (Riptide, swap, undertow, Maelstrom, Snowball, and Bullfrog). Drop a Curse on a water site, then use any of the forced movement cards to push an enemy minion into the curse, killing any minion without submerge. This acts as your long game card advantage, as 1 curse can kill a minion for every movement effect drawn while also being your best tool for controlling the board."
What do you see as the deck’s main weakness?
Jarrod: “The biggest weaknesses are certainly a lack of card draw and knowing how you need to play each turn and when to swap from the defensive player to the aggressive player. We tried to help shore up the lack of card draw via rivers for card selection, Mariner's Curse for recursive removal that helps you have something to do with your mana more often, and Manuscript.
Knowing what mode you need to be in all comes down to knowing the deck inside and out, and all the different lines of play you can make, and just as importantly, knowing how your opponent's deck is trying to play out and what their best lines are.”
Final Thoughts and Future Plans
Jarrod: “We were really happy with how the deck performed. Between Nick, who finished third with the exact same list, and me, we had a combined 13–1 Constructed record. Nick’s one loss came to Davide, whom I faced in the finals, so it couldn’t have gone much better.
For now, I’m not planning any changes until Gothic releases. Our local group mostly plays limited. I won't be thinking about constructed at all until after Gothic is released, as we only play limited in our local scene, so no updates to the deck till then. Always working on a new style and deck for every event, so that's something to look forward to."
Write Your Own Story at a Crossroads Event
Jarrod's victory at the Melbourne Crossroads is just the next step in this year’s journey. Think you have what it takes to claim a title of your own?
See the full Crossroads schedule and start your story here.
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