Some druids walk on quiet paths through misty glades. Others carve their way through the realm itself.
Nate “Duo” Smith did both with Hot Springs Druid, a Water/Fire build that earned him the title of Gen Con 2025 Crossroads Champion this past weekend.
As the first major tournament in the Crossroads circuit, this event helped define what top-level Sorcery: Contested Realm can look like: an unforgettable blend of community and competition, yes, but also a showcase for player creativity in constructed deckbuilding.
With participants traveling from around the world, the sold-out 128-player event brought together veteran competitors, fearless innovators, and fresh challengers alike, all hoping to leave their mark on the grid and earn a place in Sorcery history as the champion of our first-ever Crossroads event.
In the end, Nate emerged victorious, and today, he’s sharing the insights behind the deck that helped him dominate the battlefield and claim the crown.
Explore Nate's Gen Con 2025 Crossroads Championship deck here and see it in action here!
How long have you been playing Sorcery, and what drew you to the game?
Nate: “I was fortunate enough to get in on the ground floor - I backed the Kickstarter with my twin brother after catching a random Team Covenant stream. Like most, I was drawn in by the amazing art, but I also loved the physical, nuanced deckbuilding and tactile gameplay. It combined several of my hobbies in a way I couldn’t resist.
Being ‘early’ to explore a new meta has always interested me, and Sorcery’s launch gave me that opportunity. Finally, the chance to grow and help develop a new community at my local game store was very appealing, and as a result, I’ve met some awesome players and people! (Shout out to my Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas folks!)”
What was your goal with Hot Springs Druid? What kind of deck is it?
Nate: “This has been a long journey to reach the deck I ultimately took to GenCon. I have always enjoyed decks that were very ‘on the board,’ meaning they leveraged clever positional strategy and minion interaction. With that in mind, I initially conceptualized the Water Fire "Hot Springs" Druid in December 2024 and have been refining it ever since.
After the Arthurian Legends tournament and the success the site Pond provided me, allowing me to run an Air/Water deck with a single copy of Wyvern that I could cast every time I saw it, despite having zero Earth sites, I became very interested in leveraging Pond's power in a constructed format.
As I looked through the available beasts, I noticed a high concentration of powerful beasts that created incredible tempo when cheated out early in both Fire and Water. In addition to those beasts, access to some of the most powerful Uniques, which were highly impactful on their own but also offered strong synergy with other deck components. Finally, having water in the deck provided a unique advantage by offering protection against burrowing effects, which was the most prominent form of removal at the time due to the popularity of Earthquake and Bury.
All of these factors came together to form a Swiss army knife of a deck - an early aggressive strategy supported by resilient, large minions in the early to midgame, culminating in high burst damage potential from a few two- or three-card combinations."
What are your primary goals when piloting this deck?
Nate: "I would categorize this as an Aggro deck, aiming to overwhelm in the early game, though that isn't its only aspect. Usually, the goal is to establish an early board presence by managing your opponents' early plays with the combination of Tawny, Desert, Vile Imp, or Quarrelsome Kobolds, and sneaking in some cheeky chip damage early. One of the key strengths of this deck is that it doesn't rely on 3 or 4 minions and then run out of pressure.
Instead, you can support your midgame with an early threat like a 5-power airborne or stealthed beast, or refill your hand with Morgana le Fay or Pact with the Devil (sacrificing Tawny). As I mentioned, it can serve as a kind of Swiss army knife, so the strategy can vary from game to game and hand to hand. Sometimes you'll work to facilitate a strong Ruler of Thul or Boudicca, which might cause you to play more conservatively than with a hand containing Jihaad and Monstrous Lion."
Which cards are essential to the deck’s success?
Nate: “I would say that the most essential cards to this deck's success can be found not in the spellbook, but in the Atlas. The greedy threshold of this deck, with multiple double and triple affinity cards, requires a site composition that can allow you to play things on a curve and timely.
For this, I would say this deck very well may not exist without Floodplain, Pond, and finally the power of the Ordinary Fire Sites (the Deserts). Floodplain's ability to bridge the gap from one to two water thresholds enables significant consistency for several reasons. Most simply, it lets you play your water cards on time more consistently. The more nuanced benefit it provides is that it allows you to keep hands with only one water site (being Floodplain) to play your early Redcap Powries/Jihad, Disintegrates, and Polimorphs, as you will not have to draw a site to meet the 2 Water and 2 Fire thresholds, respectively.
Additionally, with the realm's defensive sites and constant infestation of Rootspiders, Floodplain's ability to flush the annoying arachnid from its hidey hole helps, or flooding a Perilous Bridge, allowing a Lugbog Cat to be summoned on top, really keeps the pressure up!
Pond, and ignoring the threshold of the next beast cast to it can allow you to continue to draw spells, rather than chase that second Fire for your turn 3 or 4 Monstrous Lion, and more spells, generally equals more ways to win.
Finally, the humble Ordinary Fire sites, the Deserts. The damage deserts provide is extremely strong on offense to kill enemy minions, but ironically, their Ordinary rarity provides much-needed protection from decks that attack threshold with Atlantean Fate or Peasant Revolt."
Are there any unique combos or tactics you love to use?
Nate: “This deck has reached some popularity since its inception ~9 months ago, and this win, so some of these combos may not seem very unique now, but I love them nonetheless!
My all-time favorite card in the deck, and an absolute "must remove" card, Sir Agravaine, in conjunction with... any attacker can provide you to push a ton of burst damage through blockers. Sir Agravaine going to war with 7 frogs is not only a hilarious image to imagine, but is also incredibly effective as the subsequent 7 attacks will trigger Sir Agravaine 7 times for 21 damage!
The recent Codex update provided some incredible boons for the list and Druid in particular, enabling cards like Selfsame Simulacrum to be run with more viability, at the bare minimum (or bear minimum in this case), copying a Bruin, resulting in two incredibly defensive bodies for 4 mana as they now don't both absorb the damage dealt to your Druid.
Finally, one of the latest additions is Polar Explorers. This card has single-handedly won me so many games (and you could argue even the finals of the Crossroads).
Polar Explorers lets you infiltrate your opponents' back row, meaning their front-line defenses are null and void. Got a Redcap Powries in hand, but your opponent has a Pebbled Path in the middle of the board? No Problem! Play Redcap to your backline and charge backwards! Your opponent has a big minion out of range of your Pollimorph? Play Polar Explorers to the same site as Tawny, and fly the omniscient owl around the globe to get in range to commence frogification!
I can not sing enough praise of the somewhat unassuming Polar Explorers."
Are there any specific cards you include or purposely left out of your deck?
Nate: “With defensive sites being all the rage in an Archimago meta and the deck being on fire, it is a safe assumption that an easy solution would be to include Smokestack of Gnaak. However, in my testing, I found the card did more harm to my game plan than to my opponents. With how much the deck relies on its sites' abilities, Smokestacks was cut from the deck less than 1 week to the Crossroads. Also, the determination that flooding was an ability provided to sites in the recent Codex meant that my Smokestacks would prevent my Geyser from drowning my opponents' burrowed minions (Root Spider), which was the final straw for the card.
In this iteration, I have Courtesan Thaïs, as the card is considered one of the better solutions while facing Archimago. While there were fewer archimago's than I anticipated, the card was paramount and instrumental in a few matches going my way.
Finally, my favorite tech card, Boneyard. With the anticipation of facing an abundance of Archimago, I know their decks don't generally run very many minions. Also, with access to Funeral Pyre and many of my hard removal banishing their minions, I found that it was reasonable to construct situations in which I could play a one-sided Boneyard to get a free charge unit, double dip on a powerful genesis (Morgana le Fay), or bring back a powerful passive effects (Boudicca/ Ruler of Thul).
Finally, with the concentration of charge units, it was reasonable to play Boneyard even if your opponent was going to get a minion, as they wouldn't be able to use it to block your charge unit, due to their having summoning sickness."
What do you see as the deck's main weakness?
Nate: "Like with anything in this game, some weaknesses can be exploited to Hot Springs' detriment. The largest being Water and Fire's lack of Aura and Artifact removal. In a meta that was more accommodating to Enchantress, I'm not sure Hot Springs would be viable, as they can comfortably play and utilize their auras to maximum effect.
With that being said, in most of my recent tournaments, I have noticed that two popular decks in this meta can give Hot Springs a problem consistently, Avatar of Air with Rolling Boulder, and the Mirror Match (yes, it's its own worst enemy) as in those tournaments I have been knocked out in the top 16 or higher by a fellow "Hot Springs" Druid enjoyers."
Final Thoughts and Future Plans
Nate: “I am amazed by the success of Hot Springs Druid! I've seen versions of it in the top seats of almost every tournament since its rise in popularity. I think the deck has an extremely high floor, meaning it is comprised of cards that can construct a win even when not firing on all cylinders, but in the hands of someone who has dug into the minutiae of potential interactions, outcomes, and variance, the deck's potential ceiling is one of the highest in the game.
I think there were a few turns in the final match at the Crossroads that will go down as my all-time favorite plays, as they were pretty nuanced, but I won't spoil those - you'll need to watch the finals gameplay for yourself!
In its current state, I feel the list runs very well and is pretty tuned. That being said, one of the beauties of card games like Sorcery is that you can't get complacent, so I try to consider meta when landing on a list. I know I mentioned it once before, but building decks is almost as much fun to me as playing them. In that vein, I am always excited to test new things out! (Looking at you, Dragonlord).“
Write Your Own Story at a Crossroads Event
Nate’s victory at Gen Con was just the first step in this year’s Crossroads journey. Five more events will put players to the test, with the next stop in the Metropole Ruhr region of Germany on September 27–28, 2025. From there, the circuit travels to Australia and across the United States, ending in Las Vegas this November.
Think you have what it takes to claim a title of your own?
See the full Crossroads schedule and start your story here: sorcerytcg.com/organized-play?tab=crossroads
Share:
