SorceryCon 2026 | The Immortal Throne Ruling That Broke Our Brains
SorceryCon 2026 was flush with good times, great people, and extremely complex games. I, along with Common Sense: Sorcery Co-Host, Zac Clark, battled in a Chaos game, competing individually in a four-player pod against fellow content creators, Eric of Wizards of Fun!, and Ryan, a.k.a. Roaring Turkey.
If you don't know what Chaos is, that's okay. I didn't fully comprehend what it was until I touched down in Indianapolis. Chaos is a Sorcery: Contested Realm (SCR) variant where four players contest the Realm on a 49-square grid (there may be other variations, but that's what we played on). Zac had a custom playmat made and shipped to the Sheraton, where SorceryCon 2026 took place.
Throughout the game, all four of us recognized how adding two more Avatars and 29 more squares to the Realm was not only a wickedly fun wild west of who knows what could happen, but also significantly altered the power level of many cards, none more than The Immortal Throne.
I write about this absolute mayhem in the article below. You can watch the match here courtesy of Wizards of Fun:
Power Level Chaos
Before delving into the absolute shananiganery that was The Immortal Throne ruling, which melted all our brains and may or may not have broken the game, let's first look at some simpler examples of how cards in Chaos can have vastly different power in a typical one-on-one match.
Font of Life is nigh unplayable in one-vs-one, but when the Realm is more than double the size and, therefore, more challenging to get opponents to Death's Door, the life gain provided a huge swing. Likewise, free movement in a larger Realm also proved potent, as shown by Ryan's Arcade of Bones, which led to absolutely obscene plays no one could have predicted.
The card that got the most obvious boost in power was The Immortal Throne. Not only does it not care about Death's Door at all, but it has three opponents fueling it, all of whom are farther away by virtue of the 49-square Realm.
Unfortunately for Eric, Ryan, and me, Zac found The Immortal Throne and cast it alongside his Avatar on its home square. After a cacophony of tomfoolery, The Immortal Throne was soon to bear seven counters and would need only one spell cast for Zac to sit atop the throne alone and win the game.
Zac brandished his in-hand Wrath of the Sea, which would trigger The Immortal Throne and allow him to become king. BUT WAIT! The storyline had to resolve the Wrath of the Sea and submerge The Immortal Throne, snatching the kingdom from Zac's grasp as fast as he sought to claim it, right?
"JUDGE!" we all shouted across the room full of fellow wizardfolk, whose games were disrupted by our righteous and virtuous calls of contempt for Zac's treachery.
The Immortal Throne [4]
Whenever anyone plays a card with cost equal to the number of level counters on The Immortal Throne, they draw a card and add a level counter.
At level 8 or more, an Avatar here alone wins the game.
Wrath of the Sea [7][water][water]
Flood all sites adjacent to a body of water this turn. Then submerge all minions and artifacts on water.
"Whenever" on The Immortal Throne means it has a triggered ability that occurs when the condition of a spell with a cost equal to the number of counters on the throne is cast. If Zac cast Wrath of the Sea when The Immortal Throne has seven counters, it would trigger, adding the eighth counter, and his Avatar atop the throne alone would seal the fate of the Realm.
It would be crazy to think, though, that an Avatar could claim to be king of the Realm as a torrential wave loomed in view on the horizon that would drown nearly everything, including The Immortal Throne itself.
The first judge had to call a second judge. Rules mumbo-jumbo spoken in Curio-codexian were flung and swung at us, Laymen, back and forth, as the judges' deliberations left the four players nail-biting on the edge of our seats. Surely, onlookers, had they been present, would have looked on lookingly.
Was The Immortal Throne so powerful that it could ignore the storyline it was a part of? Were we about to witness in real time SCR's version of Exodia the Forbidden One? Can an automatic victory be claimed at any time if the conditions for doing so are met? Was Zac about to claim the Realm for himself right as it was obliterated in a deadly submergence the likes of which no Realm had ever conceived before?
The short answer is yes.
Here's why:
Royal Decree
The Immortal Throne's first line is the condition by which it can accrue counters to meet its condition to fulfill its second, separate line of text, which states that, if said condition is met, an Avatar alone here wins the game.
That paragraph break is the difference that allows for The Immortal Throne to ignore the storyline!
Because it is a separate static ability that is continuously checking between moments on the storyline if its condition is met, it gains its final counter from Wrath of the Sea being cast and then claims the victory before the Wrath of the Sea resolves from the storyline.
If The Immortal Throne's text were all one paragraph, thereby binding the triggered ability to the win condition clause, rather than being a separate static ability that checks state-based actions between storyline moments, Zac would not be able to claim victory, for the throne would submerge under water right as he attempted to don the crown.
Fortunately for the heroes, Eric did not cast his Gnarled Wendigo, which would have put the penultimate counter on The Immortal Throne. The Wrath of the Sea was fended for one final turn cycle before Ryan's undead could play their Drums of Doom through a vast desert across the Realm for the victory.
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Featured image: The Immortal Throne by Elvira Shakirova