The Consistent Opening Sequence for Magicians Who Love Drawing Cards

Sorcery: Contested Realm · by Eternal Durdles · February 23, 2026

Written by ForceofPhil

Ahoy, matey!

Since the Magician avatar debuted in Gothic, it has been broadly dismissed as a meme. The obvious homage to Magic: The Gathering (MTG) is represented titularly, with its effect of combining the Atlas and Spellbook into one deck, a seven-card starting hand size, and its flavor text:

Your Avatar leaves little room for rivals.

Magician's flack is due to undoing Sorcery: Contested Realm's (SCR) obsoletion of land flood and screw. You can always choose to draw a site if you want, and a spell if you don't. Magician doesn't offer that luxury. It does, however, offer consistency.*

*For the curious, there was only one match across the several dozen I played at SorceryCon where I was mana-screwed for not drawing sites.

Sunken Treasure, a Metaphor

Heading into SorceryCon in Indianapolis, IN, I knew Magician would represent me in the Realm. While I forever endeavor to enter the infinite game that is now available, thanks to Return to Nature, I knew my deck would be base- to leverage my favorite card thus far: The Lady of the Lake.

I love drawing cards. It's my entire personality. Drawing cards is, however, not easy in SCR, or so we might have thought.

Enter Sunken Treasure.

Magician compressing 90 cards across two decks into a single Spellbook allows for a consistent opening that I was performing in an overwhelming majority of the games I played in Indianapolis. It goes like this:

Turn One
- Play Croaking Swamp.
- Pay to summon a submerged frog token.
Turn Two
- Play a site.
- Cast a minion with submerge under it.
  - I'm partial to Shellycoat and Sea Witch.
Turn Three
- Play a site.
- Cast Sunken Treasure.

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If you played a non- site, then the opponent must conjure the Sunken Treasure to where your submerged frog or minion can carry it to the surface to draw two cards.

If you played a third site, the opponent will always conjure the Sunken Treasure there, and, depending on where you placed the site, the minion or the frog can move to discover the doubloons and carry them to the surface at the start of turn four.

This sequence, comprising Croaking Swamp (ordinary), a choice of Ordinary two-drop with submerge, and Sunken Treasure (exceptional), was remarkably consistent for me when I mulliganed aggressively for it.

In fact, seeking Sunken Treasure better-informed my mulligan decisions because I knew what my first three to four turns should be every match.

The Lady of the Lake by Séverine Pineaux

If you are blessed to behold The Lady of the Lake by turn four, which is made easier by having already drawn two cards from the first Sunken Treasure, then she returns said Sunken Treasure to the location of the other submerged ally, who can carry it to the surface. Drawing cards is, objectively speaking, the best.

If it's turn four and The Lady of the Lake eludes you, but you've draw another copy of Sunken Treasure, then you can cast it before laying your fourth site so that it will again conjure to a location you can immediately access: either beneath the ally who carried the first treasure, to the ally submerged, or adjacent to where it could move to doubly discover doubloons.

If you prefer an aggressive approach, spending the early turns drawing cards is not optimal. The question now, however, is how best to convert all those additional cards into a winning position?

Magician Base

4+ two-drop (or one-drop) minions with submerge
4 Croaking Swamp
3 Sunken Treasure**
1 The Lady of the Lake
1 Dozmary Pool
1 Tadpole Pool

**Could two-one split Spellbook-Collection if playing Silver Bullet.

I've explored combo, midrange, bigrange, and control as ways to capitalize on all those sweet, sweet, drawn cards. Here's a sample decklist I'm tinkering with:

Frog Magician

Auras (2)

1 Atlantean Fate
1 The Great Drowning of Men

Artifacts (11)

2 Sunken Treasure
2 Toolbox
2 Silver Bullet
1 Aquamarine Core
1 Ring of Morrigan
1 Kythera Mechanism
1 Pnakotic Manuscript
1 13 Treasures of Britain

Minions (11)

4 Sea Witch
2 Adept Illusionist
1 Salmon of Knowledge
1 Selfsame Simulacrum
1 The Lady of the Lake
1 Nelly Longarms

Magic (16)

3 Fire Harpoons!
3 Gift of the Frog
2 Return to Nature
2 Pollimorph
2 Into the Abyss
1 Mesmerism
1 Call of the Sea
1 The Flood
1 Wrath of the Sea
1 Plague of Frogs

Collection (10)

1 Just a Rock
1 Porcupine Pufferfish
1 Riptide
1 Return to Nature
1 Extinguish
1 Sunken Treasure
1 Swap
1 Stormy Seas
1 Giant Shark
1 Hearkening Kraken

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The Sunken Treasure opening is the goal. After that, controlling the realm with the Sea Witch plus Fire Harpoons! This combo submerges an opposing minion and goes up a card — Floodplain flooding an adjacent site makes this combo possible against non-.

I'm leaning on two Into the Abyss as additional ways to deal with opposing submerge decks that could otherwise ignore Fire Harpoons! and the wrath effects.

Adept Illusionist is a solid value card, but it is not part of the game plan at first glance. It's primarily in the deck as a shuffle effect, which increases Return to Nature's potency. I am going to explore an splash to replace the Adept Illusionists with Dream-Quest and Highland Princess. could also provide some alternative utility against opposing submerge minions in Cast into Exile.

Selfsame Simulacrum is swingy, but is flexible. We yearn for multiple Nelly Longarms in the Realm.

Finally, the most significant tool against this deck is the Garden of Eden. I'm running two answers to it in Atlantean Fate and The Great Drowning of Men. If you aren't interested in the latter, cheaper options include Sinkhole and Heirloom Lost.