New Players' Quick Guide to Sorcery Limited Strategy

Written by portland_stew

With Gothic freshly on local games stores' (LGS) shelves, it is Sorcery Limited season like never before. The player base has grown, more stores carry product, and new players are contesting the Realm. Much of the established players' discourse centers on theory-crafting Constructed decks and where that meta is headed. 

Many plan to spend more time drafting and opening sealed pools. Limited is an easy entry point for new Sorcery players. Our local Portland, OR, LGS run mostly Limited events. Several Magic: The Gathering (MTG) friends are trying Sorcery as well.

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Types of Limited

The two primary Sorcery Limited formats are draft and sealed. Both formats require players to build decks with a minimum of 24 cards in their Spellbook and 12 cards in their Atlas (the Magician avatar is the lone exception). With the new 'Collection' mechanic, all the cards in your Limited pool are considered your Collection.

Finally, in Limited play, any card that references a specific spell or site by name from the Collection effectively injects that card into your Collection.

Most players coming to Sorcery from other trading card games (TCG) understand the value of removal and bigger minions. The third type of card to prioritize is colloquially referred to as "combat tricks," which can function as removal, minion protection, or a death blow.

Sorcery Limited is primarily a value game and secondarily a race. Trading one of your cards for two or more of your opponent's is a tried and true path to winning games of Sorcery Limited.

I learned the basics of Limited from watching Frogimago’s YouTube channel. While slightly outdated (i.e., from before Gothic), the video below provides a great intro to Sorcery Limited.

Core Concepts

Players new to Sorcery Limited can use this list of core concepts during deckbuilding and gameplay:

• Minion Placement
  • Diagonal placement and two steps away are key positions. You want to decide when minions fight each other, so putting a minion in attack range of an opponent's minion is often, but not always, incorrect.
• Site Placement
  • It can get complicated early.
  • Optimal placement depends heavily on a deck's style.
  • It's best to control the number of attackable sites your opponent can deploy minions adjacent to.
  • Standard development builds a 'T' shape (i.e., the square directly in front of your home square and then to the left and right of that), then builds into a 2x3 block.
  • In Limited, on the play, building your sophomore site to the side to establish a four-site square can be stronger.
• Take the Initiative
  • Limited is often characterized by back-and-forth trades and the removal of minions. Aim to get and stay ahead.
• Learn the Set's Removal
  • Familiarity with the Ordinary and Exceptional removal is essential to make informed positional decisions.
• Take Damage to Improve Position
  • It may feel counterintuitive, but allowing attackers through to your sites and then removing them on your turn with combat tricks or removal typically garners a stronger Realm presence.
  • The number of minions in the Realm is a strong determinant of winning Limited games.
• Get Value From Interaction and Tricks
  • Cards that can alter the state of the Realm often serve as roundabout removal or death blows.
  • Resist casting minions until their abilities can generate value, including those that use abilities more than once. Minions that generate value are often removed on the opponent's turn.
• Spellbook Construction
  • 17 minions (recommended to avoid building sub-16 minions)
  • Seven non-minions.
  • Minion Cost Breakdown:
    • Three to five 2-mana spells
    • Five to seven 3-mana spells
    • Three to five 4-mana spells
    • Two to four 5+-mana spells.
• Atlas Construction
  • Two elements are standard.
  • Avoid non-threshold sites unless playing single-element.
  • Standard Atlas builds typically comprise five to seven sites per element in two-element decks.
    • Five sites per main element, plus two for a splash of two to three single-threshold cards of a third element, is standard.
      • Splashing is more doable with the Bloom sites.
• Four Quadrants
  • Games unofficially comprise four phases:
    • Build-up
    • Parity
    • Ahead
    • Behind
      • View cards through the lens of their utility during each phase. Cards that primarily provide utility only when ahead are unlikely to be worth including in your deck.
• Avoid 1-Power Minions
  • They too easily die.
  • Include them if they have useful genesis or deathrite abilities, but treat them more like Magic spells rather than meaningful bodies.
  • 1-power minions are bad, but free 1-power tokens are great.

Collection

In Gothic Limited, any card that references a specific card from your Collection can tutor for it even if you don't have it in your pool.

For example, the site Troubled Town has the genesis ability that allows you to cast a Townsfolk from your Collection. There are two Townsfolk cards — 2-power minions for one mana — Serava Townsfolk in Water and Eltham Townsfolk in Earth. If Troubled Town is in your pool, you can use its genesis ability to cast one of those Townsfolk even if neither is in your pool. I recommend bringing copies of the named Collection cards to Limited events if possible.

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If a card does not reference a specific card in your Collection, you are restricted to the cards in your pool that are not in your Spellbook or Atlas. For example, Toolbox allows you to cast an Ordinary spell from your Collection; that is restricted only to Ordinary spells in your pool.

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