When it was announced that the first-ever Grand Contest would be in Washington, D.C., there was much rejoicing among my local playgroup on the north side of the city.
Not only would we all take a crack at the first opportunity for the 2026 season promo prizes, but we also wouldn’t have to travel to do it! Well, except for me, with a relatively short jaunt over from West Virginia. I attended all three days, and the whole thing was a blast from start to finish.
I learned at the previous SCGCon in Richmond that a full day of Sorcery: Contested Realm starting at 1 p.m. would take its toll, so I opted to stay in the city at a pretty cool historic hotel nearby. I retired after a respectable 4-2 showing in the sealed event and had some dinner with friends and got a pretty decent night’s sleep before the main event.
I met up with my friend Ryan (who piloted his Steam Savior to a winning record) for breakfast, got to the venue around 9 a.m., and played some Magic: The Gathering (MTG) and Sorcery before the Grand Contest began.
On Target
Heading into the event, I had two goals in mind:
Cast a Love Potion and steal someone’s minion
Don't scrub out.
Fortunately both came true (and well beyond my highest hopes!).
Round One vs 
Magician - ForceofPhil
Lo and behold, the first match I found myself sitting across from Eternal Durdles own ForceofPhil! When he pulled out his Magician avatar and laid it on the playmat, I was certain I was about to be in for a hell of a ride.
Unfortunately for Phil, it was I who wound up taking him for a ride. I kept some graveyard hate in hand because I wasn’t sure whether he was on the reanimator plan, but it never came up.
We played out a couple of sites, but when his turn three ended, he passed without a third site, and I knew he had been bitten by his avatar. I wound up having the exact type of hand you can’t afford to stumble against, with a Lugbog Cat into a Colicky Dragonettes into Boudicca. Phil churned through an impressive amount of his deck with Wiccan Tools and Lady of the Lake, but by the time he found his third site, the game was already over at 20-Door.
The game turned out pretty rough, but I had a great time chatting with Phil afterward, so it was a good game in that regard. This is one of the joys of Sorcery: the kindness and friendliness people put out there, even at the highest levels of competition and after a bad run, are incredible.
Record: 1-0
Round 2 vs 
? Elementalist - Katie
Katie was my first of several opponents from the Virginians in Prayer, a Richmond-based Sorcery group with some incredibly talented players. She was on Elementalist, so I had no idea what she was playing or what she was going to throw at me.
It turned out she was playing a heavily and list with a lot of the good minions like Autumn Unicorn and Paladins of Bazia, along with the Village sites. She made some tokens and 4-power creatures early on, but I had ideal removal at the correct times, like Firebreathing for Autumn Unicorn and a token and Begone for her warded Paladins of Bazia.
My midrange minions and avatar chipped in for two to four damage at a time and dropped her to seven life. She Infiltrated a Lugbog Cat early, and it loomed in my back row, to eventually be Gigantismed to swing for 10, which put me to four to set up an Autumn Unicorn attack that threatened to door me next turn.
Unfortunately for her, I sandbagged Ruler of Thul, who, in combination with Lugbog Cat, put her to Death's Door the following turn instead. Toolbox for Minor Explosion sealed the deal.
This was an awesome game throughout, with tons of back-and-forth and no clear favorite until the very end.
Record: 2-0.
Round Three vs Avatar of Air - Alfred
This game pitted me against Alfred and his Avatar of Air. Alfred and I had played a few weeks earlier; he was on the same deck and introduced me to the pain of The Void and Bottomless Pit conveyor belt that is his Avatar of Air deck. I groaned a little inwardly, prepping myself for the pain as we shuffled up and chatted.
Sure enough, he started off with the Bottomless Pit as his home site, and I prepared myself to never have a minion survive more than a turn. We wound up with opposing River Rapids in the center of the board, which made the math on shuffling minions off their mortal (or demonic) coil trickier.
I enacted a pretty aggressive plan of Vile Imp into Horrible Hybrids into moving into Avatar of Air's side of the Realm. He removed a couple of my minions and cast a pair of Gibbous Nightgaunts onto my back row, but a step back and timely Poison Nova deflated his pressure.
He punched back with Daperyll Vampire, but I had the Lava Flow to smack it and his Avatar. This put me on his back row, where I cornered him with my Avatar, who got the job done.
I didn’t expect to out-move and corner an Avatar of Air, but that’s just how it went down. Persecutor’s movement is his strongest asset, and that was on full display this round.
Record: 3-0.
Round 4 vs Pathfinder - Joey
In round four, I was seated across the table from Joey, another member of the Virginians in Prayer. His mono- Pathfinder list was the first, though not the last, deck in the tournament that I was sure I was going to lose to partway through the game, only to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Pressure, pressure, pressure. Much of the beginning portion of this game is a blur to me, but that’s because Joey was beating me down with a mix of the usual suspects: War Horse, Redcap Powries, and Quarrelsome Kobolds.
Infiltrate snatched my Ruler of Thul that I thought might keep me in the game. By turn five or six, I was on Death's Door, and Joey’s life tracker still glared 20 at me. I leverage some of the incredibly efficient removal; however, that really makes my deck shine. I stabilized on Death's Door and retreated to my back line.
I pulled a Lord of Lies off the top of my deck. Paired with Torshammar Trinket, Joey went from 20 to Death's Door in two turns with the help of a well-positioned Innsmouth Dock.
A Plague of Frogs kept the pressure off, but I had been forced back into a corner. My stealthed former ally, the Ruler of Thul, was closing in.
With the Ruler of Thul a step away, Joey removed my Lord of Lies and escaped my Lugbog Cat’s reach. A timely Swap appeared, and Joey’s decision to move sideways and stay adjacent to one of my sites proved fatal.
It took me a while to figure it out, but I cast the Torshammar Trinket onto the adjacent site surface and Swapped in Lugbog Cat to end the game.
This was tough because it was a rough defeat that Joey felt was preventable if he had moved differently, which was true. But the theme held true throughout the tournament that camaraderie and good-natured humor held up through victory and defeat.
Record: 4-0.
Round 5 vs Necromancer - Tom H
Tom had a really cool Necromancer list that looked like it was leaning harder into the push and pull mechanics with cards like Pudge Butcher.
This was my first Necromancer match on the day, and I opted to take a more aggressive tack on this one, since he was enacting my game plan for me by pumping out evil minions to step toward.
We had some interesting site arrangements, with me going right up the gut with three sites to get next to his home, and he coming up the other side into my territory.
We traded larger minions like Atlas Wanderers and Lugbog Cats in the mid-game, but I eventually found my avatar in his back row with a Peacemaker Arbalest while he was holding an artifact, so I got on top of him and shot his face for four or five damage multiple times by marking him as evil to bring him to Death's Door.
He nearly got me locked into a corner with his Pudge Butcher, but I kept his Swap and Coy Nixies from trapping me and ended the game with direct damage.
Tom’s list was one of the most distinctive I saw that day. He went on to Top 8.
Record: 5-0.
Round Six vs Necromancer - Gideon
Walking into this match, having just come off a win against a Necromancer list and sporting a 5-0 record, I felt on top of the world. Unfortunately, no good run goes unpunished, unless you’re my round six opponent.
This was the first match where I never really felt I had a great chance at any point. I decided that the aggro plan had worked so well in my last match, so I would try it again, but this time, my opponent figured me out, and I couldn't keep the pace.
The early game was pretty typical, with me getting positioned for free movement and him building the skeleton army. He had a River Rapids in the middle, and I had an Innsmouth Dock to keep the middle field movement interesting.
I picked up his mid-field Sacred Stag that he pushed onto my site with River Rapids with a Hyperparasite. He removed Hyperparasite to get the Sacred Stag back (sans Ward) immediately to pressure me.
I had to waste some more removal on Sacred Stag, and then eventually swept the mid-field with a Poison Nova, taking out skeletons and another minion.
Shortly after, he found his Gilman House and placed it next to his home site. The Horrible Hybrids value train was too much for me to overcome. He was still at 18 life when he finished me off, because I had to expend all my resources keeping the board clear earlier. Turns out Necromancer is still good and hard to deal with. Who knew?
Gideon likes to talk through what he’s doing to help himself keep track of the game state. Hearing some of his thought processes as the game progressed was educational for me. He is obviously a talented player, and his thought process and decisions, or at least what I heard of it, were on point every time.
Losing sucks, but your opponent being such a good player makes it sting a little less. He was certain we’d be in the finals together, though I wasn’t quite so sure, knowing that I had one final trial.
Record: 5-1.
Round Seven vs Archimago - Mike H
This was a match I had expected, had prepared for, yet still dreaded. The other bogeyman of the format, Archimago. My past experiences with a friend told me that this game would likely be a slog, and after six grueling rounds, my brain was already toast. I’m just glad I was new enough not to have heard my opponent’s reputation, or I might have just fled the scene right then and there.
This game got weird. I started the game with veggies in hand, in the form of a Mismanaged Mortuary, so I felt pretty good. Unfortunately, I was unfamiliar with the newest iteration of Archimago, and I played myself right into the villain’s hands.
I held my Mismanaged Mortuary, thinking I would let him commit some resources to building his cemetery before I locked him out. I got cocky when he played a Gnome Hollows forward and developed out to my side, not realizing he was actively trying to cut me off.
Long story short, he aggressively moved in with his sites, and I was forced to play Mismanaged Mortuary in an exposed position. Needless to say, his Sinkhole came down nearby and eventually punished me for my arrogance.
Board-wise, the game progressed with my typical Vile Imp and Horrible Hybrids minions getting a little movement going. He put down a Kettletop Leprechaun that I felt compelled to ignore, so he didn’t get another site to continue cutting me off.
I started building an L up the side to get at him, and then the token train started rolling once I had plenty of bordering sites. An Earthquake took my Caerleon-upon-Usk out of commission, and after a bit of back and forth, he administered the token beatdown one might expect of a magoo deck.
I stepped all around him and eventually got him to Death's Door shortly after he Death's Doored me, but it was too late; his Common Sense for Firebolts to my face was enough
It was a great game. I felt like I didn’t get totally run over despite my early mistakes, but another loss and a wait-and-see to find out whether I got into Top 8 wasn't what I was looking for here.
All but one of my former opponents (sorry Phil!) had a winning record, so I came in seventh place when the dust settled based on tiebreakers. I did not come into the tournament expecting to be in the Top 8, but here I was!
Record: 5-2.
After a nice awards ceremony where Silver Bullets and a Pillar of the Community award were handed out, we went on our merry ways.
A Cuban sandwich and a couple of beers down the street helped me lick my wounds from the two losses to end the day, where fellow (and perennial) Top 8 competitor from my local playgroup, Christian V., let me know that I would probably be playing Archimago again first based on standings. And he was right!
Stay tuned for part two of my recap, where I'll cover my Top 8 matches. They were the wildest games of all.
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Featured image: Persecutor by Zohn Dee