Written by ForceofPhil

Magician is fascinating. Pulling my Magic: The Gathering (MTG) sensibilities into Sorcery: Contested Realm (SCR) has spun my brain.

Upon deep reflection and Corefield exploration, I believe Magician should be base Water because of the seasonal rivers: Autumn River, Summer River, Spring River, and Winter River, and Gothic's River Rapids buttresses the notion.

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Now You See Me

Optimizing play and card selection in SCR's scaffolding is challenging; two decks comprising 90 cards (plus a 10-card Collection), of which rarity thumbs the scale of consistency, as do the dozens of playable Avatars, on a 20-square grid that includes 40 zones, wherein cards' positions matter.

Magician breaks that scaffolding by removing the Atlas. So, how do we break Magician?

You have no Atlas, but your Spellbook may contain sites, and you start with seven cards.

Many cards do different things when sites are within your Spellbook. Powerful is the Common Sense that can tutor* a site. Alternatively, some cards Magician will never wield; dearest Tithe sits lonely outside Magician's deckbox.

*Tutor is shorthand for searching a deck.

Now You Seer Me...

Playing 60 cards instead of 90 is net positive due to the mathematical implications of improving card-rarity limitations in your favor, less so because of the number of cards, and more because all 60 cards are in the same deck.

Summer River, Autumn River, Spring River, and Winter River are all Ordinary and enable Magician to do a potent Seer impression. Though I was not a SCR player at the time, Seer was a top Avatar when the game was 40-card Spellbooks and 20-card Atlases. Huh...60 cards.

We understand that Seer was primarily sifting through a 20-card Atlas back then, which is three times more powerful per scry** than this Magician example, but let's look at the math.

**Scrying is shorthand for looking at the top card of a deck and deciding whether to leave it on top or put it on the bottom.

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Scry Me a River

After opening your seven-card hand on the play, every Unique left in your deck has a 1.89% chance (1/53) of being drawn next turn. If you play a river on turn one and bottom the top card, the odds move to 1.92% for your draw step (1/52). After your first draw step, a river on turn two bottoming the top card increases the odds to 2% (1/50).

These are not major increments. But finding Uniques matters less during development, where scries will primarily sift to better ensure sites two through four are secure. Spiking a 2%'er is gambling; applying more weight in your favor to a coin flip is the casino being profitable.

One issue with Magician builds that aim to play deep into the late game is the risk of dead draws. When development is done, other Avatars can always draw from their Spellbook while Magician suffers potentially drawing a site. This is offset by sites that have meaningful abilities at all stages of the game.

ForceofPhil's Magician: The Gathering

Below is an example mono-water decklist:

Spells (35)

1 Aquamarine Core
1 Plague of Frogs
3 Sleep
2 Adept Illusionist
1 Gift of the Frog
3 Toolbox
2 Return to Nature
2 Pollimorph
1 Silver Bullet
1 Shrine of the Dragonlord
1 Pnakotic Manuscript
1 Four Waters of Paradise
3 Coy Nixie
1 The Lady of the Lake
1 Mesmerism
1 Algor Omphalos
1 Dank Omphalos
2 Giant Shark
1 Atlantean Fate
1 Maiden, Mother, Crone
2 Call of the Sea
1 The Flood
1 Wrath of the Sea
1 The Great Drowning of Men

*Winter River is only available as a promo, so it is more affordable to play additional copies of the other seasons.

Collection

1 Just a Rock
2 Return to Nature
1 Sleep
1 Instigator Imp
1 Order of the Sacred Oak
1 Font of Life
1 Extinguish
1 Stormy Seas
1 Giant Shark

Unclear if this is competitively viable, but it has a plan: control the movement in the realm, leverage that movement with one-sided wrath effects, and win through attrition. Of the 25 sites, 13 contribute to or generate free movement in the realm (not including Mirror Realm) alongside five spells:

3 Summer River
3 Spring River
3 Autumn River
2 River Rapids
1 Innsmouth Dock
1 Maelström
3 Coy Nixie
2 Call of the Sea

The payoffs for all that movement include six sites (not including Mirror Realm) and five spells (not including Silver Bullet):

3 Thin Ice
3 Troll Bridge
2 Giant Shark
2 Call of the Sea
1 Wrath of the Sea

Moving cards to the bottom of the Spellbook via rivers and Return to Nature means they will be difficult to draw again, though the upside is stacking the deck such that you could know its order later — a Control mage's skill-testing fantasy.

The only shuffle effects are Lady of the Lake and the Adept Illusionists. That's a double-edged sword. Return to Nature plus an Adept Illusionist activation can always shuffle the Spellbook if needed. The downside of Adept Illusionist is that it dies to all of the submerge wraths, but its effects — recursive shuffles and bodies — are too strong both early and late to ignore.

In early testing, I'll be looking at the value of Silver Bullet. Access to a Roots of Yggdrasil counter (Order of the Sacred Oak) and life gain (Font of Life) make Silver Bullet appealing, as those effects are otherwise absent or scarce, respectively. If many players are leaning on Roots, I could see playing two Silver Bullets main and two Order of the Sacred Oak's in the Collection.

Looking Down River

Of course, I'll continue exploring this river theory and expect there to be other baseline site-based building blocks for many strategies. Though there are two reliable Omphaloses when mono-element, and Dozmary Pool is a cheeky way to cheat one into play ahead of schedule, this build likely lacks sufficient card draw.

My natural inclination would be to pair this with or . Browse, Feast of Crows, Grandmaster Wizard, and Observatory are strong draws to and Common Sense is always alluring in .

However, if we stay true to river theory, then might be the best element after because of River of Flame and River of Blood work with River Rapids, and Searing Truth and Pact of the Devil are exceptional draw spells.

Are you working on a deck and want to share your ideas?