On Friday, Nov. 6, 2026, the Covenant YouTube channel uploaded a gameplay video featuring the new Lavamancer vs. Frostmage preconstructed decks. During the game, the Lavamancer player cast an Ordinary Magic that I am confident will be the backbone of one of the game's most powerful archetypes when it is released.
Chart is an Ordinary Magic to plan an expedition that costs 
to draw two sites. A -mana draw two for anything would be an incredible rate, but for it to be at an Ordinary rarity will be archetype defining. Aside from the obvious boons to shells like Archimago that can cast Chart and recast it from the graveyard to effectively never need to draw another site for the rest of the game, the greatest deckbuilding possibilities Baldassare's Travels might offer are strategies that are primarily Atlas-based.
Atlas-focused archetypes aren't entirely foreign to Sorcery: Contested Realm. Before the foundational change from 40-card Spellbooks and 20-card Atlases to the eventual current landscape of 60-card Spellbooks and 30-card Atlases, Seer-led Roots of Yggdrasil strategies were among the upper tiers.
The card-draw velocity Chart offers against a 30-card Atlas is only outdone by the Unique Tithe, a -mana draw three, and the -mana Primordial Spring under the right conditions. Chart, however, isn't the only -mana site-drawing spell being released.
While the new mana per turn rule, which continuously tabulates how much mana you have at any given point in a turn, might affect how Ash of Effort is sequenced in a turn, the potentcy of the following for Atlas velocity is going to upend what we think we know about designing Atlas-focused strategies:
Atlas Archetype Sample
Spells
4 Land Surveyor
4 Kettletop Leprechaun
1 Pendragon Legacy
1 Immolation 
1 Tithe
4 Chart
4 Common Sense
2 Ash of Effort
1 Dispel
4 Landmass
2 Scorched Earth
1 Bury
1 Salt the Earth
1 Sow the Earth
Sites
4 Combusting Busts
3 Fertile Earth
3 Active Volcano
3 Funeral Pyre
3 Trapmaker's Rest
2 Primordial Spring
2 Sinkhole
2 Mirage
2 Crossroads
1 Mirror Realm
1 Roots of Yggdrasil
1 Fields of Camlann
1 Vesuvius
1 Mount Ussar Sanctuary
1 Supervolcano
Obviously, this deck is incomplete, as it's just an initial pass at what an Atlas strategy might look like. The draw to splash 
for Return to Nature to reload destroyed sites back into the Atlas after an Ash of Effort or Scorched Earth is pretty attractive.
Assume you mulligan all three of your sites in your opening hand. Then, on turn two, cast Chart. Without drawing another site, you've seen eight sites deep. If either of those two first sites was a Crossroads, you've seen 12 sites deep. On turn three, cast Landmass, you've seen 13 sites deep and have yet to do anything off curve or draw a site for turn. If, at any point after this, you develop a Mirage, cast Ash for Effort or stabilize with Scorched Earth to convert a Primordial Spring, you'll be more than half your Atlas deep.
With all the sites in the game that provide meaningful interaction against opposing minions, including all the new Traps being released that bake Minor Explosions and Lightning Bolts into the Atlas, there is the very legitimate possibility that Sorcery could develop an entire archetype of strategies akin to Magic: The Gathering's Lands archetype that continues to remain one of the strongest strategies in that game's Legacy format.
As the resident Magician player since Gothic's release, I'm saddened that cards that read "draw sites" have no text under Magician's helm, since it plays entirely without an Atlas. I'm extremely hyped, though, about the potential for Baldassare's Travels to broaden Sorcery's archetype potential into new creative space that will make it feel like a whole new game.
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Featured image: Chart by Francesca Baerald
