With the Arthurian Legends refresh of the Dust Store, I have seen many people asking for advice on what they should spend their dust on. I’m here to make that decision even more complicated. In this blog, I’m going to list my favourite cards available through the Dust Store, both old and new, and explore the six ways that the Dust Store is much more than just a rewards programme.
- The Dust Store is an opportunity to provide alternate art promos to entice collectors.
- It rewards players for playing.
- It allows for design innovation from the designers.
- Provides practical solutions to enhance gameplay through accessories.
- Celebrates artists.
- Preserves the history of Sorcery.
For each of these points, I have chosen one item from the Dust Store that exemplifies the point. My goal with this blog post is to generate excitement for the Dust Store and get more out of their rewards.
I think it’s important to state how easily dust can accumulate through consistent participation over time to allay negative feelings. Between participating weekly, opening one or two booster boxes, and winning an event or two, it’s entirely feasible to earn 1500 dust in a year. So far, we haven’t seen the Dust Store go out of stock on anything, so there is time to earn and spend down the road. The marketplace aspect of the Dust Store promos is important but beyond the scope of this blog post. I’m just focusing on fun for now.
The Dust Store is an opportunity to provide alternate art promos to entice collectors – Camelot (1500 Dust)
Camelot is my favourite addition to the Dust Store. It’s the perfect encapsulation of what the store can offer. Collectors are rewarded by being given the opportunity to get these amazing alternate art cards. Whilst I’m certainly looking forward to playing with my Dust Store foils, I know most players are picking these up to add to their collections. The Dust Store does serve to provide that little bit extra value for people who are buying a lot of product.
I love this alternate-art Camelot for many reasons. Firstly, Camelot, in my opinion, is a strong, fun, and powerful site. Currently, meeting threshold requirements is incredibly important due to having fewer proportionately sites that produce multiple threshold in a 30-card Atlas, powerful cards that attack sites directly, such as Hamlet’s Ablaze and Sinkhole, and the intense requirements of powerful cards such as Morgana le Fay. Due to this, I feel like we haven’t seen Camelot really hit its stride in the current meta, but I expect it to be a strong card into the future.
The main reason I enjoy this card so much is that I’m a huge fan of Ian Miller’s artwork. This version offers a grim reinterpretation of the original version.
In the Jeff A. Menges piece, we see a resplendent Camelot, with triumphant knights returning home, banners waving in the breeze, and the castle gates wide open to welcome the heroes home. For me, this art depicts the height of King Arthur’s reign. However, in the Ian Miller artwork, I see Le Morte d’Arthur, the death of King Arthur.
In the Ian Miller piece, the bridge from the shore to the castle has been severed, the gates are closed, and the angle looking up to the wall presents an insurmountable cold cliff. The transition of colour from the white castle walls to a lush green forest being drained of its colour, all shadowed by a dark sky and encroaching evil. This pieces says to me that the good times ushered in by the reign of King Arthur are over. This is the end of the Arthurian Legends.
And we’re going into Gothic. Ian Miller is no doubt going to be featured heavily in the upcoming set of Gothic, so to me, this feels like a deliberate tie-in between two otherwise very disjointed sets. Arthurian Legends feels light, whimsical, and playful; whereas Gothic certainly won’t be. The Ian Miller Camelot is a perfect middle ground from where we are to where we’re going next.
It rewards players for playing – Pudge Butcher (200 Dust per copy)
Pudge Butcher might be the card that has hooked more new players into Sorcery than any other, so it’s always fun to see it being celebrated.
The Pudge Butcher promo also showcases the benefit of the change from one copy per customer per lifetime to three, as players can now get a full playset of three copies of this Exceptional rarity card from the Dust store without having to go to the secondary market.
Before this change, it was a mission to get a second and third copy, and players who achieved this often then kept them sealed, not quite making the leap to putting them into a deck. Now that everyone can get a playset, I expect this will open the floodgates to the idea of people using their Dust Store promos in decks instead of keeping them sealed in plastic or locked away in a binder.
Pudge Butcher represents how the Dust Store rewards and celebrates players playing the game. Taking powerful constructed cards and giving them alternate art is a celebration of players. I hope to see other constructed staples get similar treatment in the future through the Dust Store, but I expect such cards are being saved for store promotions, such as the teased Apprentice Wizard and Grandmaster Wizard from Severine Pineaux.
It allows for design innovation from the designers – Druid four pack (1000 Dust)
The Druid Dust Store promo highlights how the store is a powerful tool to help the designers break out of the limitations and challenges imposed by the requirements of the printing process.
The Druid as a double-sided card could have been handled in many different ways. I think the option of putting the foil Druid cards in booster packs as three or four separate cards would have had serious drawbacks.
Firstly, combining the two Druids into one foil card would mean we’d lose the beautiful full-art back for two cards. And in my opinion, players opening the tokens would have caused more confusion and bad feelings than positive because of the connotation created by other card games that token cards are low value.
This Dust Store package gives a feasible way to print all four in the way they deserve whilst preserving their perceived value. This shows how experimentation in design can be facilitated by the Dust Store, and I expect to see more of this in the future.
Provides practical solutions to enhance gameplay through accessories – Soldier Tokens (200 for AL four pack, 400 for Alpha-Beta three pack)
The tiny Foot Soldier tokens are a tidbit from the Kickstarter when the tokens were accidentally printed quarter size instead of half size. The fanbase loved this, and it was kept this way.
There are pros and cons to tokens at this size. An advantage is they help reduce clutter on the board and can be easier to handle in larger quantities. The downside is that they are easier to overlook and be obscured by other cards.
For ease of game play, using full-sized Foot Soldiers tokens could be beneficial. I find often a Foot Soldier that comes down on turn one through an ordinary Village site can be easily overlooked and forgotten until it causes a critical error. They can easily be covered artifacts held by the avatar and minions played to the back row such as Highland Princess. Larger tokens helps prevent this issue by making the token have the same presence as other minions.
The tokens help players customise their game experience and have options for how they want their game to look. I think there’s a lot of value in offering these options and provide players with personalisation options in the Dust Store.
Celebrates artists – playmats, Watchtower, Roots of Yggdrasil, Mirror Realm, Primordial Spring (800 Dust each)
Did you know that you can win the game before you start playing? If you put down a Roots of Yggdrasil playmat, the opponent will be so tilted by their strong emotional reaction to the power of this card, they’ll be unable to play at their best.
I think the one thing players, collectors, and everyone involved in Sorcery universally agrees upon is that the artwork in the game is incredible and important. People are generous in giving their support and appreciation to the artists, and the Dust Store is another way in which this can be achieved.
This is a bit of a cheat category as everything in the store proves this point, but I chose the playmats in particular to represent this. They showcase the passion and consideration that Erik’s Curiosa has for their artists in supporting them and championing their craft. The artwork comes to life at the larger size and small details can be noticed and appreciated at this scale.
I would like to encourage players to embrace the half-sized mats and use them more often and bring them more often to events. I think it’s fun to sit down, place down your mat next to your opponent’s and share a moment to share and appreciate the art. It’s a great way to ease into a game and get into that positive mindset that makes for an enjoyable experience.
Preserves the history of Sorcery – Sorcerer (300 Dust)
The Dust Store can be used to preserve the history of the game. The Sorcerer is an iconic avatar, and this version gives a chance to preserve the Alan Pollack artwork that was previously only available through the Kickstarter and make it more accessible.
I think perhaps the Sorcerer promo has been unfairly maligned, with players questioning why they would spend dust on yet another copy of the Sorcerer and that it might not be worth the dust, especially considering the availability of the box topper foil Sorcerers. I think this perceived negativity is perhaps the reason we did not see the previously spoiled Common Cottagers in this Dust Store update.
It is unfortunate for something to be put on to the Dust Store and then rejected by the fanbase. Dust is a precious commodity, and players want to save their currency for when it really matters. I do hope that we see more items like the Sorcerer in the future, but perhaps we will see historical pieces like the Common Cottagers distributed in other ways. The Dust Store can’t quite resolve all issues, but it is still a powerful tool in the arsenal to help.
I enjoy the Sorcerer promo and am grateful to have it in my collection. I think it gives an insight into the creative process that goes into the game, and that’s something I hold high value for.
Concluding remarks:
As I finish up writing this blog, I am eagerly awaiting my promos to arrive in the mail. I am definitely an overthinker and I enjoy musing about these things. As the store refreshed with the AL offerings, I acted a bit too quickly and missed getting Briar Patch because at the time I thought it was only one copy per 500 dust. Due to shipping to my part of the world being so expensive, I save up and do a single big order, so the Briar Patch will have to wait another year. Last year, I couldn’t afford Cloud City, so that was the first thing I put in my cart this time.
Thinking about that Cloud City promo was a bit of a past-time over the last year, including accidentally bidding on a regular foil Beta version on Ebay thinking it was the promo. Fortunately, I didn’t win that one. Though, at the time I did need a Beta foil for my collection, so it wouldn’t have been a total fail if I had. It was incredibly satisfying a few months later when I opened a foil Cloud City in a booster pack, though. All that to say is that sometimes overthinking can be positive, especially when it’s about cardboard and our hobbies that bring us so much joy. If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably already picked that up about me, and you can expect much more of that in my future posts.
The Dust Store is a privilege. It’s an example of how Erik’s Curiosa goes above and beyond in many regards. For players and collectors, it’s a chance for us to show our appreciation by using it and taking the time to share our thoughts with the community. If anyone sits down to a game with me and has three copies of Melissa A. Benson’s Warhorse, you will have my immense respect.
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