Bardsword Sorcery Blog

Tag: sorcerytcg

  • The Dust Store is so much more than just a rewards programme.

    The Dust Store is so much more than just a rewards programme.

    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.

  • Five Predictions for Gothic

    Five Predictions for Gothic

    13/6/2025

    Note: this was written and not published before the spoilers on 13/6/2025, so I will resist the urge to update this blog with those in mind.

    Note: Please forgive the current lack of graphic design. This blog is a work in progress, but most importantly for me is the writing, and I need to start getting that out into the world for feedback and to prevent procrastination, so please enjoy this old-school column. To look up cards, please visit: https://curiosa.io/cards

    Greetings. We’re currently in a lull period between sets, and whilst things have slowed down a touch, the whirring in my brain has not. Sorcery has taken over my life in the best way possible, providing me an opportunity to socialise, enjoy an incredible new hobby, and occupy my brain with something somewhat more constructive than its usual overthinking. I am constantly thinking about new decks, new strategies, and with a new set on the horizon possible new cards.

    So, here are five of my personal predictions for the upcoming Sorcery set of Gothic. Some of these are pretty wild and some are probably pretty obvious. It will be interesting to see how far off the mark I am once the set has been released. This is a big of a long-form article, and hopefully my thoughts aren’t too meandering. Number five is a bit of a controversial one, and I have included a prediction on the release date at the bottom.

    These ideas and thoughts came about by thinking (probably too much) of cards and mechanics that would benefit current competitive and casual gameplay, how cards interact with other cards from Alpha-Beta and Arthurian Legends, thematic ideas that would fit into a dark and gritty Gothic set, and parallels to other card games that might have influenced the designers.

    1. New and more minion tokens:

    This is an easy one to start off with. In many games of Sorcery, it feels like the board gets simplified too easily. Minions trade, spell removal is clean and efficient, and the board gets cleared quickly through these interactions. There are plenty of cards that easily clean up small minions, such as the Desert sites and Magic Missiles. We even already have a silver bullet card with Rain of Arrows. Even the design of The Great Famine and the Black Plague feel like precursors to more complex boards and the expectation that number of token-generating cards will increase.

    An advantage of having more small minion and minion tokens is that they can protect your larger and more expensive minions by ‘chump blocking’. One of the disappointments in Arthurian Legends is that the awesome knights get easily taken down by the usual suspects of efficient minions and removal spells. All the minion token generating cards in AL are expensive, such as Guards! and Invasion, so it often felt like the Sirs and Dames didn’t have the necessary backup to stick around on the board long enough to do anything meaningful.

    Lance tokens were a good design choice to help remedy this, but it feels like Lance tokens were cost slightly too high to really achieve this purpose as they function more like removal spells than speed bumps.

    So minion tokens are the perfect compromise to this problem. Already we have seen Gift of the Frog spoiled for Gothic. This is a strong early game roadblock for water decks, but requires a one-drop minion to function on curve, so my prediction for this category is a basic Ordinary site: 

    Lily Pad Pond.

    Water threshold.

    An Ordinary site emits a lonely croak.

    Genesis – create a submerged frog token.

    This helps fill the one-two curve for water decks with Gift of the Frog. Having the token enter submerged makes it play similar to Tadpole Pool, so it functions how players would expect it to. Having the token entered submerged lowers the power of the site by making the chump blocker be more constrained by having to unsubmerge to protect adjacent sites. It’s a choice to make the genesis effect free, compared to the ordinary village sites, but I think the zero power minion and entering submerged is enough of a drawback to justify this.

    1. Tribal archetypes (that use new minion token types)

    Tribal synergies are a fan favourite in many games. Elves and Goblins are fantasy classics, and it’s time that they come to take the throne from the frogs and wolves in Sorcery. Though, I can easily see Erik’s Curiosa deciding to eschew the tropey classics in favour of something else. But we’re definitely getting more Undead tribal in Gothic, and likely more Demons and Spirits based on Sir Galahad.

    My prediction is that in order to support these new tribal synergies, we will see one or two new Minion Tokens. The first is the Skeleton minion token  – a zero power undead Minion that is created by Earth and Air threshold cards. Such as:

    Rank of the Damned.

    3 cost. Air, Air Threshold.

    An Exceptional Magic that demands service.

    Choose a row. Summon a Skeleton token to each site you control in that row.

    This means you can get one to five tokens for the cost of three, putting it at a similar rate as Border Militia, but forces you to play your sites in a very different formation. A design issue is that Skeleton tokens need to be flavourfully and mechanically distinct from Soldier tokens, so limitations such as summoning to a row versus summoning nearby is important and help create different play patterns.

    Earth and Air could both share skeleton tokens but use them very differently. Both elements will benefit from the tokens slowing the game down. The Air element has an existing archetype of expensive and powerful effects such as Lord of the Void and ramp spells to help play them, but this didn’t really take off because aggressive Air strategies are too dominant. 

    Then Earth and Air elements could utilise these tokens in distinct ways. Earth can synergise Skelton tokens with power boosting effects, such as House Arn Bannerman and the spoiled Death Knight. Air could specialise in upgrading these skeleton tokens, such as into Mages and Archers. Even in death, we have to go to school and specialise in a subject that will define our entire lives:

    Scholomance.

    Air threshold.

    An Elite site of profane knowledge.

    Your Skeleton tokens gain Spellcaster.

    Tap four Spellcasters here to draw a card.

    I just really want to see the day where Occult Ritual is a staple and I can use that awesome Frank Frazetta art in my deck.

    Finally, on this point and going into a lot less detail, my second guess for a new minion token is a token for Fire and Water, the Cultist. These will be one-power minions, but there will be a focus on sacrificing them for fun and power. Feed them to the Cauldron Crone for a card draw. Then similar cards can turn them into life, damage, mana, threshold, or sacrifice them to summon the big bad. 

    1. An aggressive Avatar that utilises sites and ramp.

    One thing I feel that Sorcery is missing is an Avatar that wants to be aggressive and also ramp to play larger minions on curve beyond four cost. Avatar of Earth is almost like this, but it needs to stop playing sites so that it can try to actually win the game before it gets stopped by the opponent’s card advantage. Currently, we’re seeing a bit of it out of Flamecaller and Druid playing Fire threshold going up to Infernal Legion on the curve, but I think that’s more due to Fire’s strength in the meta rather than the Avatars actively encouraging this play style. Seer is also able to play like this because its scrying ability can allow it to play a wider curve and actually draw the minions at the appropriate part of the game. But all of these still don’t quite hit the mark, so my suggestion is:

    Titan – 2 power.

    Your Avatar shapes the land through mighty deeds.

    When Titan kills a minion, replace an adjacent Rubble with a site from your hand.

    Titan is a mash up of Battlemage and Geomancer. Note, that it doesn’t require attacking to trigger its ability. Playing Firebolts to kill three minions would create three triggers. The limitation is that it requires adequate Rubble tokens adjacent and Site cards in hand to fuel this ability, so it would likely be slow off the mark and then have explosive turns later in the game. It also would probably require a bunch of new cards. These cards would likely also help Avatar of Fire, which is a good thing. Existing cards that play into this strategy include: Star seeds of Uhr, which can provide plenty of Rubble. Scorched Earth can trigger the ability multiple times and provide rubble. And Tithe is an all-star that with this avatar will be great even later into the game. 

    The biggest clue that had me thinking about this Avatar was how out of place in Arthurian Legends Stone Rain felt. Just something about it made me feel that it had received changes late into the piece. Stone Rain requires you to have three sites in hand to make it a four-cost Minor Explosion, and this feels weak. Maybe it was changed late in development because it was too strong or there were cards that supported it that didn’t make it into the set. Perhaps for Limited play considerations, these cards were broken up into different sets. So my far-out prediction is we’ll see a lot more cards that draw sites in Gothic and support Stone Rain and a possible avatar like Titan.

    And talking of sites…

    1. Something to rival the Ordinary Towers

    Bans and restrictions are always a contentious issue, and I think Erik’s Curiosa has shown that it doesn’t want to go down that route. The three towers from Alpha and Beta (Lone, Gothic, and Dark) are incredibly powerful, and I think there could be sites that rival their power.

    Also, it’s very likely that similar to how we got the fourth ordinary village in Arthurian Legends (and technically the fourth ordinary river in Alpha), Gothic will give us the fourth ordinary tower.

    So here is an incredibly broken site:

    Crumbling Castle. No Threshold.

    An exceptional site that is doomed to disintegrate to dust.

    Genesis – gain Three this turn.

    At the start of your turn, replace Crumbling Castle with Rubble.

    A three-mana burst is probably far too strong, but it needs to be three to clear the towers. The timing of when it becomes Rubble is also another issue. If it generates mana on the turn it becomes rubble, that boosts this card’s power further. This is an example of how complex design is, as there are so many little things that have complex implications and  small flow-on effects – my utmost respect to the team for the great work they do on this game. Mostly, I designed this card as a homage to the band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, so this card is a top-down design that might just need to go right back to the drawing board.

    1. A Jesus Christ Minion Card

    Depicting Jesus on a trading card is a contentious issue. It’s a culturally sensitive issue and one that many would say is inappropriate. We have seen with Crusade and Jihad, where Erik’s Curiosa possibly stand on that debate, so we can go ahead with the thought experiment without getting bogged down in the cultural debate.

    There are already references to the Christian religion in the game. The Spear of Destiny is famously the one that pierced Jesus’ side. We have Sir Balin wielding it to deliver his dolorous stroke. We have references to the cross with the spoiled Day of Judgement. We have Pact with the Devil referencing the devil. It’s impossible to separate Arthurian mythos from Christianity, so the entire set is steeped in it.

    The most convincing reason for me is that in Gothic art, as in the style from the 12th Century, depictions of Christian figures and Jesus were incredibly prominent and important. As art is such a core inspiration to this game, it would be a shame to not delve into that rich source and have the opportunity to take inspiration from that era of art fully.

    So could we get a Jesus Christ minion to move, attack and block for us in a game of Sorcery? It certainly would create a marketing buzz for good or ill. Here we go:

    Jesus Christ.

    A unique Mortal of the divine trinity.

    4 Cost – Earth, Water threshold. 0 power.

    Other minions nearby can’t be destroyed.

    Already in that design there’s plenty of issues, thematically, power level, and theologically. Is this idea a worse White Hart or an overpowered monster?

    I think ultimately there will be a card that is essentially Jesus, but they won’t use the name directly. Instead, it will be a minion called The Messiah or something similar and have a much more interesting twist to it than what I have come up with.

    But the ultimate takeaway point is that there are so many fascinating ways to take Sorcery, and I think the team are willing to go further and take more risks than other current card games through complex and fun designs, concepts that encourage thought and discussion, and incredible art.

    Bonus – release date prediction:

    My final prediction is the release date. I’ve always been optimistic, and my guess is November 2025. It feels like Erik’s Curiosa has been working diligently over the last year and didn’t even pause to rest following the release of Arthurian Legends. They’ve resolved many problems with production, and where other companies might struggle in the face of this year’s political uncertainty, I think they have enough momentum to clear that hurdle.