Cardboard Corner: Review of Sorcery: Contested Realm

I held off for two years. I had the game in the basket on more than one occasion, only to delete it. We already have enough TCGs... I would just be giving in to FOMO... Ignore the algorithm!!! But voices I trust, voices that have steered me away from simple, speculator-friendly TCGs and toward rich, unique card game experiences, slowly mounted to a chorus. I gave in. I loaded the cart, again, but this time clicked Buy on Sorcery: Contested Realm (2022). Mama was right; it's important to choose good friends in life.

On the surface, Sorcery is like the other TCGs out there. You build a resource engine to play cards, permanent and temporary, in order to knock your opponent's life total to zero. And there are further similarities to Magic: one land per round, minions and spells, summoning sickness, twenty-health start, Dungeons & Dragons motif, etc., etc. So much richer and more thematic is Sorcery, however, that it is actually Magic³.

Rather than an open, 1D table space with a gozillion keywords (To infinity and universes beyond!), Sorcery is played on a 4x5 grid that has four dimensions: underground, underwater, on the ground, and in the air. Minions, artifacts, auras, and spells are played to these dimensions and can move in varying directions depending on traits—not chess pieces, but certainly in structured fashion. The options and restrictions inherent to card traits are where the grid becomes a meaty decision space. Couple this with some of the best art in card games EVER and <chef's kiss>. But I get ahead of myself.

An example to demonstrate the exponential difference. Shooting a fireball in Magic is: tap the lands to play the card to do the damage. It's abstract. Card art is the only thing holding the player's imaginative hand. In Sorcery, players subtract the required amount of mana from their pool, play the Fireball card, and follow the instructions, typically something like: Shoot a projectile and deal two damage to each minion in that direction, i.e. shoot a fireball in a cardinal direction on the grid and deal two damage to each minion until the fireball reaches the edge of game space. Not only does the card art stimulate the imagination, but damaging or killing minions (even your own) as the fireball flies across the grid feels like casting a proper spell. You push a button and see the effect on the battlefield. It's more representational than abstract, and more satisfying for it.

Decks in Sorcery are constructed around four elements: earth, fire, water, and air. Water is the slower, controlling deck style and utilizes underwater movement. Air is the dynamic, zippy-zappy faction that often flies through the void to make quick, sudden attacks. Earth is the slow, dumb aggro element; it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Fire is about fireballs, and more fireballs, and big explosions, and arid deserts. Combining elements is a wild ride.

In Sorcery, players use 60-card decks. But they'll rarely see half that in a game. I normally dislike this aspect of TCGs (why invest the time and money in a deck if you see only a small portion of it?). But in Sorcery, it makes sense for casual play. The sense is, instead of drawing to get the card you need to make your strategy work, players need to work with the cards they have, and by doing so are forced to sometimes make awkward decisions, decisions that result in more varied game states. Another way of saying this is, story emerges. Do you remember the game when my camel wandered the sites untouched and took over the catapult you abandoned? For context, camels are low cost, weak units that in other games would rarely be played, and if they are played, have no business picking up a catapult. In Sorcery, Mr. Camel has a random chance of not only seeing play, but of having a gem of a day—and perhaps a turn later being crushed by a deluvian kraken, which spawns a...

And there are a million other story possibilities in Sorcery. Unexpectedly sucking your opponent's minions into the void. A bullfrog swallowing a sleeping giant. Meteors that do graded damage across the grid. Floating cities, sunken treasure, dark unicorns, floods, chain lightning (and fireballs), and on and on goes the list of just plain fun cards. Many feel busted—great to play but perhaps too powerful for the game's good. But as a whole, things are tuned effectively. The powerful cards, while capable of swinging games, rarely result in auto-wins. There's always something potentially “else” in the next card given the limited number of cards players draw. There's just so much in Sorcery to enjoy thematically; it feels like a magic battle come alive more than almost any other TCG-type game out there.

No review of Sorcery would be complete without discussing the win condition. It comes in two stages. The first stage is knocking your opponent's health from twenty to zero. This puts them at Death's Door, i.e. stage two. One more damage needs to be dealt directly to that player's avatar on a later turn to seal the win. It thus can happen that one player stomps all over the grid, dealing big damage and quickly getting their opponent's health to zero, but then there is a struggle to pin down their opponent's avatar for that one last hit. In the meantime, the opponent dinks and danks, damage here and there, until suddenly things are quite even, the win up for grabs. Unit placement and unit movement are just as important as unit size and attack to achieve the win.

And the art. Oh, the art. Sorcery is gorgeous. Rather than hand-drawn digital art or AI, it's all hand painted pieces evoking a retro D&D motif. The player can feel the difference. Android Netrunner and Legend of the Five Rings have me pausing to appreciate artists' creations. But with Sorcery I often get caught peering into the depths of cards instead of playing. Moreover, opening booster packs is just as much about finding rarity as it is rare art. Very few games can say as much.

If there are any drawbacks to Sorcery, one might be the relative fuzziness of the ruleset. As the game becomes more popular and organized play emerges, developers are having to tighten things up. But for the kitchen table, there are one or two moments per game players simply need to discuss and agree how a particular interaction will work—the more thematic, the better. Second potential issue is cost of cards. If you plan on getting into the game competitively, the best cards cost serious money—like the other big TCGs out there. Otherwise, at one set per year (compared to Magic or Pokemon's thirty-seven per year), the game is affordable for casual play. Two people can split a booster box for $50 each and agree on which element cards they want to construct decks with.

In the end, Sorcery is the TCG player's TCG—a TCG for players who prioritize art, design, and gameplay over collectibility and trading. It's offers a rich decision space, semi-narrative gameplay, and is filled with superb art. The rules/card effects can be a little ambiguous and there is a fair amount of randomness in card draw considering players will rarely see the majority of their decks in a match. But, as mentioned, this just pushes the game into emergent narrative, something few If any TCGs out there can match. I don't believe in the idea of beginner or advanced games. Just be aware that Sorcery, with four dimensions of gameplay on a grid with four different card types, is on the more complex side of TCGs. Did I mention the art?