Welcome everyone to my Deck Spotlight series, where we are going to explore top-tier, meta defining decks or give some left field brews a deserved glance. Now if you’re new to Elder Scrolls: Legends, I highly recommend Numot’s article HERE, where Kenji gave an excellent breakdown of the basics. Today we’re gonna talk about Midrange Sorcerer (Decklist found HERE), a stalwart of the metagame and one of my personal favorites. Without any further ado, lets start the show.
Midrange Sorcerer has been in the top echelon of decks since about last winter since the nerfs to Ramp Scout, as it boasts a consistent and resilient gameplan that gives it play verses almost every other deck on the Ladder. The true strength of this deck is its powerful curve of great creatures, followed up by plenty of burn and immense late game threats. If you are familiar with Magic: The Gathering, this deck is a lot like Modern Jund. Undercosted creatures like Tarmogoyf and Scavenging Ooze to pressure the opponent early, efficient removal/burn like Lightning Bolt followed up with powerful threats like Huntmaster of the Fells and Olivia Voldaren. Another strength of this deck is its flexibility. Outside of its core of a curve plus burn, the remaining slots can be filled in whatever the current metagame calls for, and the deck can transition into more controlling or more aggressive lists as needed. With the introduction out of the way, its time to get into the subtleties.
The list I am presenting today is a more controlling list, utilizing a few more Guard creatures, more removal spells and more ways to draw cards. One of the smaller changes I made was the 2/1 split between Supreme Atromancer and Bone Colossus. Drawing all three Supreme Atromancers isn’t usually helpful, two can finish a game in short order by themselves. The major changes to the stock list is the inclusion of Dark Guardian, Riften Pickpocket, Ice Storm and Nahagliiv, with the removal of Crown Quartermaster, Haunting Spirit, Royal Sage and Wrath of Sithis. The reasoning behind these changes is that it improves the aggressive matchups by quite a lot, and allows you to enter a tempo-oriented gameplan verses the slower decks. Mainly the Midrange Mage, Aggro/Orc Tribal Warrior and Control Monk matchups have been significantly improved. To a smaller extent the Token Crusader and Prophecy Battlemage matchups have been bolstered slightly, but not by a lot. Additionally, the fringe decks of Mono-Strength Aggro and Goblin Tribal (Which is secretly gas, if you ask me) matchups have been heavily improved. The nerfs to Belligerant Giant, though small, still help bring this deck up another notch as it was found in most of the decks that sat at an even win percentage versus this deck. The matchups that have been hurt by these changes are Ramp Scout, Control Mage, Midrange Assassin and finally Meric Battlemage. Most of the Combo matchups, such as Swindler’s Market Archer or any of the Wispmother Combo decks have been hurt, but these matchups were very good to begin with so its not that much of an issue. With Ramp Scout on the rise with its great performance coming out of the Grand Melee, these changes do come at a risk. Even something small like adding the third Supreme Atromancer back into the deck can improve the Scout matchup dramatically.
If you want to get really spicy, both Barbas and J’zargo can both be slotted into this deck. Both are tempo based, midrange legendaries with very high potential. After testing both, Barbas fits in better than J’zargo, as the Experimental Scroll is far too swingy, either being backbreaking for the opponent or woefully underwhelming. Other cards that could have a home in Midrange Sorcerer include Soul Tear, Breton Conjurer, a Skilled Blacksmith/Mace of Encumbrance package, Bringer of Nightmares, or the Speaker himself: Lucien Lachance. Now lets hop into these games.
Aftermath
A disappointing finish at 2-3, but definitely a good showing for the changes. The losses were to Crusader, Battlemage and Spellsword, and the wins were both against Battlemage. Now first off, what a game three. Opponent bricked for so many turns and we faded the full 5 runes for a Lightning Bolt. We got super lucky in order to win that game, but hey, I’ll take it. Both the Crusader and the Battlemage games we lost were closer than they should have been, with me very close to stabalizing, and a few key prophecies could have swung the games in my favor. As I said in the video, the Crusader matchup isn’t fixed, but its better, and the game ended up being closer than it had any right to be. The one loss to Battlemage had the opponent curving Mighty Ally into Reive, Blademaster into Withered Hand Cultist, which is brutal for most Intelligence based Midrange decks to compete with, so I’m not too upset. Now onto the deck changes. Riften Pickpocket is the real deal. Very impressed with this card. The Dark Guardians are helpful, and act as a pseudo-win condition versus some of the aggressive decks. Nahagliiv helped more than he hurt, but we also didn’t come across a single Agility deck with Lethal creatures or Leaflurkers to snipe Nahagliiv off. And the last card, Ice Storm, very much the Unstoppable Rage of this deck. Its amazing when it kills all your opponent’s creatures, but can be really awkward sometimes and rot away in your hand. We played against four decks that Ice Storm should shine in, and we did get to blow out our opponent four times (five if you count vs Spellsword), but it still didn’t equate to “free wins”. Perhaps the Ice Storms should be replaced with prophecies like Midnight Sweep or some of the creatures that were cut originally to raise any matchup you would want.
All in all, I’m very happy with these changes. We beat the two “Midrange” Battlemage decks, almost came back versus Crusader, one hasty Dragon clutched the victory for Aggro Battlemage, and lost in a fair fight against Spellsword. The deck performed in a micro scale how I wanted it to, but still lost more in this small environment. I mentioned in the video that I had been doing well the day prior, 7-2 to be exact, so this deck has been doing well overall. I’m very excited to continue tinkering and playing this deck, as I definitely feel the list isn’t solved at all. If you have any suggestions for the list or other decks you would like to see, leave a comment below or hit me up on twitter! Overall I think this has been an excellent start to the Deck Spotlight series, and thank you all for reading.
