"Ragnarok. The doom of the gods, man, and all things. Your time, little god, is coming to an end." -Angrboða, the Seer

Welcome to Ragnarök

This fire/earth midrange Seer deck may looks similar to many sorcerer lists that you have seen, the most popular being Fury Road. These lists thrive on efficiently costed, strong minions and capping out around 5 mana so that by turn 6 the sorcerer can use it's ability to draw 2 cards per turn and drown their opponents in card advantage.

Ragnarök similarly takes advantage of these efficiently costed minions but instead of using our avatar for advantage on turn 6 we get advantage from turn one with our scry ability.

So how do we not get drowned by card advantage starting on turn 6? Simple, we blow everything up and set our opponents back to turn 1.

This isn’t an aggro deck and it’s not your typical roots control deck. It’s a tempo deck with EF midrange as a fallback. The key here is to find roots early, pop roots around turn 5-8, drop a big minion post roots, and finish the game out before your opponent rebuilds.

How do we accomplish this?

The Gameplan

We mulligan hard for roots combo pieces. If your opener does not have 1) roots of Yggdrasil 2) sinkhole 3) bedrock, or 4) crossroads, ship it. If you have more than 1 bedrock ship the extras. You really want to get roots fast so that you've got the option to go aggressive or to hard reset if you're falling behind. (unless you know your matchup. Against Geo roots I want every bedrock I can get my hands on)

Early game you scry your atlas aggressively and bottom everything that isn't a combo piece unless you need the threshold that turn. Between your scry, mulligan, and crossroads, you are nearly guaranteed to have roots in hand by turn 7. Until I have roots/sinkhole I typically scry atlas every turn unless I know what's on top (like after a crossroads). Then once I have roots in hand I scry my spell book to sculpt my hand. I also often stop at 5 mana and tap my seer for extra sites that I'll use post roots.

There are two basic play patterns. You can either hold your minions back and prep for roots if your opponent isn't pressuring you much, or you can use your minions like you would in fury road to fight for the board / damage, all while digging for roots. If the opponent is a control deck feel free to get aggressive and push damage but dont overcommit because even against control you likely want to roots to prevent them from hitting key mana/threshold limits. Once you have Roots you can play it in your backline if you arent worried about counterplay (sinkhole, smokestacks, rift valley, Atlantean fate, Thias). Sometimes just seeing roots throws the opponent off and they stop playing to the board, in which case just kill them with your minions. If you're ever behind on board you can always pop roots. Protect your roots location with bedrocks as rift valley can be a weakness of this deck. Building your second row to a wall and dropping roots in a corner with a void between it and your avatar is perfect because it's safe from smokestacks and rift valley with your only weakness being their earthquake to bring roots off the corner or Atl fate.

The ideal time to pop roots is when you are behind on board, have at least one bedrock in play, and have a big minion in hand (Looking at you Amazon Warriors). Or if against DS or a craterize list just pop it before they hit 6-8 mana. When you pop roots you keep all of your mana for the turn (but not threshold), so ideally you pop roots, play a new land close to the opponents avatar (ideally adjacent to a forward bedrock) and drop an Amazon warrior on it. Then you have mana AND board advantage while you both recover from roots. This also has the added bonus of turning off the opposing avatar bc now it needs to tap and play sites every turn. They also often can't deal with your minion bc they are set back to 0 mana.

***** If the opponent is in earth consider just dropping roots and popping it immediately and dropping amazon warriors on your bedrock. You really dont want to play roots/sinkhole down, pass turn, then they Courtesan Thias you, or earthquake you, or Sinkhole your roots, or Craterize your roots (damn you PK). It's better to have to walk forward with your warriors a turn and lose some tempo than to get blown out.

Sometimes it's ok to roots when you're not behind on board. This is matchup dependent. If you're against a control deck or deathspeaker, you've got roots, they have 5 mana, maybe a core out, and you could pop roots and drop a minion, do it. Depriving them of that grandmaster wizard and making half the spells in their hand unplayable is completely worth it.

The other thing to mention is that sometimes you don't want to roots. This is rare but against aggro AoA or an earth fire sorcerer who actually gets more bedrocks out than you, sometimes it's correct to just try and scry your spellbook to get more quality cards to 2 for 1 them and go for an aggressive win. When to do this is hard to teach and you'll understand more with experience but if they have more bedrocks than you but are losing on board you should just push your advantage. Always think: Does popping roots here let me win? Or would waiting a turn to develop my mana/hand help me win more. Use your life total as a resource. I've won games where I was put on deaths door the turn before I pop roots, and come back to win from a 20-0 deficit.

Finally: one of the best ways to recover from roots is to recognize it early and hold your cores until post roots. As a result, if you're doing fine and can afford to take a dispel, I'll sometimes draw it (rather than bottoming it and looking for a proactive play) when against a deck that I know runs lots of cores. Popping roots, dropping an Amazon warrior, then following that up with walk up and dispel the 2 cores and P stone you held can completely devastate an opponent. Follow that up with sinkhole their only land and the game is yours.

FAQ

Why no giantesses?

-giantess is great but requires other pieces to turn it on. With our atlas being so tight we didn't have room for deserts so giantess is just unreliable

Why not play Fury road?

-you still can! I've had more success with this deck. At first no one expected roots. Now they do and it gets in their head, a lot of people don't know how to play against it. Also if they dont run bedrocks, the advantage you get from dropping a 5 power minion and resetting the game is often enough to win without a great follow up play.

Why no pudge?

I tested pudge and he isn't good against an experienced opponent. Post roots your minion needs to give you huge advantage/close out the game. Because there are rubble everywhere if you drop a pudge after roots the opponent just moves out of the way. Yes this means you get more mana advantage but you need to close the game out fast before your opponents rebuild and get card advantage and an Amazon warrior just does this so much better. Also against battlemage or Avatar of earth pudge cant block.

How does this deck do against X deck?

-I've played this deck a lot since writing the original primer above (wrote this before the online league season 4 top cut) So I feel a lot more comfortable with the matchups. The thing is that this list takes some getting used to and you play differently depending on what's across from you. Overall there are no unwinnable matchups but Geomancer roots is our hardest one. I'll try and provide some tips below.

Avatar of Air

-This used to be our hardest matchup. The high end AoA lists are easy enough, just go for roots like you would normally and save a sinkhole if you can. Always keep 2 sinkholes against AoA. The way they destroy us is by dropping bottomless pit post roots so that we cant hit them/take advantage of our tempo so you need sinkhole

-Against the Birds list by PK/Kevin, this used to be our hardest matchup. The key to winning now is to grab Smokestacks which is a new addition. We lose this match when we go for roots and dont have smokestacks bc after we pop roots they just drop a bottomless pit and we are completely stalled. With smokestacks our gameplan is back online. If you dont get smokestacks consider holding roots bc if they have the pit you really cant win. They are too low to the ground and against an experienced player they will grab extra sites so they can punish us post roots. Instead dig for sinkholes to kill their defensive sites like Bottomless pit and otherwise scry spellbook instead to grab the best minions you can. Entangled terrain/earthquake can do work, and overall our minion QUALITY is better so just scry spellbook and try and out value them with better minions.

-AoF and Aow

-Honestly I havent played these enough to give an opinion

AoE

-This is a close match but I'd say the matchup is in our favor. You still want your bedrock on your forward site to push damage when the time comes. It's also important because AoE likes to earthquake your sites closer to them so having bedrock as your forward site means they can't move it. Basically value your bedrocks higher because they may play them, use entangled terrain, quagmire, and early removal to stall them. Pop roots and hit them with amazon, usually they are easy enough to beat post roots because we basically turn off their avatar. I keep Sandworm and root spiders in this matchup to counter their root spiders

BM

-The first time you play BM you might lose, it's aggro and intimidating. But after playing this matchup a lot (Thanks Count and Jams!) I think it's actually one of our better matchups. Basically the gameplan is the same. Dig for roots, stall as best you can, dont overcommit to the board. The difference here is that BM is coming to you. It's ok to Bedrock on your first site because they are going to come up. Mull for Gnome hollows and play it one site up from your avatar. This often buys you 2 turns. Use Land surveyor as chump blockers and feel free to drop a unicorn early to get some damage in but otherwise I dont commit that much since they are coming to me and I NEED 2-3 minions for post roots. After they get to you, pop roots and drop a warrior, follow up with unicorn if possible. They cant hit you because your blockers are huge, they dont want to play sites because they are literally on top of you and are taking 5-9 damage per turn, and their removal is typically double threshold disintegrate, polymorph, or poison nova so it's often useless. Count will shrink your warrior and kill it because he's an evil genius but it's a very winnable matchup.

DS

-This is a favorable matchup as long as you can find roots. If it's one of the last 3 sites in your atlas, well that's unfortunate. Otherwise it's very much a favorable matchup. The major issue here is that they will want to hold cores and play them after you roots. Pop roots before they get 6 mana if possible, and as soon as you can if they actually get that GMW off. You dont want to die to Jinn combo. Play gnome hollows on your avatar or a root spider under you if you're not getting your combo off and they are getting a large hand. I keep dispel in my opening hand or keep a common sense around to tutor dispel if I can so I can blow up their mana rocks after roots if they play them out. Otherwise it's the same as the rest. Typically this matchup favors us.

Enchantress

-This is one of our easiest matchups actually. Root spider is protection against their enchantments, play it under a bedrock so they dont flood it. They are so reliant on high mana and threshold that roots blows them out completely. You can take a little time with this one to develop more bedrocks and a better hand before you roots typically.

Sorcerer

-This one is random because every deck is different. Basically it's the same as any matchup but you want to get multiple bedrocks so you have mana advantage post roots. They are often aggro decks so vile imps, kobolds, unicorns, removal and entangled terrain are our friends here. I've won matches by not going for roots and instead using our scry to get us better minions but I would recommend going for roots anyway. Their card advantage post turn 5 is too good. Use your Quagmires, gnome hollows, entangled terrain to stall. Get at least 2 bedrocks out, an amazon in hand (common sense is our friend here) and win with tempo. Still, they can be fast and so very variable so it's a total tossup. In general it's not easy but I'll take sorcerer over AoA any day. Also keep Bury in your opening hand because this is the deck that can randomly get a Pudge Butcher out on turn 2 and end you.

Pathfinder

-Pretty easy matchup if you play it right. They are less likely to interact with our roots combo because they dont have control over their sites. They may run Courtesan so beware of double fire threshold. They often play expensive cards so popping roots usually wins you the game. Also if they are in a corner when you pop roots you can often block them on 4-5 mana and win the game

Elemetalist

-I dont even know what a typical Elementalist deck would look like. Go for the roots plan

Geomancer

-The Geo Roots combo list from ANZ is a menace but it's beatable. I'd say it's top 3 hardest matchups for us but so many of their cards are 5+ mana that we win if we set up right. Bedrocks are the key here. Get 3-4 out (mirror realm). Dont sit on roots. If you have it you should pop it, Dont sit on it because they have plenty of ways to pop our roots and take over the game. Basically gameplan is the same, get roots, pop it when able, but dont do it unless you have at least 1 more bedrock than they do and ideally at least 2. Geo recovers from roots so well that we cant afford to pop roots with 1 bedrocks else we drown in their card advantage. Also our fire minions are excellent in this matchup bc imps and kobolds can clear their chump blockers so our fatties can get damage in. Honestly the more I play against it the more I think this is our hardest matchup.

Special thanks to PK who helped me build this list and test it against so many avatars. Your patience is unparalleled, no one else could play against this list 100 times and never complain. Also thanks to nvekmauvia Aka Kevin for many a late night of playtesting

Thanks for reading! This primer is a work in progress. Feel free to message me here or on discord with questions or thoughts and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

Ragnarök

@Ceej