Deck Origination - Key Thinking Described Within

First, something about the origination of this deck. I first played a game of Sorcery at a Gothic release event in December of 2025. Shortly after, or maybe at that event, I obtained a box of Gothic. Sure, I opened [[Lilith]] and some other great stuff, but my most fortunate pull was [[The Inquisition]] specifically because I fell in love with the card...

Free cast? check.
Take a card from my opponent? check.
Monty Python reference? check.

One of my first missions in deck building had me trying to answer the question, how to I make my opponent see this card based on my deck build. A quick search of "reveal" in Curiosa.io showed me [[Squeakers]] and [[Pigs of the Sounder]]. Additionally, as a hyper competitive player of Magic: The Gathering, numerous board games, and economic/civ video games, I am obsessed with obtaining additional resources. As I searched on, I found the following cards to make my Squeakers trigger more often, [[Feign Death]], [[The Geistwood]], and the card advantage of [[Assorted Animals]].

As the related searches for cards spiraled further and further from the core of [[The Inquisition]], I found other key pieces. At first, I thought Seer would be the Avatar of choice, but on the drive home from a local Sorcery event, when the initial seed of an idea was cooking, I realized [[Elementalist]] would answer my threshold problems to be presented by needing (W) for [[Feign Death]], (E) for [[Squeakers]], the other pigs, and (E)(E) for [[Assorted Animals]], and (F)(F) for [[The Inquisition]] if I drew it.

Between the cards already described, I already had an Avatar chosen and 18 cards for the deck when adding the obvious [[Apply Alkahest]] and [[King Arthur]]. So, I needed to fill out the deck, searching successful [[Elementalist]] decks, I found the seemingly undercosted knights (because of their high and weird threshold requirements) and went to work. Then King's Council became obvious, and so on.

Version 1

Version 1 of the deck was taken to a local event, and I went 1-2, with close games on the losses. Version one was very aggressive with more one drop beasts to be backed up with site destruction. When it worked, it crushed, but 18 one drop beasts just didn't hold up in a game that went long. However, the deck clearly showed promise. [[Assorted Animals]] in combination with one cost ordinary beasts, and [[Hamlet]] was amazing when it happened. This continues to be true, because you often get 5-6 extra cards with decent abilities and stat lines... The site destruction if it didn't show up at the begging of the game proved to be insufficient.

Version 2 - SCGcon Portland

Version 2 made adjustments, taking out the site destruction, reducing the number of one drop beasts, and embracing more of the mid-range capabilities of the deck. I took the deck with me to Portland SCGcon where I was qualified for the Regional Championships for Magic. While I secretly hoped I would go 0-3 in the RC so that I could play in the Sorcery constructed event. I didn't practice or prepare and I went 0-2-1 at the RC. Therefore I played in the Sorcery event. I went 4-1-1. My loss was to a top-decked toolbox/zap while we were both on death's door and I was dominating the board state. My draw was against the guy who got second and was undefeated. We ran out of time, obviously, but I think my position on board was prepared to win.

The 6 rounds of play gave me further insight into the deck. The keys of which are:

The strength of [[Assorted Animals]] in this build is immense, but only requires sufficient different one drop beasts to get 5-6 or so and the flexibility to interact with opponents. Note the lethal ones, and [[Thieving Magpie]] and [[Frisky Red Squirrel]]. CONCLUSION: reduce the number of one drop beasts.
[[King's Council]] looks extremely promising, and drew some extra cards, but never enough to be AMAZING because I only had 16 unique minions. CONCLUSION: add more non-knight unique minions and make it so that I can overload the board with them when not gathering up assorted animals.
The deck runs much better when I draw cards like [[Assorted Animals]], [[Feign Death]], and [[The Geistwood]]. I was already thinking that I might benefit from emphasizing air to add [[Browse]], and if I emphasize air, then [[Observatory]] becomes a site that is easy to play.

Version 3 - Where we are today...

The deck is seeking to leverage two key card advantage cards, namely Assorted Animals and King's Council and has been adjusted to revolve around that. Per the SCGcon Portland conclusions, we now have 9 different one cost beasts, and 22 different unique minions. If the action from King's Council doesn't pick up significantly from this update, then I might find the need/desire to abandon the use of that particular card and the need for so many uniques as a result.

The addition of Shrine of the Dragonlord is there as a nice way to ramp if you get it early from 2 to 4 mana and to solve any and all issues that potentially exist with getting the right threshold available to the player...

Play Style & Strategy

Play your minions, go for the throat, get a sizable advantage through [[Assorted Animals]], [[King's Council]], and the overall quality of the knights. Use your [[Toolbox]] the get whatever you need, but you will also be happy if you hold onto one Toolbox as this deck has a harder time winning when they are on Death's Door without it and the [[Zap!]] from the collection.

Potential Variations & Evolutions of the deck...

AIR/EARTH CONCENTRATION -- As I think I have expressed above, but maybe haven't emphasized as much as it exists in my own mind, this deck might really benefit from losing the restrictions required when you want King's Council to be effective. In addition to that, reducing double Fire and Water threshold requirements in the deck could very beneficially enable you to use additional Air/Earth sites for utility... [[Lone Tower]] and the other towers come to mind immediately as does [[Haystack]] and [[Sinkhole]] to take care of some of their potentially problematic sites. You could try to use [[Apex of Babel]] alongside [[Base of Babel]]. [[Mount Ussar Sanctuary]], [[Garden of Eden]], [[Crossroads]] to find [[The Geistwood]], [[Wuthering Heights]].

Getting off the need for Unique minions to power King's Council allows adding [[Clairvoyant]] as a nice counter to [[Deathspeaker]] in addition to adjusting the top cards for Squeakers, and searching for powerhouses like [[Assorted Animals]]. Throw in [[Gargantula]] because that card is cracked. Explore [[Pnakotic Manuscript]] with Sqeakers and cheap/free assorted animals.

Maybe look at dropping 2+ water threshold to 0 and look at splashing extra fire threshold to support [[Searing Truth]] which can of course also bring out [[The Inquisition]] for free. Or look at going withe enough water to use a site like [[Kelp Caverns]] in combination with the Squeakers. If you can go with the splashing of double water threshold, you get to keep [[Dame Britomart]] who sometimes dominates a game, and [[Atlantean Fate]] which is almost always good, and sometimes amazing.

Then again, if you drop King's Council and Browse, Air might not even be a great element to be in.

EARTH/WATER -- These elements probably open up the possibilities of other avatars while maintaining the [[Feign Death]] + [[Squeakers]] but you also lose some number of one cost beasts that make sense. And allow me to emphasize if you leave [[Elementalist]] that the lose of the 3 lethal one cost ordinary beasts is significant. Those things do a surprisingly large amount of work in the deck.

CONSIDER YOUR OWN VARIATIONS

Starting with [[Elementalist]] as the avatar and only having the absolute TRUE need of double earth threshold for the most key card of [[Assorted Animals]] means that the field of possibilities is extremely open. I think there is something possible with [[Lady of the Lake]] which would be incredible, but I also might just be obsessed with trying to break that card.

Sir BeastALot Ver3

@Michael Mindes