Rune was in a dire state in the Steel Rebellion Shadowverse meta before its mini expansion. The class was bottom of the barrel in both Rotation and Unlimited formats in playrates and winrates, and often had the lowest global winrate on Shadowlog. It is not like the Steel Rebellion cards were bad; they were just scattered across different archetypes that had little to overlap with each other. The class felt like complete garbage and every archetype seemed incomplete and half baked.
Enter the mini expansion, and the new cards have brought the class out of the dumps. Rune got the most powerful and interesting cards by far in the Steel Rebellion mini expansion, and almost every archetype has seen a resurgence. Solomon and Clarke are both incredible cards and while Solomon is more flashy, I believe Clarke is the more powerful one. The evidence is in what I believe to be the best Rune archetype right now in Rotation: Burn Spellboost, a deck that has Clarke as a core card but often does not run Solomon.
Burn Spellboost is an archetype that has existed since the Altersphere expansion. The deck is probably the closest thing to a true hybrid Spellboost/Earth Rite that the class has ever gotten. The main play pattern of the deck involves controlling the board while slowly burning down the opponent with a combination of Orichalcum Golem + Veridic Rituals + Truth’s Adjudication + Zealot of Truth. The Altersphere version of the deck also had to run Despondent Chimera. The original version of the deck had a number of issues, the first being Despondent Chimera and how it is a a legitimately bad card due to its high variance. The second issue is that Orichalcum Golem was the only card that had a relevant Earth Rite effect, so the deck would suffer in games where the golem was never drawn.
Clarke has solved the issues with the deck. He provides another great Earth Rite effect so that you will not get stuck with a bunch of useless Earth Sigils. Not only that but Clarke draws a card which makes it easier to find your Orichalcums. He has largely made it unnecessary to run Despondent Chimera now, although the card still sees play in some variants of the deck.
Earth Rite Runecraft is my favorite deck in Shadowverse, and I really loved the Mysteria Orichalcum Burn deck from Altersphere. The Steel Rebellion version of Burn Spellboost is very close to that deck, so I have been having a blast playing in this post mini expansion meta. Compared to the more popular Solomon Raio Rune deck that people are playing right now, this deck lacks its late game inevitability. But the tradeoffs are that it does not brick as often due to running a lower curve and having way more early game interaction cards. The deck is also capable of winning games much faster, since the win condition is burn based. Pretty happy to see that a true hybrid Spellboost/Earth Rite deck is finally viable.
Core cards
3 Insight
3 Magic Missile
3 Witch Snap
3 Vesper, Witchhunter
3 Tetra, Sapphire Rebel
3 Orichalcum Golem
3 Fate’s Hand
3 Truth’s Adjudication
3 Fiery Embrace
3 Zealot of Truth
3 Clarke, Knowledge Seeker
Insight – Does this need explanation? 1 mana draw a card as a Basic means it is a core 3x in every Spellboost deck forever in both Constructed formats.
Magic Missile – Same as above.
Witch Snap – 2pp deal 3 damage is premium removal and it even gives us an Earth Sigil we can use later. One of the best cards from Altersphere
Vesper, Witchhunter – A very flexible card who can act as a pseudo Halo Golem in its 4pp mode with Earth Rite, or can be accelerated to be a 2pp deal 1 damage summon a Witch’s Cauldron. Since this is a Spellboost deck, she should be played in her Accelerate mode the vast majority of the time. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I have played Vesper in her full cost follower mode.
Tetra, Sapphire Rebel – A new card from Steel Rebellion, Tetra is a 4pp 3/4 who gives you a 1pp Repair Mode spell, and then on evolve gets full evo stats and gives you a 1pp Delta Cannon spell. If she attacks she restores a playpoint, so during the evo turns she is essentially a 3pp 3/4. Since this is not a full blown Machina deck, it is very rare that we will be able to hit the 4 Machina cards in a turn requirement to recycle Delta Cannon. But even without that, Tetra is great in Spellboost because she is a fully statted 4 drop who generates two 1 cost spells. You can almost think of her as a fair version of Magic Owl. The vast majority of the time, the Repair Mode should be used on Tetra herself. If she survives an evo trade and heals to 6 health, a lot of decks have an awkward time dealing with her.
Orichalcum Golem – One of the main sources of burn in this deck. There is a key difference in how to use this card in this deck vs how to use it in previous versions of Dirt Burn. Because this deck has a very low number of followers, it will often be behind on board during the evolution turns. If it is turn 5 and you have the choice of playing Orichalcum or something that can get a 2-for-1 trade(like Eleanor or Tetra), then it is almost always correct to not play Orichalcum. Especially if you are behind. Because of this, Orichalcum will actually not be played in its full cost follower mode the majority of the time in this deck. You can only really afford to play it for 5 if you are ahead or the board is at parity. This is especially important against Sword, Haven, and Portal because these classes often pack cards that can deny the Last Words effect of the golem. The accelerate mode on Orichalcum is amazing because it counts as a 1 cost spell that can potentially generate more spells, the Veridic Rituals. Unfortunately there is some RNG associated with Orichalcum accelerate, but all of the outcomes are positive. But since we are a burn deck, the face damage and Veridic Ritual effects tend to be the most desirable.
Fate’s Hand – One of the most broken Rune cards ever, pretty much a 3x core in every Spellboost deck.
Truth’s Adjudication – Another important source of burn in this deck. I honestly hate the design of this card. Obviously the inherent RNG of the card is disgusting and can lead to very frustrating games for both the Rune player and the opponent. But Rune as a class traditionally had an intended weakness of having bad defensive options, with very few quality wards and sources of healing. Adjudication gives the class both of these things so it feels very off. But it is impossible to deny how strong this card is so we have to run it.
Fiery Embrace – One of the best removal spells in the game and an auto-include in any slow Spellboost deck. Burn Spellboost plays a lot of low cost spells so it can Spellboost its hand at a breakneck speed, making Embrace amazing.
Zealot of Truth – A 9 cost 3/5 Storm who gets cost reduction as its Spellboost effect. Essentially the Rune version of Albert. Ideally these should be sent face, but do not be afraid of using them for board control if you are behind.
Clarke, Knowledge Seeker – The new card from Steel Rebellion mini expansion, Clarke is the actual god. He is not fancy, but a Demonic Strike that spellboosts your hand twice while drawing a card is borderline broken in this type of deck. Historically, cheap spells that generate another cheap spell are amazing in Spellboost decks and Clarke is no exception. He pretty much does everything we want in this deck: generates sigils for more Orichalcum fuel, generates burn, draws us cards, and spellboosts our hand. Clarke also has a 10pp follower mode, but we will almost never be using it in this deck. Most of the time we operate with a nearly full hand anyways.
That is a total of 33 cards that are core to this particular version of Burn Spellboost, so it does not leave us much room for flex slots.
Supplemental cards
Solomon, Lord of Magic – The other new card from the Steel Rebellion mini expansion, Solomon has sparked a renaissance in Spellboost Runecraft deck building. He is a 2pp 2/2 who generates a Seal of Solomon, a 7pp spell. Solomon himself has a Spellboost effect of reducing the cost of his Seal. The seal itself initially draws a 0 cost follower, and then draws higher cost followers the more it is spellboosted. After drawing the follower, the seal also sets the cost of said follower to 0. Essentially Solomon allows you to tutor any follower you want, which has given life to so many cards that were once considered to be unplayable for Runecraft. While Solomon is amazing, he is actually unnecessary in this deck. Orichalcum Golem is probably the key follower that you want to pull with the Seal, but we are mainly interested in accelerating the golem not playing it as a follower. If you decide to run Solomon, you most likely want to run Raio as well due to the insane synergy they have together.
Conjure Golem – A solid 2 drop that spellboosts your hand, you can never go wrong with this guy.
Wind Blast – An incredible basic removal spell for Spellboost decks, it might be surprising to see such an iconic card not be in the Core section. But we already have Fiery Embrace and Witch Snap, so in a lot of matchups having extra removal is excessive. Still worth running depending on the meta though.
Robogoblin – A neutral 2pp 2/2 who generates a 1pp Repair Mode spell upon death. 1 cost spells are amazing in Spellboost, and the Repair Mode has extra synergy with Tetra.
Seraphic Blade – You can never go wrong with 2pp removal. This card is good if the meta is dominated by certain 2pp cards that are hard to interact with, such as Vira or Temple of the Holy Lion.
Eleanor, Cosmic Flower – A 3pp 3/3(overstatted!) follower who can spellboost any card in your hand up to 3 times, and then has an evolve effect of generating a Splendid Conjury, a 1pp spell that deals 3 damage to an enemy follower. The spell also deals additional damage as a Spellboost effect. It pains me to place Eleanor as a supplemental card because I love everything about her. I love her character design, card design, English and Japanese voice, and she is by far my most favorite character from the Guild Wars Isunia story arc. But no matter how strong she is, her usefulness drops off drastically once you run out of evos. A 3pp 3/3 who can potentially spellboost a card 3 times is amazing, but there are often better things you can be doing in the late game.
Magisa, Ruinfist Witch – A 3pp 3/2 with a bunch of different Earth Rite effects depending on how many sigils you have. While Burn Spellboost is much more consistent than before, it still suffers in games where Orichalcum Golem is not drawn. Especially if you draw a bunch of sigils with no way of using them. So Magisa can be worth running as an extra Earth Sigil activator.
Sagacious Core – A cycle of cards in the Steel Rebellion expansion, this is a 3pp amulet that upon evolve, restores 2pp and puts two Insights into your hand. You can think of it as a slower version of Concentration, as the payoff is better(double spellboost) but delayed since you have to evolve to activate the effect. Since this deck already has plenty of early game interaction, Core is quite a slow card. But you can never go wrong with more card draw. It also has great synergy with Tetra.
Craving’s Splendor – A Neutral 3pp spell that initially increases any follower’s attack by 4, and then deals 4 damage to it. The main use of this is to combine it with Zealot of Truth to deal 7 damage, but it is also flexible to be used as a removal spell for followers that have 4 or less health.
Cagliostro, Adorable Genius – She has been a staple of Burn Earth Rite decks ever since her original printing in Brigade of the Sky, but is actually not core here since this is a Spellboost deck at heart. You can never go wrong with Cag though, since she provides another way of getting a 2-for-1 exchange during evolution turns.
Despondent Chimera – I mentioned earlier that Despondent sucked because of its high variance. While that has not changed, the card is a lot more consistent now with Solomon in the cardpool. If you do decide to run Despondent, you have to include it with Solomon and Raio and change the configuration of the deck a little bit. More information on that in the next section.
Raio, Omen of Truth – A 7pp 7/7 who spellboosts every card in your deck 9 times. Make no mistake, Raio is a bad card but can be worth playing now because of his ridiculous synergy with Solomon. Spellboost decks typically cannot afford to play a 7pp 7/7 with no immediate effect, but with Solomon you can potentially play him for less than 7. Solomon also gets stronger after you have played Raio as well. Zealots in the deck count as 0 cost followers, so playing Solomon and then immediately using the Seal will give you a 0 cost Zealot of Truth.
Edict of Truth – A 7pp spell that draws cards until your hand is full, and has a Spellboost threshold effect: if it is Spellboosted 9 times or more, than you will recover 7pp after casting it. In the past this card was considered to be extremely high rolly and only usable if combined with Raio. However this deck can spellboost its hand at an insane speed so reaching the 9 threshold is actually quite trivial. Edict is pretty amazing for late game fuel. If you do decide to run it, 1-2 copies is the right amount.
Magiblade Witch – An 8pp 4/4 follower who deals 3 damage to 2 random enemy followers. She also has an accelerate(1) effect of summoning an Earth Sigil. Her 8pp follower mode is completely useless so she will always be accelerated, making her a fancier version of Commence Experiment. This deck actually has hand size issues so Magiblade Witch is useful as a way to get cards out of your hand before drawing.
Mechawing Angel – One of the most widely played Neutral cards from Steel Rebellion. It is a 8pp 6/6 Ward who summons two 1/1 Assembly Droids. But it also has an accelerate effect for 2 of simply summoning two Assembly Droids, making it a Neutral version of Oathless Knight. This card is solid and does not seem fancy, but it is quite amazing in this deck. The 1/1 tokens backed up by Witch Snap and a virtual 6 copies of Magic Missile mean that this deck should have no problems surviving in the early game. Since this is a Spellboost deck, Mechawing is going to be played in its Accelerate mode the vast majority of the time. But it can still be useful as an emergency late game Ward in some matchups.
Decklists and variants
The most popular decklist would probably be Goemon’s after he reported getting a 28 winstreak on ladder using a modified version of a list Matom0 made. After that it would likely be Agni’s, who was able to get the #1 spot on ladder with a mindblowing 150k points during the May season playing several decks including this one.
This is the decklist that I use. It went through several iterations and had Eleanor in it for the longest time. Wind Blast is a card that goes in and out depending on meta, and there are times I wish it was Magiblade Witch. If Sword becomes the main deck to beat in the meta again, then Eleanor will probably return.
Everything I have written about so far is about the main version of Burn Spellboost. There is another variant that some people play that involves Despondent Chimera, which ends up being a very different deck. Here is a decklist that yttmn used to great success early in the mini expansion release, and here is my own list.
A key problem with Despondent Chimera before was that it was only useful if you were able to hit its extremely steep 12 Spellboost threshold to gain Storm. This meant that you wanted to draw into D Chimera early, as topdecking it late game was disastrous. This lead to another problem where getting it in hand early meant that you had a dead card for most of the game, increasing the chance of you getting bricked draws.
This problem has mostly been fixed now that we have Solomon. The main play pattern with this deck is to forget about Despondent Chimera and hope you never draw it, and instead aim on finding Solomon. The main purpose of Solomon is to help you find your Raio. It is a bit unlucky if you naturally draw the only Raio in deck, but if this happens then you have to find a turn where you can safely play him.
One of the most interesting things about playing this deck is knowing the right time to play Solomon. In general, it is very difficult to ever have an opportunity to play a full 7 cost Raio, so it is best to try to get the Seal of Solomon reduced a little bit before trying to get its Spellboost count to 7. Because of this, it is often correct to not play Solomon on 2 even if you have it in hand. I would only play it on 2 if there is literally nothing else you can do that turn. It is generally best to get the Seal to cost 5 or less, so I find that Solomon often gets played during the evolution turns.
After you have Raio active, your entire deck is spellboosted by 9, so any Despondent Chimeras you draw just need a trivial 3 extra spellboosts to unlock the Storm threshold. While Solomon’s main purpose in this deck is to find Raio, he has a bunch of cool combos with other cards. I mentioned earlier that post Raio, playing a Seal of Solomon that has no spellboosts on it will immediately draw a 0 cost Zealot from your deck. Getting the Seal to 6 allows you to tutor out Despondent Chimeras, and getting the Seal to 10 or higher allows you to draw a 0 cost Clarke. 0 cost Despondents are crazy because if you get them to 12 Spellboosts, they are a free 6/6 Storm that deals 3 damage to an enemy follower.. that also restore 3pp. 0 cost Clarkes are even more crazy as he essentially allows you to double the amount of play points you have in a turn. You can spend all of your pp, play the 0 cost Clarke, and then you recover all of your playpoints and can play even more cards. It is almost like a fair version of Dimension Shift in Rotation.
You might notice that this deck is missing Mechawing Angel, a card that shows up in a lot of Spellboost decks. While you can never go wrong with that card, it gets cut from this deck because of how important it is to get Raio active. With the angel cut, it means getting the Seal of Solomon to either 7 or 8 spellboosts will still have it draw Raio, so it gives you more leeway in finding him.
So the ideal gameplan is then to get Raio active first, either by drawing him naturally or tutoring him out with Solomon and potentially playing him for cheaper than 7pp. Once Raio is active, then either draw into Despondent Chimeras naturally or find them using Solomon. Then win the game using the D Chimeras, Zealots, and the other burn left in the deck. Overall I think this variant of the deck is not as strong or consistent as regular Burn Spellboost, since there are a lot more moving parts hinging on Raio. But it is a lot of fun primarily because of all the different Solomon combos that are possible.
Lovers Arcana Yamada Lvl99 