Burn Spellboost Runecraft

Tetra, Sapphire Rebel

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

Burn Spellboost 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.

MtG budget decks for War of the Spark

Chandra, Fire Artisan by Ryota-H

First time writing about Magic the Gathering on this blog! I have been playing Magic Arena a lot for the past few months and have been pleasantly surprised with how generous the game is. Unlike Shadowverse, it does not give you a bunch of things upfront, but it is very easy to make a strong deck quickly with the proper amount of planning. Being good at draft also helps a lot too.

The criteria for budget decks is different from paper Magic compared to Magic Arena. In paper, prices of cards are purely determined by supply and demand, as well as what decks are top tier in the various Constructed formats. So it is possible for weak mythics and rares to be low price, while even some commons and uncommons can have high prices. In Arena, every card of a certain rarity costs the same as the others due to the Wildcard system. So my standard for a budget deck in Magic Arena is one that minimizes the amount of rares and mythics.

However it is still important to be able to win, so I have trimmed down and made a list of the most competitive budget decks in the current War of the Spark meta. Given enough play time, each of these decks should be capable of reaching Platinum rank every season in the best-of-one Ranked queue.

Mono Red Aggro AKA Red Deck Wins

4 Lightning Strike (XLN) 149
4 Shock (M19) 156
4 Viashino Pyromancer (M19) 166
2 Risk Factor (GRN) 113
4 Runaway Steam-Kin (GRN) 115
4 Light Up the Stage (RNA) 107
2 Skewer the Critics (RNA) 115
20 Mountain (WAR) 261
4 Ghitu Lavarunner (DAR) 127
4 Goblin Chainwhirler (DAR) 129
4 Wizard’s Lightning (DAR) 152
4 Fanatical Firebrand (RIX) 101

This is by far the most popular deck in Magic Arena, and also quite possibly the strongest deck in the BO1 format. This is a very fast aggressive deck utilizing cheap, efficient creatures combined with a ton of burn spells to win games quickly. It is a fairly easy deck to play but a big part of the learning curve is determining when it is optimal to use burn spells to get rid of blockers vs using them for face damage.

The most notable card that will be lost in Rotation is Goblin Chainwhirler from Dominaria, who is a powerhouse of a 3 drop. Seeing as how aggressive low cost creatures and burn are part of Red’s color identity, some form of RDW will be viable in every single meta. So this is a great investment if you enjoy playing this type of deck.

If you have all of the NPE prebuilt decks unlocked, they should have already given you 2 Viashino Pyromancer, 4 Shocks, and 4 Lightning Strikes(from Primal Fury and Strength in Numbers combined). While it is not in the decklist shown, the 1 copy of Rekindling Phoenix(from Chaos and Mayhem) is a great inclusion if you are missing some of the top end cards.

There is some debate over what the correct late game card advantage engine is for this deck. Experimental Frenzy is the slowest one, but also has the highest power ceiling. It is capable of enabling some truly nutty plays and allows you to come back from games that would normally be unwinnable. However it is risky in this WAR meta because lots of decks are running Enchantment removal. Chandra, Fire Artisan is a new card from the set who is basically a ticking timebomb: she provides card advantage but discourages your opponent from attacking her, since the damage she takes is reflected back. However she is very weak to hard removal. Then there is Risk Factor, which is the most aggressive card here costing a whole 1 mana less than both Frenzy and Chandra. If you really have no wildcards left to spare you can try Flame of Keld as a budget replacement, but be aware that this card is generally inferior to the previous 3. I have went with Risk Factor in the decklist shown due to how much burn we are running, but honestly just pick whichever option suits your playstyle the best.

Mono Blue Tempo

3 Dive Down (XLN) 53
20 Island (DAR) 256
1 Essence Capture (RNA) 37
4 Pteramander (RNA) 47
2 Callous Dismissal (WAR) 44
4 Merfolk Trickster (DAR) 56
4 Opt (DAR) 60
4 Tempest Djinn (DAR) 68
4 Wizard’s Retort (DAR) 75
4 Curious Obsession (RIX) 35
2 Mist-Cloaked Herald (RIX) 43
4 Siren Stormtamer (XLN) 79
4 Spell Pierce (XLN) 81

This deck was extremely popular in the previous Ravnica Allegiance meta, at one point even considered the best deck in Standard. In War of the Spark, it has fallen off quite a bit due to cards like Teferi, Time Raveler and Blast Zone. But it is still a strong deck in the right hands. The playstyle of this deck involves playing a lot of evasive creatures(with unblockable or flying), enchanting them with Curious Obsession for a card advantage engine, and then protecting your creatures from enemy removal using counterspells. This is by far the most difficult deck to play out of all the ones listed here. However playing this deck forces you to master the fundamentals of the game, so I would say that this is the deck to play if you want to improve at Magic. In particular it teaches the importance of playing at Instant speed and the risk/reward assessment of tapping out vs leaving up mana for counters.

Unfortunately, almost this entire deck gets destroyed by Rotation. Tempo based blue decks are kind of an anomaly so it is very unlikely that some form of this deck will still exist after Rotation. However, Mono Blue Tempo is also the cheapest deck listed in this post by far with a grand total of only 4 rares(Tempest Djinn). 1 of those Djinns you get for free too, from the Arcane Inventions prebuilt. So it really is a small investment.

If you are running into a lot of aggro in your local meta, it can be worth replacing some of the low cost creatures with Surge Mare. The 5 health from the mare provides an amazing blocker in the early game.

Mono White Weenie

2 Adanto Vanguard (XLN) 1
4 Conclave Tribunal (GRN) 6
4 Venerated Loxodon (GRN) 30
2 Unbreakable Formation (RNA) 29
4 Law-Rune Enforcer (WAR) 20
4 Benalish Marshal (DAR) 6
20 Plains (WAR) 252
4 Dauntless Bodyguard (DAR) 14
4 History of Benalia (DAR) 21
4 Skymarcher Aspirant (RIX) 21
4 Snubhorn Sentry (RIX) 23
4 Legion’s Landing (XLN) 22

This is probably the 2nd or 3rd most popular deck in Magic Arena. This is an aggressive deck that floods the board with cheap, efficient creatures and then buffs them to win the game quickly. Fairly simple deck that does not have to worry about playing at Instant speed for the most part.

This is one of the most expensive decks in this post, with 4 Mythics(History of Benalia) and a sizeable number of rares. In addition, a lot of key cards are going away in the upcoming Rotation including History, Benalish Marshal, and Legion’s Landing. However good early game creatures and buffs are part of White’s color identity, so White Weenie is an eternal archetype that is playable in basically every meta. Some cards already have functional replacements, like Gideon Blackblade from the new set as another 3 mana powerhouse alongside Benalia and Marshal.

The decklist shown has 4 History of Benalias. Luckily you get one copy for free from the Auras of Majesty prebuilt. In addition if you have all of the NPE prebuilts unlocked, you should have 3 copies of Leonin Warleader, 1 Shalai, and 1 copy of Resplendent Angel. These are decent substitutions if you are missing some of the top end cards from the list shown above.

Mono Green Stompy

3 Blanchwood Armor (M19) 169
4 Vine Mare (M19) 207
4 Llanowar Elves (M19) 314
4 Kraul Harpooner (GRN) 136
4 Nullhide Ferox (GRN) 138
4 Pelt Collector (GRN) 141
4 Growth-Chamber Guardian (RNA) 128
22 Forest (RNA) 264
4 Ghalta, Primal Hunger (RIX) 130
4 Steel Leaf Champion (DAR) 182
3 Thrashing Brontodon (RIX) 148

This deck gets the name from its general playstyle of summoning a bunch of big creatures(some with Trample), and then just crushing the opponent with them.

In my opinion, not only is this the weakest deck in this post, it is also the most boring one. It is also the most expensive deck as well. This is an extremely one dimensional deck with basically zero interaction, as the gameplan is always just to curve out into big creatures and hope that your opponent cannot deal with them. However if you enjoy playing this type of deck for some reason, it can be a decent investment because ramp and big creatures are part of Greens color identity. So some form of green stompy will always be viable in every meta.

If you have all of the NPE decks unlocked, you should already have the full 4 copies of Llanowar Elves, 2 copies of Blanchwood Armor, and 1 copy of Ghalta from Forest’s Might. In addition if you were around for when the GameAwards promo code was still active, then you should have a 2nd copy of Ghalta. If you are running low on Wildcards, other free cards that you can use as substitutions include Carnage Tyrant(from Primal Fury) and Thorn Lieutenant(from Auras of Majesty).

Izzet Drakes

4 Chart a Course (XLN) 48
3 Dive Down (XLN) 53
4 Shock (M19) 156
3 Enigma Drake (M19) 216
4 Lava Coil (GRN) 108
1 Beacon Bolt (GRN) 154
4 Crackling Drake (GRN) 163
3 Discovery // Dispersal (GRN) 223
4 Steam Vents (GRN) 257
3 Pteramander (RNA) 47
8 Island (RNA) 261
5 Mountain (RNA) 263
3 Augur of Bolas (WAR) 41
4 Opt (DAR) 60
4 Sulfur Falls (DAR) 247
3 Spell Pierce (XLN) 81

The playstyle of Izzet Drakes can best be described with the phrase Protect the Queen. Every single drake in the deck starts off weak but can turn into a potential game ending threat. The deck plays a lot of sorceries and instants that draw cards, which also make the drakes stronger. The main goal is then to get some drakes on board and then protect them with 1 mana instants(Dive Down and Spell Pierce), and turn the corner into a win.

Seeing as how Izzet Drakes is 2 colors, this is an amazingly cheap deck. No mythics and the only rares are in the manabase. In addition, unlocking all of the NPE prebuilts gives you a fair number of the required cards. You get 1 Sulfur Falls, 4 Shocks, 3 Enigma Drakes, and 2 Chart a Course. If you do not have the full playsets of Sulfur Falls and Steam Vents, you can replace them with the taplands Izzet Guildgate and Highland Lake. But do be aware that it hits the consistency of the deck.

Izzet Drakes was fairly popular in the past 2 metas, but has unfortunately taken a hit in War of the Spark. The biggest reason is that this format contains lots of planewalkers, and the deck has a lot of trouble interacting with them. In addition Teferi, Time Raveler is seeing lots of play and that card single handedly shuts down this entire deck. Lava Coil is the best red removal available at 2 mana, but it is a completely dead card against Control decks and planeswalkers. So it can be worth replacing it with Lightning Strike if you see a lot of them in your local meta. Lightning Strike gives this deck extra reach and also allows us to snipe off planeswalkers after they use their minus ability.

Boros Feather Heroic

3 Lightning Strike (XLN) 149
4 Adanto Vanguard (XLN) 1
6 Mountain (RIX) 195
4 Shock (M19) 156
6 Plains (M19) 261
3 Gird for Battle (GRN) 12
2 Boros Guildgate (GRN) 243
4 Sacred Foundry (GRN) 254
4 Defiant Strike (WAR) 9
4 Dreadhorde Arcanist (WAR) 125
4 Feather, the Redeemed (WAR) 197
4 Tenth District Legionnaire (WAR) 222
4 Clifftop Retreat (DAR) 239
4 Reckless Rage (RIX) 110
4 Sheltering Light (XLN) 35

A new deck archetype pushed in War of the Spark, this is a somewhat aggressive deck that relies on Dreadhorde Arcanist and the namesake Feather to beat the opponent on board by constantly recurring pump and protection spells.

There are no mythics but quite a bit of rares in this deck, clocking in at a total of 16. However it is not actually that important to play creatures on curve with this deck, so you can kind of get by without the full playset of the rare lands. So substituting them with the taplands Boros Guildgate and Stone Quarry is acceptable.

If you have all of the NPE decks unlocked, you should already have a full playset of both the Shocks and Lightning Strikes. Adanto Vanguard is an amazing card against control but is a liability against aggro. So if you are seeing mostly aggro in your local meta, it can be worth substituting it for Burning Prophet. If you sign up for a free trial of Amazon Prime, you can unlock a free Boros Legion deck by linking your Amazon and Twitch accounts for Twitch Prime. Legion Warboss and Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice are excellent additions to this deck and can replace some of the pump spells.

Omen of the Ten was a mistake

Galmieux, Omen of Disdain by 77gl

I was inspired to write this post after seeing a lot of people talk about how bad and/or unfun the Altersphere meta was. Looking back over the cards from that expansion, it had a very reasonable power level and many cards had very interesting designs. So what happened? What should have been a great meta was ruined by the fact that Altersphere released right after Omen of the Ten, which in contrast was anything but a reasonable expansion. It has become increasingly clear to me recently that many of the problems from the Altersphere meta and even our current Steel Rebellion meta are caused by cards from Omen.

It kind of pains me to write this because Omen of the Ten is one of the best expansions ever from a flavor perspective. It was really awesome how it was built around the theme of the ten commandments, and how the male omens obey the commandments while the female omens disobey them. Or how the commandments translate to card effects and in-game mechanics. To my knowledge, it is also the first time that original characters were created for new cards, as the vast majority of cards before contained characters borrowed from Rage of Bahamut and other Cygames IPs. But even though the flavor was so amazing, Omen has overall steered the game in a negative direction. There are a number of issues with this expansion.

Powercreep

Let’s get the most obvious issue out of the way first. The power level of this expansion is ridiculous. In my opinion it is on the same level as the old powercreep trio of RoB/TotG/WD from 2017. Keep in mind the expansion that preceded Omen was Brigade of the Sky, and that was already considered a powercreep one. But Omen just turned it up to eleven. Many of the English language streamers noticed the unusually high power level of Omen during spoiler season, and attributed it to the fact that the 2018 World Grand Prix would be played in that expansion’s meta. I guess the logic was the power level was intentionally set high so that the WGP would be flashy and mostly feature the new cards.

While the power level of this expansion was ridiculous, not every class benefited equally. In particular, Dragoncraft was one class that was pushed extremely hard in Omen. Which brings me to the next point.

The Dragon problem

I have noticed that in card games that have a Legacy and Standard Rotation format, there is one thing that mostly happens when a new set comes out. There is almost always a huge power level difference between Rotation and Legacy, so the vast majority of new cards only end up seeing play in the Rotation format because they are not strong enough to compete with the power level of Legacy. And then occasionally you will see cards that see no play in Rotation, but end up becoming staples in the Legacy format due to the proper support from the larger cardpool. The Fairy Wisp generators like Aria and Flower of Fairies are the best examples of this: never taking off in Rotation, but being a perfect fit for Unlimited Roach Forest.

Very rarely do new cards become staples in both formats. When this happens, it is generally a sign that the new cards are broken since they can compete with the other broken cards from the past. This is pretty much what happened with the entire Disdain package from Dragon. Cerberus, Hound of Hades for Shadow is also guilty of this.

The Disdain package single handedly negated all of ramp’s inherent weaknesses and made Dragon(the most degenerate class in the game) Tier 1 in both Constructed formats for a very long time. Ramp is a very dangerous mechanic, and in other card games it comes with an opportunity cost: you are losing cards in hand and giving up early game tempo for a mana advantage later in the game. The Disdain package allows Dragon to ramp while drawing extra cards and maintaining board control.

Even without ramp, this expansion also made Dragon have the premiere aggro deck in Unlimited. Because for whatever reason, the slow ramp class gets to have broken early and mid game cards too. I have lost count of the amount of games where I am playing a slow Control or Combo deck against Aggro Dragon, and I notice that somehow the face deck has managed to draw more cards than me, while simultaneously taking the board, pressuring my life total, and removing my followers for less pp than I am spending to remove his. We know that the majority of the SV developers are Magic the Gathering players, and I would not be surprised at this point if they mostly main green. It feels like they just decided to remove all of green’s weaknesses and make it capable of doing everything. Does anyone else think it is crazy how even after one nerf, Galmieux is still an auto include in every Dragon deck in both formats?

Anyway out of all the classes, it is glaringly obvious that Dragon was pushed the hardest in this expansion. It obviously worked, since literally every single player in the Top 16 of 2018 World Grand Prix brought Dragon in their lineup. Dragon completely dominated the Omen and Altersphere Rotation metas, and is surprisingly not Tier 1 anymore in Steel Rebellion. But I think the class is mainly being held down by Blood, and if that class gets nerfed then we will just get a repeat of what happened in the last two metas.

Invocation

This was a new mechanic introduced from this expansion, and in my opinion it is inherently degenerate. Getting a tempo advantage from playing cost reduced(or free) followers from hand is one of the most frequently complained about things in this game. But there is something even more broken than that: playing cards for free out of your deck. This is pretty much what Invocation is. Anyone who has played Hearthstone during the time when Mean Streets of Gadgetzan was in Standard knows how broken Patches the Pirate is. In SV it requires a bit more work than just playing one pirate, but the general idea of pulling cards for free out of your deck without spending any resources is completely broken.

The effect that this mechanic had on Blood was particularly warping: in the entirety of Omen and Altersphere every single Blood deck in both formats was a Flauros deck. Simply put if the deck did not have Flauros it was not competitive. I suppose that it is kind of a miracle that Steel Rebellion managed to change that as we finally have competitive Blood decks that do not use Flauros(Machina Blood in Rotation and the return of Aggro Bats in Unlimited).

I think the only acceptable Invocation card is Prophetess of Creation, and that is primarily because 1)the Invocation requirements are so steep and take the entire game to hit and 2)she MUST be summoned through Invocation, and cannot be played normally from hand. But I would honestly not be surprised if Prophetess were to become oppressive in the future: all it would really take is for Rune to get a cost reduction 6pp card and something less awkward than Raio/Edict to use for the 7pp requirement.

Mjerrabaine

A very unique card kickstarting the Highlander archetype in SV. Unfortunately because of how powerful and swingy his leader effect is, the experience of playing as and against Mjerrabaine decks is awful. It feels like none of the decisions from either play matter, and the only thing that matters is whether or not Mjerrabaine is drawn on curve. When you fight against Highlander decks you also cannot play around anything since everything is a 1 of. Sometimes the Mjerrabaine player happens to play common constructed cards on curve and you don’t even realize that it’s a Mjerrabaine deck until it is too late. I would have actually preferred if his Fanfare effect was just Reno Jackson’s from Hearthstone, since healing is at such a premium in Shadowverse.

Forestcraft

Some people try to push the narrative that Forest is a long term underpowered class and hated by the developers. I am here to tell you that this is nonsense. In fact if you look back through Shadowverse’s history and see which class most frequently showed up in Tier 1, it would be Forest.

With that said.. this expansion would be the beginning of the end for Forest in Rotation. Forest was consistently Tier 1 in every Rotation meta since the format was introduced, and Omen of the Ten was the class’s downfall. A big reason is that Forest got one of the worst Omen themes next to Shadow. Izudia is a slow 10pp follower in a class that has a lot of trouble playing the long game, and his effect has absolutely no relation to the effects that his followers have. True to its name, Unkilling does not actually help you win the game: it either annoys the opponent or helps you not lose. The best Forest card in this expansion is Liza, who is a generic valuebomb creating a 10,500 vial barrier for playing the class since she is auto-include in both formats. The other best Forest card from Omen is Luxglaive Bayle. Does anyone actually like this card? Bayle is obviously strong, but cost reduction followers are one of the most hated types of cards in this game and I don’t think anyone was asking for more of them.

Forest would later become quite strong for a brief period of time in the last half of Altersphere, but it was only because of a buff to Greenglen Axeman and a key card(Lina and Lena) being withheld in the mini expansion. Thankfully Steel Rebellion has made Izudia Forest somewhat competitive(word being used very loosely), but it doesn’t change how disconnected the effect of the Omen is from his other Unkilling followers. You compare the theme of Unkilling to the theme of Disdain and it is crystal clear which class was pushed more.

Puppet Portal and Lishenna

Lishenna, Omen of Destruction was printed in this expansion, encouraging a slow control style of playing Puppets. While I am not a fan of Lishenna’s design due to her deck having very little in the way of board interaction, the real issue is that she was pushed at the expense of an old archetype. The release of Omen coincided with a double nerf on Nicholas, Stalwart Inventor and Vengeful Puppeteer Noah, which pretty much destroyed the aggressive version of Puppet Portal forever. It is true that Puppets was too good during the Brigade of the Sky meta, but Nicholas was really the only card that needed to get changed. The old deck’s playstyle was also a lot more interactive than Lishenna’s.

The conspiracy theorist in me believes that old Puppet Portal was nerfed so harshly because Cygames wanted players to use the new Omen cards. I am glad they created a new archetype in this expansion for Portal but it did not have to devour an old one in the process.

Odds and ends

I know that Rune is a complete joke in both Constructed formats right now, but this is also the expansion that gave us Truth’s Adjudication and Anne, Mysterian Prodigy.

I like the Usurpation theme a lot, but it does bother me that Octrice is a Last Wards hate card… who also happens to do a ton of things at once. Even if her fanfare whiffs, she has full stats, an evolution effect that generates more cards, and good late game scaling due to her Enhance effect.

Not everything that came out of Omen was a mistake. Orichalcum Earth Rune with Founder from the Altersphere meta is one of my all time favoite decks, and it would not exist without Owen and Orichalcum Golem, two cards that came from this expansion. But overall I feel that OotT has worsened the game.

Notable cards leaving SV from CG

The next Shadowverse expansion Steel Rebellion has recently been announced, and when that drops in a few weeks the next Rotation cycle will happen. Chronogenesis will be leaving the Rotation format so I wanted to talk about the cards that I am going to miss and cards that I am not going to miss, just like my previous post for Starforged Legends. Chronogenesis was a landmark expansion for the game. It introduced the 9th class Portalcraft to Shadowverse, which was a very unique craft with a trait based around deck size manipulation and having a Magitek and artificial life aesthetic. CG also introduced the Rotation format which split up the play mode options into Rotation and Unlimited.

Chronogenesis is the only time I can remember when there were actually server issues during expansion launch day. It was really hard to log in and stay there to open packs due to how many people wanted to try the game. It was an exciting time because the game environment was going to look very different from before without cards like Dimension Shift and Rhinoceroach being in the main play format.

The Chronogenesis meta had a very interesting evolution. There were complaints during the first month, but I think people generally enjoyed the meta since it was so different than what we were used to before the format split. Then the nerfs were announced and while people were generally happy with what cards were targeted, most people did not expect how much worse the meta was about to become. Bahamut was one of the most overtuned and complained about cards since RoB, and he was finally changed from a 13/13 to a 9/9 while losing the ability to destroy amulets. People quickly pointed out that while the change was good to allow amulet based decks to thrive, it had a very broken interaction with Tilting at the Windmills, a card widely considered to be a meme from Wonderland Dreams. Daria Rune was found to be relatively strong at the beginning of CG, but was not played much because the archetype had a poor matchup against Dirt Rune. One of the nerfs was to Magic Illusionist(2 health to 1 health) and many people thought it was just a slap on the wrist. But it actually killed the card and the Dirt Rune archetype in general, which allowed Daria Rune to rise up in the meta. The result was a new meta with Neutral Forest, Daria Rune, and Tilting Ramp Dragon at the top.

The final 2 months of Chronogenesis is one of the best examples of how statistics do not tell you everything about how good or healthy a meta is. Let’s take a look at a random Shadowlog report from this era. From the overall class distribution, we can see that the best class is Forest(53.7% winrate) while the worst class is Portal(44.8% winrate), which was expected since Portal was working with a much smaller set of cards in this meta. As for the 3 meta defining decks earlier, Neutral Forest specifically is at 54.3% winrate, Tilting Ramp Dragon is at 48.3%, and Daria Rune is at 51.3%. Compared to a lot of the other metas in Shadowverse, these numbers look amazing.

So this should have been one of the best metas ever, right? Well it turns out that Months 2 and 3 of Chronogenesis were one of the more unpleasant times to play SV. What the numbers do not tell you is that all of these 3 meta defining decks were highroll garbage. The difference between good and bad draws was way too high, and so many matches were determined without much player agency. In essence it was a balanced, but unfun meta because the top decks would often just lose to their own draws. It was also very irritating to see Sahaquiel and Israfil being played in almost every deck. The playerbase numbers took a huge nosedive during this time. I know it is anecdotal, but I consider myself a fairly casual player and generally get between 4-5k master points every season from a mixture of doing dailies and playing meme decks. Months 2 and 3 of Chronogenesis are the only time where I was able to make Top 10k in Master Points on the ladder from my normal play patterns.

Chronogenesis was actually a very low power level expansion, but people did not really notice because of how different the game was due to the format split and the addition of a new class. It had a fair amount of cool cards, so I will start with those first!

Cards that I am going to miss

Mysteria, Magic Founder by Hisakata Soji

• Mysteria, Magic Founder – The Mysteria tribe and archetype was first introduced in Chronogenesis and the founder of the academy itself was the headliner card. She provides a unique permanent leader effect of adding a +1 buff to all spell damage, pushing for a new Rune archetype based on spell damage(in contrast to effect damage, which is what Dirt Rune does). The Mysteria archetype was unfortunately half baked as many of the good burn spells rotated by the time of Chronogenesis, and the other Mysteria followers from this expansion were complete garbage. Not only that but one of the main ways of getting burn spells was through RNG effects from Mysterian Knowledge and Hanna. Can you believe that they introduced this archetype without Mysterian Wyrmist, who would show up in the next expansion? The Mysteria archetype floundered for several metas, and finally became competitive with Omen of the Ten’s mini expansion. However by that time the archetype had transformed into something completely different: the Founder herself was dropped, the deck relied less on burn damage and more on big tempo from cost reduced followers. The original slow burn style of the archetype merged with Earth Rite Rune and became competitive in Altersphere. Who would have expected that Mysteria Magic Founder would get kicked out of her own tribal deck and become Dirt Rune’s savior? I am going to miss her a lot as Dirt is one of my favorite decks to play in the game. One of the better designed leader effect cards since you cannot always afford to play a 5pp 4/4 with no immediate effect. Great art and one rare instance where I prefer the English voice to the Japanese one.
• Arthur, Knight King – This card has gotten a fair amount of complaints in the past, but I really like his design and think he is an exemplar of the Swordcraft class identity. Sword is a class that should be about playing for the board, and Arthur is a single card that creates a board. He is very similar to Otohime, another card that was complained about a lot during the first 2 metas for Shadowverse. But I think Arthur is much much better designed. For one, he comes down one turn later which makes a huge difference in metas where Sword has a consistently strong curve. He also imposes a few deckbuilding restrictions to get the most out of his effect. Arthur Sword decks are less aggressive in general since they are discouraged from playing 1 drops. They are also discouraged from playing 2 drops with strong fanfares, like Oathless Knight who also happens to be a card that would fit in an aggressive Sword deck. Then there is the choice of whether or not the Sword deck should be running exactly 4 different 2 drops to get consistent Arthur pulls, or if it is worth running more for the lower curve at the cost of Arthur consistency. There have certainly been metas where Arthur might have been too strong, but I think he can definitely be unnerfed now.
• Summit Temple – The amulet version of Arch Priestess Laelia. The idea of converting health into attack points has existed since Shadowverse launched but was not competitive because Laelia was expensive at 6pp, and the effect required her to stay alive. Summit was a more reasonably priced version of the effect that made a Midrange version of the archetype competitive, where you would build a board of low attack, high health followers and make them dangerous for just 1pp. There was a reasonable amount of counterplay to it, since forcing trades or lowering health would directly affect how much damage the followers were doing. I am a huge fan of Divine Spirit Inner Fire Combo Priest from Hearthstone and this is the closest thing we have gotten to that style of deck in Shadowverse. Sadly Summit Haven has not been competitive for some time. I would really like to see the archetype get a functional reprint of the same effect because I had way more fun playing it than any other Haven deck in the Altersphere Rotation meta right now.
• Death Dragon Caller – The Burial Rite/Reanimate Shadow mechanics and archetype were formally introduced in Chronogenesis. Unfortunately most of the cards that got printed in SV with this keyword would either be poorly designed or underpowered. Death Dragon Caller is one exception where I feel that the card was at an appropriate power level. She allows Shadow to potentially cheat out a huge follower for less than its original cost, but it happens on Turn 8 which is much more reasonable than an effect like old Ceridwen. The English voice acting for this card is also AMAZING. Casey Mongillo(the voice actress) even made a Reddit thread a while back!
• Hamelin – Really feels like this card should be evergreen. Portal has had many different decks since its introduction in Chronogenesis. But no matter which deck you were playing, you were practically guaranteed to see a few copies of the pied piper. Hamelin provides a very simple but powerful effect: for the cost of playing an understatted 2 drop, you can duplicate any 3pp or cheaper card in your hand. In Artifacts, the best way to use him is to make copies of Analyzing Artifacts for more draw and in Puppets, there were a ton of good targets including puppets themselves and strong puppet generating cards like Flower Doll. Hamelin is an amazing utility card who also embodies the Portalcraft class identity of replication and artificial life. I am going to miss him a lot especially for the fact that having animated Hamelins essentially allows you to animate any other 3 cost or cheaper follower in your deck. One of my greatest accomplishments from Chronogenesis is opening up a full playset of animated Hamelins.
• Icarus – Another card that feels like it should be evergreen. Icarus is a 2 drop who shuffles 2 Ancient Artifacts in your deck. She has a very powerful evo effect of drawing an Artifact from your deck. However there are times where it is best to not play her early because as Artifact Portal, if you are looking to draw a specific card, then putting 2 artifacts that do not cycle themselves into your deck makes it harder to find that card. Out of the initial 4 artifacts, Ancients were the best one for board control purposes. But it turns out that Ancients not being able to replace themselves like the other 3 artifacts was a very real drawback. Icarus has some cute art and I am a huge fan of her English dub voice. The exaggerated valley girl accent is hilarious. I also like how her flavor text and death voice line reference the Icarus from Greek mythology.
• Acceleratium – The glue that holds Artifact Portal together. This archetype has consistently been one of the most affordable competitive decks to play since its introduction in Chronogenesis. It was also a great archetype for new players to learn the game with since it was a board based deck with a high skill floor and skill cap. Giving your artifacts rush to control the board was so important to the deck functioning and also contributed to many Epic Sax moments in the game’s history. There was also a decent amount of counterplay to Acceleratium once Brigade of the Sky hit since Seraphic Blade provided a strong Neutral answer to low cost amulets. Artifact Portal and the class itself is about to experience a huge change once the next Rotation hits. While I doubt that Artifacts will die off completely, the archetype will likely never be the same again without Acceleratium.

Cards that I am glad to see go

Insect Lord by Budi

• Azi Dahaka – One of the biggest disappointments from this expansion for me. Chronogenesis introduced Rotation to the game and we all wanted to see classes do different things. Genesis Dragon rotated… but Azi Dahaka ensured that Dragon was still going to have the exact same endgame of playing big Storm followers. The cost reduction effect of Azi was pretty highrolly: since Oracle can be thought of as a cost reduction card in giving you more mana in later turns, that meant that Azi got its cost reduced twice if it was in hand during the evolution turns. Disgusting card, quite happy to see it go away.
• Insect Lord – A card that has consistently been a core 3-of in every single Forest deck in Rotation. Insect Lord is kind of like a powered up version of Elf Child May. May has the nickname Demon Baby May in the Japanese community which reflects what many people feel about that effect. Insect Lord is a strong, but not overpowered card. In many cases, the RNG of its Fanfare can be mitigated by trading before playing it. However there are lots of other cases where the Forest player has to hope to get lucky, and this kind of RNG that affects the board always creates a negative experience for one player. Looking forward to seeing this go away so that Forest can get some solid non-RNG based removal.
• Aiela, Dragon Sword – Similar to Azi Dahaka, just another gross Dragon card that ensured Dragon would never change. Tempo efficient ramp is a mistake.
• Mysterian Knowledge – Low key one of the most broken Runecraft cards ever. It does not look impressive at first glance, but there is a very good reason why it was the first card in SV to get emergency nerfed(in Unlimited), just a mere 5 days after the 1st scheduled nerf date in the Chronogenesis meta. Golem Assault from Wonderland Dreams was already seeing a lot of play due to providing double spellboost from a 2pp card. Mysterian Knowledge was even better as it gave the same double spellboost for 1pp. And anyone who has played Spellboost Rune knows how strong 1 cost spells are. Later on when the Mysteria archetype fused with Spellboost during Omen of the Ten, this card became even stronger as it performed double duty in that deck. It was the only card to provide both a double spellboost AND a double Mysterian cost reduction for Miranda/Anne, along with adding 2-3 to Anne’s Sorcery damage. Everyone who has played SV during late OotT or Altersphere has experienced the early Mysteria board highroll. The vast majority of the time when that happens, it is because the Rune player drew into multiple Mysterian Knowledges. The RNG of this card is also pretty infuriating sometimes. While both of the spells generated are good, there are absolutely matches where not rolling Missile drastically changes the outcome of the game. Would prefer to see less RNG based cards like this in the future.
• Mech Wing Swordsman – A card commonly played as curve filler in Artifact Portal. There is nothing particularly strong or notable about the card, but I greatly dislike him because of the RNG. Generating expensive artifacts early on is awful when you play as the deck, and it is super tilting when you play against Artifact and the enemy Mech Wing just happens to create the best artifacts for the situation. Even when more reliable options like Angel of the Iron Steed are available, Mech Wing still ends up being better because having something to play on 2 is so important in this game.
• The Bloodcraft cards – Oh my god, this expansion was such a dumpster fire for Bloodcraft. The fact that Savage Wolf is probably the best card for the class says a lot about the quality of CG’s Blood cards. I will never understand why Blood Drinker’s Brand still does 4 damage if you target your own follower for the Drain effect. I imagine Blood will be in a much better position going forward without Chronogenesis weighing it down in the Rotation meta.

Orichalcum Burn Runecraft

Mysteria, Magic Founder by Hisakata Soji

It has been a very long time since I have done an in-depth writeup on a Shadowverse deck here. But the new version of Dirt Rune has been making a comeback in Rotation recently so I was motivated to write about it. If it is not already obvious from the fact that I have written about it twice before, Earth Rite Rune is my absolute favorite deck in Shadowverse. So I am very happy to see it back in the meta now after it became mostly unplayable from Dawnbreak Nightedge to Omen of the Ten.

The best way to describe the new Dirt Rune is a slow burn deck revolving around the synergy between Mysteria Magic Founder and Orichalcum Golem. The deck plays very differently than the Burn Earth Rite deck that was popular from Wonderland Dreams to Chronogenesis. The key difference is that in the Altersphere Rotation card pool, Earth Rune does not have a solid curve of followers. It does not have the high roll potential of T1 Sigil T2 Magic Illusionist T3 Karl T4 Halo Golem. Because the followers are so weak now, it has to rely a lot more on spells. It also does not have a way of steadily dealing 3 damage every turn like the Unlimited counterpart. This is where Mysteria Magic Founder comes in.

Mysteria was originally printed in Chronogenesis along with Silver Blade Golem, so the idea of combining her leader effect with burn spells and spells generated from Earth Rite effects has existed since then. There were 2 problems though, the first being that Silver Blade Golem was way too slow. I love the design of it, but even though it is an almost strictly better version of the old Rose Queen, it is still not good enough. And then the 2nd problem is Mysteria Magic Founder herself: she was so important to the deck, but there used to be no way of consistently drawing her. This all changed in Omen of the Ten which gave us Owen, who specifically draws a Mysteria follower from the deck. The mini expansion of Omen gave us Orichalcum Golem(pretty much a better version of Silver Blade), and with one new card from Altersphere the deck is finally a real player in the meta.

Orichalcum Burn Rune core cards

Core cards

3 Witch of Foresight
3 Owen, Knight of Mysteria
3 Magic Missile
3 Witch Snap
3 Silent Laboratory
3 Cagliostro, Adorable Genius
3 Vesper, Witchhunter
3 Mysteria, Magic Founder
3 Orichalcum Golem
3 Staff of Whirlwinds

Witch of Foresight – A 2 cost 1/2 who draws a random spell from the deck. Not flashy but very important to this deck, since spells are part of our burn win condition.

Owen, Knight of Mysteria – 2 cost 1/2 who draws a Mysteria follower from the deck, excluding himself. Incredible addition from OotT, he allows us to consistently draw into Mysteria Magic Founder since these two are the only Mysteria followers run in the deck.

Magic Missile – A basic card that mostly sees play in Spellboost. We play it here because we need all the draw we can get, and the ping is very useful since our early game followers are so weak. Also becomes stronger with Mysteria boosts.

Witch Snap – The primary new addition from Altersphere, 2 cost spell that deals 3 damage to an enemy follower and gives you an Earth Sigil in hand. Not fancy, but the importance of this card cannot be understated. 2pp deal 3 is premium removal, and non Spellboost Rune has wanted this kind of card for a very long time.

Silent Laboratory – Nothing fancy here, an Earth Sigil that summons either a 2/2 Zombie or Golem. It is our best statted 2 drop.

Cagliostro, Adorable Genius – One of the best designed cards ever. On her own, she is a 4pp 4/3 who summons an Earth Sigil. But if you evolve her, you regain 2pp and get an Ars Magna(2pp deal 3 damage, Enhance(4) Heal 3). So she is a slightly worse version of Old Levi, although the healing effect off Enhanced Ars Magna can sometimes be a life saver. Allows us to get easy 2-for-1s on the board during the evolution turns. But her main usage is in saving the Ars Magna for face damage since it gets buffed by Mysteria.

Vesper, Witchhunter – A very flexible card, can act as an Earth Sigil version of Magic Missile, or can have a pseudo Halo Golem effect where the 3 damage cannot go face. For the purposes of this deck, the Magic Missile accelerate mode is the one we will be using the most since we need all the early game pings that we can.

Mysteria, Magic Founder – 5 cost 4/4 who gives you the leader effect of having all spells deal +1 damage. One half of the primary win condition of this deck. We run a ton of weak spells that become amazing when buffed by Mysteria. Her leader effect stacks too, so the damage adds up very very quickly over time.

Orichalcum Golem – The other half of our primary win condition. Orichalcum Golem is a 5 cost 5/5(overstatted!) with a bunch of effects: he generates 2 Earth Sigils on the board on death, and then gets returned to your hand with his cost changed to 7. So he is essentially infinite value in a way. Then he has an Accelerate 1, where he performs Earth Rite: randomly generate a 2/2 Golem, deal 2 damage to the enemy leader, or add a Veridic Ritual for every Earth Sigil on the field. Veridic Rituals are already amazing with Mysteria, but since Accelerate counts as playing a spell, the deal 2 damage to face also gets boosted by Mysteria leader effect! The accelerate effect is unfortunately random, but honestly all of the outcomes are pretty strong. But since we are a burn deck, summoning Golems tends to be the least desirable effect.

Staff of Whirlwinds – A 5 cost spell that deals 3 damage to an enemy follower, and then deals 1 damage to every enemy. Almost like a weaker version of Swipe from Hearthstone. Honestly a terrible and clunky card, but becomes amazing when buffed by Mysteria. And since we can consistently draw Mysteria with Owen, this is not a problem. The important part of Staff is that the damage is dealt in two waves, so they are both buffed by Mysteria. So with one Mysteria buff, it deals 4 to one follower, and then 2 to all enemies.

So this is a total of 30 cards that are considered to be the core of Orichalcum Burn Rune. The last remaining cards are chosen depending on which matchups you want to be better in, primarily the slower ones vs the fast board based ones.

Supplemental cards

Scrap Iron Smelter – It might be weird to see a 1 cost Earth Sigil generator not be a core card but hear me out. The new Dirt Rune does not have any super important Earth Rite effects in the early game. The one you want to be using the vast majority of the time is the accelerate on Orichalcum Golem. So since it is not actually that important to put down Earth Sigils early on, this card is not that good since it is fairly low impact. With that said, it is still easy to fit into the curve and is very good at protecting early game followers.

Mysterian Knowledge – Even though we are not a full Mysteria tribal deck, this card can still be useful. Generatimg a Mysterian Missile gives us more burn, and generating a Mysterian Circle gives us a great 2 drop that also has synergy with Golems randomly generated from Silent Laboratory. I personally do not like playing this card in Dirt, but some people swear by it.

Goblin – Burn Earth Rune is inherently an aggressive deck, so Goblins are always a consideration. Also a very good inclusion to improve the matchup against fast board based classes like Forest and Sword.

Beastfaced Mage – A 2pp 2/2 who puts an Earth Sigil into your hand as a Clash effect. Honestly he is a terrible card and is a much worse version of the rotated Dwarf Alchemist. Most decks in the meta run lots of removal spells so in a lot of matchups he is just a 2/2 who gives you nothing. However he is still a 2pp 2/2, so it is worth considering him if you want to run a follower heavy build of this deck.

Rabbit Mage – A 2pp 3/1 who will summon an Earth Sigil if there is not already one on the board. A really awful card since 3/1 is a super awkward statline. However he can sometimes be better than Beastfaced Mage since you can find situations to guarantee the Earth Sigil. If you do run Rabbit Mage you probably do not want to run him with Scrap Iron.

Grand Spire – 2pp spell that deals 2 damage to an enemy follower, and with the Earth Rite upgrade deals 4 instead while also doing 1 to the enemy leader. Not a great spell by itself but becomes very good once you have a Mysteria played. It then becomes one of the only ways this deck can deal with big enemy followers after evos are gone.

Legendary Fighter – This card seems like a meme, but he actually has some great synergy in this deck due to all the cheap amulets and spells we run. Even without the combos he is still a 2pp 2/2, something you are never unhappy to play. If you run him, you pretty much have to also run Scrap Iron Smelter as a cheap 1pp sigil.

Slumbering Calamity – A new card from Altersphere, it is a 3pp 2/3 Ward who gains +2 attack as an Earth Rite. Then he also has an Enhance(8) of dealing its attack damage to all enemies. So with an Earth Sigil in play, he is basically a better Grimnir when Enhanced since he does the exact same thing on Turn 8 instead of 10. A really strong card, but surprisingly not core in this deck because our main win condition is spell based. In a lot of games, there are better things that you can do for 8pp. If anything it shows that the original Grimnir was actually a fair card… the main reason it got nerfed was because how hard Dragon could abuse him. How many more neutrals does Dragon have to ruin in this game with its degenerate design?

Veridic Discovery – Another new card from Altersphere, this is a 3pp spell that summons a Clay Golem, and then gives a +1 attack buff to all Clay Golems in play. Then if you have an Earth Sigil in play, it performs Earth Rite: put a Veridic Ritual in to your hand. In the worst case scenario this is a 3pp 3/2, which is unfortunately a very awkward statline. This card is very similar to Chain Lightning and even costs the same in terms of mana(3pp for the spell and then 2pp for the Ritual), but it has the potential of eating up two Earth Sigils. Some people swear by this card but I personally find Chain Lightning to be better. If you decide to run Veridic you should definitely be running more Earth Sigil generators like Scrap Iron and an additional 2 drop that gives you them.

Nova Flare – A 4pp spell that deals 2 damage to all followers on the field. In spell heavy, follower light versions of this deck, I like running at least 5 AOE spells. So if you are not running Calamity, Nova Flare is a good option. One of the good parts about Nova Flare is that it is a decent card even without the Mysteria boost. Very useful against classes who can swarm the board early like Shadow and Forest.

Chain Lightning – A 5pp spell that deals 3 damage to an enemy, and then the card gets returned to your hand if you have 3 or less cards in hand. Honestly a very clunky spell but very important to this deck since we need all the burn we can get.

General gameplan and mulligan

The ideal curve with this deck is to get exactly 2 Earth Sigils in hand before Turn 5. On Turn 5, you want to play and evolve Orichalcum Golem. It will most likely die giving you 4 Earth Sigils. Then on Turn 6, you play Mysteria and play the accelerated version of Orichalcum Golem. Ideally, the majority of the Earth Rite effects result in the enemy leader getting hit or you getting Veridic Rituals in hand. Then with the Mysteria leader effect in play, try to win the game in the next few turns with burn spells.

A common decision branch happens on Turn 5, where if you have both Orichalcum Golem and Mysteria, it can sometimes be hard to decide which one is best to play. In most situations it is better to play Orichalcum since it has much higher stats. However against fast board based decks, it is sometimes correct to play Mysteria over Orichalcum on 5. The main instance this is correct is when you have Nova Flare/Staff of Whirlwinds in hand, and you foresee that you will have to use it very soon.

The entire deck revolves around Mysteria and Orichalcum Golem, which makes them the two most important cards in the deck. Mysteria more so, since our burn spells are actually quite weak without her leader effect in play. This makes the mulligan very simple: we always keep Mysteria, Orichalcum Golem, and cards that can help us draw into them. This includes Owen, Magic Missile, and Witch of Foresight. Since this deck is extremely low curve with no card costing over 5pp, we are generally guaranteed to draw into a playable hand every game. So we do not have to worry about keeping certain cards based on going 1st or 2nd. The only exception I would consider is Cagliostro against fast board based decks since her evolve effect is amazing going 2nd.

As for decklists, I tend to prefer the heavy spell based variants of Dirt Rune over the heavy follower versions. Here is the decklist I use, which is very similar to the one Rain Drop Luck plays on stream.