Finally, a deck that can play competently in a "Tear 0" format without spamming floodgates - Naturia Runick! Methodically pick apart and control a hyper aggressive deck and out resource it in a grindgame. You can also piggyback off your opponent's mills if they mill your deck!
This deck is a variant of my earlier deck guide, Naturia Ishizu, feel free to check it out as well. :)
Want to see the deck in action? Scroll to the very bottom for the Youtube video!
COMBOS AND GAMEPLAN
With Runick's draw 3/deck banishing coupled with Naturia's control/resource generation, you should be able to out-resource your opponent in a grind game. Grind games are forced out as you banish your opponent's key cards from deck, control the board/GY, and negate everything with Naturia Sunflower/Beast and Runick spells.
Going first, the gameplan is to set up Runick Fountain, draw 1-4 cards and a level 10 Synchro of choice. If you're lucky, you can summon both Chengying and Baronne.
A hand that has access to Naturia Molcricket/Camellia + Runick Fountain can accomplish this.
- Special summon Hugin from RD with any Runick card.
- Discard any card with Hugin's effect to search for Runick Fountain. (This is best done in draw/standby phase so your opponent cannot Droll you)
- Tribute Molcricket for Camellia. Or if you have Camellia already in hand, normal summon it.
- Activate Camillia's on-summon effect to mill Sacred Tree from deck to grave.
- Sacred Tree searches Blessing.
- Synchro Camellia + Hugin for Stardust Charge Warrior to draw 1 card.
- Activate Naturia Blessing to summon Camellia from GY.
- Synchro Camellia + Stardust Charge Warrior for your level 10 Synchro of choice. I personally go for Chengying, since his synergy with Runick is incredible, he's hard to remove, and he protects your lifepoints and low attack monsters.
- If you have Runick Tip/Slumber, you can activate them turn 1 to trigger Runick Fountain's effect to shuffle back Runick cards in the GY to draw 1-3 cards. If you have extra level 4s, you can make Abyss Dweller or any other rank 4 of choice to further lock down your opponent.
- During your opponent's turn, you can summon Molcricket from your GY when you opponent summons from the extra deck. Molcricket can tribute itself to tag out into Camellia/Sunflower for monster negates, mills, and resource generation.
With this combo, you drew 1-4 cards, a strong defensive monster that can banish field/GY cards, follow-up for next turn, GY-setup for both Naturia and Runick and multiple in-hand interruptions (Maxx "C", Kelbek, Runick spells).
When discarding cards with Hugin's effect to search Runick Fountain, its ideal to discard Naturia Sacred Tree (Naturia search) and Ishizu cards (Interruption/mills)!
When milling with Camellia, always send Sacred Tree so it can search Naturia Blessing. Naturia Blessing is a monster reborn that is not once per turn!
Going second, opponent's boards are broken by interrupting your opponent at key moments with handtraps like the Bystial cards, Ishizu cards and Naturia cards.
Remember, Naturia Molcricket can summon itself from the GY if your opponent summons from the Extra Deck, so you can potentially play turn 1! If you somehow summon Molcricket in this turn 1 situation, tribute Molcricket to summon Camellia + Sunflower, which represents 2 monster negates + 1 search!
If your deck was milled by your opponent, it will help you out on the crack-back during your turn, since a decent GY set-up enables more plays, resources and interruptions for the Naturia player.
When your opponent's turn 1 is complete, you can methodically pick apart your opponent's board depending on which Runick spells you have in your hand. If you can't fully break your opponent's board, you can always summon level 4 Geri, The Runick Fangs, and XYZ summon with another level 4 to stall for time/resources with Bagooska.
When you finally break your opponent's board, you can go for the ideal turn 1 set-up to force a grindgame where you out-resource your opponent with a combination of Runick + Naturia cards.
Want to see the deck in action? Scroll to the very bottom for the Youtube video!
GENERAL TIPS
- Before milling with Kelbek, try to make and activate Abyss Dweller first so that your opponent doesn't plus with your mills.
- Remember that Runick Fountain can draw cards during your turn AND your opponent's turn! You can theoretically draw 6 cards before it's your turn again (given you have proper GY and hand set-up)! Remember to keep the GY and hand in mind when you use Runick spells.
- Ishizu shufflers effectively shut down Runick Fountain's draw effect since it targets Runick spells in GY to shuffle back into your deck. Try to clear your opponent's GY shufflers before attempting to activate Fountain's draw effect!
- Runick spells skip only 1 battle phase - battle phase is still an option for finishing off your opponent's life points. If your opponent has no more resources and you can attack for game, you can still enter the battle phase after you've skipped one earlier to finish off your opponent!
- If you make Chengying, its effect to banish your opponent's card in their field and GY can be triggered as a quick effect by the Ishizu cards, Runick spells and Bystial monsters.
- If you get interrupted too much and you're in a bad position, make Bagooska to stall for resources.
- Decks that counter Tearlaments are usually also bad match-ups for this deck - like Floowandereeze, Exosisters and surprisingly, Ghoti. Be sure to side appropriately for those match-ups. Luckily, this deck naturally outs anti-GY floodgates like Macro Cosmos, Necrovalley and Dimension Fissure with Runick spells.
CONCLUDING COMMENTARY
I found this deck personally hard to pilot (just watch my Youtube video, I missplay quite a bit lol), since you have to keep track of soooo many things like your GY, your opponent's GY, the amount of resources in hand, whether you can break your opponent's board, what possible combo lines you can do, how much cards you draw, etc. But man, is it fun to play!
Alternative win conditions like controlling and milling your opponent into submission always had a special place in my heart, and Runick cards just made this playstyle competitive!
It's also very cool that Runick cards are from first person perspective - it's like you're DOOMGUY blasting away your enemies, or your Skyrim hero fighting monsters in a fantasy world! Now we can live out our video game imagination in Yugioh!
The play style also kind of reminds me of Sky Striker (rest in pieces Raye T__T), and Runick is the closest I'm going to get to playing that fan-favourite deck this format, since my favourite mecha pilot isn't very viable in the meta anymore.
Anyways, Runick Naturia is a viable contender that can comfortably face Tearlaments this Tear 0 meta in Masterduel, and I'm definitely trying to ladder to the top of Diamond 1 with this strategy!
GLHF Duelists!
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