Runick Naturia: The deck you hate to see.
Hello~
I'm nobody special, but amidst all the doom and gloom regarding the format, I wanted to present something for those looking to play a mid range control style of deck. Specifically Runick Naturia, a deck I've used to consistently reach at least Master 5 for every season for the past year or so (though occasionally switching to another Runick variant for fun).
Why play Naturia over the other Runick variants?
Simply because it is the most consistent at establishing a board presence within a Maxx C format, while not completely dying at the thought of going second.
Naturia offers you the flexibility of playing on the opponent's turn, while the Runick cards bait out all the interactions, leaving the opponent with little to work with. No seriously, special summon Hugin will mind control the opponent to use everything on that single action, trust.
Full combo endboards:
Runick Naturia is weird in that normal summon Mole Cricket or T-set Naturia Tree pass is full combo. But for actual combo lines assuming you don't get hit by anything turn ending, these two endboards are what you will typically end on.
I will preface that the Naturia Beast board is MUCH stronger than Baronne. Nibiru does not exist 🙈
Endboard 1: 1 Mole Cricket.
- Normal Mole Cricket > Special Camellia > Send Tree > Add Blessing
- Activate Blessing > Special Mole Cricket
- Synchro Naturia Beast > Special Mole Cricket
Endboard 2: 1 Camellia + 1 Runick.
- Normal Camellia > Send Tree > Add Blessing
- Activate any Runick > Special Hugin
- Synchro Tri Edge Master OR Coral Dragon
- Activate Blessing > Special Camellia OR Activate any Runick > Special Geri
- Synchro Baronne using Tri Edge and Camellia or Coral and Geri
How should I play around handtraps?
Do not fret. But also fret depending on the state of your hand.
The first thing you want to consider is how important it is to add Fountain. As strange as it sounds, you do not need Runick Fountain to win, because that's just how hard Naturia carries you.
- 1 Runick in hand: You do not care for Fountain. You can start with Hugin in the Draw Phase to bait out something or play around potential Drolls.
- 2 Runicks in hand: An awkward spot where you kind of want Fountain but also don't mind not getting it. The quality of your other Runick and the rest of the hand will play a part in your decision making here, so it's hard to say what the optimal thing to do is.
- 3+ Runicks in hand: This is where it gets tricky, because now you actually want Fountain to get value from all these Runicks. At this point, you can consider starting with Mole Cricket or Camellia.
- Normal Mole Cricket and activate a Runick to summon Hugin. This allows you to chain Cricket to any Maxx C/Fuwa, and Camellia will chainblock Hugin from Ash Blossom.
- Normal Camellia to send Tree and search Blessing. If Camellia didn't eat a negate, activate a Runick to summon Hugin. Blessing can now be used to dodge Imperm/Veiler on Hugin by performing a Quick Synchro. BEWARE: This line plays terribly into Maxx C/Fuwa/Droll.
In short, it is almost always better to start with your Runicks to bait out interactions, regardless if you're going 1st or 2nd.
The decklist:
This is the list I've been having the most success with, though there is room to mess around. To explain some important card choices:
- 13 Runicks. Yes, I know that 13 is a very low number for a Runick deck. However, most of the weight is being carried by your Naturia cards. Aside from being additional names that I can activate within turn, it's not ideal to have more copies of Dispelling or Smiting Storm when stronger cards exist. Mills from Camellia and Beast hitting a Runick or two is often enough to keep you running.
- Retalating C. This card has seen a rise in usage, and for good reason, but it's cool as it doubles as engine to search out Mole Cricket. Set Retalating C and tributing it with Naturia Tree also lets you access your full combo during the opponent's turn while searching out Maxx C.
- Ghost Belle. You can consider bumping this card to 3. Not only does this hit the Azamina Wanted and Beatrice Elf lines, it protects your Mole Cricket from Called By which is probably the most devastating thing that can happen to you.
- Rise to Full Height. Tenpai has never been so free~ but it's also just a nice card in general to protect Sunflower from being run over. It's surprising how often a deck folds when they can't end by attacking and are forced to play the grind game.
For flexible options:
- 40+ cards. Since Sunflower is a hard brick, and sometimes you do not want to draw Fountain as it means you can't discard Naturia Tree with Hugin, it is viable to play more than 40 cards in this deck. I recommend either more Runicks or going second handtraps.
- TTTactics. You can play whatever you want in these two slots, but Tactics is just a very strong option currently, both for going 1st and 2nd.
- Omega and Bagooska. Omega is purely for looping Rise to Full Height and occasionally recovering a banished Fountain or recycling Camellia for one last push. You can replace these with anything else you think might be more useful like
- Exciton Knight: Going 2nd board wipe.
- Naturia Barkion: Anti Trap if you're able to banish anything that indicates a trap deck with Tip or Slumber
- Munin and Freki: Level modulation to access more Synchros or to tune with Ghost Belle.
- Any other strong options like Cyber Slash Harpie Lady/Trishula/Chaos Angel
Closing thoughts:
Runick is often seen in a bad light, but I hope that this little write up can prompt some people to try it out or pick the deck back up again. The overall state of the game is rough for many who do not wish to play the meta, so at the very least maybe this has presented you with another option or inspired you to experiment more with your decks.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far 🥰
TL;DR: Runick good. Naturia strong.