10 Ways To Defeat The Runick Archetype In Yu

Yu-Gi-Oh's relatively new Runick archetype aims to banish opponents' decks, but these strategies have the potential to take Runicks down.

Runick is an interesting newer archetype that was recently added to Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel alongside Labrynth. A control deck, Runick focuses on preventing the opponent from summoning monsters long enough to banish their entire deck. In this way, Runick doesn't really have a huge focus on monsters and can efficiently be added to a number of other deck builds.

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Whereas Labrynth relies heavily on traps, Runick is an extremely spell-reliant build. Most of its quick-play spell effects banish the opponent's cards at the cost of the user skipping their next battle phase, really pushing them to continue milling through the opponent's deck until there's nothing left.

The main goal of Runick is to banish as many cards as possible from the opponent's deck. While that can be utterly debilitating for most archetypes, there is one that would love nothing more than to get freely banished: Shiranui.

Shiranui zombie monsters have a plethora of card effects that get activated when they're banished, meaning that the more Runick banishes a Shiranui deck, the more it's digging its own grave. Alternatively, Thunder Dragons are another good archetype that plays well into being banished, allowing the player to mill the deck when their thunder monsters are banished.

Runick's main spell cards largely involve giving the player the choice between two effects. One effect is ordinarily the capability to summon one of its signature Runick Monsters from the extra deck. The other effect, however, involves banishing cards from the opponent's deck and then doing some other useful action such as destroying a spell/trap or monster on the field.

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In order to prevent this second form of effect, players can be proactive by playing floodgates such as Imperial Iron Wall which prevents players from banishing cards. Since the card's effect won't be able to be resolved without banishing from the deck, the entire effect is unusable, which could cause a huge problem for Runick decks.

A lot of Runick's combos start with players drawing from the deck using their mill cards and effect monsters. Countering that first normal summon can be a deal-breaker in potentially stopping Runick in its tracks.

In order to pull this off, cards like the infamous Ash Blossom or Droll & Lock Bird can be key in throwing a wrench in Runick's plans before they get the gears turning. Targeting Hugin the Runick Wings or Runick Tip are often the best bet since these are the archetype's main search engines.

For back-row heavy control decks like Runick, Harpie's Feather Duster or Lightening Storm can literally win the game single-handedly. Seeing their fully set-up field get annihilated by one card is often enough to make players forfeit on the spot.

Additionally, quick-play spell cards like Twin Twisters and Cosmic cyclone can get rid of Runick's myriad of floodgate cards like Skill Drain. Since Twin Twisters is quick-play, it can work around these common Runick floodgates before they actually go into effect, giving them even more impact on the control of the game.

Spell heavy-builds like Runick can find themselves completely at the mercy of cards like Anti-Spell Fragrance or Eradicator Epidemic. Anti-Spell makes players set all spells before playing them, while Epidemic destroys all spells the opponent draws or holds in their hand for three consecutive turns.

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Eradicator Epidemic can completely shut down Runick for multiple turns after it's used, while Anti Spell Fragrance is just a pure floodgate that makes Runick move extremely slowly. This can prevent them from setting up their board at all, and lead to an easy victory when all's said and done.

Artifact Lancea is an effective alternative to continuous cards like Imperial Iron Wall. Lancea prevents players from banishing for only one turn instead of indefinitely as Iron Wall does. It also activates on the opponent's turn, which can prove beneficial being as it can be chained to a Runick spell card.

Lancea can also be activated directly from the player's hand, making it nearly unstoppable apart from negation. Decks that are somewhat reliant on banishing as well such as zombie decks may benefit from using a card like Artifact Lancea instead of Imperial Iron Wall.

Chaos Hunter is a fairly strong monster that is summonable from the hand and has an extremely useful effect against Runick. In short, the opponent cannot banish cards. This is very effective in that it doesn't shut down the player who holds it — only their opponent.

Chaos Hunter also has a decent 2500 Attack points which may prove difficult for Runick decks to overpower. Preventing the opponent from banishing is an infinitely useful effect that can also work against a lot of other archetypes, so Chaos Hunter is definitely worth considering, especially for fiend decks.

Effect Veiler and Infinite Impermanence have become staples for many deck builds, so adding an extra one of these cards when facing a Runick deck couldn't hurt. However, knowing when to use Effect Veiler or Impermanence will be key in stopping the right cards to really break up the opponent's combo at a pivotal moment.

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Most players are fully aware of Veiler and Impermanence's places in the meta, and will likely use their first summon as bait whenever possible. For example, Hugin the Runick Wings can destroy itself to protect another card from being destroyed on the field. However, if chained with impermanence after it's summoned, players can shut this down while still carrying on with their play.

Runick decks revolve around banishing the opponents cards from their deck, and also recycling their own spells and traps from the graveyard. Given their reliance on the graveyard however, Runick suffers when it's own cards are banished as well.

In to give Runick a taste of its own medicine, players can run any number of cards which prevent the opponent from sending cards to the graveyard such as Dimensional Shifter or Macro Cosmos. This can prove problematic for some decks that play out of the graveyard themselves, so players may want to set up their own field first before playing a card like Macro Cosmos.

While it may seem like a strange tactic to some, against a floodgate build like Runick, it can sometimes pan out better for the player to not do anything and wait for a turn or two until they pull the right cards to counter. Being patient until they can stop Runick may be a better option for most players than just simply playing cards that get negated by floodgates.

Because many Runick cards force the user to skip their next battle phase, the player can at least rest contented knowing that they likely won't be OTK'd in the immediate future. Taking that time to strategize and wait for an opening can be the key tactic to taking down the Runick archetype.

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Brett is an Anime and Gaming writer for CBR. When he's not writing about isekai or The Legend of Zelda, he's usually producing Lo-Fi beats or reading Wittgenstein. He's currently in the early stages of developing a narratively-driven RPG for mobile, though he often procrastinates in favor of continuing his quest to reach Diamond Rank with his Zombie World/Eldlich deck in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel.