A guide by DB Honeyhill.
Spellboost has been a relevant deck ever since Kuon was released and it got some new support with Daria in the new set.
Introduction
Spellboost has been popular because of Kuon, Founder of Onmyodo. A powerful card that can overwhelm your enemies by filling your board instantly and with its own risk when removing them. The risk of spellboosting the other cards of course. The idea to play this deck is to spellboost kuon as much as possible and place him (I honestly thought it was ‘HER’) on the board on turn 6 and keep other cards to win by board. A lot of cycle cards are used in this deck to find kuon faster and at the same time doing spellboost.
Explanation of each card.
Draw and Cycle
Finding kuon is your top priority. If you haven’t got one early, these cards will surely help you to find one.
Spellboost boosters
Not only these cards could spellboost your card better than other, both of them could be useful to maintain the board in the early game.
Keep your opponent busy
Both of these cards basically have two bodies when summoned. Ward and rush effect are also compatible with kuon’s underlings. Even without pairing them with kuon, then can maintain the board on their own. Ward is helpful to prevent leader damage in spellboost deck because this deck lacks healing. Demoncaller also useful for clearing the board. Furthermore, their summon has spellboost to help placing kuon early in the game.
Tempo Destroyer
In the early game, sometimes you get easily overwhelmed. But using windblast and mystic absorption, you can save yourself now. Against portalcraft, mystic absorption is useful to banish and reduce their ‘different artifact’ effects. Wind blast and fiery embrace are useful against many decks especially bloodcraft/nerea.
Leader Damager
Kuon is basically your wincon. Clarke could be used to clear boards, but since you are using the ‘tempo destroyer’ cards on board, you might want to keep clarke to damage the leader.
Alternatives
Mysterian project is useful to duplicate your follower to match with your situation sadly it is not a spellboost card. Sagacious core is not that popular anymore since daria got introduced, but basically, it is good for recyclying. Twinblade mage might replace zealot of truth because of the storm and could disrupt the opponents tempo. But it is a lot weaker than zealot and could easliy killed. Flame destroyer has a good body but less flexibility. Personally, i prefer the 7+ cost card to be demoncaller and traditional sorcerer than twinblade or flame destroyer because of more flexibilty and have more purpose in this decks. Update : Magic missile might serve a good purpose on recycling to replace mysterian project. The main purpose is almost the same, to get more kuon. Gabriel can be considered too since it boost the follower. At the late game, it is possible to have +7/+7 storm follower. For example from kuon’s token.
Mulligan
1. Prioritize: Kuon, Shikigami Summon, Clarke, Chaos Wielder.
2. Situational:
a. If you already had kuon or chaos wielder : any spell with cost less than 2
b. Kyoka if you are going second or against deck that build big board like artifact.
c. Mystic absorbtion against deck that use last words card early for example natura dragon (desert pathfinder & ptera), against portal to banish the artifact instead of destroying them, or against shadow to prevent reanimate
d. Daria, traditional sorcerer, demoncaller, if you already had kuon and one low cost spell.
e. If you are going first, at least keep one low cost card. If you are going second and not satisfied with your card you can hardmull.
Strategy and matchup table
General mindset:
– Spellboost win with board. Try to hold your kuon until you can spam at least 2 times in a row or guaranteed kill.
– With this deck, the chance of drawing non spellboost card is 16/40 roughly. About 1/3. Expect daria to draw 1-3 cards. To be blunt. Just treat this as 0pp draw 1 card. If your hand is at 8. Just play it. It’s not like your hand will be full.
Matchup Table
Shadowcraft
Friends forever is a good addition to this deck because it could easily create board to overwhelm spellboost. To counter this, mystic absorbtion could banish follower and not destroying them. Meaning? Friends forever could not reanimate them.
o Ginsetsu 50/50
Ginsetsu’s deck tend to play in two style. The first one is to find the exodia. The second is to overwhelm spellboost early. Find out what pattern they are going. If they drop miyako, they most likely going for the second pattern. Because handling early games is more difficult, try to keep low cost spell like shikigami, windblast, and mystic absorbtion. If they went for the first pattern, either setup the fiery embrace, windblast huge damage, or kuon.
o Natura 50/50
Try to kill natura shadowcraft before thoth activate. You can go face more because natura shadow tend to trade in order to activate their last word quicker.
Portalcraft
o Paradigm shift 50/50
This deck tend to have suddenly big board on t3-t4. Prepare mystic absorbtion to banish artifact. Also prepare low cost follower like kyoka and shikigami to hold them. If you could, if you survive the early game at t5 with a board bigger than them, you will most likely win.
o Belphomet 60/40
Even if belphomet could build the board with the help of heavens gate, spellboost is much better in building the board than belphomet. Basic idea, try to build big board before the belphomet come.
Dragoncraft
o Discard 60/40
After the nerf, this deck is less popular because it mainly destroy the board. But spellboost could just spam kuon and build another board.
o Zeus 45/55
This is a bit tricky deck. Low cost follower and Clarke will needed to just go face. If they ramp too much, they wont be able to destroy the low cost follower. But if they managed to highroll all the ramp, goblin, and zeus, pretty much done.
Try to build big board with big defense. Work well with daria. The goblin couldn’t clear my board and i was going face all the time.
o Natura 45/55
Build your board and hope for the best. Big board tend to force natura dragon not to build tree damage from corrosion.
Runecraft
o Spellboost 50/50
Mirror. Hehe. The one who can spam kuon better wins
o Natura 55/45
Try and kill them before the tree counts reach 7. If you are too late, build a big ward so Karyl won’t be able to clear a path for riley.
Forestcraft
o Machina 60/40
If you see low cost follower like beetle and robotic bagworm, kill it. If you see the mechaboomerang elf, banish them. Make it harder for them to setup damian.
o Control 60/40
Still lack of data. But I feel like control forest good addition is the gaia. But losing carbuncle is massive for cforest. Going with the last expansion matchup table, spellboost has the upper hand.
Havencraft
Basically, kel is the main problem here. Force them to use their kel to clear up useless board. After their evo points are gone, just setup your board.
o Elana 55/45
Haven’t faced it. But I feel like this deck lacks the power to clear the board if kel was gone. Death vice grip is nice, but still hard to pass the 4/5 ward.
o Natura 55/45
This decks has a lot of storm like meowsker, agnes, meus, Justine. Just make sure you don’t let them survive more than one turn until turn 4-5 and have ward from trad sorc or kuon in the late game.
Swordcraft
o Mech 60/40
Still not enough data. Just play normally. They have lots of rush and ping to face. But still hard to them to deal with kuon big board.
Bloodcraft
Anticipate nerea all the time. Keep your wind blast or fiery embrace at least one.
o Machina 55/45
Until turn 6, let them kill their own machinas. Just focus on building a big board. Drop shikigami or even kyoka. Prioritize going face in early game. In the late game, make sure the alpha drive can’t kill you. In a nutshell. Priotize keeping your hp above 12 while chipping the opponents health.
On that image, i haven’t use any of the kuon. T1 skip, t2 use sorcery in unity, t3 kyoka and he couldn’t kill her. T4 clarke face, kyoka evo face. Just go face before t6 and make sure on t7 onwards the alpha drive couldn’t kill.
o Control 50/50
Their heal really is annoying. But it is on the late game. Try to kill them before they heal themselves like crazy.
Dawnbreakers Esports 