Anne's Sorcery Will Be A Problem For Runecraft In The Long Run...

You have to give Cygames credit for making a deck that players without a good budget can utilize in Rotation to compete with the current meta. It's a far cry from Walletcraft, that's for sure. But one card they printed will serve as a detriment to their design space for future expansions, and that is Anne, Mysterian Prodigy, more specifically, Anne's Sorcery.

There are many reasons why this card will cause problems for Cygames in the future.

1) The card's damage can be boosted with tempo-based cards.

The reason why the Spellboost mechanic is "balanced" in a sense is because you need to keep them in the hand, use spells to increase the "X" variables, and not all spells generate a lot of tempo when you cast it. Unfortunately with the Mysteria archetype, it's far easier to reduce the cost of cards such as Ms. Miranda and Anne while gaining tempo advantage due to their cost reduction condition consisting of simply playing cards with the Mysteria trait.

This isn't even including the fact that said cards also generate spells that also happen to have the Mysteria trait that either removes a follower off the board or summons a follower with ward. Combine everything and what you have is a deck that can essentially steam-roll opposing decks while ahead, and a game-ending card to close out the game, leaving the opponent with no room to counter it. We'll address those counters later.

2) The card being so powerful creates a situation where no one would want to use other finishers.

Does anyone even use Prophetess of Creation or Raio, Omen of Truth in their decks? Have they even experimented with them lately? What about G. Chimera? I haven't seen those powerhouses lately, and that's all because Anne's Sorcery by itself out-classes them greatly.

When you compare them side-by-side it'll feel like Anne's Sorcery is the only option.

"Why use G. Chimera where you need to keep it in your hand to boost its damage?"

"Who wants to use Prophetess of Creation when it does nothing the moment you summon it?"

"Raio is essentially a Turn-7-Do-Nothing card, it's garbage."

"Anne's Sorcery deals damage based on how many times I played Mysteria cards? Holy crap, I'll take it!"

You see the issue here? Anne's Sorcery is just so powerful that there's no reason why you'd want to play any other Runecraft deck in rotation. And the problem that this deck has can reach to even Unlimited, where games are supposed to be quick.

3) Thanks to Wizardess of Oz, Anne's Sorcery can be cheated out before Turn 10, creating a scenario that can consistently end games faster than even D-Shift.

Anne's Sorcery is theoretically "fair" because you need 10 PP to play it, making the card a win-or-lose situation. However, because it's not a Spellboost card, the card's cost can actually be reduced to 1 PP thanks to Wizardess of Oz.

Combine the fact that Runecraft has more annoying stall tools to work with in Unlimited such as Kaleidoscopic Glow allows Runecraft to stall the game more, thus creating a scenario where if Wizardess of Oz is played while Anne's Sorcery is in the hand, you have yourself a game-ender before the turn it's supposed to end the game.

Now there are a few counterpoints that I'd like to address.

"Why not play Nilpotent Entity or Alexiel to counter it?"

First of all, Seraphic Blade exists. Second of all, if you need to tech in a card just to deal with a win-con, that's not good game design. There should be more ways to deal with a card that can literally damage the leader beyond its max health with a simple condition. There's also the fact that the aforementioned cards only stall the game, they aren't game-enders themselves.

Can't you kill them before the Anne's Sorcery turn with more aggressive decks?

At the moment, yes, it's possible and a more consistent way to beat the deck before they can gain traction. However, the argument isn't that it's broken at the moment, but rather that the card limits design space for future Runecraft cards.

This means that Cygames has to be careful when making more burn cards or stall cards for Runecraft, less they want to give Mysteria more tools to work with that can either close the game quicker or stall the game longer for that lethal Turn 10 combo. And this isn't including the fact that if they want to print an archetype that will see use over Anne's Sorcery, it has to be quicker and more efficient than Mysteria already is.

Do I have a solution to this? In all honesty, I don't. But that doesn't mean it isn't a problem that needs to be addressed.

TL;DR - Because Anne's Sorcery can deal direct damage to the leader just by playing cards, as long as Anne's Sorcery, and by extension the Mysteria archetype as a whole, exists in its current state, Cygames' design space will be limited in future expansions.