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Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players. Here is another one of my weekly Battle Mage Secrets posts.
During this week's challenge the featured ruleset is Heavy Hitters. With this ruleset active all Monsters gain the Knock Out ability. Having that ability causes them to deal double damage to Stunned enemies. So you do have to bring a Monster that has the Stun ability if you want to make use of that Knock Out ability.
You can recognise this ruleset with the following icon.
Personally I don't use advantage of this ruleset that often. I have some Monsters with the Stun ability, but well it's also 50% chance for the Stun to happen, often doesn't go in my favour. Also sometimes with other rulesets or with what's available it doesn't always seem like a great idea. Regardless of all that I have had moments where I did play a Stun Monster in this ruleset and had my Monsters deal sooo much damage thanks to the Knock Out, it was really great. Unfortunately the last time was definitely a while ago so I don't have a battle saved where I took advantage of that to share now.
That's why I'll share a battle from a tournament this weekend where the Heavy Hitters ruleset was active. During the Summun Infuria Modern Silver Invitational Tournament. In this tournament I had two wins where the Heavy Hitters ruleset was active. The battle I will be sharing was one against the player cookiess.
Here is a picture of our initial lineup.
Battle Rules
This was a battle with a 22 Mana Cap. The Fire, Earth, Death and Dragon Elements were available. The battle had 3 rulesets:
- Heavy Hitters: All Monsters have the Knock Out ability.
- Equalizer: The initial Health of all Monsters is equal to that of the Monster on either team with the highest base Health.
- Little League: Only Monsters & Summoners that cost 4 Mana or less may be used in battles.
Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_femyQRQkXdiILJTOtjec&ref=athunderstruck
Battle Lineup
Alright we have Little League so with only Monsters up to 4 Mana Cost it is quite limited, then again it may not make a huge difference because of the low Mana Cap in this battle anyway. Due to the Equal Health I don't really want to go for Sneak or Opportunity, so I decided to go with Obsidian. Death is available and has counters to a Magic heavy team with Obsidian, but that Equal Health from Equalizer kinda mitigates those counters a bit.
If this was a Wild format battle I would've had the chance to bring Spirit Shaman which is a 4 Mana Epic Monster with the Stun ability at level 3. But I couldn't bring it due to being a Modern format tournament.
I'm starting my team with Failed Summoner, it can tank some damage and if my opponent brings some Magic attackers then at least it also reflects some damage back. Up next I'm using Khimer Princess. At level 4 she has the Tank Heal ability, but unfortunately mine is only level 2 so no heal. That's part of why I placed her second. Also wanted to place her before Queen Mycelia then to have Armor on this one too to stop 1 or 2 Melee and/or Ranged attacks.
Then I bring Spirit Hoarder. If my opponent goes Earth as well they could bring a Failed Summoner so having Triage here would be nice to heal my backline up a bit. I'm also thinking about my opponent potentially playing Thaddius to reduce my Magic or Owster to add Magic Reflect to their team. In the later case the Triage would be even more useful and so I definitely bring Spirit Hoarder.
Up next I have Doctor Blight. If my opponent runs Earth and has Khimer Princess at level 4 it would be great to have Affliction. And in any case of them playing Earth or going for Death with either Thaddius or Owster then the potential of Doctor Blight to land Poison to deal an extra 2 damage per round can be really important!
Lastly I brought Fungus Flinger, the Earth Martyr card from Souldbound Reward cards. At level 5 it gains the Blind ability so I want to bring it to make my opponents Melee and Ranged attacks have a chance of missing me. I placed it in the backline since it's a Ranged attacker that allows it to attack longer and well if my opponent does somehow decide to run Sneak Monsters it could also use Martyr on my Doctor Blight to make it stronger. Here I did make a mistake, I should've placed Fungus Flinger between Spirit Hoarder and Doctor Blight because of the Camouflage on Doctor Blight. If my opponent runs Sneak they'd still be hitting the Fungus Flinger and it could activate its Martyr ability on both Spirit Hoarder and Doctor Blight.
Battle Anaylsis
Alright so I did think correctly that my opponent might decide to counter a potential Magic play. As they're using Owster Rotwell to add Magic Reflect to all their Monsters.
They're using a good frontline with low Mana Carrion Shade to tank in the Equal Health followed by a Riftwing. Their Life Sapper and Venari Bonesmith can be annoying with the Life Leech. At least in Round 1 my Failed Summoner does Magic Reflect against them to cancel out the Health they get from Life Leech in that round. My Doctor Blight lands Poison in Round 1 but it actually doesn't matter because my Magic attackers have 8 combined Magic damage when the opponent has 7 Health so yeah in round 1 that poison didn't matter.
Round 2 starts the same for my opponent with their Life Sapper and Venari Bonesmith attacking my Failed Summoner so still staying at the same health as they Life Leech but take Magic Reflect damage. Now they kill my Failed Summoner and with 2 Monsters dead the Riftwing has 9 health, which means it survives my 8 pure Magic damage. But here comes a really awesome play where Spirit Hoarder's Dispel gets rid of that Armor which makes it possible for my Fungus Flinger to deal that last damage. Also if it missed the Riftwing would've still been dead because my Doctor Blight landed another successful Poison!
Meanwhile my team always takes 1 Magic Reflect damage per time they attack. Spirit Hoarder does heal my backline once a turn too so that helps. Queen Mycelia for example went back to 7 health right before she took another Magic Reflect damage but now still at 6 health instead of 5.
The start of round 3 looks like this.
Round 3 once against begins with my opponents Magic attackers because they have higher speed. Then my Khimer Princess damages Life Sapper before dying to my opponents Ravenhood Warden. Queen Mycelia gets her Armor destroyed by Soul Strangler. Spirit Hoarder heals itself and then takes out Lifesapper. Doctor Blight damages Venari Bonesmith, doesn't land Poison this time.
Which means it's going to take my full team to take out Venari Bonesmith as it'll Life Leech to 5 health in round 4 and require all 3 of my remaining Magic attackers to take it out. Queen Mycelia is looking really weak though and about to die so she may not be able to attack! But then comes a miss from Soul Strangler thanks to that Blind ability on my Fungus Flinger!! Woohoo!! That miss helps for sure because it allows me to take out Life Sapper and now that their Ravenhood Warden is in the front they only have Soul Strangler left to attack me. Of course I'll keep taking Magic Reflect damage too. I still have the Triage though so Doctor Blight can get healed.
During round 6 my Spirit Hoarder does a final Triage to get Doctor Blight to full health before it attacks the Ravenhood Warden to kill it but also kill itself because of the Magic Reflect damage it takes. I didn't get to screenshot the action but I still got a screenshot when they both got to 0 health when that happened.
Now the Soul Strangler gets into the first position so I'll easily win as it can't attack anymore. Doctor Blight will still take 1 Magic Reflect damage per turn, but since it deals 2 damage per turn to Soul Strangler and my Fungus Flinger can also deal 1 additional damage I'm guaranteed the win now.
Was My Strategy Successful?
Yeah it was quite successful! I predicted well that my opponent was likely going to play a counter to a Magic team. But with Equal Health that Magic Reflect from Owster is definitely less great, especially when there are heals like Triage for backline heal.
My opponent did still play really well! That Riftwing with the Scavenge made it a good 2nd tank. Using Life Sapper and Venari Bonesmith was a great play because they deal damage and with Life Leech become tankier. Although at first they didn't because my Failed Summoner's Magic Reflect damage was cancelling out their Life Leech.
One mistake I did make was placing Fungus Flinger completely last instead of between Spirit Hoarder and Doctor Blight. In case of Sneak Monsters, because with Camouflage on Doctor Blight those would've always hit Fungus Flinger and then the Maryt could've buffed Spirit Hoarder and Doctor Blight. Oh well it wasn't necessary in this battle but yeah still probably should've switched those two around.
Conclusion
One huge difference for my opponent could have been if they used a level 4 Owster instead of level 3 as a level 4 would allow Venari Bonesmith to also have the Poison ability. That potential extra damage could've made a huge difference.
For me a difference could've been renting a level 4 Khimer Princess, as the one I own is only level 2. Then I probably would've placed Spirit Hoarder before the Khimer Princess so that Spirit Hoarder could heal my backline with Triage and Khimer Princess could heal Spirit Hoarder. But yeah it worked out well.
It was also great to see that Soul Strangler miss my Queen Mycelia because of the Blind provided by my Fungus Flinger!
That's it for my Battle Mage Secrets challenge this week. Thank you for reading!
If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck
Thanks for sharing! - @rehan12
