Thumbnail for the weekly challenge provided by @splinterlands
Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players, welcome to my next weekly Battle Mage Secrets posts.
The ruleset featured for this week's challenge is Lost Legendaries. When this ruleset is active Legendary Monsters may not be used in the battle. You can still use Legendary Summoners though.
You can recognise this ruleset with the following icon.
As said before Legendary Monsters can't be played in your team but you can still use Legendary Summoners. It depends on the situation if those would be a great pick or if it's better to stick with other Summoners. But yeah that's often kinda situational or dependant on what team you wanna build so that's not really changing anything just because of this ruleset.
The battle I want to share with you this week is from recently in the Gauntlet Wild Bronze GF Invitational Tournament. A tournament from a few days ago as I forgot to save one from ranked battle when I had this ruleset. In this battle I played against smokeitup.
Here is a picture of our initial lineup.
Battle Rules
This was a battle with a 20 Mana Cap. All of the Elements were available for a change! The battle had 3 rulesets:
- Weak Magic: Magic attacks hit Armor before reducing Health.
- Tis but Scratches: All Monsters have the Cripple ability.
- Lost Legendaries: Legendary Monsters may not 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_eNp9umZJdrIeXogCmzMy&ref=athunderstruck
Battle Lineup
Having all Elements available definitely makes it harder to choose what you want to play, especially since this was also a Wild tournament so even more cards available. Except for legendaries of course. Well there is the Weak Magic ruleset where they hit Armor first. Given the low Mana Cap as well it doesn't seem great to use a Magic focused team cause it could get put to an easy stop by bringing some Armor heavy Monsters.
Just like last week's challenge it seems Mylor can be a great pick. With a solid frontline like Mycelic Infantry that has the Shield ability to take less damage from Melee and Ranged attacks. Of course even getting hit by those that deal no damage will still reduce its max health due to the Cripple ability from the Tis but Scratches ruleset. But his job would be to live long enough by not taking much damage so my backline can do some work too.
Another reason for Mylor pick here is that with the low Mana cap there most likely won't be a lot of Ranged Monsters on my opponents team.
So as I mentioned before I put Mycelic Infantry in the front for the Shield ability. This does take away a big part of my mana but hopefully the damage resistance from Shield is worth it.
2nd position I'm using Uraeus. It has 2 Melee attack and sneak so I wanna protect it from opponent Sneak hits as long as possible, though it may be vulnerable to Opportunity. At least it has Armor which could block a first Opportunity hit.
Then I'm using Screeching Vulture and Venari Scout as the next two in my backline. Their Opportunity could help hit some opponents that hopefully damage themselves against me by being Melee units with Sneak/Snipe. As you notice compared to last week's challenge the Venari Scout only has 1 Melee attack now. This is because of this being a Bronze Tournament and at level 3 it just has 1 Melee attack. It still has good health to place it behind the Screeching Vulture as it's more likely to survive a hit.
Last but not least I use the Furious Chicken. This one is just here to take a hit from Sneak or maybe Opportunity if my opponent has an Opportunity Monster that is faster than their Sneak Monster(s).
Battle Analysis
Hmm my opponent is using Brighton Bloom. That is actually an interesting choice! Adding the Flying ability to all their Monsters so they increase their chance to evade my attacks. Especially their Naga Assassin in the front is then interesting. Being a Ranged unit it can't attack from there but it seems my opponent really just wanted to let that "tank" with the 5 Speed + Flying ability it could become tricky for my Monsters to hit it. Then their backline is filled with Sneak attackers and an Opportunity Monster to try and take out my backline as fast as possible. They also put in a Creeping Ooze to lower my Speed which further decreases my chance to hit their Monsters.
That is a really Melee heavy team though, which does sound great for me because of the Thorns on all my Monsters provided by Mylor.
His Opportunity Monster, the Serpentine Spy, has the highest speed on his team. So it starts the battle and kills my Furious Chicken. But since the Serpentine Spy only has 2 Health it also dies to the Thorns right away. Had my opponent chosen to play Tarsa as their Summoner here it would've still survived with 1 Health.
Thanks to his Creeping Ooze both his Tenyii Striker and Uraeus are faster than my Venari Scout. Otherwise my Venari Scout would've attacked before Uraeus. Now both of those attacked me first though which meant my Venari Scout dies before it got to attack :( Of course they do take damage from my Thorns so that's still a good thing.
My Uraeus is able to attack their Tenyii Striker so it's now at 2 Health left which means with its next attack against my team the Thorns will take it out.
At the end of the round my Mycelic Infantry tries to attack that Naga Assassin, but with the 4 Speed difference and the Flying ability on Naga Assassin my Mycelic Infantry misses.
The start of round 2 looks like this.
Well all of my Opponents backline Monsters with the Sneak ability look like they're going to die now. As they have 1-2 Health. This does mean my Screeching Vulture and Uraeus will also die when they get hit. Well Uraeus will take 2 hits at least because of its Armor.
Tenyii Striker takes out my Screeching Vulture and with the Thorns it also kills itself.
Their Uraeus hits mine, breaking the Armor on mine, and then killing itself on the Thorns.
Kobold Miner delivers the final blow to my Uraeus and kills itself against from the Thorns damage.
All that's left now is my Mycelic Infantry, that still didn't take any damage. Versus the Naga Assassin and Creeping Ooze and neither of those can deal any damage to me. So yeah GG. All that's needed is for my Mycelic Infantry to hit that Naga Assassin now to end the battle one round after that as it'll also have to spend another round to take out Creeping Ooze.
Here is a screenshot when Mycelic Infantry hit and killed the Naga Assassin. Actually happened at the end of round 2 even. I would've expected it to miss at least once more, but I guess the chance to hit was pretty much around 50% so it makes sense to hit it now.
And that's a GG! 😄
Was My Strategy Successful?
Yeah it was definitely a solid strategy! With this low Mana Cap it's not really viable to bring many Ranged attackers because they can't attack from the front unless they have Close Range. With the Weak Magic it's also less likely for Magic to be played, especially due to the low Mana Cap. So the Thorns from Mylor seemed like the best idea and it worked great!
Honestly there was still a possibility for Magic though. Sure they'd hit Armor first because of Weak Magic but at the same time Cripple still lowers the max Health while they're hitting the Armor. So once the Armor is destroyed they'd already need less hits. But yeah Melee did seem the most likely play.
Conclusion
My opponent did have a really interesting pick there with Brighton Bloom to give Flying to all their Monsters and even more interesting that they placed Naga Assassin in the front to combine the Flying ability and the high speed to create a frontline that might be hard to hit.
Which my Mycelic Infantry did miss against in the first round. But during the 2nd round it already took it out.
Mylor was a great pick though since my opponent focused on Melee Monsters as expected and so the Thorns was really helpful!
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! - @alokkumar121
