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Ahoy and welcome to my newest weekly Battle Mage Secrets post!
This week the featured ruleset is Odd Ones Out. When this ruleset is active only Monsters with Odd Mana costs can be used in the battle. So only about half of your Monsters would be available. This should be more or less around half but of course it can differ depending on how many Monsters you own as well as the Elements.
You can recognise the ruleset with the following icon.
So yeah only Monsters with Odd Mana Costs can be used here. Combined with other rules that may make even less Monsters available! One important thing to note is this only applies to Monsters! So you can still play Summoners with Even Mana Costs!
The battle I want to share with you today is going to be from a Tournament once again. I was kinda debating between choosing one from a recent Tournament or one from the Brawl. I only had 1 Brawl battle with this ruleset and I did win the battle so it might be good to share. I just think the Tournament battle might be a more interesting play where RNG doesn't really play a role in it compared to the Brawl battle where it did have a factor.
The Tournament was the Gauntlet Wild Bronze Invitational Tournament. Which was like 5 days ago. It started on the day of my Birthday so I guess it's more of a reason to share this battle instead of the Brawl one.
In this battle I played against smartstart.
Here is a picture of our initial lineup.
Battle Rules
This was a battle with a 23 Mana Cap. Only the Fire, Life and Death Elements were available here. The battle had 3 rulesets:
- Wands Out: Only Monsters with Magic attack may be used in battles.
- Odd Ones Out: Only Monsters with odd Mana costs may be used in battles.
- Equalizer: The initial Health of all Monsters is equal to that of the Monster on either team with the highest base Health.
Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_4CI4rdRoSh7iDb4cQJ4m&ref=athunderstruck
Battle Lineup
As I mentioned before with that ruleset you have maybe about half of your Monsters available cause of only Odd Mana cost ones. Some other rulesets could then possibly even further reduce that and that's exactly what happened here. Because on top of that only Monsters with Magic attack can be used. So we only have Odd Mana cost Monsters and then on top of that all Monsters with NO Attack, Melee Attack and Ranged Attack couldn't be used either. (If a Monster has Magic+Melee or Magic+Ranged then of course those are allowed). So yeah even waaaaay less Monsters to choose from here.
Let's see with what we have available. In Fire I could use Calduum with Void but he's 11 Mana so that's just half of the Mana on 1 Monster so not a good idea xD Life is available here and well Captain Katie the Gladiator has an Odd Mana cost. You do have to play Franz Ruffmane as the Summoner to use her here. She could be dangerous. BUT she has the Snipe ability though AND all Monsters have Equal Health so to me she doesn't seem like a great strategy to play at all.
Maybe my opponent thinks she's gonna be amazing though. So with Death available I wanna play Owster Rotwell for Magic Reflect. Even if my opponent wouldn't go with Captain Katie it still seems quite fine here to go with Magic Reflect so when my opponent hits me they also take damage back.
My Owster Rotwell is only level 1. At least this is a Bronze Tournament so the max is only level 2 which makes my level 1 not too bad at least since my Monsters won't be that underlevelled.
I put Death Elemental first because well with the Low Mana this is one option to close out the team and because of Equal Health I DON'T want him to make use of that Snipe ability. So I'll let it frontline. Then I put Enchanted Pixie as the next one. Up next I have Spirit Hoarder, I want it to live longer so that it takes longer for it to get in the front to allow it to continue healing my backline especially if Life Sapper's Health goes up nicely. This also in case my opponent also plays Owster for Magic Reflect.
Last but not least I have Cabalist with the Amplify ability to increase the Magic Reflect damage that all my Monsters have thanks to Owster! Great addition to make that stronger!
Battle Analysis
Looks like my opponent did want to play Captain Katie. She can definitely be amazing for sure I agree to that fully. But since there is also Equal Health she won't be able to Snipe an early kill to get stronger.
My opponent has Divine Sorceress in the front with Divine Shield so I'll have to hit it once to break that before I can start damaging it.
Captain Katie hits my Enchanted Pixie for 3 damage which leaves her at 4 Health so even next turn they wouldn't be able to take it out because then it would be at 1 Health still. That is without even taking the Triage backline heal from Spirit Hoarder into account. With that attack Captain Katie also took 3 damage from Magic Reflect. So she's also at 4 Health now already xP Which you can see in this screenshot taken right after Captain Katie attacked me.
My opponent did also play Spirit Hoarder for backline heal, smart! It heals Captain Katie back to 6 Health. My Spirit Hoarder heals Enchanted Pixie also back to 6 Health. My Monsters finish the first round taking out that Divine Sorceress already!
The start of round 2 looks like this.
Captain Katie does the same thing against my Enchanted Pixie bringing her to 3 Health but due to Magic Reflect also going down to 3 Health. Now my team kills their Enchanted Pixie so Captain Katie goes into the first position before Spirit Hoarder could even heal her. She's looking pretty doomed now!
My Spirit Hoarder now takes out their Captain Katie in round 2.
Couldn't properly screenshot the attack from Spirit Hoarder landing but you can see that Captain Katie is at 0 Health.
Meanwhile my Death Elemental is still alive even! With 3 Health left and their Spirit Hoarder having 1 Magic attack they won't even be able to kill my Death Elemental.
I win the battle as a FLAWLESS VICTORY right at the start of Round 3.
GG! 😄
Was My Strategy Successful?
Yeah I predicted quite well that my opponent might be really eager to use Captain Katie here even though it doesn't sound like a great idea due to the Equal Health. So my pick of Owster Rotwell to have Magic Reflect was really great! Especially pairing it with Cabalist for the Amplify to increase that Magic Reflect damage.
If my opponent had also decided to play Owster Rotwell then things might have been a bit different and well that would've been a more interesting battle for sure if we both had Magic Reflect! So that's something I definitely would've wanted to see. Although there wouldn't be much variety in that case so we'd pretty much have a Mirror Match if they had all the same Monsters available.
Conclusion
Owster Rotwell for Magic Reflect paired with Cabalist to Amplify that damage was an amazing pick. Given the available Elements and low amount of Monsters we could bring with such small Mana Cap and only Odd Mana cost Magic Monsters. Predicted my opponents' desire to play Captain Katie pretty well but still would've wanted to see how the battle would've gone if they also decided to go with Owster.
Bonus Battle
If you wanted to check out the Brawl Battle with Odd Ones Out ruleset that I spoke of early in my post then here is the link! https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_1U3gz0gAGnMFz9rqZd3a&ref=athunderstruck
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! - @yonilkar
