Thumbnail for the weekly challenge provided by @splinterlands
Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players. Here is my latest Battle Mage Secrets post.
For this week's challenge the featured ruleset is Reverse Speed. When that ruleset is active the lower Speed Monsters will attack first and have a better chance of avoiding attacks. Which can allow for some interesting plays with those low Speed Monsters.
You can recognise the ruleset with the following icon.
With this ruleset the Monsters with 1 Speed suddenly become much stronger as they will be allowed to attack first. It can make for some interesting plays. With the Speed reversed this also applies to the types of attacks and card rarities. In a normal game when Monsters have the same Speed those with Magic attack go first, then those with Ranged and then Melee attackers. With the Reverse Speed ruleset it's Melee attackers that go first when they have the same speed.
Once again I kinda have 2 battles that I wanna share. Both of them were from the same Tournament. I think the one where we used the same Summoner might be the most interesting one. Also in the other battle I feel like my opponent mistook the Fire & Regret ruleset where all Monsters gain Return Fire for the ruleset where they can attack from the first position so I feel less like sharing that one.
The battle I'm sharing was from the Poseidar Wild Silver Invitational Tournament that started on Friday. My battle was against karibok.
Here is a picture of our initial lineup.
Battle Rules
This was a battle with a 23 Mana Cap. Only the Earth Element was available! The battle had 2 rulesets:
- Armored Up: All Monsters have 2 Armor in addition to their normal Armor stat.
- Reverse Speed: Monsters with the lowest Speed attack first and have the highest chance of evading attacks.
Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_ANuJd6NBNnxcmuyyDhnU&ref=athunderstruck
Battle Lineup
Well there really aren't a lot of possibilities here because Earth is the only available element. It's wild so there are a lot of possible Summoners to play, but with the low Mana Cap and the Armored Up ruleset some aren't really favourable to play at all.
So Magic seems like kind of the play to make here. There is of course Llama Kron as a possibility too. However a strong sustainable frontline and then Goblin Psychic + Doctor Blight could render that combo useless because both of them would have a chance to apply Affliction AFTER the Llama Cleanses and BEFORE Kron would have his turn thanks to the Reverse Speed ruleset. It's still some RNG but if they could consistently hit Affliction it would be possible to deal with him.
I'm kinda hoping my opponent won't play that though as my team build isn't going to include those.
I'm thinking that my opponent may rather either Obsidian to try and build a strong enough Magic attacking team OR go with Immortalis to have an Anti-Magic team thanks to the Void ability.
The Anti-Magic way with Immortalis is the route that I'll go just in case my opponent does feel like going all out with Obsidian. And if they play Immortalis too with some Magic attackers included well then I can stop their damage!
So as my summoner I pick Immortalis. I pick the Flesh Golem for a high health tank unit with good health and he can heal himself. Then I have a combo of Mushroom Seer AND Elven Mystic with both the Silence ability to do a double Magic debuff. I'm bringing both in case my opponent plays Obsidian because then one Silence would negate the Obsidian Summoner buff and the other one would further reduce the Magic.
With my core picked up I now have 2 Mana Left. Ideal to pick Failed Summoner for the front then. My Flesh Golem would attack first because it has the same Speed as those Magic Attackers. So placing Failed Summoner in the front allows that one to take some damage first while my Magic Monsters will use the Shatter ability to destroy the Armour on my opponents frontline. Then my Flesh Golem can start hitting that after the Failed Summoner dies.
In the back I just throw Fungus Fiend and Furious Chicken since they cost 0 Mana and I throw them here just in case my opponent picks a Monster with the Sneak ability to try taking my team out from the backline.
Battle Analysis
Alright so my opponent also went with Immortalis which was one of the 2 Summoners I was expecting most. They're using Hill Giant as a frontline. With Goblin Psychic up next to Heal and also with a chance to put Affliction on me. They've got Queen Mycelia for even more Armour (which doesn't really matter since I have Shatter from Immortalis too). A Mycelic Infantry to probably give their Djinn Bilkja a bit of extra attack chance in case the rest of his team falls AND to protect their backline a bit from potential Sneak units too.
Their Goblin Psychic and Djinn Biljka would have 2 Magic attack, which means they'd both do 1 damage per turn to my units because of Void. However thanks to the Silence I brought they got reduced to 1 Magic attack like Queen Mycelia and now they can't damage me.
Round 1 starts with their Goblin Psychic dealing no damage to my Failed Summoner due to Void, but it's still a hit so that does shatter the Armour. None of his Magic attackers will Magic Reflect damage from my Failed Summoner though due to them having the Void ability too.
Hill Giant is the only one that can damage my Failed Summoner for 2 damage per round.
My Elven Mystic shatters the Hill Giant's Armour. My Mushroom Seer can deal 1 damage per turn but that's not going to matter because Goblin Psychic heals that back up.
So the first 2 rounds are just going to be the same basically with just my Failed Summoner going down which it does in the 3rd round. After my Failed Summoner goes down the Flesh Golem comes into first position. It's Reverse Speed and Hill Giant with 2 Speed just took out the Failed Summoner which means Flesh Golem with 3 Speed will now get hits turn. He hits the Hill Giant for 3 damage. Pairing that with the Mushroom Seer's 1 damage I now have 4 damage per turn to Hill Giant while my opponent heals it for 2. It'll take a few rounds like this to take it out.
Round 4 starts with the Goblin Psychic shattering my Flesh Golem's Armour paving the way for Hill Giant to start hitting me back. It also landed Affliction straight away! So now my Flesh Golem unfortunately won't be able to Heal himself back to full after each attack from Hill Giant.
With the Hill Giant losing 2 Health per round (taking 4 damage and being healed for 2) it ends up with 3 Health during round 5. That's when my Flesh Golem hits and kills him.
My Magic attackers shatter the Armour on the Goblin Psychic and deal 1 damage to it.
At the end of round 5 here is the lineup.
Now my Flesh Golem can never heal itself back up since it got hit by that Affliction. But my opponent has almost no damage potential against me anymore. All of their Magic attackers have been reduced to 1 which means they deal 0 damage to me with the Void ability. The only damage potential they have left is the Mycelic Infantry with a Melee attack and if my Flesh Golem hit it he'll take Thorns damage. Even that combo of Mycelic Infantry hitting Flesh Golem and Flesh Golem hitting it back and taking Thorns is only 3 damage in total. Which means he's never going to die. I'll just slowly take away my opponents Monsters now. So that's a GG!
Was My Strategy Successful?
Yeah this was a great strategy! Expecting my opponent to play either Obsidian or Immortalis and making a team to take as little damage as possible from them worked well.
If they played Obsidian with Magic attackers that had at least 3 Magic damage without the Obsidian buff then I could've taken a bit of extra damage as they'd have been reduced down to 2 Magic attack and still deal 1 damage to the Void.
I think it might have been good if I placed Fungus Flinger OR Furious Chicken in the front though and left Failed Summoner out of my team. Replacing it by another 2 Mana Monster, the Halfling Alchemist. That one would've helped me deal 1 extra damage per turn and would also be able to reduce his Hill Giant's Melee attack to 1. In that case my Flesh Golem would've had more Health.
This was still a solid win though so that's great!
Conclusion
Properly predicted that my opponent would play Obsidian or Immortalis.
I'm glad that they didn't play Scarred Llama Mage and Kron the Undying combo. Earlier in the post I mentioned that the combo would be quite beatable with a sustainable tank and then Goblin Psychic + Doctor Blight combo for 2 chances to apply Affliction before Kron gets his turn. A bit of RNG then but it could beat him if they consistently land that.
However as you can see I didn't play either of those, because I wasn't really going to expect that. So if my opponent did surprise me with that combo well then I would've lost because I didn't bring any Affliction xP
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
Congratulations @athunderstruck! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 20000 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPThanks for sharing! - @alokkumar121
