Thumbnail for the weekly challenge provided by @splinterlands
Ahoy, welcome to my next Battle Mage Secrets post!
This week the featured ruleset is Rise of the Commons. When this ruleset is active only Common and Rare Monsters may be used. Summoners defy this ruleset as you can still use Epic & Legendary Summoners when it's active.
You can recognise the ruleset with the following icon.
So yeah as I mentioned earlier you can only use Common and Rare Monsters when this ruleset is active. Other than that there really isn't anything else to specify about this ruleset or to really keep in mind. You just can't use Epic and Legendary Monsters so if you use those often you'll have to think about some good other Monsters to use in their place.
The battle I want to share with you in this week's post is from the Archipelago Modern Bronze GF Invitational Tournament that took place this weekend. I would've wanted to share a Brawl battle for this week's challenge but the Rise of the Commons ruleset didn't show up when I was submitting my teams.
In this battle I'm sharing I was up against the player smallcircle.
Here is a picture of our initial lineup.
Battle Rules
This was a battle with a 36 Mana Cap. Only half the Elements were available with only Fire, Life and Dragon being the available Elements. The battle had 3 rulesets:
- Rise of the Commons: Only Common and Rare Monsters may be used in battles.
- Weak Magic: Magic attacks hit Armor before reducing Health.
- Fire & Regret: All Monsters have the Return Fire ability.
Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_cZIS6AZD8rBaKXkmGve3&ref=athunderstruck
Battle Lineup
Alright so with these rulesets I'm kinda limited in what to play. Well still a lot of choices but there is the Weak Magic ruleset so too much focus on Magic might not be good, but some of them in the backline could help though to get through the opponents tanks. Ranged Monsters aren't the greatest idea, it's still okay to bring some but after a few turns they'll end up killing themselves on the Return Fire if they're squishy. This does feel like a more frontline heavy kinda battle too or maybe a mix with opportunity. Sneak isn't really something to worry about too much because of it being a Modern battle. The Neutral Uraeus can't be used because it's Epic and then for Dragon there is the double-strike sneak card but it's a Bronze league battle so it only has 1 damage twice, not a really big deal.
I decide that I want to have a strong healthy frontline while protecting the backline a slight bit because there could be at least one Monster with Sneak though like I'll play myself.
With these options I decide I'll play Eternan Brune, that way I can bring the Gladiator Chimney Wallstop as a beefy secondary tank who also has Reach so he'll already be able to attack while in the second position. Additionally Eternan Brune reduces my opponents Armor by 2 which could also help.
With Eternan Brune and Chimney Wallstop locked in I decide to play Elven Defender as my additional tank that I placed 1st. That way Elven Defender can attack and then Chimney can also attack thanks to Reach.
Up next I bring Technowizologist for a bit of extra damage to the frontline and a chance to land Stun so that my opponent's frontline may miss a turn which could help me survive longer.
Then I bring Tenyii Striker, he's kinda there to protect my backline from a potential Sneak hit too and he could start to weaken my opponents backline a bit. Last but not least I bring Chaos Agent with Dodge so he can also take a hit or two if my opponent brings a Sneak attacker.
Battle Analysis
It seems that my opponent has decided to play Conqueror Jacek. This is now a great example that the Rise of the Commons ruleset only applies to Monsters. Because my opponent used a Legendary Summoner here. That extra Speed and the Piercing ability he provides to his team can be quite painful for my frontliners because now their health could get damage.
They're playing 2 Magic attackers, but because of Scattershot they're actually not guaranteed to help take out my frontline. He did have a really smart play here too to throw in a Scavo Hireling with the Armor repair as that will require 1 of my team's hits each turn to break the Armour again before I can damage the health.
Aha see I knew there'd be a good chance my opponent could also bring a Sneak attacker as they also brought Tenyii Striker.
Wow their Tenyii Striker missed my Chaos Agent in the first round thanks to its Dodge ability! My opponents' Magic attackers hit Chimney Wallstop and my Tenyii Striker with their Scattershot. My Technowizologist stuns their Ferox Defender.
Now my Elvend Defender and Chimney Wallstop both MISS against the Ferox Defender. They don't even have a high chance to miss, only 20% from the Speed difference, but they both missed! So well that extra Speed from my opponent's Conqueror Jacek really helped them out there because otherwise they would've been the same Speed.
Round 2 their Tenyii Striker misses me again! I guess the RNG is kinda balancing out here as he's got like 25% chance to miss and misses twice where my Elven Defender and Chimney Wallstop also both missed with like 20% chance to miss.
Their Magic attackers do like to hit my Tenyii Striker though with the Scattershot so he is slowly going down. This time my frontlines do hit the Ferox Defender so they finally break the Armor and hit his Health for 2.
Now in Round 3 their Djinn Apprentice actually lands a Scattershot hit on my Chaos Agent to kill him. Which means their Tenyii Striker no longer has to worry about that Dodge and is able to go for a direct hit against my Tenyii Striker leaving it at 1 Health. With their Tenyii Striker left at 2 Health mine could now go in for the kill... but he misses! Just like my frontline earlier he had 80% chance to hit and only 20% chance to miss but ended up missing unfortunately.
At least my frontliners land all their attacks to that Elven Defender takes out the Ferox Defender.
Here is what the lineups look like at the start of Round 4.
Even though my opponent's Tenyii Striker outspeeds mine and would go first to kill mine, it is their Djinn Apprentice who isn't having it and kills my Tenyii Striker with a Scattershot hit. So my opponent's Tenyii Striker now hits my Technowizologist who goes down to 1 Health. Their Venari Spellsmith now has a 1/3 chance to hit and it does in fact land the Scattershot hit on my Technowizologist who now dies before he got to do anything this round. That's unfortunate!
Luckily my Chimney Wallstop and Elven Defender work together to take out the Radiated Brute. Not before Elven Defender took some damage though and it's now at 2 Health so that Djinn Apprentice moving to the front will take out my Elven Defender first thing in round 5.
Tenyii Striker would normally just break Chimney Wallstop's Armour now, but because of the Piercing from Conqueror Jacek it breaks that Armour and also lands 1 damage on my Health.
Chimney Wallstop kills the Djinn Apprentice and gets some Bloodlust giving him an extra Health and gaining 1 Armor again.
Which means in the next round Tenyii Striker basically does the same, Piercing through my Armor to take that away and hitting me for 1 Health too. Their Venari Spellsmith has Dispell which now takes away the Bloodlust so Chimney Wallstop goes back down to 5 Attack and 2 Speed.
He now ends up missing against the Scavo Hireling with a 70% chance to hit and 30% chance to miss from the Speed difference!
Due to that miss the start of round 7 is looking kinda scary!
Tenyii Striker and Venari Spellsmith bring my Chimney Wallstop down to 3 Health. He needs to hit now or he's done for.
But he does hit! It's mostly expected because he has a 70% chance to hit but RNG can always decide he'll miss instead.
Tenyii Striker will take away the Armour and hit me down to 3 Health, then Venari hits me down to 2 Health and takes away the Bloodlust against bringing me back down to 2 Speed.
Good thing Chimney Wallstop now kills the Venari Spellsmith.
Well with that Piercing ability on Tenyii Striker my Chimney Wallstop really only has 1 opportunity to win this fight because he'll be down to 2 Health as soon as Tenyii Striker hits me. This time there is no Dispell anymore though so at least Chimney is keeping that extra Speed bringing his chance to hit to 80%
And he does hit! GG!
Was My Strategy Successful?
Yeah kinda, but I also wasn't really expecting the Scattershot here. Also some RNG was involved with both the Scattershot and those misses on both sides. If his Scattershots wouldn't have hurt my Tenyii Striker there could've been a chance for mine to kill his and that would've definitely helped secure the win due to lower damage output. But at the same time his Tenyii Striker missed my Chaos Agent twice so if that didn't happen my Tenyii Striker could've still been dead anyway without killing his.
It's hard to tell how it would've gone if my opponent used those Monsters but a different Summoner. Without that Speed increase my Tenyii Striker would've taken his out even if his never missed my Chaos Agent just because his would've needed a turn to kill that Chaos Agent while mine would've made a direct hit.
The Venari Spellsmith taking away the Speed from my Bloodlust was really scary because it lowered my chances to hit again! Which is also due to the Speed Buff from Conqueror Jacek. So again with a different Summoner I may have been hitting more and gone through the frontline quicker.
Conclusion
Really interesting fight here with the RNG misses. They did get quite balanced out as both teams had a few misses when their chance to hit was like 75-80%. Usually when that happens I see my team missing but my opponents keep hitting so I was glad to see it really balanced out this time!
It ended up being such a close game for sure! That final 80% chance to hit and 20% chance to miss would've made all the difference as a miss there would allow the Tenyii Striker to kill my Chimney Wallstop. Extremely close for sure!
That Venari Spellsmith in my opponent's team was a really solid pick for getting rid of the Bloodlust.
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
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 150000 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
STOP
Check out our last posts: