In this week's battle mage secrets, we have the even stevens ruleset. The ruleset allows only even numbered cards to be played which can make a huge difference on strategies due to the cards available. One strategy I really enjoy using is a speed meta strategy with a few key cards and a few key summoners such as Jacek as mentioned in the title. As usual, we will breakdown a few other strategies to be used in this ruleset and then get into breaking down a battle round by round. For access to the full battle, please use the following link: https://splinterlands.com/?p=battle&id=sl_5736ffe2d95c55f13e2484e4f96c74eb
Strategies
1. Speed
There are several monsters that are speed buff monsters in the even stevens playset. Supply runner, countess sinash, naga assassin, and the clockword aide to name a few can be a great way to speed up your team. Naturally, there are also a few monsters with slow that you can use as well such as the time mage and black dragon. Speed is powerful in almost every ruleset but can be really important in this ruleset as you play similar monsters and attacking first may let you defeat your opponent before they can fire. This will be shown greatly in the battle below.
2. Opportunity/Scattershot play
Sneak monsters are generally odd numbers so your opponent may think his backline is protected. Opportunity monsters however are generally even number such as runi, deeplurker, and feasting seaweed. You can really surprise your opponent with a targeted opportunity play and defeat his backline before your tank goes down. Scatter shot can similarly be powerful as it is another way to target the backline in even stevens and take out some of the higher damage monsters.
3. Magic spam
When all else fails, magic is always king as far as attack is considered and so can be a viable play here. Cards such as oshannus, prismatic energy in beta, and the chaos dragon can turn the tide in a match by sheer overpowering your opponent. There are also a few nice blast monsters that are even numbers such as ruler of the seas and the riverboat captain.
Now that we see a few of the bigger strategies, let us examine a battle where I chose to combine one and two while my opponent went with the third strategy and see who wins.
Round 1
Standard even stevens here which makes it easy to show off the strategies mentioned above. In round 1, both plans are working well as I am able to work through some of his shields and backline monsters keeping his tank fairly untouched while he is spamming my bear.
Round 2
Round 2 things take a slight downhill turn for me as I was unable to eliminate any of his backline monsters due to the scatter shot. Naturally, this is always a risk with jacek which can be frustrating at times. His strategy worked by getting through my bear and knocking down my ferexian hero to one damage.
Round 3
Round 3 continues down the wrong path as I keep hitting his higher health monsters leaving his reaper and enchantress alive for more rounds. He obviously is probably getting frustrated as well however as his taunt is doing nothing in this match just sitting on the backline taking minimal damage.
Round 4
This was a pivotal round as my fire demon finally has a great hit eliminating two of his backline monsters leaving him with low health remaining on his phantom and prismatic. I felt pretty good here as at the worst my tinderlock is left in the back to last stand and deal heavy damage up front.
Round 5
This round is the beginning of the end as some unfortunate misses extend the game a bit but his soldier goes down before firing and I have three high health monsters left against his low health energy and taunt monster only dealing two damage. The match finished up over the next few rounds and turned out to be an easy match.
Speed and scattershot in even stevens can really work well to surprise your opponent by hitting his backline especially with some of the taunt monsters present at this mana cost. Please upvote or comment if you enjoyed this breakdown and have any other strategies for this ruleset.
