Battle Mage Secrets Challenge - Lost Legendaries

Hey Splinterheads, I hope you are all having a great Splinterday!

The Battle Mage Secrets Challenge is a wonderful and effective way to get to know rulesets better and improve your gameplay. Not only do you study and analyse rulesets and example battles closely, you also get to read and see what other Splinterheads are thinking and doing with their little darlings on the battlefield.

With many battles now being comprised of 3 rulesets, it is important to know your rulesets well, how they relate to other rulesets and what corresponding cards work well to either exploit the ruleset or defend against it. We have also seen a number of new rulesets coming into the game lately and a bunch of new monsters have received new abilities.

The game is becoming more and more technical, leaving you with ever decreasing chances of winning battles with sheer brute force and overkill strategies. All these reasons and the clear challenge that players (and bots unfortunately) are getting „smarter“ all the time underscore the need to know rulesets very well. The Battle Mage Secrets Challenge helps and motivates us players further to do just that.

In today's challenge we are looking at the Holy Protection ruleset.

There are several rulesets, that prohibit or restrict the use of legendary monsters. These are Lost Legendaries, Rise of The Commons, Little League and Even Stevens/Odd Ones Out, depending on whether monsters have even or uneven mana cost. These 5 rulesets appear regularly, even in combination. Also, when an attack type is not permitted, like Lost Magic, Broken Arrows and Keep Your Distance, the use of legendary monsters is restricted even more.

When my Splinterlands addiction first took hold, I thought that the more often I used legendaries in my battles, the more battles I would win. I also thought that legendaries would always beat lower rarity cards, because they were…well… legendaries. Well, I soon worked out that this was not so.

Overly opting for big gun legendaries is not always a good idea, often even harmful for your winrate. Legendaries are powerful, yes, but often cost a lot of mana and have very specific abilities. This can be detrimental when you need to spead your fire and when your opponent applies strategies, that render you battle approach harmless. These reasons, rulesets limiting the use of legendaries and the added fact, that most legendaries are expensive, all point to the need to look at other rarity monsters, know your deck well and have alternative lineups up your sleeve.

The Lost Legendaries ruleset, among others, is perfect to teach you not to focus too much on legendaries and to diversify your use of cards. Another restriction for the use of legendaries is a low mana cap. There are low mana legendaries around, that can be used in specific situations, but their usecases are limited. On the other hand, the big guns cost lots of mana and can often not single-handedly manage a 12 or 13 mana battle. A low mana cap battle is one that I have chosen to look at in this week’s Battle Mage Secrets Challenge.

The battle we are looking at today is a water war with the Lost Legendaries, Counterspell and What Doesn't Kill You ruleset. The mana cap is 13 and the available splinters are red, blue, purple and gold.