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 have the Noxious Fumes ruleset.
Description:
All units are Poisoned at the start of the game.
Units with Immunity are not poisoned.
This is a one-time application - units that are cleansed, resurrected or rebirthed will not be re-applied with poison.
Enrage is triggered by Poison application.
Noxious Fumes is not an easy ruleset to work with. Not only are you confronted with enemy attack, you are also subjected to poison at the beginning of every round, taking 2 health from your little darlings each time. As mentioned in the ruleset description, monsters with Immunity are not affected, but there are not many monsters with this ability around. The main candidates are in the Death splinter, HARKLAW and the REVEALER, both being reward cards. Other reward cards with Immunity are the VAMPIRIC BLOSSOM, ALMO CAMBIO and VENATOR KINJO.
Other monsters with Immunity include the FORGOTTEN ONE, QUORA and ADELADE BRIGHTWING, among others. Other ways to deal with Noxious Fumes are Heal, Enrage, Cleanse and the newer abilities Resurrect and Rebirth. Of all these abilities, I mainly use Immunity and Heal, coupled with monsters with high health, therefore I always go for the Death splinter, where I find CURSED WINDEKU for *Heal and HARKLAW and REVEALER for Immunity. As I said, I personally find Noxious Fumes diffucult to prepare for, so when the Death deck is not available, I ususally go for the easiest way out: select monsters with the best chances of outlasting the enemy, while everyone is taken down by poison one by one. My track record there is not so good.
The battle we are looking at closely today is, thank heavens, a Death match, to illustrate the effectiveness of Heal and Immunity.
The battle stats are the following:
RULESETS: Aimless and Noxious Fumes
MANA: 37
SPLINTERS: Water, Earth, Life, Death and Dragon
Here is the team I put together:
THADDIUS BROOD is my standard summoner for death matches and most of all, when the Noxious Fumes ruleset is up.
CURSED Windeku is a very powerful tank with Heal at level 5. With the additional 10 health, he is a good guardian against poison attacks and holding the fort at the frontline generally.
QUEEN OF CROWS is in second position for several reasons. With Close Range, she is a good backup tank and inhibits enemy range with Headwinds. For the Noxious Fumes ruleset, she is here because she has high health and therefore a higher chance of survival than many other monsters.
HARKLAW, apart from the FORGOTTE ONE, is probably the best monster to use in a Noxious Fumes ruleset. I like putting him further back to be as safe as possible from enemy fire during the battle.
VENARI MARKSRAT is here to die at the beginning of the second round to give a Martyr boost to monsters on both sides, so he is strategically placed in the midfield.
The REVEALER is a great card to use in Noxious Fumes with the Immunity ability. He will get a boost from VERARI MARKSRAT to then give him 3 speed and 3 magic.
LIFE SAPPER is in the backline to survive to the third round with Life Leech.
So now let's take a closer look at the battle in focus today.
Upon th opening of Round 1, Ruler of the Seas had first shot and nearly wiped out my backline with Blast, followed by Venari Wavesmith finishing off the LIFE SAPPER. That was not a good start! Gelatinous Cube then got cleansed and healed. The rest of the round was uneventful.
In Round 2, Noxious Fumes went on a trail of destruction, wipinf out VENARI MARKSRAT to give HARKLAW and the REVEALER a Martyr boost. Hopefully this would save the battle. Ruler of the Seas fired again, but his shot was not as damaging as the last one. Again, the rest of the round was uneventful.
More poison came, this time wiping out 3 enemy monsters and reducing Ruler of the Seas to 1 health. Things were looking much better! Gelatinous Cube collected plenty of Scavenge points, Ruler of The Seas fired to then be wiped out with a direct hit from the REVEALER. CURSED WINDEKU healed nicely to then deliver a blow to that silly cube. QUEEN OF CROWS then took a deadly hit from Return Fire
Round 4, like the remaining 3 or 4 rounds to follow, were maked by CURSED WINDEKU regularly healing from Noxious Fumes, HARKLAW and the REVEALER being immune to it and that silly cube and Cornealus eventually biting the dust.
I had actually forgotten, that Stun prevents enemy monsters from healing and here it basically saved the day, because my opponent brought 2 healing monsters, which would perhaps have outlasted HARKLAW otherwise...
My Heal and Immunity strategy worked perfectly but the matchwinner was the repeated Stun by the REVEALER to prevent the Cube from healing and withstanding Noxious Fumes. Had it not been for the REVEALER's Stun ability, things may have gone differently.
Seeyaround Splinterheads!
title image background from bangkokpost.com
images of model tombstones from myshopify.com
