Hi battle mages, I hope this post finds you well! Today's Battle Mage Secrets Challenge is the aimless ruleset:
Description: All monsters have the Scattershot ability
FIRST THOUGHTS
Scattershot is a relatively new ruleset. The ability itself has been around for a while, but not many monsters have it. With Conqueror Jacek, the ability has seriously come into fashion and it therefore features in a lot more battles now than in the past.
Scattershot allows your little darlings to randomly shoot range and magic anywhere they please, including at camouflaged monsters. Taunt will not redirect attacks either and monsters with no own abilities are now able to attack beyond the first position, so this ability/ruleset basically turns the battle on its head.
I didn’t pay much attention to scattershot in the past, but especially since it has become a ruleset, I have it on my radar. I trained it a lot with Jacek so I think I have come up with an effective strategy for the ruleset in general: speed, range, protect and shield repair. Because scattershot can hit any monster, I tend to prefer playing defensively when it is a ruleset. I do my best to include protect whenever I can. This is not always possible and useless against magic attack, in which case I rely on speed to have first strike capability as often as possible. I also prefer range monsters rather than magic attackers for this situation, as there seems to be a greater variety of choice with bow and arrow.
CARDS THAT COME TO MIND
For a defensive play in a scattershot ruleset, I would look for a protect monster before anything else. Cards that come to mind are, first of all of course, Arkemis the Bear. With Protect, lots of health, 3 melee and halving at level 4, this dude is a fierce adversary. The halving ability is rather rare, so having this ability as a neutral card is highly valuable.
Other cards providing protect are Queen Mycelia, the Truthspeaker and Venari Wavesmith, among others at higher levels. Although protect does not protect your heroes against scattered magic slings, covering their heads will shield against scattered range and your front-line tanks are also boosted in their defenses.
Depending on how defensive my play is going to be, I may bring a repair to bolster my defenses even more, for example, when I am confident that my opponent will not field a magic team or be restricted in doing so. Defense stategies like this one usually get good results. The job is usually done by Scavo Hireling, when neutrals are allowed. There are a few other candidates for deployment, like the Armoursmith, Adelade Brightwing and the Swamp Spitter, among others.
⚔️ GETTING READY FOR A FIGHT ⚔️
The battle I am studying in this challenge has two rulesets, scattershot and holy protection. The mana cap is 48. The green, white and purple decks are available.
The neutral cards were available , so an Arkemis play was the go and I went for the life deck for its powerful ranger team. I was also itching to try out Ava the Undaunted and the weapons training ability. With plenty of mana to play with, I put the following team together:
FERNHEART
With an Ava debut in mind, I wanted to put a maximum number of archers in the line-up and have them able to shoot from the first position. Fernheart is an important summoner in my deck to enlarge my range capabilities in the green deck. He often saves the day in range only situations but here his job is to give me rangers in the front-line to get the most out of scattershot. Having 5 archers scattering their aim was surely going to take care of the fight.
ARKEMIS THE BEAR
As discussed, Arkemis is the front-line tank to defend and halve the opponent’s offensive monster. He is slow at 2 speed but the halving ability slows down his counterpart, making him a survival strategist while dishing out with brute bear force. With the added holy protection, he should hold the fort for a good while.
GELATINOUS CUBE
I am glad to find more utility for one of my old favourites. The cube is slow as a dead snail but can scavenge for a while. In bloodbath situations, he can scoop up a pack of healthpoint. With Ava behind him training him, this is going to be a bit weird to see. A cube with range attack, you have to see this!
AVA THE UNDAUNTED
This is the first time this dude is in the field. He certainly synergizes well with Fernheart. He doesn’t have much health, so buffering him with 2 tanks is the plan. I don’t think I would play this way with the cube in the first position. With plenty of mana left for the last three monsters allows me to have a super strong backline.
ULOTH DHAMPIR
I don’t like this guy’s name but I love him for the stun ability. He brings good stats to the table and dishes out 3 range attack to boot. Speed lacks but with scattershot, we have a murderous candidate to send in. I also like the green Riftwatchers and Uloth can do plenty of damage in the first position when he has to.
VENARI SEEDSMITH
Smart as rats are in the splinterverse, the Seedsmith can safely sit in the back-line and scavenge around. In fifth position he scoops up health to be strong in the home stretch, when it comes down to the wire. With 3 speed he gets involved relatively early. He also has great stats for 5 mana.
IZA THE FANGED
Iza is one of my favourite Chaos Legions cards. She dominates my little league strategies and is an important inclusion in this line-up for her fast sneak and scavenge. The scavenge ability in the scattershot ruleset was going to play a vital role, as we will see.
ROUND 1
My opponent fielded a taunt magic team led by Immortalis. This looked quite promising at the outset, as my little darlings had no magic attack to be nerfed by void and silence. The Sorcerer’s rust was an issue as Arkemis was not able to provide shield to everyone. This went against a fundamental aspect of my defense strategy, so this was going to be interesting. The battle began evenly. I had three first strike hits and Uloth was able to sink the Mushroom Seer with his first shot. My three scavengers picked up the scalp and the cube got in on the action.
ROUND 2
During the next round, Grund seriously injured Arkemis early but the opposition‘s scattershots didn’t hit him, so he survived the round. At this stage, the balance was in the enemy’s favour: Grund and the Slipspawn still had plenty of health and the Goblin Spychic was still around to heal. Scatters would have to hit the right targets early in the next round for my team to have a chance.
ROUND 3
At the beginning of round 3, Venari Seedsmith took out the Sorcerer, which restored Arkemis‘ shield protection to smother one hit from Grund before sinking. The scavengers continued to fill up on enemy blood and it became clear that this would be a close call and scavenge had to come and save the day.
ROUND 4
It didn’t look too good for my heroes. Grund the Slipspawn still had most of their health and the Goblin Psychic was still breathing. Ava took the Goblin, Drund toasted the Cube and Ava was now in first position. He remained there for the remainder of the round without taking a hit, which gave me a glimmer of hope.
ROUND 5
Now it came down to the wire. Grund got rid of Ava, but my back-line scavengers were going strong and Uloth would hopefully be able to shoot a stun before saying farewell. This he did to dismiss Grund and victory was near.
ROUND 6
In this round, Iza took Hunter Jarx and Uloth had to go, leaving only my back-line scavengers to fight. By now Iza had 10 health, Venari Seedsmith had 6, which decided the match. In rounds 7&8, the Slipspawn had no chance of survival. Game over.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
What went well and what will I do differently next time I encounter a scattershot ruleset?
Do I like scattershot?
Well, what went well is using a powerful ranger team to mow down the opposition. What I didn’t consider, was the possibility of my opponent using rust, which I may have to keep in mind in the future. Regardless of the possibility of having shield taken away, I think I will continue using a defensive Arkemis strategy, when confronted with scattershot. What worked especially well, is using scavengers in my team. Having three scavengers certainly tipped the scales in my favour. Fernheart teamed with scavengers in a scattershot ruleset with lots of range attack synergizes very well and brings good results. What was also impressive, was that my team withstood a magic attack strategy, which tells me my scattershot strategy has some good thinking.
I like scattershot. As a shot can go anywhere and you never really know what will happen, it makes these kinds of battles very interesting. Technically you can’t really prepare for them comprehensively but I think I am doing quite well with my strategic planning for scattershot. I enjoyed studying this battle and going into more detail studying it as I usually do.
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