In the spirit of the new weekly Battle Mage Secrets challenges, I would like to take a look at a Splinterlands battle with a particular focus on a ruleset. Our ruleset today is one that has actually been the subject of Battle Mage Secrets in the past. But this is an interesting enough ruleset that I thought it was worth visiting again. Today, we will be taking a look at a battle with the Equalizer ruleset!
As you may recall, Equalizer gives every monster on the battlefield a max health equal to whichever number the monster with the highest base amount has. Since health is the stat being affected here, the winners and losers tend to be inversely related to their amount of health. Lower health? That's exactly what you want to see in these battles, because their mana cost tends to reflect their lower health and in these fights they will be getting quite a bit of additional health. Higher health? Well, monsters with higher health are a bit worse because you will be paying more of a "fair" cost for the stats you will get in the battle. As you can see, the emphasis is shifted more away from a monster's bulk and towards its attack stat and abilities.
If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup? Read on further!
First up: the ruleset. Of course, we have the Equalizer ruleset, which will give every monster in the battle the same starting health. To go along with it we also have Fog of War and Weak Magic, which will remove the Opportunity, Sneak, and Snipe abilities and will make magic attacks blockable by armor. Finally, we have a fairly restrictive mana and splinter combination - just 15 mana to work with, and a single splinter - Fire.
Given the relatively low mana cap, we want to go with a cheap summoner in order to have more mana to spend on our monsters. Tarsa is a great option in this situation because her combination of costing just 4 mana to bring into battle and providing great melee buffs is exactly what we are looking for from our summoner.
I started my team with a great tank for these battlefield conditions. Antoid Platoon is great in Equalizer battles because the Shield ability will be even better with the additional health granted by the ruleset. Weighing in at 4 mana, Antoid Platoon is an affordable tank with plenty of durability. To top things off, with a low mana cap I don't expect my opponent to be selecting very much magic damage in their lineup, since magic attackers tend to be more expensive and therefore would be more difficult to use given the tight mana situation.
My secondary tank also happened to be my primary source of damage for my lineup. Radiated Brute hits for two per turn, which becomes 3 with Tarsa's buff. Radiated Brute also has Reach which is very helpful in this battle - due to Fog of War, we have limited options to get multiple melee attacks in per turn. With Reach, my Antoid Platoon and Radiated Brute will both be able to attack at the same time.
I closed out my team with Scorch Fiend and Halfling Alchemist. Scorch Fiend was there was a buffer for some additional protection. Halfling Alchemist is great in this lineup because of his synergy with Antoid Platoon. Shield reduces incoming physical damage by half, and Halfling Alchemist cuts its target's attack in half. This means that opposing frontline tank will need to have 4 damage in order to be able to attack through Shield - any lower and the combination will result in their damage getting debuffed all the way to 0!
With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am pretty happy with the battlefield situation. My opponent has selected plenty of monsters, but none of them are ranged or magic attackers and my opponent's team will only be attacking with a single monster per round. On top of that, none of the enemy monsters have more than 2 attack. This means that none of them will be able to deal any damage to my Antoid Platoon once my Halfling Alchemist's Halfing ability triggers.
This battle progresses a bit slowly on account of Fog of War, but I am getting 3 attacks each round to my opponent's 1, and by the start of round 3 it is clear that my team is slowly chipping away at the enemy's lineup.
Over the course of the next few battles it is more of the same - the enemy attacks are unable to get much done through my combination of Halfling Alchemist and Antoid Platoon, and my monsters make slow but steady progress by knocking out whichever opposing monster happens to be in the front position.
It actually ended up taking quite a few more rounds, but it was just a matter of time until my damage took out my opponent's team. By round 10 the opposing team had finally run out of bodies and my monsters were able to close out the victory. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.
My strategy for this battle worked out perfectly - my combination of Antoid Platoon and Halfling Alchemist were able to nullify the opposing team's damage output, and my monsters' own attacks took out the enemy lineup one by one. This game showcased the importance of playing to the rulesets - paying close attention to which monsters worked well with the rules and what my opponent was likely to select were both key to pulling off the victory.
Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:
The Long Game - Battling with Going the Distance! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Going the Distance!
Splinterlands Economics: Causation - A look at causation, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
Splinterlands Economics: Ceteris Paribus - An introduction to the concept of Ceteris Paribus, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!
Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!
All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.
