As you probably already know the Battle Mage Secrets Weekly Challenge involves showcasing a battle involving a particular ruleset which is different every week. The ruleset we are to talk about this week is Lost Legendaries.
Let us see what this ruleset does before we get into the nitty-gritty of the line-up and the battle itself.
The Lost Legendaries ruleset is pretty straight-forward - Legendary Monsters may not be used, however, Legendary Summoners are still available.
Now that we've got a good idea of what the Lost Legendaries ruleset practically does, let's see now how it can be effectively utilized.
I normally describe a couple of options here if it ruleset allows for some variation but this one in particular is pretty clear, so here's in short:
Well, as we have already established - Legendary Monsters cannot be used. But you love your Legendaries and you want to use them every single battle - tough luck. There are a lot of great cards in the game of other rarities and I have shown just a few of those allowed in Modern to make a point. In fact what happens more often than not is that due to mana constraints or other limitations imposed by the different rulesets, people use the commons, rares and epics a lot more often than they use the Legendaries. Of course there is nothing better than a 99-mana battle with no restrictions where you can finally let all the rage out and even include your very own Rage in the line-up as well as all the rest of your fattest and most buffed up Legendaries.
Now that we know what the card does (or doesn't do) at the different levels of play, let us have a look at the battle I have chosen to showcase.
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- The line-up of the Battle and the Ruleset:
The ruleset for this battle is Lost Legendaries (Legendary Monsters may not be used), Broken Arrows (Monsters with ranged attacks cannot be used) and Counterspell (All Monsters receive the Magic Reflect (When hit with Magic damage, does half the Magic damage (rounded up) back to the attacker) ability at the start of the battle. Enemy units that attack with magic receive damage back). The mana budget is 15 which is very low so I will have to go with either very low-mana Monsters or a single bigger one. All Elements are available but Death. I've decided to go with the Dragon Element.
The 1st spot is for the Cruel Sethropod. It's main characteristic is the fact that it is.. cruel other than that, it does not do anything special but that's to be expected for 3 mana. It has a very good amount of Health - 7 and also 6 Armor. So, for 3 mana that's pretty impressive. Other than that it also has 3 Melee attack even though with its 2 Speed, it often has issues hitting the enemy Monsters.
2nd in the line-up is one of my favorite Sneak Monsters - Uraeus. For its mana cost of 3 mana it definitely packs a pretty good punch with its 3 Melee Attack. What makes it even better is that it also has the Poison (Attacks have a chance to apply poison, which does automatic damage to the target at the beginning of each round after the poison is applied) ability. Poison is actually pretty good for battles against Monsters with larger health pools as it needs more rounds to do work but it will get it done eventually.
The 3rd spot is reserved for the Pelacor Bandit. I've put it here since it has a decent amount of speed so it can dodge a hit or two if the enemy has decided to go through the "backdoor" and gets to it. Generally it's a Flying (has an increased chance of evading Melee or Ranged attacks from Monsters who do not have the Flying ability) Monster with a high amount of speed. It is also a Sneak (targets the last Monster on the enemy Team instead of the first Monster) Monster so it can often be a pain in the enemy backline.
Following immediately after is Vruz. While Vruz could be useful at the Bronze level in some instances, the level which he really becomes useful at is in the Silver league range - level 5, where he gets his Martyr ability (When this Monster dies, adjacent Monsters get +1 to all stats). I currently have him at level 8 but he gains his last ability - True Strike (this Monster's attacks cannot miss) at level 10. He is a pretty cool little card for sure and can be very important in the line-up if played correctly.
It is time for a quick round by round analysis:
- The Summoner I am going with for the battle is, as you have probably already guessed - Quix. He is my usual go-to Summoner for low mana battles since I like to mix my Sneak Monsters a bit and I find the Water/Dragon <4-5 mana mix to work the best more often than not. My enemy has decided to go with Tarsa, which is another Summoner which is great for the current battle conditions. They have decided to come up with a bit of an awkward setup (at least in my opinion). Let's see how this goes.
- After 1 round of exchanging blows, I have managed to take down the enemy Radiated Scorcher, which they used to protect their Ureaus from my Sneak team.
- Round 3 begins and I have taken down the enemy Ureaus so they are basically sitting ducks at this point.
- Round 4 - my Monsters are chewing through the remainder of the enemy backline.
- Round 5 - All that's left of the enemy team is a lonely Chaos Agent which is about to die.
Well this was definitely a fast but fun battle, and an entertaining way to showcase the Lost Legendaries ruleset. See you next week with another exciting post related to the brand new Battle Mage Secrets Weekly Challenge!
Over and Out,
Referral