Strategy Corner #55- Equalizer Ruleset - Easy or tricky ?

Another week, another ruleset. Recently I switched from travel mode to more active holiday mode ( I will put a photo of that on next season's report :) ). So I got even less time than usual. But I do my best to find a little time to catch up on news and be aware of what is happening around SPL :).

Description:

All units start with the same health, based on the highest health on either team.

Buffs and debuffs are done afterward - this impacts base health.

Firstly, the description of the ruleset in the game is not perfect, sometimes you got just general information which not giving you all information you need. Best way to read the full description as above from the game documentation at least once. You can check all here.

Equalizer is in my opinion quite an easy ruleset, but as you can see below sometimes it could be tricky :). Overall you try to concentrate on damage, and health points of the units it's totally irrelevant. The next very important thing is focus fire, if you make a mistake and got spread damage team, you will probably lose the battle. About healing, I think tank heal is a great addition, all monsters on the battlefield got the highest amount of HP among all of your and your opponent's units. So probably the healing ability could heal up to 3-4 damage every round, and it will same amount for every monster on the first positions. And how about triage? Bringing triage around your team usually is a mistake. Why?, optimally all teams shouldn't target any monsters other than the first position. So triage shouldn't occur at any time during the battle. Of course, if an opponent makes a mistake with targeting, triage could be very effective, but overall usually, in that case, you should win anyway.

Today's battle is Modern Ladder silver level match. I saw quite an interesting ruleset and I got some ideas to use it. How did it go? Let's see.

You should already know, that I'm a big fan of Death Splinter, and for lower mana and Equalizer ruleset, I still think it's one of the best choices. I'm not sure how about all those new cards, but I still try to use all those good damage low HP monsters like Life Sapper or Weirding Warrior.
In our battle, we have a new ruleset FiveAlive (V), which limits our team to 5 monsters. Still, the rule of thumb works here, for the Equalizer, you always should try to put a full team, always :). The last monster - Spirit Hoarder usually should be a mistake, you shouldn't need a triage in that kind of battle. But it's great punishment for the opponent who makes a mistake and spreads damage.
From the opponent side, it's a solid Water Splinter team, Musa Saline is very strong card, but the overall damage output is lower than ours, but with a speed advantage.

Round 2, no casualties in this round, that magic reflect is quite annoying but this time spirit Hoarder could be very useful.

Round 3, both "tanks" were dead this round, with no more reflection damage. Our damage output is higher, so we could have some small advantage.

Round 4, yep, we managed to kill another unit, without losing any ours. Life Sapper seems better here than Musa, getting more HP so far. I'm not sure about the order of the opponent team, but we can talk about it in analysis section.

Round 5, another victim on both sides, opponent's range unit was just a buffer before Musa, and now we have 11 HP unit opposite each other, but our Sapper has still Life Leach :)

Round 7, let's skip round 6, where nothing really happened, Math is simple here, we have 5 damage vs 3. Of course, we still can miss it, so it could be an interesting ending.

Final Blow - Round 9 - another skip, it was quite a long battle considering a low mana match, but usually, that is the case with an equalizer ruleset. We finally killed the muse, and now it was just a formality to kill last range unit.

Death team FTW :), even with the addition of new cards from the soulbound rewards, Rebellion and Riftwatchers sets, it's not easy to beat an old-school Chaos Legion team :). Of course, new cards are still powerful, Daigendark Surveyor could have a big advantage if I didn't take Spirit Hoarder. Normally, as I mentioned, using a triage unit in an equalizer match shouldn't give any advantage, because both player should focus fire on front unit to be the most effective (maybe sometimes full sneak team can do the job :) )
Same with Musa Saline, I'm not sure if this is the correct order to put it after the range unit, the same case is with my Spirit. I can understand the reason to get more HP from scavenger, but at the same time, some of the damage output was sacrificed that way. From my side, I think it was just a mistake, Weirding Warrior should be the last one.

LIFE SAPPER, all life leach monsters are very useful. Another common choice is VENARI BONESMITH. Especially in the equalizer ruleset, they shine even more, because usually they are low health points monsters and now they just become the beasts :). Usually, I try to put them in the second or third position, they are magic so they still can attack when they come to first positions, and get more health every time they hit, so they give you more buffer time for the rest of your team.

WEIRDING WARRIOR, another staple in the low mana death team, is a very useful monster with a great mana cost/ damage ratio. Shatter sometimes seems useless ability, but even in normal battle could surprise your enemy. For Equalizer ruleset, another tendency is to choose some very low-heath monster with a lot of armor, shatter in that case is just a life-saving ability that could decide who will win the battle.

SPIRIT HOARDER, I talked about that card in the analysis section, so I will not repeat myself here. I'm not a big fan of that card in the equalizer match, but sometimes like today it can be useful and help win the match. In general, Spirit Hoarder is a great card, I like to combo him with any taunt monster like Iziar. Even the low speed usually is an advantage here, because you are sure that there will be some HP to heal at the end of each round. Solid card, great support with triage, Dispel and on higher level Blind abilities.

As I mentioned above, the equalizer ruleset seems to me more straightforward. You put all the highest damage units, if they got some additional armor it is even better. There are some good units with just 1 health point and plenty of armor, like for example new neutral soulbound card: Dumacke Orc. In higher mana matches I think this card is a must for equazlier battles. I know, maybe my opinion about triage could be controversial, but I think getting triage is usually a mistake, and with a good opponent, it is supposed to be a useless ability on the battlefield. If you have different opinion just try to convince me with your comments :)

I hope you like this kind of report, battle, and strategy presentation. More strategy analysis, discussion, and prediction games you can find on my Wednesday Twitch Channel stream. There will be schedule soon :)

If you have any comments, please do not hesitate. Do you think I could improve anything just tell me :)

If you wish to try out Splinterlands you can use my reference link.

Thumbnails and other pictures borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Cooltext