Hello there.
Today I'll share my battle under the Silenced Summoners ruleset. But first, I will share some of my thoughts regarding it. With this ruleset, summoners don't provide any of their buffs, debuffs, and abilities to monsters. The only thing they provide is the ability to use monsters in their element. So if one uses an Earth summoner, they can use Earth and Neutral monsters like usual. A Dragon summoner will still let them choose another element. That is why the best summoner in this ruleset are the dual element summoners in Rebellion. Not only are they cheap, but they also still work in allowing two elements to be played from.
In this ruleset, I try to use the dual element summoners as much as I can. Magic is still really powerful since there is no Thaddius or Immortalis to counter them, although they don't hit as hard because Obsidian is also unavailable. If there a lot of mana available, I might forgo the dual element summoners since I only have low level copies of them, and instead opt for my high level summoner and monsters instead.
I believe that being flexible in battle is the ideal strategy. Check the opponent's history, check what they are most likely to use, and counter it. But always pick teams that can also counter different strategies. Without further ado, let's get into the battle.
The Ruleset
This was a tournament battle, so it was a Silver battle with Healed Out, and Silenced Summoners Rulesets. A 29 mana battle is on the normal amount, and only Fire, Life, and Dragon are available. I can think of a lot of different strategies for each so I will try to counter as much as I can.
Fire is known for their cheap melee sneak and opportunity teams, and that can be perfect here. Tarsa not giving the buff does hurt their damage a bit. Antoid Platoon in front can provide some defense against physical attacks that both Fire and Life elements are known for.
For Life, their usual range teams take a hit because of the Silenced Summoners. Their magic damage for their cheap monsters is a bit low. A good option though is to use Aves to give magic damage to other cheap monsters without attack.
Dragon has a lot of good cheap monsters that can work well with other teams. Dhampir Infiltrator and Vruz can improve the Fire sneak teams, while Naga Assassin can be a good sneak tank with its speed. Kra'ar Xoc can be a very cheap last tank in front of the attackers.
The Lineup
For me, between the lineups I mentioned above, I'd rather go with the Aves setup. I had to use Franz as my summoner because I wanted to use my leveled cards to increase my chances of winning. Since my main win condition is through my magic damage, I let Drybone hang back a little behind the Scrapper. I'm hoping the scrapper's Void can block one or two magic attacks before dying. To try and counter the sneak and opportunity teams, I placed the Clockwork at the back with its high armor, and the Chaos Agent with its Dodge at the last position. Uraeus applying poison to the Clockwork early on would be really painful though, so I'm hoping that doesn't happen.
The Battle
The Matchup
My opponent decided to go with an almost full Dragon team. Chwala is a strong front tank with its high armor and HP. Carnage Titan brings a lot of damage in the second position. Dhampir is the backline attacker, and Naga Assassin and the Soul Fiend are the Sneak/Opportunity bait/tanks. I think this looks like a good matchup for me because they split their damage a bit while I'm focusing my attacks front to back. The Magic damage will also ignore their high Armor, which is perfect.
End of Round 1
I am again reminded at how OP Drybone Barbarian is. Not only does it have high stats, but it also has Enrage and Retaliate. Not only did it survive the first round, but it also was able to kill Chwala before dying. Putting the Scrapper in front and tanking one hit from the Carnage Titan paid dividends. The Infiltrator didn't miss its attack agains the Chaos Agent, but it still has a lot of armor to go through to kill the Clockwork.
End of Round 2
The Naga Assassin killing my Drybone before it can attack is a bit of a shame, but at least the Carnage Titan missed both its attacks against my Pelacor. The added speed from Clockwork and the Flying ability really worked that round. With their monsters' HP looking low, this is starting to feel like it will be my win.
End of Round 3
The Naga assassin also missed its attack on my Pelacor. It made me look back on all the times I missed my attack just because of the Flying ability. So this is what it feels like to be on the lucky RNG side. It kind of feels nasty. The battle is looking over and it is like insult to injury.
End of the Battle
I will have to say that I was surprised at how easy that battle looked. I fully countered their team with high Armor, but I think my win depended a lot on Drybone's Retaliate. If I was unable to kill the Chwala on the first round, I might not have enough time to kill their team. There was bound to be some misses on the Pelacor because it had high speed and Flying, but I think it also helped a lot. If I used anything other than this magic team, I think I might have lost.
The Result
Conclusion
In tournaments where there are additional limitations on top of the Rulesets and banned elements, I try to make it a point to look at the possible teams and imagine them fighting against one another. I will then choose the team which I think is best. For this specific battle, my opponent used a team composition that I didn't expect. They had a tanky team that also deals a lot of damage. I was lucky that I went with magic damage so I didn't have to go through all their armor. I think they have a really strong team, and I was just lucky that I managed to counter it.