In the Modern League when you hit a bot in a Diamond league they don't have some of the most powerful cards, however the lineups are perfectly optimized so winning against these bots is quite difficult. Sometimes I find it easier to defeat human opponents with better summoners than these bots.
Today I am going to focus on one of the battles against these Diamond league bots. It is not enough to have raw card power to defeat one of these bots you also have to do a really good job playing to the rulesets in effect.
With No Pain No Gain and Ferocity active at a high 47 mana cap, the temptation is obvious: stack damage, race the opponent, and hope your strong cards get there first.
Instead, I went the opposite direction and that decision is what won the battle.
Choosing Eternal Tofu into No Pain No Gain might look counterintuitive at first glance, but it’s actually a very deliberate choice.
No Pain No Gain rewards monsters for taking hits. Ferocity ensures those rewards snowball aggressively. That combination means the winner is rarely the player who hits hardest early it is the player who keeps pieces alive long enough for scaling to matter.
Eternal Tofu is not about racing. It is about surviving chaotic early rounds, smoothing damage spikes and outlasting your opponent. Against a fully maxed and perfectly optimized liquidity bot opponent, that matters more than raw stats.
Slot 1 - Janni Rebel
Leading with Janni Rebel was not an accident. In No Pain No Gain, early damage is not a problem it is fuel. Janni has the durability to absorb pressure without instantly collapsing, and placing her in front allowed me to protect my true tank for later.
This is a classic bait opener:
“You can hit me just don’t expect me to fall apart.”
By the time Janni stepped aside, the board state already favored patience over brute force.
Slot 2 - Mantaroth (True Tank)
Once the early exchanges were out of the way, Mantaroth became the real frontline.
This is where the battle slowed down and slowing the game was exactly what I wanted. Against Molten Elemental and Torch Myrmidon pressure, Mantaroth’s job was not to dominate, but to exist long enough for everything behind him to matter.
In Ferocity, surviving the transition from early chaos into midgame stability is often the decisive moment. Mantaroth made sure that transition happened cleanly.
Slot 3 - Chaos Adjutant (Poison Spreader)
I like throwing Chaos Adjutant into the middle as he has decent health so servs as a pretty good meat shield and he has poison and scattershot abilities that help him poison multiple opponents on the other team.
Slot 4 - Venka the Vile (Main Damage Dealer)
Hidden more towards the back Venka the Vile is my main damage dealer. Seven melee damage with piercing and trample abilities could be quite deadly and I won a number of games thanks to this card.
Slot 5 - Meriput Magician (Healer)
This is where the match quietly tilted in my favor.
At level 5, Meriput Magician is exactly the kind of monster that thrives in prolonged fights. She survives longer than opponents expect, and is great in No Pain No Gain helping my front monsters last longer.
Slot 6 - Caravan Guard
Caravan Guard is great for making sure your team stays longer in the fight. This monster reduces ranged damage, has triage and has another interesting ability: Echo which makes repair, healing and cleansing abilities trigger twice per round.
Link to the battle
As you can see I am playing against a liquidity bot here. The giveaway is that there is no guild and if you click on their profile and look up their battle history you will see that they don't get any SPS rewards on their winning matches.
In the first round we lost our front monster the a very heavy onslaught from our opponent. Janni Rebel did her job and preserved the full attack power of the Mantaroth.
In the second round we took out two of their front monsters significantly reducing their attack power.
Third round was a key round for us as our Venka and Mantaroth took out the majority of their firepower with only one monster left on the field that is able to attack us.
And in the round four we finished off the liquidity bot!
This was a nice win for our team and we got over thirteen SPS for this win in Modern Diamond. The SPS earnings are not as good at the start of the season it seems as I am still closer to the bottom of the Diamond League.
