The Rat and the Hippo

Venari Marksrat

The card is the Venari Marksrat, a range monster which at level 1 has the "Martyr" ability, which at least as I have been using it, should really be called the "Suicide Bomber" attribute. When this little 3 Mana sucker dies, the trait gives +1 to all stats to the cards either side of it, so positioning it well can make quite a difference.

This might not be suitable for many rounds, but it can come in handy for example, I have used it with Obsidian, placed between Blight and Biljka, which both have camouflage. It dies, bumps them up with Biljka having a 5 magic and Blight a 4. Which can be damaging.

However, in this round today, with Life and Death splinters available, I went with Life, and we had a "somewhat" similar setup - with both looking to use Jared Scar to pound the other.

As you can see, this is a 36 Mana opportunity, return fire and added armor round. The opposition setup is pretty good, with additional speed and shield from the summoner, as well as Rust to take away the added shields from me. Blight will probably take out my Tank heal and Renova protects the back position and has backline heal. We both have a Resurrect. The real decider here would be Jared Scar, which I have beefed a bit with Chaos Knight, which adds +1 melee and also has shield, with the same HP as Jared, so it will take the hits first.

But, the little hero of this story is ~~sneaking~~ squeaking in between the the two of them - because not only is it going to add +1 to all stats when it gets targeted first by the monsters, because I am using Lorna with Divine shield, it is going to take two hits "for free" - the first and the one after the resurrect (which happened to be the piercing hit of the enemy Scar), provided by Adelade. Then on the second death, it is going to give another +1 to Chaos and Jared. This also means that it pushes their stats up higher also, meaning they aren't getting targeted, leaving Chaos Knight to +1 the Melee and Jared to wreak havoc.

By the time the L2 Rat with no shield (Rust took it) and 2 HP (Blight took -1) was finally defeated, it had lived twice, taken four hits and added +2 to the stats of the adjacent cards, leaving them looking like this:

Yep, they are some meaty looking attacks, but what is also important in this round is the HP, because the monsters forced into opportunity, are going to target the lower HP first. With Xenith Monk at the front facing Chaos Agent with no attack, the backline is the target, with Adelade first and then Dumacke Exile, which is going to keep sneaking. But remember, that these back cards are yet to take a hit, so they still have a Divine Shield in place, as does the Monk at the front.

By the time the opponent Jared Scar got its first kill and had its stats bumped with Bloodlust, the field looked like this:

And as you can see, the tides have turned. Blight can now do very little and even if it goes Jared to Jared at this point, mine can take 2 full hits and survive, whilst that same two would be enough to clean the other up. Even at this point. But it doesn't matter, because before it would have a chance to even get to me, it would have to take out the Chaos Knight, and thanks to the stat bump, it can hold its own.

And Jared had its Divine Shield intact until the final enemy blow, where its counterpart finally had a chance to faceoff and give its best shot, doing zero damage.

The Rat and the Hippo

Venari Marksrat

Aayyyy!