Hi everyone! It's time for the weekly battle challenge, and this week is the start of a new contest called Battle Mage Secrets. The first challenge of this contest is the Aim True Ruleset.
About the Ruleset
Aimless
The Aimless ruleset states that "All monsters have the scattershot ability", and it mainly applies to ranged and magic attacks. I do believe that it doesn't apply to melee attacks unless it's stacked with the Melee Mayhem ruleset. The Taunt ability also does not work in this ruleset, and ranged and magic attacks are all rather random, and the resulting battle can be unpredictable.
Battle Ruleset(s)
Details of my battle with this ruleset is as follows.
Going the Distance: Only Monsters with Ranged attack may be used in battles
Aimless: All Monsters have the Scattershot ability
Only the Life, Death and Dragon Splinters can be used
Mana Cap: 43
Format: Modern
Cards & Line Up
Summoner
vs
Summoner: Quix the Devious - This reduces the Speed and Ranged Attack of the opponent’s deck by 1.
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| Position | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Queen of Chaos | I used it as the main tank as it has a large amount of health. Its Close Range ability is useless due to the Back to Basics ruleset. |
| 2 | Zyvax Vuul | I used it second position it has a fair amount of health, and the Basic to Basics ruleset meant that it can attack every round. |
| 3 | Dark Ferryman | It has low damage but a decent amount of health. With the Aimless ruleset, it helps to spread the damage around |
| 4 | Dhampir Stalker | It has 3 Ranged attack, and has the True Shot ability. Again, abilities are useless in this battle, but it will help take opponents out faster. |
| 2 | Runic Skyclaw | It has 3 Ranged attack too and has 3 Shields. It is also fast with 6 Speed, which should give me a slight advantage |
| 3 | Soul Strangler | I had on 3 points left to assign and limited cards to choose from, so this was the best option with 2 Ranged damage. |
Strategy
The combination of rulesets here meant that:
- All Monster abilities are useless here.
- Only ranged monsters can be used.
- Attacks will be random.
Given these 3 combinations, the first card in the deck will be useless in terms of attacks. I still opted for my highest health one as the first card, because if it gets killed fast, my second card will then be useless. My strategy was to also use Quix the Devious as my summoner, as it immediately reduces the attack of my opponent's entire deck by 1, and also slows the monsters down. Then I tried to use cards with a good amount of damage and health. As attacks are random, the attacks will be fairly (sort of) spread around, and higher health will provide better survivability.
The opponent used 3 cards with only 2 health, which wasn't that great an idea. With a faster attack speed, I had an advantage and made quick work against my opponent. Luck played a part too as the opponent didn't manage to take out any of my cards before I took out his entire backline. But I think my strategy did put me at better odds of winning!
Thoughts on the Aimless Ruleset
As the Aimless ruleset turns all Ranged and Melee to random attacks, a good strategy to use is to have high damage and high health cards where possible. This helps to spread the damage evenly out amongst the deck and hopefully luck will play a part in helping you win.
Another good strategy is use ignore the ruleset and use Melee cards entirely! As this will give you some control over where the attacks will land, based on your Monster's ability. Concentrating the attacks on a particular part of the deck (e.g. backline) will help to take the opponents cards out faster than he can do yours.