Hi everyone! It's time for the weekly battle challenge for Battle Mage Secrets. The challenge this week is the Counterspell Ruleset.
About the Ruleset
Counterspell
The Counterspell ruleset states that "All Monsters have the Magic Reflect ability", and it means that magic monsters are at a disadvantage in this ruleset as half of their attack damage (rounded up) will be reflected back to them. As an example, if the monster has 3 Magic attack, it will actually take 2 Magic damage back.
Battle Ruleset(s)
Details of my battle with this ruleset is as follows.
Only the Water, Earth, Life, Death and Dragon Splinters can be used
Mana Cap: 39
Format: Modern Tournament, Bronze League, Chaos Legion set only, no legendary summoners
Cards & Line Up
vs
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| Position | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Diemonshark | I used it in first position it has a fair amount of shield and health, and which makes it a very good tank. It also has the Trample ability which allows it to make a second attack if it kills off a monster. |
| 2 | Flying Squid | I used it second position it has a fair amount of health and attack, and has the Reach ability, which allows it to attack from this position. |
| 3 | Disintegrator | It's here to reduce the melee attack of the opponent with its Demoralize ability, since the opponent is more likely to use melee and ranged cards. |
| 4 | Kulu Swimhunter | It has 2 damage and is fairly low cost with 4 mana. |
| 5 | Deeplurker | It has a fair amount of melee attack, and I'm trying to pick off the opponent's weaker monsters first with its Opportunity ability. |
| 6 | Venari Marksrat | I used it in the last position so that Deeplurker's stats will be boosted if the opponent uses a backline attack. |
Strategy
The ruleset here meant that Magic monsters will take damage everytime they do damage and the opponent is less likely to use Magic monsters as a result of the ruleset. This does not mean that the opponent will definitely not use Magic monsters though.
Given these considerations, I thought that my best strategy is the use a mix of melee and ranged monsters with a good amount of health, so that my monsters won't get picked off quickly even if the opponent uses magic monsters. As such, I felt that using the Water Splinter would be a good match for this strategy, as it has a good mix of cards with high health and good damage. As such, I have the Diemonshark and Fly Squid to tank and deal damage to the opponent's tank and Deeplurker to pick off the weaker cards first.
The opponent chose a similar strategy with the Dragon and Death Splinter, and used an irritating combination of Ravenhood Warden to add shields and Scavo Hireling to repair shields. This made the Cursed Windeku quite lethal with its Thorns ability and my melee-heavy attack. This was a close fight and fortunately for me, my last card standing was a melee one versus a ranged one for my opponent, and that allowed me to win this battle by a hair.
Thoughts on the Counterspell Ruleset
As the Counterspell ruleset makes magic monsters less likely to be used, it's more important to ensure that you have higher health and shields to defend against the physical attacks. Skills like Shields and Repair Shields come in really handy in such rulesets to improve the survivability of your monsters. So do skills like Dodge and Flying to a smaller extent as these have an element of luck in them.