Hi everyone! It's time for the a weekly battle challenge, and the challenge for this week is Legionnaire Alvar.
About the Monsters
Legionnaire Alvar
Legionnaire Alvar is a Legendary card which is great at level 1 with 6 Health, 8 Shield, 2 Melee Attack and the Void Armor ability. It gains the Giant Killer, Demoralize and Death Blow abilities at level 2, 3 and 4 respectively. I’m using the basic level 1 version.
Ruleset
Close Range: Ranged attacks may be used in the first position in battle
Only the Fire, Life, Death and Dragon Splinters can be used
Mana Cap: 56
Format: Modern
Cards & Line Up
Summoner
vs
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| Position | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Legionnaire Alvar | It's chosen as the main tank as it has a huge amount of shield and a fairly decent of health. |
| 2 | Void Dragon | A good Dragon card with decent amount of Health (7), with the Flying and Void ability. Its high speed makes it great for dodging some attacks. |
| 3 | Chaos Dragon | A good Dragon card with high Health (10), 4 Shield, with the Flying and Scattershot ability. Great for such rulesets where no abilities can be used. |
| 4 | Adelade Brightwing | A card with decent Magic damage and health, and is used to bypass shields with its attack. |
| 5 | Runic Skyclaw | It has a good Ranged damage(3), and high speed (6) for dodging. It has Snipe and Flying but is of no use in this ruleset. |
| 6 | Prismologist | It has good Ranged damage(3), and can still attack in position 1 based on this ruleset. |
Strategy
The ruleset for Back to Basics meant that abilities are useless in this battle. As such, the best strategy to take is to use cards with high health, high shields as much as possible, and cards from position 2 onwards should either be a Magic or Ranged Card. The Close Ranged ruleset meant that Ranged cards are of no difference to Melee cards. As such, I chose to use the Dragon Splinter as I had a fair number of cards with high health and shields, with the Lift Splinter as the supporting Splinter with high Ranged attacks. So my strategy was to place Legionnaire Alvar in the first position to absorb most of the damage, and the rest of the deck with Ranged and Magic Monsters.
I must say that this fight was not too difficult, as the opponent made the mistake of using too many Melee cards. While they were high in health, they were not optimised as they couldn't attack while the main tank is still alive, and the damage output was limited to 4 cards. Legionnaire Alvar took on a fair bit of damage before it was killed off and together with Void Dragon and Chaos Dragon were key in tanking and dodging most of the damage. As such, I ended the battle with 3 cards left.
Thoughts on the cards
I think that Legionnaire Alvar is a great card to have, and is a great tank against Magic attacks, especially with the combination of its high shield and the Void Armor ability. If it is used in combination with cards with the Resurrect or Repair ability, it's sure to frustrate the hell out of the opponent.