Hello Splinterlanders, it is time once again for the Battle Mage Secrets Challenge! In today's challenge we have the Even Stevens ruleset.
EVENS STEVENS
Only units with even mana costs may be used.
This rule does not apply to summoners.
This is a great ruleset and a reminder that it is basically necessary to have a diverse deck in order to have a large choice of cards to use in your battles. Here we can only use cards with even mana cost.
When diversifying your deck, it is a good idea to have at least one even and one uneven tank in each splinter with neutral backups. There is nothing worse than preparing for a battle and having no decent tank to place in first position. It is also a good idea to have at least 2 or three different rangers and magic attackers for both even and uneven mana cost at your disposal. Especially in high mana battles, having a good choice of monsters is essential for a successful fight on the battlefield.
The battle I have chosen to study today is a middle-high mana battle and shows how important neutral cards can be. If i hadn't had the extra choice from the neutral deck, I would probably not been able to put a competitive team together for this battle.
The feature battle in today's Challenge is a relatively high mana battle with two rulesets and two available splinters:
RULESETS: Ferocity and Even Stevens
MANA: 48
Here is the team I put together:
I use my favourite summoner, Conqueror Jacek, whenever I can. I always go for him when the red splinter is available, unless it is a very low mana battle. His abilities to give +2 speed to the team together with Scattershot and Piercing are great conditions for putting together a powerful lineup to send into battle.
The red splinter, at least the deck I have, does not give me many options in terms of tanks and those that I have either don't have enough health or are not leveled up high enough to be competitive in diamond league. So Arkemis the Bear is a great choice in these conditions. He has a ton of health and several great abilities.
Scavo Chemist is second in line to provide a buffer for the midfield and slow the enemy down. I also want him to remove any negative status effects on Arkemis.
Ferox Defender is one of the better soulbound reward cards and I like him for the Repair ability. Most other monsters with this ability are low mana with either weak attack or no attack. I also like the fact that he can act as a tank when need be.
Supply Runner is a regular inclusion in my teams. Swiftness and Strengthen are very useful abilities to give to the rest of the team and with 5 attack, he can do a lot of damage to the opposition.
Molten Ash Golem's most important contribution to the battle is the Demoralize ability besides his high health. The Close Range ability is also important when the frontline and midfield collapse. He can then fight on and protect Countess Sinash.
Countess Sinash is a perfect pick in a high mana game and likely to be the last one to go down. Her biggest argument beside Opportunity and Camouflage is speed. At 6 speed, she will surely fire first and get those obnoxious little low health attackers or otherwise disrupting the enemy attack strategy. Countess Sinash cleans up nicely there.
So after dicussion the team, let's look at how the battle plays out!
After all the buffs and debuffs, the battle began and both Supply Runner and the Countess took shots at the backline. Arkemis took a solid swing at the enemy tank, Molten Ash Golen took his shot and Arkemis did very well to collect three misses and only be hit by enemy magic attacks.
In Round 2, the archers continued to do good work and the two Arkemis tanks nibbled away at each other with Forcefield so they couldn't inflict great damage on each other. Enemy magic hit kept coming in and Arkemis got more misses before he finally went down and brought Scavo Chemist to the front, which was a bother...
Supply Runner made his first kill, the Countess did some damage with blast and Scavo Chemist collected 2 misses before also going down the magic attacks.
Ferox Defender was now in first position. My 3 archers scattered some arrows around the arena and the Defender reduced the enemy Arkemis to 3 health before almost going down to magic attacks.
It was 4 to 4 in Round 5. With an absolute speed advantage, Supply Runner and Countess Sinash took out two enemy monsters in a flash and we were on the home straight. Ferox Defender took his leave at the end of the round.
In Round 6 it was 3 to 2 but Supply Runner could no longer attack from first position. Countess Sinash did some valuable damage and so did Molten Ash Golem. Supply Runner then went to nirvana and it was 2 against 2.
The end was nigh but it still took till Round 9 to seal the deal. We went out for pizza and beer afterwards.
I hope you enjoyed reading my post and I will see you again soon for another Battle Mage Secrets Challenge!
WHAT IS SPLINTERLANDS?
Splinterlands is an autobattle digital card game on the Hive blockchain. The playing cards are NFTs, therefore they belong to you and you can trade, transfer or delegate them as you please. All you need to move cards and other ingame assets around is a Hive Keychain login. There are three types of battles you can play: ranked battles, brawls and tournaments. Every battle you win brings rewards, including SPS and/or loot chests containing cards, potions, packs and merits. The ingame currency is DEC and the governance token is SPS. For gladiator packs you need to earn merits through brawls and loot chests. Tournaments can bring you stacks of SPS if you play well. There are several third party card markets, including Peakmonsters.com and the best places to learn to play are PeakD and YouTube.
