Hi battle mages, I hope you are having a great Splinterday! Today's Battle Mage Secrets Challenge is the Counterspell ruleset.
RULESET: Counterspell
Description:
All monsters receive the Magic Reflect ability at the start of the battle. Enemy monsters that attack with magic receive damage back.
There are three rulesets that punish or inhibit the three attack types: Thorns return damage to melee, Return Fire returns damage to archers and Counterspell returns magic attack. When these rulesets come up, it is a good idea to avoid that specific attack type and beef up the other two. On the other hand, it becomes easier to anticipate the attack type and/or the strategy used by your opponent.
Whenever I play this ruleset, I have two things in mind: can I beef up melee/archers and can I increase shield protection? Since getting my newest edition to my team of summoners, Astral Entity, I have been seizing every opportunity to try out my strategies with this summoner and the Counterspell ruleset is perfect to work with. I will elaborate on the strategy as I introduce the team and show the battle.
For the battle to follow, I was very happy that the Death deck was available and had a pretty high mana cap of 44. Counterspell was the only ruleset, so I was able to concentrate on a specific strategy to exploit the probable lack of magic monsters in the opposition team.
Here is the team I put together:
In this battle, I want to show you my Astral Ghoul strategy. As the name spells out, the two main protagonists are ASTRAL ENTITY and my favourite taunt monster from the Death deck. ASTRAL ENTITY has Dodge, takes 2 shield and resurrects the first monster on my team with one health. This is a really cool set of abilities, providing me with extra miss chances, greater attack capabilities by reducing the opposition’s shield defenses and the resurrection of one of my little darlings.
The aim of this strategy is to make sure, that a specific monsters will be resurrected, hence the NIGHT GHOUL with his taunt ability in first position. He comes with 5 shield so once resurrected, he has total of 6 more hitpoints, provided there are no nasty little magic enemies around. In a Counterspell ruleset, I anticipate that there will be none of these around. NIGHT GHOUL is costly and the strategy basically puts everything on one card, pun intended, so this can only work with rulesets like Counterspell, or even better, with Lost Magic.
With 17 of 44 mana already spent, I wanted to make sure, that I had the hardest hitting midfield possible and looked for ways to reduce my opponent’s attack capabilities. SILENT SHA’VI, with 5 speed and Dodge was to attack the rear and play a protective role ahead of a set of archers to follow. 3 melee was plenty to shake up the tail end of the other team and the 5 mana cost left me with room to move when selecting the remaining damage dealers.
After selecting my archers, I had one mana left and it went, of course, to the CREEPING OOZE. He does great to ooze down the opposition, is well protected and provided another buffer hit before archers could move to the front. So third spot was his position. As a Wild League player, I always keep the option in the back of my mind to reserve a mana for either the OOZE or the CHICKEN.
Next comes my favourite Beta Death card: OCTOPIDER. He hits hard, has good health, and most importantly, he has Demoralize. This was significant in this battle environment, because melee and range were going to dominate this battle. He has a very good track record in my battle history, so I knew that this guy would not go down without a fight. As all other midfielders were stealth fighters, OCTOPIDER was to work the frontline tank and decimate its health.
LIRA THE DARK comes next. Normally I rely on her Swiftness at level 2 but she does well in Silver bouts as well. She is super fast with 6 speed and most likely shoots first at the beginning of each round. This is lethal with Opportunity, so she is a must inclusion in the team.
This leaves my favourite neutral card, MANTOID, to be the third stealth fighter in the team. It is such a powerful card, that I wrote this post about how much I value this monster . This card also has an incredible track record in my battle history. Speaking from experience, teams without a sniper are automatically disadvantaged. So putting MANTOID in last spot was natural selection. So this is the team and now let’s look at the battle
At first glance, the only serious foe was Oshannus. Axemaster was a tough competitor, too. Lira started off by toasting the that rock little monster at the back and the rest of the round was basically a serous pounding of my GHOUL. MANTIOD missed Oshannus and the GHOUL was down to 4 health and no shield.
Axemaster was wiped out by none other than LIRA at the beginning of the second round and the equation looked better already. NIGHT GHOUL went down and returned with 1 health and 5 shield and lived to see another round.
Oshannus cleaned up the NIGHT GHOUL and it looked a little shaky there for a moment. Then OCTOPIDER wasted Diemonshark and the tables turned again.
Then it was LIRA’s third kill in the fourth round, proud of you girl! The other stealth rangers also made devastating contributions to the demise of the opposition.
LIRA’s fourth victim went down and Oshannus was the only man left standing.
At the beginning of the sixth round, LIRA…
Looking back at this battle, a number of factors led my to victory. The ASTRAL/GHOUL strategy worked out well. Speed differentials, Lira’s first strike assaults and a stroke of luck when Octopider was missed, all came together to bring my team out on top. It was a strategic gamble, though. Oshannus, with his Void ability was immune to Counterspell, repelling any punishment for being a magic attacker. I need to keep this in mind.
I hope you enjoyed this little battle today and I will see you around the Splinterverse.
