This week's Battle Mage rule set challenge was Heavy Hitters in which every monster gains the knockout ability, which is where melee and ranged monsters do double damage when an enemy monster is stunned!
Heavy Hitters general strategy....
There's not too much to say about this other than it's worth having monsters which stun on your side, and the right attacks to back these up with the double damage.
However I don't think it's worth going all-in because there is still only a 50% chance of a stun attack landing!
Other than that: there's no point playing monsters which have knockout in the first place!
A Stunning Win with Blast and Knockout....
The battle below shows a battle featuring the Water splinter in a comprehensive victory!
Mana and rulesets:
- Heavy Hitters
- 28 Mana
- Summoner - Yodin for the blast etc!
- Venari HeatSmith - a decent low mana tank with Void shield
- Chicken - snipe and opportunity soak
- Dwarven Wizard - snipe one
- Technozologist - for the stun
- Centaur - snipe 2
- Gem Meteor - scattershot~!
The battle...
- round 1 - I lose my Chicken, but that's what he's there for - Tusk doesn't attack because he's stunned!
- round 2 - I blast out the Radiate Brute, I lost my Gem Meteor and Centaur (ouch), Tusk again gets stunned so doesn't attack.
- round 3: I blast out the Tenyll Striker (a powerful card gone!)
- round 4 - I take out Tusk and The Snake in one hit, nice! BUT THEN LOSE MY Technoz dude.
- round 5 - I lose my Venari, but my final card standing: the Dwarven Wizard takes out my opponent's final two cards.
It's all over!
Final battle analysis
STUN was crucial to my victory here, principally because it stopped Tusk attacking, but also I did land one double damage hit on Tusk with Centaur, again crucial given the tight victory.
BLAST also plaid its role with those additional 2 damage points with each Snipe and Scattershot attacks chipping away.
Heavy Hitters final thoughts...
I think this battle kind of suggests relying on Stun is a risk, as it was very close despite my far superior summoner and my opponent IGNORING the ruleset altogether!