Hey Splinterheads, I hope you are all having a great Splinterday!
The Battle Mage Secrets Challenge is a wonderful and effective way to get to know rulesets better and improve your gameplay. Not only do you study and analyse rulesets and example battles closely, you also get to read and see what other Splinterheads are thinking and doing with their little darlings on the battlefield.
With many battles now being comprised of 3 rulesets, it is important to know your rulesets well, how they relate to other rulesets and what corresponding cards work well to either exploit the ruleset or defend against it. We have also seen a number of new rulesets coming into the game lately and a bunch of new monsters have received new abilities.
The game is becoming more and more technical, leaving you with ever decreasing chances of winning battles with sheer brute force and overkill strategies. All these reasons and the clear challenge that players (and bots unfortunately) are getting „smarter“ all the time underscore the need to know rulesets very well. The Battle Mage Secrets Challenge helps and motivates us players further to do just that.
In today's challenge we have the Little League ruleset.
Little League
Description:
Only units and summoners with a mana cost of 4 or less may be used.
Little League is one of my very favourite rulesets. Just like with Even Stevens and Odd Ones Out, this ruleset restricts you to using only certain cards. Here with Little League you can only use cards up to a mana cap of 4. As with the other rulesets mentioned, certain cards come to mind immediately when the rulesets appear. Considering other rulesets coming with it, such as Taking Sides (neutral cards may not be used), the selection of deck and general strategy quickly comes to mind, because Little League is basically a gameplay category of its own, for which you should always be prepared.
Neutral cards are sometimes not permitted, so it is necessary to study your deck to see which ones can field a complete team of 4 mana cards and under. In my deck it is the purple deck followed by the red deck.
I have two absolute favourite Little League candidates in the purple deck. One is a soulbound reward card, RAVENHOOD WARDEN
and the other one is a gladiator, TRAPP FALLOWAY
The battle stats are the following:
RULESETS: Little League, Reverse Speed and Meelee Mayhem
MANA: 55
The combination of these three rulesets is very interesting. Reverse Speed can mess up strategic choices but Meelee Mayhem can make up for it, as it allows meelee monsters to attack from any position.
The mana cap is irrelevant here, as it is greater than 24, therefore not restrictive in term of mana and the available splinters are blue, green, purple and white. I am happy that the death deck is available in this battle and that the neutral cards can be used, so I am going with a purple team.
Here is the team I put together:
THADDIUS BROOD is my standard summoner for death matches. In Little League he can be very powerful, as small cap monsters rarely have more than 2 attack points and taking 1 magic away can sometimes make all the difference.
VENARI MARKSRAT is making his presence felt all over Splinterlands. Using the Martyr ability to increase the power of adjacent monsters on either side can be very effective in various scenarios, including Earthquake, Poison and Rebirth. He is certainly also very useful in Little League, as most small cap monsters don't have big stats and Martyr increases their stats all round.
CRYPT BEETLE is my number one tank in Little League. No other small cap tank has Shield and at level 8 his stats are very respectable, to be further increased when the rat selflessly bites the dust. He is a very stubborn little customer, giving teams good odds to score wins.
The purple deck offers me a number of good small cap monsters, but another reason I like using the death deck in Little League is that several of my little darlings are at max gold level, giving them above-average stats and a number of additional abilities, like Affliction, which is strategically very important in Little League to thwart that neutral Heal tank. Besides Affliction, SHADOW SNITCH has 4 speed, Reach and 3 meelee, giving him superb stats.
ANIMATED CORPSE is a great tank and also a great card to play in Little League with Melee Mayhem. He will perform well with 3 speed and 3 meelee and above all, 7 health is supreme in Little League. He is in the middle of the pack to act as a backup tank, should the frontline collapse.
SOUL STRANGLER is an amazing card at level 6. 4 range with 3 speed is hard to match among 3 mana cards and is therefore the star of Little League in my books. His health is low but the heavy damage he can inflict is very much worth the inclusion in the linepup.
RAVENHOOD WARDEN, as mentioned before, is one of my favourite soulbound cards and features a lot in my death matches. His Protect ability is very effective in protecting my little darlings and from experience, Little League battles tend to be settled quickly, therefore the extra protection can often be a gamechanger.
So now let's take a closer look at the battle in focus today. My opponent also opted for a death team. His summoner is at level 5, so the lineup will have similar power to mine. At first glance, the order seems a little strange, with his Shadow Snitch in position 3, not able to attack for at least the first round or 2. Also, Venari Spellsmith seems to be an odd inclusion here, but let's see what happens:
VENARY MARKSRAT left the scene early to give CRYP BEETLE his prescribed boost and enable SHAWOW SNITCH to fire from the second position. The giant Scorpion copped a hit from SOUL STRANGLER and died quickly.
The second round was uneventful. SOUL STRANGLER got his second scalp. The Riftwing went down but so did CRYPT BEETLE.
It all still looked pretty even in round 3 but when ANIMATED CORPSE pounded Shadow Snitch and Verari Spellsmith was reduced to 2 health, it looked good for a win.
Round 4 was the beginning of the end for my opponent and yet another good Little League result to come.
Ready for the war dance...
ANIMATED CORPSE delivered the final blow.
This battle was another show of force by my purple deck and yet another point to the Little League tally. When you select a powerful and hard hitting team, you chances of success with the little guys is high. Firepower is the key, as low mana cards don't usually hit hard.
Seeyaround Splinterheads!
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