Hi Splinterlanders, I hope this post finds you well! Today's feature is the summoner Aquatus, so it it also an in-depth discussion about speed and how you can use it to your advantage to win battles.
This water summoner comes with the Backfire ability to all monsters: when an enemy monster misses a melee or range attack, it take 2 damage. The water deck already has a number of high speed monsters, so it is fitting for Aquatus to be equipped with this ability. The Backfire ability is quite an uncommon ability, so using it for your team requires some strategic planing and there are a number of ways to maximize its effectiveness.
Apart from Aquatus, only 8 other monsters have the Backfire ability, mostly at higher levels:
When sending an Aquatus team into the field with a speed strategy, the big danger is enemy magic attack. You should avoid this approach when you anticipate your opponent using summoners like Obsidian or Alric. The ideal setting is taking advantage of the Lost Magic ruleset. Lost Legendaries and Rise of the Commons rulesets also give you good odds, as magic attack features increasingly with epic and legendary monsters.
Speed is a very effective weapon to increase your first-strike capability while at the same time encourage melee and range misses by enemy monsters. The Backfire ability will reward you when you can field a high speed team to confront the enemy in battle. There are 3 ways to increase your speed:
- Increase your speed while decreasing that of your opponent
When using pure speed to outrun your opponent, you calculate the miss differentials as follows: subtract the slower speed of the enemy monster from that of yours, add a 0 and that is your percentage probability to generate a miss. For example, when the enemy attacks with 2 speed and wants to hit your monster with 4 speed, the difference is 2+0 resulting in a 20% miss chance. You can maximize the standard speed difference in two ways: buff your monsters with the Swiftness ability, like Supply Runner at level 5 and Ruler of the Seas at level 2 and nerf your enemy with the Slow ability, like Creeping Ooze. I always try to put in both of them, as it makes an immediate difference of 20% across the board at the beginning of the battle.
- Use monsters with the Flying ability
The Flying ability adds a 25% miss chance to the existing speed difference when confronting a monster without flying. Using our standard speed difference example from above, when your monster also has flying, the miss chance increases to 45%. My favourite flying monsters are Runemancer Kye and Pelacor Bandit. The Runemancer doesn't have amazing speed stats but lots of shield and the Life Leech ability, which increases her health every round, making her a perfect damage dealer in the second position. The Pelacor Bandit, with his high speed and Sneak ability at the small cost of 3 mana, is a perfect monster to place in the backline.
- Use monsters with the Dodge ability
Dodge is similar to the Flying ability by also adding a 25% miss ratio to your monster when outrunning a melee or range attack. My favourites here are Water Elemental at level 5 and the Spirit Miner. With Dodge, Heal, 5 speed and 3 range, Water Elemental can be a lethal weapon and hard to hit. I usually place him in the last position behind the Pelacor Bandit. The Spirit Miner is also quite powerful and a good second position monster in low mana games.
Once you have looked at the technical aspects of generating speed, make sure you include fast tanks in your line-up, considering that typical frontline tanks are relatively slow melee customers. It doesn't get you great results when you use fast midfields and backlines, while your tanks lag behind and get dusted early. Leaving the best till last, the water deck has 2 tanks that suit the speed trap strategy perfectly: Phantom of the Abyss and Serpent of Eld.
Phantom of the Abyss has both Flying and Dodge, giving it a 50% buff at the outset. Add the speed difference and the buff/nerf contributed by the Supply Runner and Creeping Ooze, this formidable tank is almost impossible to hit. So going back to our calculation when a monster with 2 speed and no extra abilities attacks your Phantom, the miss ratio is up to a possible 90 whopping percent! Serpent of Eld is also very fast and with added shield, he can hold the fort for some time, while your midfields and backlines outpace the enemy. These 2 tanks are so powerful, that I don't feel the need to level them up, so I keep them at level 1.
Before we take a look at a battle to illustrate the power of speed and show you the Aquatus speed trap, we need to keep in mind that magic cancels all these calculations and when your opponent fields a magic team, your chances of victory are greatly reduced. Furthermore, the True Aim ability of an opponent archer also cancels speed calculations and will not generate a miss. We also need to consider that your speed differentials are probabilities and not guaranties. I have had plenty of speed fights where a much slower opponent still managed to wipe me out. So basically, the Aquatus speed trap, with the aim of generating missed by your opponent, remains a mathematical gamble but man does it look good when my opponent can't hit my team and wipes himself out with backfire instead!
Here is the perfect battle to show you the Aquatus Speed Trap: 52 mana and these 3 rulesets: Melee Mayhem, Heavy Hitters and Lost Legendaries.
First of all, I jumped at the opportunity to use two fast tanks followed by Arkemis in third position to exploit Melee Mayhem and protect my team with extra shield. With lots of mana to spare, I fielded my favourite archers: the obligatory Supply Runner, the Water fundamental Elemental and a killer level 7 Coastal Nymph with Affliction and Scattershot. Talk about loading my bases! At the other end, my opponent banked on a team with no speed, no magic and no stealth. The actual fight was a bit of a disappointment...
The result was overwhelming: my entire team struck first, generated 3 backfires and my boy Diemonshark threw in a trample for good measure. I think with a team half this fast I still would have won the battle due to a fundamental mistake made by my opponent: he had no strategy. Funnily enough, all three backfires were generated by the Diemonshark, who has neither Flying nor Dodge, which shows how powerful standard high speed monsters can be in any kind of circumstances.
If you're into speed monsters get into Aquatus!
