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 are looking at the Wands Out ruleset.
RULESET: Wands Out
Description:
Only units with magic attacks may be used
The Wands Out ruleset is, I must admit, one of my very least favourite rulesets, as it is rather restrictive and usually leaves you with a limited choice of cards. Even when there are other rulesets, it doesn’t usually help the situation, because not many other rulesets, like Melee Mayhem, Super Sneak or Target Practice, enable magic monsters. Another issue I see with this ruleset, is that you need monsters with high health to survive such battles, so you end up taking high mana monsters that are mostly clumsy and slow.
The best way to approach this ruleset is to start with a summoner that has magic buff or debuff, like Obsidian (+1 Magic), Alric (+1 Magic) or Thaddius (-1 Magic). Boosting you magic attack or restricting the magic attack of your opponent is a good place the start. Then look for monsters with the Silence ability to further reduce your enemy’s magic power. My favourites here are Phantom Soldier and Goblin Psychic. Next, look for monsters with Magic Reflect! Possible candidates here are Djinn Muirat, Haunted Spirit, Sea Wreck and again Prismatic Energy, among many others. Finally, look for monsters or summoners (Immortalis) with Void. Some options here are, Prismatic Energy, Oshannus, Baakjira, Bone Golem and many others (check out splintercards.com to scan all your options). So there are plenty of options, when it comes to Void monsters, which does help when playing with the Wands Out ruleset.
As you can see from the cards mentioned above, you have good chances to play a good battle when you can use the Earth and Death splinters. Beyond that, the options are not so good. The battle I am looking at more closely today is a Death match, with Magic debuff, Silence and Void.
The battle stats are the following:
RULESETS: Wands Out
MANA: 34
I was very happy to be able to use the Death splinters, as, according to my deck, I had the best options here for an all-Magic setting. With relatively high mana and Thaddius in mind, I went for the purple deck.
Here is the team I put together:
As discussed above, I needed Magic debuff summoner. THADDIUS was perfect for this and he is by far my favourite summoner generally. Having him a max level also enabled me to take the strongest possible monsters from the purple deck and available neutral cards.
PRISMATIC ENERGY was the most appropriate tank to use for the Wands Out ruleset, as it has both Magic Reflect and Void. Apart from such super anti-Magic defense abilities, it also has 3 Magic and 5 speed. What a weapon!
Next came PHANTON SOLDIER, with more great stats and Silence to debuff my opponent further. He also has Void, so second position was the perfect spot for him.
VENARI BONESMITH is here in third spot to accumulate some extra health with Life Leech to steer the ship in case the frontend collapsed, considering that all attack would go to the tank. Poison is a useful ability to inflict additional damage.
MAGI NECROSI is here to deliver 3 Magic at good speed. His abilities are ineffective here, as all attackers aim at the tank, so he was the best option in position four to try and make a difference for the overall offensive capabilities of my team.
The REVEALER usually plays in a different spot, mostly position 2. He has Stun and Reflection Shield, which are normally quite powerful, but here he will be at the backend with 2 Magic and slow speed to support the frontend and midfield.
So now let's take a closer look at the battle in focus today. My opponent came to the arena with an Immortalis team, giving all his monsters Void. Goblin Psychic with Silence was also in his team and there was a Taunt in the backline, protected by Triage. This looked to be a balanced fight. Let’s check out how it played out!
The first round was a series of magic ping-pong hits with Magic Reflect and Void, therefore a lot of big zeros appeared and progress on both sides was rather slow. VENARI BONESMITH delivered some Poison, Spirit Hoarder healed the Slipspawn with Triage and Goblin Psychic healed Magi of Chaos.
Round 2 was conducted in almost the same fashion with very little progress in finding an eventual winner with all the voiding, reflecting, healing and triaging. My hope was that the Slipspawn would eventually die of poison to make something happen in this battle while the Revealer stunned Magi of Chaos only to be healed again….
There was more of the same in rounds 3 and 4 and the Slipspawn finally departed in round 5. I was hoping things would move forward then but alas, it was still slow going…
Nothing much happened in round 5,6&7. Magi of Chaos finally departed in round 8….
Golbin Psychic took his leave in round 11…
Finally in round 12 it was all over…
Not a scratch on him!
This battle played out differently to what I expected. Although I raved on about it at the beginning of the post, that this ruleset frustrates me and that there are no great options to enable magic monsters, their defensive abilities Void and Magic Reflect make all the difference in the long run. My team inflicted a maximum magic debuff, which meant that nothing could get through my tank. I wonder how it would have played out without PRISMATIC ENERGY on my side...
I also didn't consider that there are some rare magic cards with Scatter Shot, that could perhaps cause an upset to the outcome, when you expect everything to only be directed at the tank.
Madcap Magus is one such card, a soulbound reward card. Mine is at level 4 and I am waiting for him to get to a higher level. At higher levels he gets Affliction and Dispel to make him very useful in different situations.
Seeyaround Splinterheads!
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