This week's Battle Mage rule set challenge was Equaliser in which all monsters receive the health of the highest health monster on either team.
Equaliser general strategy....
There are a few basics to get right I think, not necessarily in this order:
- Play the lowest health monsters possible to take advantage of all the other bonuses, and leave open the opportunity for your opponent to gift you higher health. I mean think about it, it's always a trade off, why opt for higher health at the expense of attack power or buffs when you've nothing to gain?
- Play strengthen as much as possible, or summoners with plus one health, this doesn't help your opponent.
- Heal and triage are essential, they are worth more with higher health.
- Scavenge and Life Leach are great - these battles tend to last longer.
- Affliction and poison also, especially affliction, and for that matter: cleanse!
- I generally find splitting attacks into snipe and sneak and so on doesn't work - all monsters hitting one monster, otherwise it takes too long to take anything down!
Equaliser battle exemplar
The battle below shows a battle in which my opponent gets it ALL wrong!
Ruleset = just equaliser an 30 MANA.
Summoner - Lilly for the plus one health and triage
- Flesh Golem - higher health than I'd have liked, but a decent self heal option as tank
- Chicken - now high health soaker
- Serpentine Mystic - for affliction
- Goblin Psychic - tank heal and decent attack
- Mittica Headhunter - my main attack card
- Brownie - sneak soak and swiften.
The battle...
- round 1 - we trade blows for no losses, it's usually the way with high health
- round 2 - I take out my opponent's Cruel Sethropod. Already, see: all wrong!
- Round 3 - I take out Osheanus
- Round 4 - I lose my Stone Golem, damn!
- Round 6 - The Deeplurker goes
- Round 8 - The Archer goes, I'm safe!
- Round 12 - it takes me another four rounds to finish off my opponent, and I'm 5/6 at the end.
Final battle analysis
A great example of me getting it mostly right and my opponent getting it entirely wrong, with no heal and splitting his attacks.
In retrospect I wouldn't have gone for Lilly with the Camo, it would have been better to play life splinter with shields and triage and just let 3-4 damage from opportunity be wasted by triaging it every round.
I didn't need affliction as my opponent played no heal.
I was even unlucky with my opponent's shields - my 4 damage from Mitica usually hit shields, but I still crushed my opponent!
Equaliser final thoughts...
Follow as much of the above advice as possible!