When it comes to the medium mana rulesets like this one with only twenty five mana available I am always hesitant to play a seven mana summoner like Eternal Tofu. In this case though we have a Heavy Metal and Super Sneak ruleset combo in effect. This makes it really likely that my opponent is going to have a melee heavy team.
With that in mind I decided to play Eternal Tofu in this twenty five mana battle. Another advantage besides the obvious thorn damage to all melee attackers is that Eternal Tofu boosts all friendly monsters with two health and gives three monsters divine shield. The health boost is nice because at twenty five mana battle it is hard to put even four monsters on the field with a decent health.
The Strategy
As you can see from the image above my strategy for this battle is completely counter-melee strategy.
My main monster that is supposed to do the work is Skyspire Leopard. I don't get to see this older Rebellion reward card very much on the battle field in Modern. That is too bad, because this is an excellent monster to play in a battle like this. Skyspire Leopard has five melee damage making him the biggest hitter on my team, he also comes with a base health of seven and base shield of four. Both of those are great for the defense against sneak attackers.
Skyspire Leopard also has a very useful anti-sneak ability: Retaliate. I am not sure it will play in really well as his speed is only two, but if he hits on a retaliate that would be a great bonus. I placed this unit in the very back of my lineup to defend against super sneak attacks.
In front I played Ironwing Juggernaut which is not a very usual play for me as I tend to hide this monster in the second or third position. But mana is low and this would have to do as my main tank. He does come with three melee damage and base health of seven as well as five shield.
In the second position I played another major melee damage dealer: Thanalorian Blade. This card comes with a decent four melee damage and six health and one shield for six mana. But where she shines is her abilities, especially her Execute ability where if the target has a health of two or less she can strike a second time making her an eight melee damage dealer per turn if lucky.
And finally the fourth monster on the field is Palimpsest Prophet which is another new Conclave Arcana reward card that I managed to max out already in addition to Ironwing Juggernaut that I played in the first position. This card has a decent melee damage of three, comes with five shield and four base health points. This is my secondary anti-sneak tank.
The Battle
Let's see how this battle has turned out... In the first round we were able to take out the rear monster on our opponent's team, but our Skyspire Leopard has take on a lot of damage and lost all of his shields and is down to only five health at the start of round two.
At the start of the second round our Skyspire Leopard really proven his worth by scoring two retaliates on Apollo99's main damage dealer and took it out with just retaliates while succumbing to the strikes.
In round three our team scored a lot of damage against our opponent and at the start of round four it is pretty clear that our victory is imminent!
And just like that at the very start of round four we take down the last remaining monster on our opponent's team and we score a nice win a the Modern Champion level and with it over twenty two SPS tokens!
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