The theme for the current "Battle Mage Secret" challenge is Equaliser ruleset this time! This means all units start with the same health, based on the highest health on either team.. As always, the key to winning Equaliser battles will always be the using cards with low HP and/or high armor. It's not always easy to get the specific ruleset, but if you play hard enough, you definitely can find one!
For this ruleset, it's not too difficult to manage but of course, that depends what other rulesets it is paired with.
Anyway, I thought it would be still be interesting to introduce some useful cards and show how their strengths can be maximised especially with a particular ruleset. In this post, the featured card is a special Common Reward, Ever-Hungry Skull!
I am using it at Level 3, which is the base for a Gold Foil copy. At Level 3, it packs 8 Armor and 1 HP, making it a very strong card for Equaliser battles or battles which disallow the use of Magic cards. What's more, pairing it with Astral Entity will surely give the opponent a hard time with Resurrect.
As usual, here's the lore for Ever-Hungry Skull for your reading interest:
Skulls of slain vampires sometimes become re-animated with necromancy, allowing the spirit of the former vampire to possess it once again. This is used for dark rituals, for information gathering, and even by necromancers with a macabre sense of humor. The souls are not happy with their situation, but often seek to turn the tide in their favor. They will go along with what their captor asks in hopes of returning to a full body.
These skulls still feel the bloodthirst they did in their lives, driving them to be very ruthless and foul-tempered. They have no empathy and can prove very cunning in their strategies and words. For instance, the necromantic power flowing through the skull left a mark and each one is protected by a nearly imperceptible magic shield. When harmed by any weapon, the skull lashes out with the magic used to create it to harm the attacker. The necromancers that keep these skulls must walk a fine line between harming them and distrusting anything the skull says.
Battle Type & Team Lineup
| Position | Card/Level | Mana |
|---|---|---|
| Summoner | Astral Entity | 6 |
Astral Entity is my default Death summoner these days because of how strong his abilities are. In this battle, he gets chosen once again because Death cards generally benefit a lot from Equaliser battle due to their low HP.
| Position | Card/Level | Mana |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ever-Hungry Skull | 5 |
Ever-Hungry Skull packs a huge amount of armor and just 1 HP, making it one of the perfect cards to use for Equaliser battles. With Astral Entity's Resurrect, hopefully this means the opponent will need to go through the huge amount of armor twice.
| Position | Card/Level | Mana |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Creeping Ooze | 1 |
A filler card to take advantage of the Equaliser ruleset, as well as to buy time for cards in the backline.
| Position | Card/Level | Mana |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Chaos Agent | 1 |
A filler card to take advantage of the Equaliser ruleset, as well as to buy time for cards in the backline.
| Position | Card/Level | Mana |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | Venari Bonesmith | 4 |
Venari Bonesmith is also a key beneficiary of Equaliser battles given that the Life Leech will start from a higher base, making it even higher to take down.
| Position | Card/Level | Mana |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Life Sapper | 3 |
Similarly the same strategy is used for Life Sapper as well, which also has the Life Leech ability.
- Pre Battle: My opponent came in with a Level 2 Waka Spiritblade! That's like almost 1500 USD!? My lineup was decent but I definitely knew my chances of winning were very slim.
- Round 1: Round 1 was okay as every card had 8 HP and was not going to go down that easily. I did ok, except that the Poison will start to affect my team in the next round.
- Round 2: Ever-Hungry Skull's armor wasn't useful in this battle because my opponent was dealing Magic damage, and Poison damage hit HP directly as well. Ever-Hungry Skull went down swiftly but got resurrected in this round.
Round 3: It's somewhat amazing I was still sticking around after 3 rounds. The Poison from Waka Spiritblade was just overwhelming and my opponent had strong cards too. Was down to 3 cards.
Round 4: I actually wondered if I stood a chance if my opponent didn't use Waka Spiritblade... Right now, it's just a matter of time that I will lose this battle.
- Round 5: And the battle is over!
If you are interested to watch the battle, you can find it here.
Post Battle
Did my strategy work? I fielded a team as strong as I could, so I guess it's not really a matter of strategy. With a Level 2 Legendary Summoner that cost almost USD 1500, it would be embarrassing if my opponent actually lost this? Hahaha.
What's the Battle Mage Secret? You can't win every battle. Haha. Sometimes you just have to accept losing against these overpowered teams and move on to the next one! :)
So that's all I have! What are your takeaways from this battle? Feel free to comment below, as I am always keen to learn and improve!
As always, thanks for reading and have a pleasant day ahead!
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