This week's Battle Mage rule set challenge was Lost Magic in which no magical monsters may be used.
Lost Magic general strategy....
Well without magical cards we are left with a choice of ranged, melee and no attack cards...
So this means choosing summoners and monsters which either buff or debuff either ranged or melee.
As with any of these limited choice rulesets we quickly get involved in double think where we try and anticipate what we're going to come up against and defend against it, and then think about countering the counter by not doing the 'obvious thing'.
One thing you can reasonably expect is shields in this ruleset, and repair, so BLAST and PIERCING are good for breaking down those.
In terms of attack I personally just pick either an attacking ranged or melee lineup and go with that!
So we have Yodin for ranged, or Selena of course, I don't like to use debuffing summoners, its too much of a dice roll, and then Tarza ... FIRE seems to be a good rule set here!
Of course LIFE could also work well with its focus on shields and repair - CHANSEUS maybe?!?
An alternative is a defensive strategy, where you play low attack and high heal and shields/ repair and where you let your opponent where himself out with return fire or thorns.
Lost Magic battle exemplar
The battle below shows a battle featuring the Water splinter in a comprehensive victory!
Mana and rulesets:
- 29 Mana
- Lost magic only
** Summoner - Yodin** - for ranged and blast!
- Forgotten One - a nicely shielded tank with retaliate and immunity!
- Chicken - blast and snipe and opportunity soak
- Scorch Fiend - 0 mana filler, another tank!
- Mantoid - Snipe one
- Centaur - Snipe two
- Lava Spider - snipe three!
The battle...
- round 1 - CARNAGE - Forgotten One's retaliate triggers and blast takes out the monkey, right after the Mantoid's snipe attack's blast out both the Ooze and Spark Pixies - OUCH for my poor opponent, half his line up gone! half way through the first round! Then he losses his other ranged card and Fineus to my other two snipers!
- Round 2 - It's all over - My immense attack, now focused on the LAVA finishes him off.
Final battle analysis
Well I got that right! Just pure blast killing the back row entirely in round one, that's a result!
Of course the retaliate played a role too.
It's interesting to note that my opponent got it wrong in that he was fully expecting me to play with shields, hence his choice of summoner, whereas I didn't bother with shields essentially neutralising that buff!
Lost magic final thoughts...
BLAST AWAY!