Welcome back to my Diamond I Journey!
As it is still the start of the season, I have started to focus on my deck rather than play ranked mode. This is because all the people that were in Diamond has dropped to Gold and I am not ready to play them yet.
To ensure I am ready when I do decide to start battling for Gold to Diamond again, I decided it was time to look into Light cards that I have and upgrade my Little League and Low Mana strategy.
The strategy I currently use is good for silver, however that is not good enough for this trip we're taking.
Let's have a look at some of the cards I have upgraded and go into detail on why these were picked.
The first card I upgraded was the Vulguine.
I chose this card as I only had 1 BCX of him which was good for the scavenger ability but he would instantly die unless he was in-between other cards. I purchased an additional 11 cards ranging from level 1 to level 4 for $1.98.
This upgrade has allowed the card to gain the Enrage and Dodge abilities which will be extremely helpful in Little league as he has a good amount of damage which will increase if another monster hits him, and the dodge will help range and melee miss him on the battlefield.
For a 2 mana card, the Vulgine has a good chance of becoming a decent tank, however I still wouldn't put him in first position due to him only having 4 lives at the start of the battle. I will continue to put him second or third so he has the chance to gain lives before any of my opponents' monsters have the chance to attack him.
I noticed that I never purchased Time Mage with the rust which is always handy, especially for Kelya battles. Not only will she slow the speed Kelya gives to her monsters, but Time Mage will also remove the shield given to them. This makes Time Mage one of the few monster cards that counteracts with a summoner making their boosts worthless until she dies.
My final purchase (as I ran out of RC) was the Pelacor Conjurer. The reason I decided I needed him for my diamond team was because he gained 2 extra lives from my previous level 8 version, and he also gained phase. This means that magic and melee has more of a chance of missing this tank. I normally use him as my light tank as I normally include Time mage to slow the other team down and a healer to keep his lives intact while the rest of my team attacks.
In true Beccss fashion, I played one game and automatically dropped to Silver which wasn't such a bad thing as I was able to work out my light team and see what works well and what doesn't before getting back into Gold league.
Here are a few of my matches that worked very well.
My first light game in Silver was against 
This did worry me at first as I do not have any form of cleanse as I was hoping the Vulguine would gain enough lives from people dying before he does and also Dr. Blight afflicting and giving out a double poison. By also having magic reflect active, I am able to get the clense card to a lower HP before the poison hits which then helps my Vulguine. By also using Lorna as my summoner it allows my team to take a hit of damage without reducing their HP which gives me the advantage.
Having my monk at the back rather than the front did work in my favour as NFTdiver only had one sneak card that would hurt it. As they had no affliction, my monk would constantly heal and have the right amount of lives to stay alive during this game.
My thought process worked well with this one as my Monk was able to help me win this game. If you would like to watch the battle here is the link:
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_143679509979757461fdc26562aa3145&ref=beccss
The next game I had where I could work out my light strategy was against 
Here I decided to go with Dragon light as everyone started with Divine which means Lorna wasn't needed for this game. As there was no healing and also a low amount of mana, there was no need to bring in a healer or Uriel as this would go over my mana allowance.
By distributing my mana and not going above four really did help my team out. By using Quix as my summoner, I instantly made Kelya's extra speed invalid as I removed that before the game even began. However, I did have a disadvantage as I only had two cards attacking where Bronko had three.
With both teams 0's dying first allowed my scavenger card to gain two extra lives which will help once my tank dies. My sneak and opportunity cards did win the game for me as they worked really well together as one would remove the divine while the other would do the damage.
Originally I was quite worried about Bronkos sneak but once that card died it should have been a clean win.
You can watch this battle here: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_c1f9779ba2c4b185aca6eccac603de67&ref=beccss
Okay so this one isn't a low mana/ little league game but I couldn't not put it in! In this round I had 52 mana to play with while everyone had opportunity and blast.
When creating the team, the first thing I thought about was 'who still does something but will firm the blast?'. The only people who were available to me were Corsair Bosun who is the new Riftwatcher reach card for light and Venator Kinjo, who is the neutral card who slows everyone down and is camouflaged. As I forgot I was playing in Silver Kinjo wasn't able to slow everyone down but he still firmed the blast so half the job done!
I also decided to go with Uriel, Adelaide and Kralus as each one of these cards brings their own thing to my team. Although Uriel is charging for some rounds, he is doing 9x damage which then makes it 3x damage for the opponent's second monster. In this case the 3x damage wasn't doing much as Tide Biter doesn't get any hits from Blast. Adelaide is able to restore Uriel's shields so DiemondShark is constantly trying to get through them and she also brings someone on my team back to life. Kraus has magic, flying and healing so she can go straight through peoples shields and heal herself from any damage she may take.
My opponent, 
They also have Kinjo in-between Hellondale and Wave Brood for the blast damage which was also clever as most people don't think about a back one, only one at the front.
This is such a smart move as my team will be trying to kill Wave Brood whereas their team can focus on trying to attack as many of my monsters as possible.
This game was very intense as Adelaide died pretty much straight away, meaning that once Uriel had no more shields he would be relying on healing himself before enough damage happens.
I was able to get rid of the taunt but as expected, it was brought back to life meaning I had to get a magic shot on him. But as soon as he was dead again...Uriel died. Apart from Kralus I didn't have much going on which is why I thought the would be a loss for me. There were also a lot of misses on the Diemonshark which scared me too but having Dr Blight with poison did help the situation.
It was a very good game from my perspective and Splintertonks2 have a very good team which I can learn a lot from too.
Here is the game if you want to have a watch: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_de61559325307c50df9a6a2baf6efc84&ref=beccss
There were other light games that helped me move back into Gold III but I am not going to bore you with the ins and outs of teams that are pretty similar to the previous one I chose.
Here's hoping the next post I make will be on how the purchases helped me with my light team and the next splinter I will be upgrading.
Let me know what your favourite little league / low mana games are and why - would love to know what everyone else's go-tos are!
Until next time!!
Beccss