Welcome back to our Weekly Battle Mage Secrets!
This week, we are featuring the Equalizer ruleset.

Equalizer:

All units start with the same health, based on the highest health on either team.
Buffs and debuffs are done afterward - this impacts base health.

Equalizer does exactly what it says, it tries to level the playing field as much as possible, at least health-wise. The second point is extremely important to take note of though since that is where you can potentially get the leg up against your opponent.

Synergies
Void Armor	Void Armor gives us a clear advantage against the enemy because base HPs are mostly equal barring any extra buffs or debuffs outside the initial total HP calculation. Ensuring more survivability will be key as the playing field is a lot more level.
Scavenger	Scavenge is also important in rulesets like these because these matches tend to get drawn out because even low mana monsters potentially get a ton of health. Having a monster with scavenge in the backline makes it an important tank when it takes to the front position.
Life Leech	Similar to the concept of Scavenge, Life Leech benefits well from this ruleset. Having an increase to HP as the first few monsters tank can potentially have you ending up with a monster tank by the time this monster gets to the front line.

Counters
Weaken	I mentioned previously that the buff or debuff applies after the ruleset is added which means that if you have a monster on your lineup with weaken, you essentially start with 1 more health in total per monster. This might not seem like much but could be the difference in a win or loss.
Redemption	Redemption is often overlooked since it seems a bit underwhelming to deal 1 damage per monster on death but since the HP for all monsters are more or less level, this can give a significant boost overall for your lineup. Exploding Rats is one of the big monsters to use for this ruleset as it has blast, high speed and ends up with redemption.
Demoralize	The third one can be any combination of Demoralize/Headwinds/Silence. Anytime you are able to decrease damage dealt to you in an same HP ruleset will have you deal more damage while taking less. Any combination of this will work and you'll need to adapt depending on the other partnered rulesets.

This week's feature is from a regular match in Diamond League. Rulesets are as follows:

Up Close & Personal
Equalizer
Even Stevens

Now let me start off by saying that I got the shorter end of the stick in this match because my opponent apparently was already in champ while I wasn't. Call me bitter but it is what it is. Lol.

Round 1

I opted to go with Grandmaster Rathe while the enemy went with Tarsa. I mentioned that Void Armor is important together with Scavenge and it seems the enemy had the same idea but doubled down on it. Tripled down, in fact. 3 Scavenger monsters, a Demoralize, and a Blast/Redemption combo via the Exploding Rats. This will not end well.

Round 3

I mentioned before that Equalizer matches tend to go long so we'll skip some rounds. I opted to go with the Dumacke Orc even if it's on a lower level because it has shield, high armor, retaliate and equalizer makes up for it's HP shortcoming. Level 5 is where it unlocks Retaliate so I thought it would be a nice addition.

It did do well retaliating around 2 or 3 times prior getting shut down. Anticipating the Exploding Rats first, My Venator Kinjo also was key in tanking blast damage.

Round 4

In Round 4, the triple Scavenge advantage starts to rack up. Tanking those extra hits can be a game changer. I essentially see my Kinjo go down here but take down everything else except the Ant Miners.

Round 8

In this last round. I found myself very annoyed. Just looking at the 1v4 lineup, you'd think that this one would be in the bag but there are a couple of key things that happened here that made things not go my way. First, when the Chaos Knight goes down, it's important to note that the Inspire buff gets taken out with it. That means reduced damage. Second is that the Ant Miners' Scavenge is paired with the Shield ability. This means that my Soul Fiend would get back to 1 damage after the Chaos Knight goes down and in a 1on1, it's essentially useless.

Results

GG! While I'm a bit bitter, not having max level cards is part of the game and while I think my lineup was better, sometimes, things just don't go your way.

That's it for this one and see you next week!

Full battle here.

Images provided by Splinterlands in game and via Weekly Battle Mage Challenge post