This week's featured monster is Elven Cutthroat! This small but mighty monster is 3 mana monster with exceptional speed and the ability sneak (attacks the last position monster instead of the 1st). This unit is great to use in specific team compositions where you think the enemy is going to focus all their resources in the front units and leave the back vulnerable. An example of this is a strong tank (Lord Aranthius / Lord of Darkness / etc) plus some support units (Corrupted Pegasus, Khmer Princess, etc) as the main win condition. In these situations attacking positions other than the front is the ideal win condition. Elven Cutthroat is a very good unit to accomplish that goal.
On to the battle!
The Ruleset
The Strategy
With the given ruleset, magic is out. That means all attacks are coming from melee or ranged. Automatically, I'm thinking water is out, as it relies significantly on magic attacks. The shield ability is super strong, as all attacks will be reduced and we don't have to worry about trying to cover up a magic weakness. Also, since there is the snipe ruleset, I have to either lean all in on a ranged attack composition to try and reverse snipe the opponent, or pretty much abandon ranged altogether and focus all the ranged on a single target while I try to melee them down.
Given the cards I have at my disposal and the ruleset, I decided that I would abandon ranged attackers and just try to go all melee.
The Summoner
Zintar Mortalis is a 3 mana rare summoner that has the demoralize (-1 to melee) ability. This card is a good match when you expect to face off against melee monsters (or like me you just lack other death summoner options).
1st Slot - The Anti-Melee Absolute Unit
Lord of Darkness (LoD for short) is an absolute monster of melee destruction. With the combindation of shield/stun/enrage/retaliate, any monster who dares hit him with melee is in for a beating. 1 v 1, there is pretty much no melee monster who can stand up to his might and live to tell the tale. In some cases, this beast can solo the enemy composition with some lucky retaliate procs. He is very weak to magic type attacks and at 3 base speed, he does lack a bit in the ability to avoid damage (rather just absorbs it, so a heal goes a long way with him). For this battle, I'm throwing him out there because he is just an amazing front line monster to lay down a beating.
2nd Slot - LoD's BFF
The backbone of the LoD comp is to use the LoD to wipe the floor with the opponent over time. To aid that, Corrupted Pegasus is a perfect pairing. The Pegasus has exceptional support abilities by healing and granting extra HP to LoD. Additionally, with reach, he guarantees a focused attack pattern on the frontline monster. Not much to say other than in almost any composition LoD is in, Corrupted Pegasus will have his back in the 2nd position.
3rd Slot & 4th Slot - The Sneaky DPS
Next up is the DPS. These near twins of stats do the same thing and work great as a pair. These guys pack a nice punch for 3 mana and are decently fast. It would help if I had leveled up versions to get that extra speed and HP, but I have to work with what I have.
5th and 6th slots - Protect the DPS
The goal was to add some cards in the back with the remaining mana to try and protect my DPS monsters. For this I chose Almo because it can take a ton of hits and shoot some back with return fire. I know it'll be attacked until it dies by the enemy units, but it's really just there to stall and do some damage while I whittle away the enemy with melee attacks. Shadowy Presence is a great 1 mana utility mob that gives extra hp and melee attack to my melee focused team.
The Battle
In what turned out to be no surprise, the enemy decided to go full on ranged snipe to take advantage of the ruleset. I used a summoner expecting reducing melee (I only have this leveled so no choice), but there was at least a couple melee monsters from the opponent so it worked out decently. Honestly, the reduced melee ended up playing a huge role here even if a bit lucky.
Looking at this comp, can you guess what happened? It's a bit of a crazy battle!
Round 1:
Cockatrice + kitty?! Oh no, this is a tough start, as my melee team is slow and plodding, and the 8 spd bird will dodge 100% of my hits from the 3 spd LoD. Welp, the front door is fully closed here T_T
It's a good thing I have some retaliation damage and a couple of sneak monsters instead of going all in on front line here.
Round 2:
After 1 round, not much has really happened, but it's looking bad for me...All i've done is strip some armor and miss a bunch of attacks....meanwhile the solo opportunity monster from the opponent is going to pick off my sneak monsters as they have the lowest HP. It's a race to hit some of the backline before they fall.
Round 3:
And now the Elven Cutthroat goes down. I get the hit on the Spirit of the Forest, so she's going down to the Almo's return fire next turn....the battle is tight!
Round 4:
A poison proc speeds up the clock on the Shadowy presence going down, but it's getting close. Can I kill all 3 attackers before the Assasin goes down? Does that matter or can LoD clean up from here?
Round 5:
Nice! A poison proc in reverse, while the assasin is going down next round, he's at least assured a kill on the swamp thing in 2 turns. It's basically a race now, the pinging of the harpy vs the rng dodges of almo + cockatrice. who wins?
Round 10:
And now, the battle begins...1 harpy, 1 cockatrice, 1 almo vs 1 dank boy.
(for the math, I need LoD to take 1 damage to gain the +2 spd from enrage. This pushes his hit rate up to 20% vs. bird, 70% vs. almo, and 65% vs harpy). At 3 spd, I can't touch the cockatrice.
How does it end, guess you'll just have to Watch it yourself!
The Wrap
Overall, I think this battle highlights the variety of strategies and how decisions on team compositions can really get you a bonus or a loss if you guess wrong. Thankfully I didn't go all in on a frontline strategy, as the cockatrice + kitty combe would have owned me with a probably flawless victory for the opponent. Adding some combo of sneak monsters was able to kill off just enough DPS during this battle to make it a close fight. A good strategy battle that shows off different ways of going at it. A close battle indeed. Watch the fight and see what ended up happening ~_^
Chickens BBQ'd: 0 T_T