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Ahoy, welcome to my latest Battle Mage Secrets post.

Earlier I was a bit busy and then I had to head of to class so I couldn't finish writing this post. Back home now I'm finishing up the post and publishing it.

This week the featured ruleset is Even Stevens. Which allows only Monsters with Even Mana Cost to be used in battle. So only about half the cards would be available. It's only for Monsters so at least you won't have to worry about your Sumoner choice! Depending on the other rulesets you might have in your battle there could be an even bigger limit on what you can play, if for example only Melee Monsters can be used.

You can recognise the ruleset with this icon.

The battle I'm sharing this week is from the Wild Tournament Friday AKA WTF! [NBH] [NB] Tournament. My battle from last week was from a similarly named tournament, but that's because they kept the same name for the tournament. If you check my battle and go to the Tournament you'll see it started on 15/03/2024 (depending on your timezone).

The battle I want to share with you this week is from this past weekend in the Wild Tournament Friday AKA WTF! [NBH] [NB] Tournament. This is a tournament hosted by bunsbagsandcaps and by ehmaywuntee for their Viewers. Hyperlinks to their Twitch channels. In this battle I played against bunsbagsandcaps himself!!

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This battle had a 25 Mana Cap. Half of the Elements were available with Water, Earth and Death being those we could pick from. The battle had 3 rulesets which were:

• Close Range: Ranged attacks may be used in the first position in battles.
• Even Stevens: Only Monsters with even Mana costs may be used in battles.
• Lost Legendaries: Legendary Monsters may not be used in battles.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_F34C7BQZwx0BeCIhbZ2x&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

I would love to go Water here with some Magic attackers as I have a couple of really strong Even Mana Magic attackers there. Such as my favourite: Ruler of the Seas! Unfortunately one of the rulesets is Lost Legendaries, so I wouldn't be able to use him. That's why I decided I'll go with Earth instead. I wasn't so sure if I would choose for Mylor with Thorns or not. But maybe my opponent would make use of that Close Range ruleset thinking that I'd pick Mylor so I decided I won't.

Then I picked Lobb Lowland, that way I could bring a Gladiator with me. Katrelba Gobson is an Even Mana cost card with Sneak and has Double Strike so she can attack twice. Earth team has another Melee attacker with Sneak too that's also Even Mana, which is Goblin Thief. So I decided I'll bring both.

In front of them I placed Flesh Golem, he can take quite some hits and has the Heal ability for some sustain.

I brought Halfling Alchemist to try and reduce the damage on my opponents frontline, it is slow though so it would likely be a reduction for the next round instead.

Last but not least I threw in Furious Chicken to take a potential Sneak attack.

Battle Analysis

My opponent went with Kelya Frendul for that extra Speed and Armour. Which is a great pick! Especially Deimonshark in the front is strong with its high Armour and then getting the Enrage ability once it takes damage to its Health.

He also has 2 Ranged attackers that can hit my tank. His Deeplurker will be hitting my Halfling Alchemist because of the Opportunity ability.

Round 1

The battle starts with Kulu Swimhunter hitting my Flesh Golem for 2 damage.
Then Diemonshark hits my Flesh Golem for 3 damage.
Deeplurker attacks my Halfling Alchemist because of its Opportunity ability, which just destroys the 1 Armour from my Halfling Alchemist.
Igor Darkspear hits my Flesh Golem for 2 damage.
Katrelba Gobson attacks Kulu Swimhunter and destroys his Armour. Then her Double Strike activates and she attacks it again for 3 damage to his Health.
Flesh Golem, down to 3 Health already from the attacks he took, Heals himself for 3 damage. Then attacks Diemonshark for 3 damage to its Armour.
Goblin Thief attacks and kills Kulu Swimhunter.
Halfling Alchemist hits Diemonshark for 1 damage to its Armour. Also applies its Halving ability on Diemonshark which sees its Melee attack going from 3 to 1!

That's the end of the Round. Here are our current lineups.

Diemonshark attacks my Flesh Golem for 1 damage.
Deeplurker attacks my Halfling Alchemist and kills him.
Igor Darkspear attacks my Flesh Golem for 2 damage.
Katrelba Gobson attacks and destroys the Armour on their Deeplurker. She activates her Double Strike and attacks him again dealing 3 damage.
Flesh Golem Heals himself for 3 Health, which is exactly the amount of damage he took this round. Then he attacks Diemonshark for 3 damage to its Armour which is enough to destroy it.
Goblin Thief attacks Deeplurker for 3 damage.

The round is over now, so let's see how our teams look.

Round 3

Diemonshark starts the round again, attacking my Flesh Golem for 1 damage.
Deeplurker has a new target now with his Opportunity, this time targeting my Furious Chicken and instantly killing it!
Igor Darkspear attacks my Flesh Golem for 2 damage.
Flesh Golem Heals himself for 3 Health and attacks Diemonshark dealing 3 damage to its Health. Which triggers the Enrage ability.
Diemonshark's Enrage ability makes it go to 2 Melee attack (because of the Halving ability earlier) and to 6 Speed!
Katrelba Gobson attacks and kills the Deeplurker. This triggers her Bloodlust so she gains +1 Attack, +1 Speed and +1 Health.
Her Double Strike triggers and she attacks and destroys the Armour on Igor Darkspear.
Goblin Thief attacks Igor Darkspear for 3 damage.

That's the end of this round. Here are our current teams.

Diemonshark attacks Flesh Golem for 2 damage this time.
Katrelba Gobson attacks and kills Igor Darkspear. Which triggers her Bloodlust again and that gives her another +1 Attack, +1 Speed and +1 Health.
Her Double Strike triggers and she attacks and kills the Diemonshark! This causes her to trigger Bloodlust again for another +1 Attack, +1 Speed and +1 Health, but of course there is no point to it now as the fight is over now! GG!

Was My Strategy Successful?

It was a quite good strategy, but also a bit risky with the Flesh Golem because if my opponent had a lot of focus to the frontline he might have died quickly. Depending on the attack order too. If my opponent's Deeplurker was another Monster that attacked my frontline my Flesh Golem might have died if it was enough damage.

The combination of Katrelba Gobson and Goblin Thief worked really well to kill one of my opponent's Monsters in the first round. Which reduced their damage output against my Flesh Golem by enough so that he could Heal EXACTLY the same amount of damage as he was taking!
BUT that was also thanks to Halfling Alchemist hitting the Diemonshark and applying the Halving ability to it.

So using Lobb Lowland also helped as his -1 Speed to my opponent's team negated the +1 Speed that they got from Kelya. Keeping the Speed difference between Halfling Alchemist and Diemonshark at 2 so that it had an 80% chance to hit.

Conclusion

This team worked very well, but if my opponent brought more direct damage instead of Deeplurker then my Flesh Golem really could've possibly died 1st round or 2nd round and that would definitely change the outcome of the battle.
Kelya Frendul was a good pick from them, that Armour prevented my Katrelba Gobson from getting a kill in the 1st round.

It was a good battle for sure imo, quite intense to look at.

That's it for my Battle Mage Secrets challenge this week. Thank you for reading!

If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck