My BATTLE MAGE SECRET Weekly Challenge! Five Alive

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Hello there, this is my entry to the latest "Battle Mage Secret Weekly Challenge!". If you want to participate or learn more about the challenge, click here. This week we have to formulate a strategy with the Five Alive ruleset.

RULESET: Five Alive

With the Five Alive ruleset in action, only up to five units can be used in the battle.

This ruleset is very simple and easy to understand because, unlike the usual seven units in your battle, you are restricted to just 6. It is not a drastic change and won't have too much effect on your strategy other than having a standard ruleset.

Let's see how this ruleset makes me change my lineup and how I strategies for the following battle.

My Lineup

This is my lineup for the battle

Position	Summoner/Monsters
Summoner	Mylor Crowling
Position 1	Grund
Position 2	Oaken Behemoth
Position 3	Kron the Undying
Position 4	Mycelic Slipspawn
Position 5	Tortisian Chief

It was a 49-mana cap battle and had the following rulesets:

• Broken Arrows - Ranged attack Monsters may not be used in battles.

• FiveAlive - Up to Five Units can be used.

Only Fire, Earth and Dragon elements were active during this battle. I just had 49 mana to spend. Mylor Crowling was my summoner for this battle as it gave the 'thorns' ability to all my units. This will punish melee attackers and give them 50% damage back to the attacker.

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I used the Grund as my tank which costs 10 mana. It justifies this cost with its impressive stats, attacking twice per round with three melee attack damage and having huge health. It was a good tank for my battle.

Next in my lineup was Oaken Behemoth which was even more deadlier than the Grund and dealt 2 magic and 3 melee attacks in the same round. Having a multi-attack type unit is such a relief and adds a lot to the attacking potential of your lineup. It also comes with good health and armour.

I still had plenty of mana to spare so I used another heavy hitter, Kron the Undying. It costs 10 mana but has some amazing abilities. Its healing and 'divine shield' abilities help it last much much longer on the battlefield. It deals 3 magic attack damage and I was counting on this one to save me from any rough situations if they arise during the battle.

The fourth unit in my lineup was Mycelic Slipspawn. It came with huge health and 'taunt' ability which made all the enemy units target this first and save my tank. This cost 9 mana to use and it dealt 2 magic attack damage. So, it was good on both the attacking and defensive fronts.

Last but not least was Tortisian Chief, another mage which dealt 2 magic attack damage but this one came with relatively lower health of just 6 hp. But this costs only 5 mana so I can't complain at all.

Now that my lineup was set, it was time for battle.

I will share my battle here, which I have uploaded to YouTube.

My Strategy

This was a 49 mana cap battle and to spend it on just 5 units was plenty. So, it was a good time to use high-cost strong and bulkier units in the whole lineup. I started with Grund as it did strike twice and then added all the strong attacking units with mages at the back.

I chose the Mylor Crowling as it would punish the enemy's melee attackers. Already the ranged attackers were not allowed and to punish the melee attackers too would just leave the mages for the opponent which is not what everyone uses all the time. I didn't know what I was expecting with this battle. I didn't check the last 5 battles and just moved on to the cards-picking stage.

As you can probably see my main focus was on magic attackers as they ignore the armour too.

This strategy, as you will see, worked in my favour and gave me a comfortable win at the end.

When I saw my opponent using a level one summoner I knew the battle was over. I don't know why but it happens a lot, one battle the opponent is using a level 5 summoner and in the next, they are using level 1 cards. I was playing in the wild too, which I don't usually play and I experienced it a lot in that format. Anyways, the guy used Underboss Fabino as their summoner and gave two units +2 melee attacks. Why?

At this point, I think it was a bot or they knew they had no chance of winning this one. I wanted to play another game with this ruleset but I have been playing for two days and this was the only battle I got with this ruleset. Very unlucky ruleset for me.

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Let's get back to the battle and as everyone expected, my opponent's units were shattered to pieces, they had no clue what hit them! Even my Grund was laughing at the end of the battle seeing how easy it was to just obliterate the whole lineup without sweating!

This was one of the easiest wins in Silver League that I got. This lineup would be tough for anyone to crack as it was filled with strong units one after the other.

Conclusion

As you saw in the above battle, Five Alive doesn't fundamentally change anything. It doesn't give any buffs or debuffs, and doesn't restrict the type of unit you can use in the battle. It just makes you utilize the given mana on up to five units.

Sometimes, the mana cap is quite high like in the above battle and during those battles one can use aggressive and strong units and hope for the best. Still, the fundamentals are important, having a good sturdy tank at the front, supporting it with healing or adding more armour to his stats. All play a huge role and then having attacking units with relatively lower health somewhere in the middle or end of the lineup is good too.

So, there can be multiple strategies. Let me know which one you prefer in this ruleset.

Thanks for reading...

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