Battle Mage Secrets: Five Alive - Keeping It Simple

Prelude
Hi all, hope all is well for you and it is time for another Battle Mage Secrets. After a week break from the 4 cards lineup where we look at a ruleset that is bad for range attackers, we are back again today to examine the 5 card lineup ruleset.

Ruleset Spotlight

Five Alive

Description:

• Up to five Units can be used.

What thrives with this ruleset?
Compared to the 4 card ruleset, the Five Alive ruleset is not as stringent as it is somewhat like a single card penalty. And sometimes, when mana is a little tighter, we might self impose a Five Alive ruleset on ourselves because we rather field stronger cards than fill cards all the way to 6 cards.

Some general guidance that I use for this ruleset. If the number 6 card that you will put into the lineup is a Chicken or a Fiend and not using them as a tank, then what you are fielding is already good enough to have them omitted.

With this ruleset at high mana, then we also need to have sufficient high mana cards at our disposal to maximize the mana threshold for the match. On low mana match with this ruleset, I would say you will need a good mix or small to middle mana cards to maximize the mana threshold. Sometimes when we are a little restricted, the key to winning could be just keeping it simple.

With these in mind, let's start to talk about the battle proper.

The Battle
Link: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_02854c26a577cbede5bc80ecc6c23d38&ref=vaynard86

Ruleset
Five Alive, Broken Arrows, What Doesn't Kill You
Mana Limit: 21

Splinter	Mana Cost	Position	Reason
Thaddius Brood	4	Summoner	Somehow I find mid mana matches good for death splinter and Thaddius does well with the magic attack reduction and the health -1.
Cursed Windeku	6	1st	One of the most reliable tank for Death Splinter. Always facing opponents with its fangs to let them self hurt with thorns.
Corpse Fiend	0	2nd	Somehow I felt I needed some extra help to protect the back line and give Life Sapper one more chance to absorb one more health
Life Sapper	3	3rd	Small magician that absorbs one health with each attack. Another very reliable card that have walked with me since I started playing.
Silent Sha-vi	5	4th	Yet another reliable card which strikes hard and fast from the back. One of my favourite cards for death splinter
Uraeus	3	5th	Armoured sneak attacker. Provides an additional padding from the back and the armour helps cushion 1 attack.
Total Mana:	21

Opponent Lineup

• Summoner - Thaddius Brood
• Position 1 - Cursed Windeku
• Position 2 - Shadow Snitch
• Position 3 - Silent Sha-vi
• Position 4 - Corpse Fiend
• Position 5 - Wily Coyotian
• Position 6 - NA

Prediction before pressing rumble
If we didn't look hard enough, this is almost a mirror match. With Cursed Windeku, Silent Sha-vi and Corpse Fiend being used by both side. The decisive battle will be within Life Sapper/Uraeus vs Shadow Snitch/Wily Coyotian.

Interestingly, opponent chose to use a full melee lineup but I prefer to have a magic attacker especially one that has been reliable in the form of Life Sapper.

Let's battle!

Battle Synopsis

Round 1, Alot of focus on Cursed Windeku with thorns applying across both side and both getting enraged. Wily Coyotian was taken out by Uraeus.

Round 2, Opponent Silent Sha-vi took out my Uraeus while my own Silent Sha-vi took out opponent's Corpse Fiend. The front line was exciting when my Cursed Windeku took out opponent's copy, then with Life Sapper doing 1 damage on Shadow Snitch, the attack from Shadow Snitch killed my Cursed Windeku but at the same time thorns killed it.

Round 3, The round started with opponent Silent Sha-vi taking out my Corpse Fiend while my own copy slam in 3 damage to opponent's copy and Life Sapper with a final prod secured victory for my side, by eliminating opponent's Silent Sha-vi.

Post Battle Summary
A nice victory! Simple strategy and with a little more consideration such as the armour by Uraeus and avoiding too many melee in view of possible Cursed Windeku since it is a very popular Death Splinter tank with thorns.

Did my strategy work? While it was almost a mirror match due to very similar cards chosen to put into the lineup, a good combination of cards of various attributes was the key in my strategy and it really worked well. Thorns to give the frontal threat while tanking attacks, Life Leech to created a 2nd tank and the armour in Uraeus was key to put things in my advantage. No big tricks but just remembering the traits and characteristic of our cards and knowing what possible lineup opponent likely to fill will bring us far.

What's the Battle Mage Secret?

The Battle Mage Secret for today is on keeping things simple. While we might struggle to find cards to fill the lineup, always remember what we have in our collection and put them out to the right use. The strategy that I deployed today was no rocket science. It was a plain mid mana Death Splinter strategy to make use of Cursed Windeku's thorns to put it as a tank, preparing an off-tank through Life Leech in Life Sapper, marshalling backline attacks use Silent Sha-vi and Uraeus which also had an extra armour to fend off one attack. Corpse Fiend was also instrumental to prevent Life Sapper from facing opponent's Silent Sha-vi face to face which can expose me to possibly losing the match if another round goes and I did not attack first. So remember, don't over crack your heads, but in constrained lineup ruleset, good to find a flexible mana cost in your collection. So if one particular mana is lacking cards, do look into adding them into your collection to make sure you have something to slot in.

Wrap Up
I hope you guys enjoyed reading my sharing on the rule set Five Alive. I would really appreciate it if you liked and/or commented to let me know what are you thoughts.

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Till my next battle sharing, take care, stay safe and happy battling!

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