Battle Mage Secrets Weekly Challenge! Back to Basics!

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Hi everyone! It's time for the weekly Battle Mage Secrets challenge and the challenge this week is the Back to Basics Ruleset.

About the Ruleset

Back to Basics

The Back to Basics ruleset states that "Monsters lose all abilities". This means that Magic attack monsters have an advantage as they can attack from all positions. Melee monsters are unable to attack from beyond position 1 and Ranged monsters can't attack in position 1.

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Battle Ruleset(s)

Details of my battle with this ruleset is as follows.

Back to Basics: Monsters lose all abilities
Fire & Regret: All Monsters have the Return Fire ability
Mana Cap: 14
Available Splinters: Fire, Water and Earth
Format: Modern

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Cards & Line Up

The Summoner vs

Summoner: Obsidian - This increases the Magic attack of my deck by 1.

The Line Up

Position 1	Position 2	Position 3	Position 4	Position 5

vs

Position 1	Position 2	Position 3

[Card image source]

Position	Name	Description
1	Hill Giant	This is the main tank to take damage, as it has a fairly high health of 7
2	Fungus Fiend	This is 0 cost and acts as a damage buffer for my real damage dealers.
3	Mycelic Morphoid	This is the second damage buffer.
4	Spirit Hoarder	It's low mana cost and here to provide 2 magic damage.
5	Djinn Biljka	This is the secondary attack as it is low mana cost and has 3 magic attack power.

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Strategy

The ruleset here meant that (1) monsters have no access to their abilities, (2) ranged attacks get reflected.

The general principle I employ for the back to basics ruleset is the use high health cards in the front positions to take as much damage as possible, and to use Magic monsters in the rest of the positions as they are the only attack types that can attack from all positions in this ruleset. I think ranged attack monsters can be placed in the last position, if it is fast and does high damage. However, the Fire & Regret ruleset here puts ranged monsters at a further disadvantage.

The opponent opted to use a three card deck of monsters, using Mycelic Slipspawn as the main card. I think this was a big mistake. This is a low mana cap battle, and just one Mycelic Slipspawn took up the bulk of the mana cap. The damage throughput for this is also lower, with only 4 total damage at best per round, compared to up to 7 for mine. This allowed me to win easily as a result.

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Thoughts on the Back to Basics Ruleset

As I mentioned earlier, the Back to Basics ruleset works best for Magic monsters due to their ability to attack from all positions without any abilities. Melee monsters with high health is good for tank in the first two positions, even if it can't attack from position 2. Ranged monsters can also be used in the last 2 positions, if you are confident that you can take out the opponent's monster before it reaches them. Summoners like Possibilus the Wise and Immortalis are great too, since their abilities are not affected by the ruleset.

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Battle

Watch the battle here