This week's battle challenge involves the Mycelic Morphoid! The Mycelic Morphoid is an Earth splinter Melee monster that is an excellent card due to it's low mana and thorns ability. It isn't a card to build around by any means but it's definitely a great choice as a "meat shield."

Disintegrator Highlights

You may not pay too much attention to the Mycelic Morphoid until the clock is winding down and you're trying to figure out what to do with you last mana point before settling on this card. I think you may want to reconsider that strategy especially with a Level 3+ Mycelic Morphoid.

At Level 1, it doesn't seem very useful. 1 Attack, 1 Speed, and 2 Health with no abilities. I admit, there are better options. However, level it up to Level 3 and you gain thorns. The thorns ability ends up transforming the Mycelic Morphoid from a passive meat shield to a potential lineup destroyer (especially in little league!).

	Thorns : When hit with a Melee attack, does damage back to the attacker. Has an upper cap of 2 (unless you have amplify which will increase thorns damage)

Since I play in Silver I, my max level for a Mycelic Morphoid is Level 5. The only difference between a Level 3 and Level 5 is that it gains 1 speed. That isn't a huge concern for me so at the moment I only have a Level 3. Eventually I will get it leveled up but I'll take my time.

Once it gains thorns, I don't see a big enough bump after that for me to rush into upgrading.

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So when do I use the Mycelic Morphoid?

• The easiest and most common tactic is to place it at the front/end to absorb an attack if you have an open spot and 1 mana to spare.
• Any medium/low mana ruleset that grants opportunity, sneak, or backline attacks from melee monsters.
• Little League is a good one as well. With this ruleset, many monsters have low attack and low health, a Mycelic Morphoid could actually take two 1 damage melee attacks, potentially killing the attacker (Undead Badger for example!).
• A creative use for it is to place it upfront and let the thorns soften up the enemy tank.

This Week's Featured Battle

In this featured battle, my opponent and I both played the Obsidian summoner with the Earth deck. With similar lineups, who came out as the victor?

Battle Ruleset

	Reverse Speed	Monsters with the lowest Speed attack first and have the highest chance of evading attacks
	Explosive Weaponry	All Monsters have the Blast ability (does additional damage to adjacent targets at half the main damage rounded up)
	19 Mana	This is considered a low mana battle
	Active Splinters	All splinters except Life are available

Strategy Highlights

• Reverse Speed
  • Since speed is reversed, you want to prioritize 1 speed monsters (and don't play anything with the slow ability!)
  • Kelya is usually avoided in this ruleset since she buffs all friendly monsters with +1 speed
  • Generally, most players at this level go with Obsidian because a lot of the Magic monsters are incredibly slow at 1 mana
  • Tarsa can also be favorable because some of the tanks are very slow (Grum/Living Lava)
  • Life with General Sloan is another choice since a few of the Ranged attackers are 1/2 speed (not available for this battle, however)
  • Try to avoid playing any monsters with Enrage. Enrage will cause them to gain speed

• Explosive Weaponry
  • Shields and a decent amount of health on your frontline are very important
  • You want to attack as quickly as possible in an attempt to take out some of your opponent's team before they get a chance to attack
  • Magic is a great choice since the Blast damage also ignores shields
  • Life Leech is also applied during Blast so you will be gaining health from both the main target and the adjacent target(s)

When faced with reverse speed, my instinct is almost always to go with Obsidian. There are so many 1 speed Magic monsters that have a low mana cost. With only 19 mana to play with, we can pack a lot of damage with the 2, 3, and 4 mana monsters.

Usually though, I like to counter my first instinct (what I think most people would choose also) so generally I like to go with Thaddius Brood in this case in order to reduce their Magic damage and Health. That is usually a great tactic when paired with the Void ability up front. Death is slightly faster but it usually isn't an issue in reverse speed.

I decided to go with Obsidian anyways because I really wanted to pack the lineup with low mana, low speed monsters due the Explosive Weaponry ruleset. I didn't want to risk attacking after my opponent in case the Blast effect took me out before I could retaliate.

The Lineup

Position	Card Image	Card Name	Notes
Summoner		Obsidian	Earth Summoner that gives all friendly monsters +1 to their Magic attacks. This is an extremely powerful summoner and is commonly used in Bronze and Silver
Pos 1 (tank)		Mycelic Morphoid	The card of the hour! I assumed my opponent would place a melee tank up front so I played Mycelic Morphoid here to deal out either 1 melee damage or 2 thorns damage (or both!)
Pos 2 (secondary tank)		Failed Summoner	Since I felt that my opponent would use Magic, I used the Failed Summoner behind the Mycelic Morphoid to return Magic damage back at its attacker with the Magic Reflect ability
Pos 3 (attacker)		Doctor Blight	Of all the low speed, low mana Magic attackers, he has the highest health so he's in front of the others to absorb a little bit of the Blast damage to keep the others alive as long as possible
Pos 4 (attacker)		Djinn Biljka	He has the Camouflage ability which is usually good because he can't be targeted (like Doctor Blight). Because of this he is usually placed in the back where Sneak attacks skip over him but with the Blast ability, a sneak attack would actually deal damage to him as well as the monster on the other side of the sneaked monster
Pos 5 (attacker)		Khmer Princess	Extremely low mana card (2 mana) that is perfect for these slow speed rulesets
Pos 6 (attacker/support)		Spirit hoarder	Again, low speed, low mana Magic monster but this one has the Triage ability. This allows him to heal a monster on the backline. Since we have the Explosive Weaponry ruleset, he will help keep the cards near the front of the lineup alive. I placed him in the back in order to preserve the Triage ability for as long as possible

Let's Battle!

• My opponent had a very solid and similar lineup. Like I predicted, Obsidian was going to be the summoner of choice.
• They actually nerfed my magic damage with their Mushroom Seer who has Silence (essentially negating my Obsidian).
• However, I did have 1 more Magic attacker so that helped immensely as well as Magic Reflect which helped to bring their backline damage down. These two basically made up for the loss of Magic damage.
• By placing the Mycelic Morphoid in the first position, you can see that I was able to dish out 3 damage to his tank (1 Melee, 2 Thorns). That is huge for a card that only costs 1 mana.
• I'm very surprised that I was able to pull out the win because Mushroom Seer really reduces the effectiveness of my lineup.

Did it work?

Yes! Sort of. I was able to win but it felt like it really came down to luck with the attack order. Mycelic Morphoid at the front did 3 damage to the Hill Giant! Without the thorns damage, I wouldn't have been able to get through the Hill Giant before taking massive casualties.

I analyzed the battle with Splintertools and as I suspected, I had a fairly low chance of winning this battle. I'm thinking it's mainly due to his Mushroom Seer Silencing my Magic monsters.

Important Note

I even replaced the Mycelic Morphoid with another 1 Mana monster with the exact same stats minus Thorns and my win rate was reduced to 10%. That's huge and just goes to show how much of a difference this card can make at Level 3.

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Instead of going with Obsidian, I should've gone with my usual anti-Magic lineup of Thaddius Brood and the Death deck. My Bone Golem has 1 speed and Void (reduced damage from Magic attacks).

With Void and Thaddius's Magic debuff, his Spirit Hoarder wouldn't be able to do any damage to my Bone Golem. The Mushroom Seer and the Djinn Biljka would only do 1 damage.

I can then pick off his lineup with my 2 Magic attackers, Venari Bonesmith and Life Sapper. Both of them also have Life Leech and with the Blast ability, they'll be gaining 2 Life each attack!

Final Thoughts

Initially, I wasn't impressed with the Mycelic Morphoid when I saw it in the starter set but once I had a Level 2 Obsidian and a Level 3 Mycelic Morphoid, I was able to see just how useful of a card it can be.

If it's not at the front of my lineup to dish out some melee/thorns damage, it is at the back of my lineup to fight back against a sneaky opponent.

I highly recommend that you at least buy/rent a Level 3 Mycelic Morphoid because the Thorns ability can turn the tide in your favor. Imagine baiting that pesky Serpentine Spy and killing it with Thorns! It's extremely cheap to obtain a Level 3 (14 cards at $0.07/BCX) and definitely worth it.

Thanks for reading! I hoped you enjoyed it!

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