This week's battle challenge involves the Legendary Queen Mycelia! Queen Mycelia is an Earth splinter Magic monster that is an excellent card due to it's low mana cost and Protect ability. This card is especially strong in Silver Leagues and below but is a staple in any Earth splinter deck.

Queen Mycelia is a must have card if you play the Earth splinter with any regularity. While Earth is primarily a strong Magic splinter due to the new Chaos cards and the Obsidian summoner, those hard hitting Magic monsters typically have low health, low speed, and not much armor for protection.

Without armor, the Chaos edition Earth decks are extremely susceptible to Sneak and Opportunity attackers especially against a Tarsa Fire deck.

Queen Mycelia provides that missing protection that increases the survivability of the low health, low speed Magic cards which allows them to dish out more heavy damage before dying.

Icon	Ability Name	Description
	Protect	All friendly Monsters gain +2 Armor
	Amplify	Increases Magic Reflect, Return Fire, and Thorns damage to all enemy monsters by 1
	Triage	Heals the friendly back-line Monster that has taken the most damage
	Rust	Reduces the Armor of all enemy Monsters

As you can see, there is no shortage of abilities with Queen Mycelia. She isn't a big damage dealer by herself but she plays an amazing supporting role.

Queen Mycelia can be used in all the leagues that I have experience in (Novice - Gold). I imagine she is great in Diamond and Champion as well but I can't comment on her usefulness.

• In Novice/Bronze, she can be used to help counter those Sneaky and Opportunity lineups
• In Silver, the amplify ability can be paired nicely with Mylor's Thorns or Failed Summoner's Reflect
• In Gold, you get those benefits as well as Triage which further increases the survivability of Earth

In this week's featured battle, we have Earth's Obsidian summoner taking on Fire's Qid Yiff summoner!

	Enrage	Has increased Melee attack and Speed when damaged (Multiplier x1.5 rounded up)
	23 Mana	This is considered a medium mana battle
	Active Splinters	All splinters are available

• Enrage
  • Take advantage of this rule by playing Melee monster with good speed and high health. They become much stronger and faster once damaged
  • Double Strike becomes extremely deadly
  • Counter this effect by using Magic monsters, especially those with high speed or Phase
  • Try to concentrate your attacks to prevent unwanted Enrages enemies (Sneak can be tricky)
• 23 Mana
  • This is a medium Mana battle so expect to see a full lineup of monsters

With Enraged, my strategy is highly dependent on my Focus Splinter as well as my Opponent's Splinter.

My opponent obviously had a Fire Focus and I had Earth. Knowing that Melee monsters highly benefit from becoming Enraged, I wanted to make sure I had Armor and used Magic so that I would not miss (except for Phase).

This is where Queen Mycelia becomes the centerpiece of my line-up. She can dish out Magic attacks while Protecting my own monsters.

Position	Card Image	Card Name	Notes
Summoner		Obsidian	Earth Summoner that grants all friendly Monsters +1 Magic Damage
Pos 1 (tank)		Mycelic Morphoid	I used this as my "tank" to take the early damage from the fast Fire monsters such as Flame Imp, Spark Pixies, Fire Elemental, and if I'm lucky, Serpentine Spy. If Serpentine Spy hits this, the Amplified Thorns will take it out
Pos 2 (secondary tank)		Chaos Agent	Again, this is kind of used as a meat shield so that I can hopefully get my Magic attacks off before they end up at the front
Pos 3 (attacker)		Spirit Shaman	I liked this card because of the Stun ability. Since I'm concentrating on attacking their tank, it will be Enraged and potentially very strong. Stunning it would prevent it from attacking
Pos 4 (attacker)		Magi of the Forest	Very strong, low mana Magic attacker that can hopefully take out their tank quickly
Pos 5 (support)		Queen Mycelia	The Legendary card! She will be protecting my monsters from Melee attacks while dealing a bit of damage as well
Pos 6 (attackers)		Regal Peryton	Very fast Magic attacker. I placed it back here just in case my opponent goes with a Sneak attack. Once damaged, this monster will be extremely hard to hit again (9 Speed with Flying!) by un-Enraged monsters

• My opponent went with Fire but surprised me with the Qid Yiff Summoner. This is a great call on their part because they can take away one of the best parts of Armor which absorbs all of the "leftover" damage. This gives their Enraged monsters the ability to kill my units in one blow!
• Even so, Queen Mycelia gives friendly monsters +2 Armor which is like giving +2 Health in this case. This was critical to survival because without it, there would have been quite a few deaths on my end just from getting hit once.

Yes! My backline was able to survive long enough to deal serious damage to their lineup. Those Enraged monsters were very scary though!

I analyzed the battle with Splintertools and was given a 96% chance of winning the battle. That is always great to see!

Queen Mycelia is an excellent card at every level and her pricing reflects that. She is currently $12/BCX which would be $132 for a Max Level version. A Gold Foil version will be $111/BCX or $444 for a Max Level Gold version.

Thanks for reading! I hoped you enjoyed it!

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