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Ahoy fellow Splinterlands players.

A late post as I got quite busy today. Which is my bad, I should really try to write it during or even before the weekend. Despite it being quite late I still want to get this post out so here is my latest Battle Mage Secrets post.

This week the featured ruleset is Noxious Fumes. With this ruleset active all Monsters get Poisoned at the start of the battle.

You can recognise this ruleset with the following icon.

So when this ruleset is active all Monsters get Poisoned right at the start of the battle. Which causes them to take 2 damage at the end of the turn.
Monsters with the Immunity ability won't be affected by this, so they can be a great choice to bring into your team.
Monsters that can Heal themselves might be nice too as they can recover the damage every turn and maybe even more depending on their max Health for when they get attacked.
The Cleanse ability can be really useful here to remove the Poison from your Tank.
If a Monster dies and comes back to life thanks to a Resurrect ability it will NOT be Poisoned again as it only applies to the start of the battle. So Resurrect can be a great play. As an extension to that Runi has the Rebirth ability where it also comes back to life after it dies so that's also a great play here.

The battle I want to share with you today is from a Tournament this weekend. It was in the Summun Infuria Modern Silver GF Invitational Tournament. I played against the player blastedzeus.

Here is a picture of our initial lineup.

Battle Rules

This was a battle with a 19 Mana Cap. Only the Water and Earth Elements were available to choose from. The battle had 3 rulesets:

• Wands Out: Only Monsters with Magic attack may be used in battles.
• Noxious Fumes: All Monsters start the battle Poisoned.
• Lost Legendaries: Legendary Monsters may not be used in battles.

Here is a link to the battle if you want to check it out: https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sm_T5JN4zkiooqwUcs4dcMC&ref=athunderstruck

Battle Lineup

Well we really don't have much to work with here with only Water and Earth available. Especially because there's also the Magic-only ruleset. On top of that this is Modern and not Wild. If it was Wild then Alric as a Summoner would be a really viable option as well. Still in Modern Water might be a great pick with Djinn Oshannus as he has high Health to tank and the Void ability. But the 3rd ruleset is Lost Legendaries so that option has been scrapped.

This makes it so Obsidian and Immortalis are the best options. Immortalis is actually a really solid option with the Void ability and giving -1 Health to the opponents Monsters. But this is a Gold Foil Tournament and well I don't own a Gold Foil Immortalis, only a regular one and I also never rent him. So he isn't an option for me here. Would be nice if I can eventually pick up the Gold Foil one in the future!

That's why I decided to go with Obsidian here for that Magic damage increase.

There was a bit of puzzling with what team composition I wanted to go with due to low Mana. It seems like 3 Monsters was the best option. If I brought 4 or more that would cost less Mana well they'd also have lower Health and died first.

So first I chose Goblin Psychic. Really slow but enough Health to survive 1-2 Poison and it has Tank Heal so it could help my Tank Sustain. Maybe due to its low Speed it could also heal itself if it ends up in the first position so that it could then live longer.

Then I chose Elven Mystic. At level 4 it has the Silence ability which reduces all of the opponents Magic attacks by 1. I feel like this one would be important here to reduce the damage from my opponents Magic attacks since they're the only type of Monsters we can bring. It'll either cancel out their Obsidian Summoner buff if they also play it, or just reduce the damage from all their Monsters that have 2+ Magic attack.

After picking those I had 5 Mana left. With that 5 Mana I picked Tortisan Chief and placed it up front to serve as a Tank that could hopefully get Healed by Goblin Psychic to survive longer. But hopefully still die fast enough that Goblin Psychic has a chance to heal himself to survive longer.

Battle Analysis

Alright so my opponent decided to go Immortalis. Since they either own or rent him. A great choice of Summoner here for sure by providing that Void ability to their team. Let's see how it plays out.

Normally my team would have 6, 5 and 4 Health. But it gets reduced to 5, 4 and 3 because of Immortalis.

They're playing Khimer Princess up front probably to soak up some initial damage. It does also have Tank Heal so it's a great pick especially with that Void ability it might be able to survive and Heal itself. Up next they also brought Goblin Psychic for that extra card that has Tank Heal so it can help trying to keep Khimer Princess alive or keep itself alive if it goes to the first position. As the last card they played Regal Peryton. With that high Speed it's a great card as it'll be pretty much guaranteed to go first and deal some damage.

All my opponents' Monsters have either 1 or 2 Magic attack. My Elven Mystic reduces those with 2 down to 1 as well which means my opponent has 3 damage per turn to me.

Round 1 the Regal Peryton goes first to deal 1 damage to my Tortisan Chief. Then my Elven Mystic attack, due to the Void ability the Khimer Princess only takes 1 damage. My Tortisan Chief has the same Speed as Khimer Princess, but it's Epic rarity so it goes first and because I buffed it to 3 Magic attack even with the Void ability it takes 2 damage so I kill the Khimer Princess before it has a chance to heal itself.

Now the only ones left to attack in Round 1 are both our Goblin Psychic. There are a few possibilities here.

• My Goblin Psychic goes first to deal 2 damage to their Goblin Psychic which then gets their turn and heals that back up. It also heals my Tortisan Chief for the 1 damage taken from Regal Peryton.
• My Goblin Psychic goes first, deals the 2 damage and lands Affliction causing the opponents Goblin Psychic to be unable to heal during its turn. It also heals my Tortisan Chief for the 1 damage taken from Regal Peryton.
• Their Goblin Psychic goes first, deals 1 damage to my Tortisan Chief. Then my Goblin Psychic heals my Tortisan Chief for 2 Health before damaging my opponents Goblin Psychic for 2 damage.
• Their Goblin Psychic goes first, deals 1 damage to my Tortisan Chief and applies Affliction. Then my Goblin Psychic wouldn't be able to heal my Tortisan Chief and would just deal 2 damage to the opponents' Goblin Psychic.

Well I may have gotten a bit lucky there as my Goblin Psychic went first and landed Affliction so my opponent doesn't have a chance to heal back to 5 Health. My opponent didn't hit Affliction on me. But even if they did land Affliction then my Tortisan Chief could've survived with 1 Health (after the Poison). Which means I'd still have enough damage.

Here is a photo of the start of round 2 before the Poison damage was done.

I might have been a bit lucky here that my Goblin Psychic went first to heal that 1 Health on my Tortisan Chief. Because if my opponent went first and they did the damage AND also hit Affliction then I wouldn't have been able to heal when my Goblin Psychic would have its turn. Which would mean it would have 3 Health, lose 2 to Poison and then die to the attack from Regal Peryton.

That's of course if my opponent's Goblin Psychic went first AND landed the Affliction. So yeah that would be some RNG required.

After the Poison damage their Goblin Psychic has 1 Health. Their Regal Peryton went first and attacked my Tortisan Chief down to 1 Health. Then my Elven Mystic killed the Goblin Psychic as it had 1 Health after Poison. Now my Tortisan Chief deals 2 damage to Regal Peryton. Then my Goblin Psychic heals Tortisan Chief and it deals 2 damage to Regal Peryton which kills it and wins me the battle!

Was My Strategy Successful?

Yeah it went quite well by bringing Obsidian to increase my Magic damage and bringing Elven Mystic to reduce my opponent's damage.

There could've been a lot of possibilities here though. As I explained earlier in the Battle Analysis.

On top of that there are also a few possibilities again at the start of Round 2 based on stuff happening in round 1. If their Goblin Psychic was at 3 Health (after the Poison damage) and my Tortisan Chief was at 1 Health (after the Poison damage) well then I'd lose the Tortisan Chief right away to Regal Peryton and then my Elven Msytic also wouldn't be able to take out the Goblin Psychic. So mine would then have to go first to take it out. I do suppose if their Goblin Psychic went first in Round 1 then mine kinda should go first in round 2 since they're the same level but I think that's random 50/50 chance.

Conclusion

That was an interesting battle! There were 4 possibilities regarding our Goblin Psychic's during Round 1 and based on those outcomes there could also be various outcomes. I would've definitely lost damage output if I'd have lost my Tortisan Chief to Regal Peryton. If that happened then things may not have looked so good for me but it still depends on some RNG. In that case it would've been really important for my Goblin Psychic to go before my opponents in round 2. Again depending on the outcomes of the turn order and the chance to land Affliction.

So many possibilities! I think the worst case scenario for me would've been a draw. I think it would've always been a win or a draw because of the Poison.

That's it for my Battle Mage Secrets challenge this week. Thank you for reading!

If you haven't signed up for Splinterlands yet and want to check it out, you can do so with my referral link at: https://splinterlands.com?ref=athunderstruck