Facing Lorkus + Barashkukor - What works, what doesn't

This is part of the Community Engagement Challenge: Click here for the Link to the Challenge

Prologue

If you have played a little and participated in Tournaments, you will encounter an extremely strong and hard to beat combo of cards, especially in high mana battles - Lorkus and Barashkukor.

Lorkus is a legendary summoner that provdes +1 melee and +1 magic damage. Additionally, it can either give Affliction and Life Leech to two monsters, or trample and fury to two monsters.

Barashkukor is a Rebellion Legendary monster that costs impressive 13 Mana, but has 5 Magic damage on level one, plus fury, plus 6 LP, 2 Armor and 3 Speed. It gains Weaken on level 2, and Magic Reflect on level 3.

Now, what is the combo? Giving Barashkukor Life Leech. It will have 6 Magic attack with the Lorkus bonus, so it can leech up to 3 life in each round. That is very powerful, especially if the opponent can't bring it down in the first round.

This combo is often used in earthquake (as the case in my examples), poison, magic only, and fog of war.

Example 1 - Dragon Power! The Void Case (Click for battle)

The dragon element has several good cards to counter LoBash, as they have Void or Phase (or both, like the Void Dragon). If LoBash misses, it doesn't leech. If he only does half the damage, it leeches less.

In this case, we're having a 51 Mana Round in a Rebellion Novice Tournament, Earthquake, Return Fire and Holy Protection.

The opponent has very strong cards - but I anticipated a magic-set-up and threw Rage as first card. Second is Reaper for his WingBreak. Third the Redwyrm Dragon, and Helheim Demon at the end.

The opponent gives Leech and Affliction to the Shaman (great choice, it gains LP while still protected by the void armor), as well as Barashkukor, turning it into LoBash. Not one flying creature - that is disappointing.

The Ambush and the first two attacks take out the Firestorm, and the Shaman is directly the tank. Unfortunately, LoBash has also Fury and attacks after the Scout, so the Demons's Divine Shield is already gone, and it takes 12 damage, dies and gives LoBash 4 LP (since the Demon only had 8 LP).

Earthquake takes down some of the Shaman's armor, but it survives while Rage is seriously injured - 1 LP is all it has got left, but it's still allowed to attack once more at the beginning of round 3.

Shaman, down, Scout, down - then Rage down, but LoBash only gets 1 LP from that attack, that's good!

After the Earthquake in Round 4, it's only LoBash left against the Reaper and the Redwyrm. In the end, it's actually the Earthquake that does enough damage to it so my Redwyrm can take it down - plus, the Redwyrm still had the Divine Shield intact, preventing another leech. Otherwise, I would've lost this one.

Example 2 - Just kill me now... The Sneak-Approach (Click for battle)

This one did not give the choice of dragon, so I tried high-damage-death - to no avail, LoBash was just too strong. I did not use the Demon again here, since I already expected LoBash and didn't want to repeat the happenings in the battle before. Both battles were directly after each other.

53 Mana, Earthquake again, no heal, knock-outs, only life and fire - perfect setting to summon LoBash.

I did not take into account the "no heal" ruleset, so the Weaver should've been replaced by another card. Also, facing Mantaroth in first position and having little magic damage is tough. I used -2 health on LoBash and the tank, hoping that the Daigendark Hunter could LoBash down in time. The opponent gave Leech to the Shaman and LoBash, just like in the battle before. Maybe I should've gone with fire here, taking away 2 magic damage from LoBash by using Nomos, plus the sneak/opportunity monsters from fire.

This was a quick game. LoBash took out my tank right away, no questions asked. My units just went down one after the other, and I only had 3 left at the beginning of Round 2.

I didn't even do more damage here. It was impossible to beat that combo with the cards that I had available. The combination of a Shield-Tank and LoBash in the rear is extremely powerful.

Example 3 - Blocked Leech! The Void Armor-Save

In this match, I go for surprise-attacks to take maximum advantage of the blast.

Agor Longtail does two ambush attacks, and Rage one. Before the enemy can attack, he's already lost 2 units.
Lucky for me, he placed LoBash before Venka, and so it attacks first - while Agor still has a little Void armor left, blocking the whole 12 damage (Fury). Round 2 is the last one.

Conclusion

LoBash is a combo that is extremely hard to beat if one does not have the proper cards available. It definitely need either a lot of fast-acting Sneak monsters to take it down before it can attack, or Void/Phase monsters to lower it's leech-rate. Divine Shield also helps, as well as Void Armor.

I hope this helps someone who is as frustrated as I am to deal with this combo - it's almost as annoying as Tofu :-D

Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it at least as much as I enjoyed writing :-D If you have any comments or feedback - please let me know! And don't forget to leave your own posts for me to curate. Thank you very much!

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