HELLO to all Splinterlands readers of my humble blog.👋🏻👋🏻👋🏻

Welcome to week 21 of the new iteration of the Splinterlands Weekly Challenges (at least, if I haven't miscounted so far, yet. 😜). For any old Hivers/Splinterland players who've just come back and are confused, fret not! Even with the name and format tweaks, right at it's core, battles are still the foundation of these posts.

In this week's edition of Battle Mage Secrets... Welcome to the BIG "Small Time" Leagues! There's no space for the Goliaths today. Only the small ones, the "weaker" ones, those which usually go unnoticed! 😱

No matter! I present to you the ruleset — LITTLE LEAGUE 🤏🏻🐭

The game's description of KEEP YOUR DISTANCE is as follows: "Only units and summoners with a mana cost of 4 or less may be used in battles."

One can say goodbye to your entire army of expensively assembled cards. Most of the strongest overpowered cards tend to by huge monsters with astronomical casting costs. With this ruleset in play, anything (including Summoners) which cost more than 4 will be completely excluded!

As always, this calls for every deck to have a good variety of cards. If you have been the type to only hoard and focus on the "big strong ones", you will be in for a shock when encountering the Little League ruleset.

Needless to say, battles like these are usually much shorter than usual because of their much lower expected health pools. There is also a lot less leeway for errors as a single hit could be the killing blow for such "small" units.

I will take advantage of this ruleset in my battle showcase today to show how 1 of my units in particular becomes a lot stronger than one would expect with LITTLE LEAGUE. Introducing the Summoner, Thaddius Brood.

Messing with the dark arts should not be taken lightly. But that was the risk that Thaddius Brood took. A curious young man fascinated by the occult, he took to casting rituals and holding dark ceremonies. And it wasn't long before he got in touch with a dark entity that drove him into madness.
His family sent him to an asylum, but it only worsened his condition. And the entity within him festered and grew more powerful. Soon there was no boundary between Thaddius and it. Using his newfound dark magic, Thaddius broke from his prison and now wreaks havoc everywhere he goes. Through his rituals he got into contact with Doctor Blight. And the Doctor was fascinated with his power.
Thaddius has now joined the ranks of the Chaos Legion as an agent in the Splinterlands, sowing death wherever he can.

From Splinterlands Lore on Thaddius Brood

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Thaddius Brood is a Rare card released during the Chaos Legion expansion. It has definitely found it's place in many Death decks given its availability and usefulness. It's effects on the battlefield are -1 🪄MAGIC ATTACK🪄 and -1 ❤️HEALTH❤️ to all enemy units. It's summoning cost is, like all other Chaos Legion Rare Summoners, 4 🧪MANA🧪.

The stat buffs it gives are nothing out of the ordinary, so at first glance, he might look pretty bland. It would seem that in terms of firepower, this summoner does almost nothing to boost your team. However, under the correct battlefield conditions, he could end up being really strong!

As it is obvious from his ability to reduce your opponent's magic damage by 1 across the board, Thaddius is clearly an anti-magic based summoner. As an added bonus, he also reduces the health of all enemy units by 1 too! This is an all round ability that further increases his advantage if the opponent decides to field a magic heavy team.

Normally, Thaddius's debuff to units health by just 1 HP wouldn't seem like much at all. After all, what is a mere 1 health when you're dealing with large units which have more than 10? However, for the ruleset Little League, with the mana cost of units restricted to 4 and under, those units tend to have very low health points. This means that -1 HP suddenly becomes something really significant.

This could make all the difference if the battle comes down to the wire where the slightest advantage is the fine line between victory or defeat! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻 This is definitely what I'd consider game changing! 😱😱😱

⚔️🛡️My Battle Showcase🛡️⚔️

Let me present a battle I fought recently in which the ruleset LITTLE LEAGUE was in effect. My opponent ALSO used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Thaddius Brood from the DEATH splinter as his main pick, while I (obviously) used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Thaddius Brood from the DEATH splinter too. 💀 VS 💀

At first glance, it would seem like we were both evenly matched.

• Both of us were using the same splinters and summoners.

• Our mix of units were similar too, with a mixture of melee, ranged and magic units.

• Somehow, we avoided picking a single matching unit at all. 😱

• I would say that his choice of Riftwing was particularly dangerous as it would "grow bigger" every time a unit died.

• This could end up being a deciding factor if I could not burn down that troublesome tank.

I was honestly expecting this to be a really bad matchup for me 😜🤣. This was a team who had an innate advantage in this ruleset. The choice of that one particular Riftwing could prove to be my undoing. Would I be able to turn the tide of battle against such an opponent then? Victory or defeat would lie in the small details.

I would say that the ruleset LITTLE LEAGUE was DEFINITELY the MVP of this match, having played it's role in turning the tide of battle. The advantage it gave my team resulted in me outlasting my opponent in this battle. It definitely provided the edge that I needed to overcome my opponent.

This ensured that the other units could eventually wear down the opponent until victory was achieved! 🏆🏆🏆

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LINK TO MY FIGHT

👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️LINEUP CHOICES👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️

1st CARD SLOT

The Animated Corpse is chosen for this slot. He plays the role of the Main tank perfectly with his great stats. His high health stats and the VOID ability will also allow him to have much longer staying power on the battlefield. This allows all other units to be kept safe until he is taken down.

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2nd CARD SLOT

The Revealer occupies this slot. It's main role here is to attempt to stun the enemy whilst also dealing some DPS. It will also play the role of a backup tank.

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3rd CARD SLOT

The Maggots fills this slot and it's main role is to be the DPS for the team. At just 3 mana, it is an amazingly great card being able to output 2 damage with the OPPORTUNITY ability taking out the weakest units.

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4th CARD SLOT

The Ravenhood Warden fills this slot. It's role is to be ranged DPS for the team. It will also give the entire team a much needed +2 Armor thanks to the PROTECT ability.

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5th CARD SLOT

The Haunted Spider is yet another amazingly efficient card. Costing just 3 mana, it is able to deal 2 ranged damage ALONG WITH the chance to proc the POISON ability. This could potentially DOUBLE it's damage output.

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6th CARD SLOT

The Twisted Jester occupies the last slot. It's main role is to be a high damaging ranged DPS which is also able to target any protected non melee unit thanks to it's SNIPE ability.

I hope you're starting to see the pattern here in my team setup. 😉

⚔️🛡️Battle Action Report🛡️⚔️

As you can see, both of us fielded very different units in our matchup. Even though we both used the exact same splinters and summoners, and our unit selection did not feature a single similar unit! 😱

💀DEATH💀 VS 💀DEATH💀

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My opponent used the Shadow Snitch as his tank in the 1st slot which was a VERY good choice. With his great defensive stats, and the REACH ability, this is a unit which will protect it's entire team until it falls.

The Riftwing occupied his 2nd slot. This is an amazing backup tank unit. Whilst it is unable to deal any damage, the SCAVENGE and FLYING abilities allow it to become a very hardy tank which could potentially hold off any number of attacks.

His next 2 units were ranged units in the form of the Soul Strangler and Dark Astronomer. They are both units with very decent DPS for the Little League.

His last 2 units, the Death Elemental and Undead Badger, were his "assassin" team with their SNIPE and SNEAK abilities.

All in all, I would say that the opponent picked a really strong team.

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My choice of the Main Tank was the Animated Corpse who is perfect for this task. He has really high HEALTH stats in order to take extra hits to ensure that all the other units are protected. Not only that, it also has the VOID abilitiy. This allows it to last longer on the battlefield.

The Revealer comes next in the 2nd slot. It's has a pretty good amount of health and would make a very good backup tank.

The Maggots occupy the 3rd slot and their job is to go around picking off the weakest units in the opponent's team thanks to it's OPPORTUNITY ability.

My next 3 units were all ranged DPS units. They had one aim only, and that was to bring down the opponent before the tank fell. They all packed quite a punch too.

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The battle started out with all our units just duking it out pound for pound. It was a high mana game with 46 mana as the limit. The rulesets were TAKING SIDES & LITTLE LEAGUE.

• The first round saw my team unleash a barrage of attacks performed beyond my expectations!

• The opponent's main tank and shadow strangler were taken out within the first few attacks. 🤣

• My choice of Thaddius Brood paid off handsomely too as I was able to negate the magic damage from my opponent's "All Magic" team.

• Had the opponent's Riftwing not dodged some attacks, it could have easily had gone down too!

• In just 1 round of attacks, my team had barely a scratch on them while taking a huge dominant position on the battlefield. 😱

• Thanks to the Little League and Thaddius's debuffs, they had so little health left that they became really fragile and died with just the slightest touch! 🤣

• Round 2 saw the remaining units completely wiped off the face of the earth!

• It was all over for the opponent now as I eventually mopped up his entire army. 💀💀💀

Talk about doing WAY MORE than it was supposed to!!! 😱🤯🥳 All I expected was for the LITTLE LEAGUE ruleset to give me a slight advantage. Individually, on their own, my units could have easily died because of their fragility. However, thanks to being able to debuff all his units down making them easy to pick off, I was able to turn the tides of battle! The opponent simply could not handle all that at all.

Well as you can see here in this GIF of my battle, the results were pretty good! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

This was truly an eye opener! 😁🏆

Slowly, but surely, I wore down the opponent's team and the match ended up with me inflicting a crushing defeat. My team selection proved to be the edge I needed to eventually overpower my opponent. 💪🏻

🔮🔮🔮Hindsight is 20/20🔮🔮🔮

Would I have done anything differently? 🤔 This might have seemed like a disadvantage at the start but I ended up winning handily. IF I had to use the same cards again, there would be no better lineup than what I had already used for the match. Any other combination MIGHT have resulted in a loss for me. I'm really satisfied with the results against such a worthy opponent. 🏆🥇

💭🧐💭Ending Thoughts💭🧐💭

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I definitely can appreciate the ruleset LITTLE LEAGUE and how it changes the dynamics of usual gameplay. This is one of those rulesets which can be turned into a huge advantage if surrounded with the proper team. The role it brings to the battlefield will give a player the edge in squeezing out every tiny advantage to get the win. 👍🏻

I hope this article has given you some insight into its potential. 😉

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To any new players who wish to explore the world of Splinterlands, do feel free to sign up with my REFERRAL LINK 😊.

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