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

Welcome to week 22 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, we are lost! Well, we aren't lost on some purgatory island like the passengers of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815! But at least an entire class of units seem to be missing from action upon encountering this particular ruleset.

No matter! I present to you the ruleset — LOST LEGENDARIES 🌫🌫🌫

The game's description of LOST LEGENDARIES is as follows: "Legendary monsters may not be used in battles."

This is a ruleset which effectively removes the most powerful units in the game from play. In effect, it also evens the playing field somewhat for newer players who may not have access to these ultra rare legendaries. However, do take note of the wording, this rule affects ONLY units and NOT summoners. So feel free to abuse the power of a legendary summoner (as I will showcase how I did so too) to your heart's content! 😁

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 LOST LEGENDARIES. Introducing the Summoner, ASTRAL ENTITY.

From the shadows and the ether comes an eldritch entity known only as the Astral Entity. It is a celestial being that drifts through rifts in reality, searching for new planes and realms. There are almost no recordings of the Astral Entity in the athenaeums of the Splinterlands, but if one was to search through forgotten scrolls in the cobwebbed corners of ancient libraries, one would find the briefest mentions of this being. Snippets from across the centuries mention a humanoid shape made of cosmic energy. No one knows where it came from or what it wants, but it has only been recorded doing one thing: observing.

From Splinterlands Lore on ASTRAL ENTITY

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The Astral Entity is a Legendary 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 -2 🛡️ARMOR🛡️ and it grants the DODGE ability to all your units. It is also able to use the RESURRECT ability once on your team. It's summoning cost is, like all other Chaos Legion Legendary Summoners, 6 🧪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, in a defensive game, all his abilities combined makes this Summoner one of the strongest in the game!

Firstly, he debuffs the opponents with -2 to their ARMOR, which gives melee attacks a small advantage against them. However, I would say that I am more focused on the DODGE and RESURRECT abilities.

I would venture to say that with the LOST LEGENDARIES ruleset in play, there will be a lot less abilities from the units you use in the game. Now, we have a summoner which suddenly gives all your units an additional 3 abilities across the board (although resurrect can only be used once) and the battlefield conditions overwhelmingly tilt towards you.

Add one and one together and I hope it's glaringly obvious by now that the Astral Entity is a match made in heaven for this situation. Dodge gives all units an additional 25% chance to literally evade any physical based attacks and Resurrect gives an extra "save" for the first unit which dies.

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 LOST LEGENDARIES was in effect. My opponent used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Tarsa from the FIRE splinter as his main pick, while I used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Astral Entity from the DEATH splinter. 🔥 VS 💀

At first glance, it would seem like I was at a distinct disadvantage.

• My opponent was using a level 2 Gold Foil Rare Summoner VS my level 1 Legendary.

• His units were likewise significantly higher levelled than mine.

• This gave his entire team a huge increase in raw damage output.

• To exacerbate matters, he had a few SNEAK units designed to take out my vulnerable backline. Should they succeed, all my glass cannon units would be toast!

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. His team had one purpose only and that was to output the maximum amount of damage possible. 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 LOST LEGENDARIES 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 Pelacor Deceiver is chosen for this slot. He plays the role of the Main tank perfectly with his great stats. His high health stats and the FLYING 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 Silent Shavi occupies this slot. It's main role here to be the SNEAK DPS for my team. With some luck, it will successfully take out the opponent's fragile backline.

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3rd CARD SLOT

The Revealer fills this slot and it's main role is attempt to score a "lucky" STUN on the opponent via it's STUN ability. It can also contribute to the DPS with it's magic attacks.

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4th CARD SLOT

The Magi Neccrosi fills this slot. It's role is to pick off weaker units with it's SNIPE ability. It also has CAMOUFLAGE to give it some additional protection.

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5th CARD SLOT

The Soulstorm occupies this slot. It is a fast and hard hitting ranged unit whose only drawback is it's abysmally low amount of HP. Fortunately, it has the FLYING ability to give it some extra chances to dodge.

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6th CARD SLOT

The Phantom Soldier occupies the last slot. It's main role is DPS and defend the backline with it's considerable HP and FLYING 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. His fire splinter units were heavily melee based while I went for a more magic units. 😱

🔥FIRE🔥 VS 💀DEATH💀

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

The Radiated Brute occupied his 2nd slot. This is another tough unit and with it's REACH ability and good damage, it packs a punch. It would likely also be the backup tank after his main tank falls.

His 3rd slot was occupied by the Disintegrator, which is able to debuff all melee units with -1 attack.

This was followed by the hard hitting and tanky Lava Launcher ranged unit in his 4th slot.

His last 2 slots were filled with SNEAK DPS units, Uraeus and Tentii Striker.

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 Pelacor Deceiver 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 FLYING ability. This allows it to last longer on the battlefield.

The Silent Shavi comes next in the 2nd slot. While it isn't a particular tanky unit as a backup tank candidate, it is hard hitting and has the SNEAK ability to take out the opponent's backline.

The Revealer occupies the 3rd slot and it is mainly there just to provide some additional DPS and hopefully a "lucky" STUN whenever it lands a hit.

The Magi Necrosi, Soulstorm and Phantom Soldier occupy the next 3 slots. They will form the bulk of my DPS team with their magic and ranged attacks.

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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 40 mana as the limit. The rulesets were LOST LEGENDARIES & STAMPEDE.

• The first round saw both our sides launch a flurry of attacks. Both teams took a damage trading blows, but my team came out of it with the upper hand.

• Whilst the opponent's units were much harder hitting especially when enhanced by Tarsa's +1 melee damage, my Astral Entity's DODGE combined with my front and back units FLYING ability allowed me to DODGE the majority of attacks.

• Round 2 saw his main tank, Living Lava get picked off while my entire team DODGED ALL OF HIS ATTACKS FOR THE ENTIRE ROUND! 😱

• Round 3 was almost a repeat of the previous round as his backup tank, Radiated Brute, died too, while I only got hit once!

• With all his tanks gone, it was open season on the remaining fragile DPS units left on the field.

• Round 4 saw my units killing all of them as the sheer numerical advantage I enjoyed put the game beyond any doubt.

• 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 LOST LEGENDARIES ruleset to give me a slight advantage. Individually, on their own, my units would face a huge disadvantage against an enemy which has higher levelled than me. However, thanks to the amazing number of DODGES, which I have to admit was pretty lucky, 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 LOST LEGENDARIES 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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