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

Welcome to week 27 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... The Flash becomes as slow as a Tortoise. This is a reality in which the Tortoise most definitely won the Hare by a fair margin in the race and left him in the dust.

No matter! I present to you the ruleset — REVERSE SPEED 🐢🏃🏻💨

The game's description of REVERSE SPEED is as follows: "Monsters with the lowest Speed attack first and have the highest chance of evading attacks."

This is actually a pretty straightforward ruleset. All you need to do is to think of your usual fast units as the slow ones now and vice versa. If you want to take out your opponent at breakneck speed, just stack your team with "speed 1" units and watch as they suddenly move at breakneck speed!

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 REVERSE SPEED. Introducing the Summoner, Tarsa.

The village folk always say that Tarsa was born with fire in her blood, and that is true in many ways. Her burning rage and quick temper are amplified by her powers to summon and control fire. While her parents and teachers tried to instill patience for such dangerous magic, Tarsa had little time for that. She used her abilities to bully and threaten those that got in her way.
Her young and innocent-looking appearance only helped her to further manipulate people around her. “Tarsa always gets what Tarsa wants” is what she says to herself every time something or someone challenges her.
When the Chaos Legion arrived, Tarsa saw this as an opportunity to have free reign of her fire power without interference from anyone else. So long as the Chaos Legion opens the path for her, she can burn everything else to the ground.

From Splinterlands Lore on Tarsa

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

Tarsa is a very "direct use" kind of Summoner in my opinion. She gives a straight up buff to melee attacks and health. This makes her clearly favour melee based units giving them that extra bit of damage to take down your opponents. For general usage, she also toughens up every unit slightly.

Should your team lineup suit the conditions, Tarsa can definitely prove to be a most useful Summoner choice. Conversely, I would usually not recommend using Tarsa in matches which only allow Ranged or Magic units.

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 REVERSE SPEED was in effect. My opponent used the Untamed edition Summoner Yodin Zaku from the FIRE splinter as his main pick, while I (obviously) used the Chaos Legion edition Summoner Tarsa from the FIRE splinter too. 🔥 VS 🔥

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

• My opponent was using a Legendary Summoner at level 2!

• And it wasn't just any Summoner, but one of the strongest in the game, Yodin Zaku!

• All his units were also of a much higher level than mine! 😱

• Was there any hope for me at all with such a gulf in quality and levels of our units?

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. There was a clear mismatch in terms of level and quality of the opponent's team as compared to mine. 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 REVERSE SPEED 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 Dumacke Orc is chosen for this slot. He plays the role of the Main tank perfectly with his great stats. His high Armour stats and the SHIELD 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

Venator Kinjo occupies this slot. It's main role here is to negate the effects of BLAST with his REFLECTION SHIELD ability.

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3rd CARD SLOT

The Spirit Hoarder fills this slot and it's main role is to be the Support for the team. At just 3 mana, it is an amazingly great card being able to heal the backline with it's TRIAGE ability.

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4th CARD SLOT

Sorriel the Bale fills this slot. It's role is to be Magic DPS for the team. It is able to output great amounts of DPS thanks to it's DOUBLESTRIKE ability.

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5th CARD SLOT

The Djinn Inferni fills this slot. It's role is to be the Magic DPS of the team. It is a hard hitting magic unit who can deal even more damage against units which cost more than 10 mana thanks to it's GIANT KILLER ability.

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6th CARD SLOT

The Scavo Hireling occupies the last slot. It's main role is to be a Support unit by restoring lost Armour thanks to it's REPAIR 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 our unit selection did not feature a single similar unit! 😱

🔥FIRE🔥 VS 🔥FIRE🔥

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

The Goblin Shaman occupied his 2nd slot. This is a unit which debuffs enemy health thanks to it's WEAKEN ability.

His next 4 units were ranged units and they ALL had the SNIPE ability. This meant they were very deadly units who could easily bypass any tank to take out any non melee unit.

Couple with his Yodin buffing all ranged damage and giving them the BLAST ability, the opponent's team was set up to absolutely destroy anyone they faced.

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 Dumacke Orc who is perfect for this task. He has really high ARMOR stats in order to take extra hits to ensure that all the other units are protected. Not only that, it also has the SHIELD ability. This allows it to last longer on the battlefield.

Venator Kinjo comes next in the 2nd slot. I had anticipated the opponent picking Yodin and chose Kinjo to reduce some of the damage from BLAST thanks to his REFLECTION SHIELD ability.

The Spirit Hoarder occupied the 3rd slot and would be another support unit who could lessen the impact of BLAST damage from Yodin once again thanks to the healing given to backline units from it's TRIAGE ability.

My next 2 units were my Magic DPS units. I would be counting on them to punch through the opponent's defences before he took me down with his overwhelming attacks.

My last slot was occupied by the Scavo Hireling. It was purely a support unit meant to restore my ARMOR thanks to it's REPAIR ability.

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The battle started out with all our units just duking it out pound for pound. It was an average mana game with 37 mana as the limit. The rulesets were REVERSE SPEED & EQUALIZER.

• The first round saw both teams unleash a barrage of attacks. Even though both sides took a fair bit of damage, the round ended with everyone still standing.

• The 2nd round started off positively for me as my focused attacks brought down his Molten Ogre Main Tank. However, my own team was not unscathed too as the SNIPE/BLAST combo was devastating my backline.

• Round 3 was another good round for me as I brought down the opponent's Goblin Shaman too! Once again, my backline hovered really closed to the brink of death. The only thing saving them was a lucky round of dodges thanks to REVERSE SPEED making my "slow" units dodge more often.

• Round 4 saw me bringing down the first of his Ranged DPS and also negating another one as it moved to the front line and became unable to attack. However, I lost my Spirit Hoarder and Sorriel. This was a huge blow to my team.

• Round 5 saw yet another Ranged DPS brought down but Round 6 saw the last of my DPS units, the Djinn Inferni completely knocked out of battle. I was in deep trouble here now.

• Thanks to REVERSE SPEED though, my Dumacke Orc was able to take down another ranged unit and completely negated the opponent's last ranged unit after that (being unable to attack at the front).

• 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 REVERSE SPEED ruleset to give me a slight advantage. Individually, on their own, my units could have easily died because of the superior firepower and level advantage the opponent had. However, thanks to being able to move "faster" than expected, 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 the video recording 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 REVERSE SPEED 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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