Odd Ones Out - Out of My Comfort Zone

Greetings, battle mages!

Even Stevens and Odd Ones Out are probably two of my least favourite rulesets in Splinterlands. The reason for this is they usually mess up my great strategies by excluding certain units. That being said, it's obviously the same for the opponent and when those are in play, they can provide good opportunities to test out new strategies and less-used monsters. So without further ado, let's dive into the world of odd mana monsters!

While doing a little scouting on my opponent's battle history I noticed they seem to favour the Dragon splinter a lot and especially the summoner, Quix The Devious. Quix is a nasty piece of work with debuffs that will reduce both speed and ranged attacks, something to definitely keep in mind when choosing my squad.

In this 49-mana battle, we had two rules of combat:

Odd Ones Out means choices are restricted to monsters with odd mana cost only.

Keep Your Distance will narrow down the options even more as monsters with melee attacks are not allowed to enter the battle.

So, it seems my options are limited to say at least. Because of the Quix's ranged attack debuff, I'll ditch the idea of using ranged monsters and Life splinter but instead go with with Alric and magic. Now let's take a look at what kind of team I managed to put up.

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My Team

Even though the options are limited, I take comfort in the fact that the good old ALRIC STORMBRINGER will boost the attack strength of my magic units by one point. Now the question remains, who will I find to replace those even mana units?

Djinn Osunnus has been a solid choice as a tank unit with his Void ability and so has Legionnaire Alvar with Void Armor. Since both of these are off-limits I decided to choose NERISSA TRIDAWN who has strong attack power and plenty of health but unfortunately no armour.

To change that fact I chose VENARI WAVESMITH to stand next to her and provide the needed armour using her Protect ability. This is a unit I haven't been using that much lately and have kind of given up on but gladly rulesets like these offer second chances to monsters to prove their worth.

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I might seem like I am over-protecting Nerissa and part of that it's true, Without any abilities, I see her as somewhat fragile in the first spot and have chosen quite a few supportive monsters to stand behind her. One of these is River Hellondale who will resurrect Nerissa or whichever unit who happens to die first. Another pretty fragile one but with a strong magic attack.

I certainly hope that we don't come down to the point where my tank unit needs to be resurrected and therefore I have chosen CRUSTACEAN KING to help Nerissa to stay healthy with its Tank Heal ability.

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This is getting ridiculous! Nerissa that, Nerissa this... BUT since Nerissa now has armour thanks to Wavesmith, that armour needs to be constantly repaired. SWAMP SPITTER is just the right turtle for the job! In addition to his Repair ability, Spitter also has a strong ranged attack(3) on level 4.

COASTAL NYMPH is another ranged unit with powerful attack(3). She is also quite well protected(2 armour & 7 health) and will Scattershot ability to hit random enemy targets.

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Entering The Arena

Most of the monsters I chose wouldn't be the first choices but all in all, I was pretty pleased with the general idea I came up with. That was until I got to see that my opponent had picked almost the same ones but positioned them very differently. That son of a...that rascal!

They had Void Dragon in the tank spot, a very clever move because it can use the Void ability to reduce my magic attacks while the rest of the team works in the back. Another monster on their side was Gobson Bomber, a camouflaged ranged unit who will attack only once in every other round but does 3x damage because of the recharge ability.

Still, I had faith in my healing & protection system and even though my ranged attacks were reduced, the two units suffering from that were still dangerous enough.

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The Battle

To find out how these almost identical teams settle the score, you can watch the whole battle HERE or/and continue to read my battle report!

ROUND 1

The first round was pretty even. A lot of pressure was applied to both team's tank units but they survived - for now.

ROUND 2

In the second round, the enemy used their speed advantage and took out Nerissa Tridawn who was then resurrected and killed again. We did the exact same thing to their Void Dragon and the battle remained an even one.

ROUND 3

It was now Gobson Bomber vs. Venari Wavesmith in the front line. Again they did the trick first and wasted my Wavesmith. It was then a payback time and the Bomber had to pay the price.

ROUND 4

No change in the script in this one either. My River Hellodale had it coming and at this point, the situation began to look a bit worrying. All I had left were three ranged units whose attacks were reduced against their powerful magic monsters including Nerissa herself!

ROUND 5 & 6

They quickly played out two of my remaining monsters and the battle was suddenly over since the Coastal Nymph couldn't attack anymore from this position. Congratulations to my opponent. Well played.

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Conclusion - What Went Wrong?

My strategy obviously didn't work out so well. Captain Hindsight would probably say that I shouldn't have put Nerissa Tridawn in the front but instead tried to find another tank unit and place Nerissa somewhere in the back.

Another factor that was working against me was speed. I was just too slow as their summoner had reduced the speed of most of my units to one. They then got the advantage which was very important when playing Nerissa out before she could be healed or her armour restored.

In addition to all of that, I'd say they made an excellent choice of summoner since Quix also reduced the attack of my ranged units. Well played on their part and some bad positioning on my side.

Thank you for reading!