The Common People

4 months ago

Greetings, battle mages!

For this week's Splinterlands Battle Mage Secrets challenge I was waiting for a ruleset that would allow me to demonstrate perhaps the best card I ever pulled - a gold foil legendary Drybone Raider. Unfortunately, that's not the case. In fact, the Rise of the Commons ruleset only allows the use of Rare and Common monsters.

If that wasn't restrictive enough, I got another ruleset that added even more limitations. Even Stevens ruleset will let me use only monsters even mana cost.

You might think this would leave very few choices, but I was surprised as I found a pretty awesome gang and a solid strategy. Let's take a look!

Scouting My Opponent

My opponent had played three of their previous battles with a Water Magic team containing some pretty nasty creatures. Still, I was pretty sure that if this was the case, I could still take out a magic team led by the summoner Kelya Frendul by adding a little magic myself.

The Team

I must admit that I'm quite used to boosting powerful magic units such as Djinn Oshannus and Nerissa Tridwan with Alric Strombringer's +1 magic buff but since those kinda monsters are now sidelined, I had to come up with something else.

Something else, that would also require Alric's expertise.

COASTAL SENTRY is a monster I see many of my opponents using but I have never been that fond of it myself.

Perhaps it's because of her relatively low health that in my opinion, is just not enough for a tank unit. I would categorize this one as "specialist" for rulesets in which melee monsters can attack from other positions as well.

That being said, her Double Strike ability combined with 4 melee attack points makes a truly lethal combination.

To support my unusual tank choice, I've chosen ARKEMIS THE BEAR to provide armour to friendly units with his Protect ability.

Arkemis is also a solid choice to take the second spot as he can operate as a backup tank if things go south for some reason. A strong melee attack and a good amount of health make Arkemis a tough bear to crack.

Being a Neutral unit with Protect, Arkemis has proven out to be a very useful monster and in fact, quite soon after this battle, I bought all the needed cards to upgrade him to level 3.

A fragile little ICE PIXIE should be pretty safe here in the middle protected by Arkemis' ability and her own one - Flying.

Thanks to Alric's buff, she is also somewhat of a threat as her magic is now upgraded to 2 points.

SEA GENIE is another flying unit and just like the Pixie, he is also vulnerable to all sorts of attacks having only 4 health points.

Another so-called specialist I'm usually only using in the Earthquake battles.

If able to stay alive, Sea Genie can offer some serious firepower when his base attack of 2 is levelled up to three because of the summoner buff.

Now, this is where it starts to get interesting!

In a short time, MOXIAN REBEL has become one of my absolute favourite units in the game and I now have many interesting strategies that revolve around her.

For example, I can surround her with non-attack units such as a healer(Merdaali Guardian) and a Repair unit(Scavo Hireling) to create an ultimate support team with devastating magic attack power as well.

However, in this battle, I used Weapons Training to plot an even more cunning plan...

I placed a GELATINOUS CUBE in the last position to absorb enemy Sneak attacks with its massive amount of health. Besides that, Cube has the Scavenger ability which makes its health grow by 1 point every time a monster dies on the battlefield.

This strange habit will come in handy in a case of Gelatinous Cube should be my last monster facing the opponent tank.

But how can it attack if it is the last monster, you might ask. Well, here's where Moxian Rebel's ability comes into play. Weapons Training will provide a magic attack to the Cube and that attack is also boosted by Alric to two points. The best thing is those points will remain even if the trainer, The Rebel, would be dead.

Let's see how they can cope with that!

Entering The Arena

As always, I was wrong about their Splinter of choice. Instead of Water, they went with Earth as Lobb Lowland as a summoner. Lobb can summon a Gladiator unit with the dreaded Bloodlust ability and it seems my opponent used that option by choosing Katrelba Gobson, a real threat with Sneak and Double-Strike.

Their other monsters are:

Unicorn Mustang - has the Void ability which can mean trouble for my magic plans.
Goblin Psychic - a healer that will prolong the life span of the Unicorn Mustang. Also not good for us.
Goblin Thief - another Sneak monster. Busy night ahead for my Cube.
Mad Ogre Anarchist - a new friend I have to watch closely.
Mantoid - can cause some surprises with its Snipe ability.

The Battle

The setup for this battle is extremely interesting and the outcome should be very difficult to predict. If you want to check out the whole battle, you can watch it HERE or/and continue reading my battle report below:

ROUND 1

The first round was pretty even in my opinion. If should have put a weaker unit in the last spot instead of The Cube, I would certainly be in trouble now. So much pressure was applied there by their Sneak monsters.

Meanwhile, we managed to reduce their tank's health to only one point while my Coastal Sentry remained in much better health.

ROUND 2

Their Mad Ogre Anarchist was targeting Ice Pixie and now managed to kill her with a second try using his opportunity ability.

Our payback was brutal. Coastal Sentry launched a double strike and took out Mustang Unicorn along with their healer!

At the end of the second round, we further added to their pain as their attacks hit our armour or the Cube. We struck back and with a few magic attacks, we vaporized both Goblin Thief and Katrelba Gobson. This was the turning point of the battle.

ROUND 3

In the last round Coastal Sentry softened the opponent and after that, my strong magic backline delivered the final blows. Game over.

Conclusion

Rise of the Commons rulesets offers an interesting opportunity to try other idle monsters and use your creativity to come up with new tactics that might widen your strategic perspective.

As for me, the Idea of using Gelatinous Cube was indeed a game changer here it was able to prevent the opponent's Bloodlust ability from triggering. Together with Moxian Rebel, Cube became quite a threat. Thanks to the new Rebellion set, it's been awesome to discover these kinds of pairs, and combinations, of old and new cards.

Such a great time to be playing Splinterlands!

Thank you for reading!