Double Trouble - Battling with Even Stevens!

This week's Battle Mage Secrets challenge features the Even Stevens ruleset! I am not the biggest fan of Even Stevens, because it eliminates what is essentially half of the usable monsters in your deck. While that in itself is manageable, with two or possible even three different rulesets in play, an Even Stevens battle can very easily leave you with only a handful of monsters to choose from, and very limited strategic options.

You might be able to guess what Even Stevens does just from its name - even mana costed monsters only! There are a pair of very clearly impacted groups here: even mana costed monsters win because they are playable, and odd mana costed monsters are big losers since they can't be used at all. The other winners and losers really depend on the format you are playing in, and figuring them out requires knowledge of the meta you are playing in. For example, you may know that a particular strategy uses a lot of odd costed monsters. In that case, you may have to worry less about your opponent choosing that route when you are selecting your own team. On the reverse side, strategies which make use of mostly even costed monsters are stronger in Even Stevens, and more likely to see play.

If you wanted to jump right to the action, the Battle Link is right here. Want to hear some more about the lineup? Read on further!

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First up: the ruleset. Of course we have Even Stevens, which limits our monster options to cards with an even mana cost. To go along with it we have Broken Arrows, which means that we can't use any monsters with a ranged attack. Notably we only have 2 rulesets, which is nice given the fact that Even Stevens and Broken Arrows are both already fairly restrictive rules. Finally, we have a 22 mana budget and 4 splinters to choose from - every splinter except Life or Death.

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For our summoner we will go with Lobb Lowland. Lobb gives the opposing team a speed debuff, and allows us to use a Gladius card in our lineup. This is very useful in the Even Stevens ruleset, since the Earth splinter has a couple of very potent gladiator cards with an even mana cost.

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We'll lead off our team with Gargoya Lion and Fungus Fiend. Gargoya Lion doesn't tend to see very much play, but it pairs a decent amount of bulk and melee damage with Flying and Void - a great all-around combination that covers your bases against both magic and physical attacks. Fungus Fiend isn't a card that should be expected to be very impactful, but this is a relatively low mana battle and Fungus Fiend can work well as a secondary tank and potentially soak up an extra attack or two.

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Queen Mycelia is an outstanding card in low mana battles, and just so happens to also have an even mana cost! With the Protect ability she gives all of our monsters some extra armor, and even pitches in some magic damage. That extra armor is particularly useful with Bloodlust monsters, since if they didn't have any armor originally then it gives them an additional stat to boost.

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Our main damage source in the lineup is Katrelba Gobson. With 3 damage, Double Strike, and Sneak, she can make quick work of an enemy backline. As previously mentioned, Queen Mycelia's armor buff is great on Katrelba, since she will now be able to gain additional armor (in addition to all the other stats) every time she gets a kill.

With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I like what I see - my opponent has positioned some particularly weak monsters at the back end of their lineup. This perfectly sets the stage for Katrelba to get some early kills and snowball her way through the enemy team!

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As expected, in the first round of battle Katrelba is able to earn a quick double kill and double Bloodlust buff by taking out the enemy Furious Chicken and Torrent Fiend.

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One more round and one more kill for Katrelba - she knocks out the opposing Deeplurker to get Bloodlust buff number 3! The enemy Dhampir Infiltrator is keeping Katrelba's health in check with Cripple, but her attack and speed stats are beginning to get out of hand - exactly what I like to see!

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One more attack and the Dhampir Infiltrator is off the board too, though there is one unexpected complication - Katrelba's attack has been boosted so much that it will be triggering Djinn Oshannus' Forcefield ability! Luckily my team still had plenty of bulk remaining so this only delayed the inevitable - it took an extra batch of attacks, but my monsters were able to finish off the enemy team before the end of the fifth round. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.

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This battle serves are a reminder that "free" monsters are not always free. My opponent's use of 2 zero mana monsters at the back of their lineup gifted my Katrelba a free double Bloodlust buff, which she then used to sweep her way through their team. Those Fiends and Chickens are often great to throw in to a team as an afterthought, but from time to time those things can come back to cost you a battle!

Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:

• Heavy Hitters - Remarkable Splinterlands Battles! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Equalizer and Equal Opportunity!

• Splinterlands Economics: Causation - A look at causation, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!

• Splinterlands Economics: Ceteris Paribus - An introduction to the concept of Ceteris Paribus, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands!

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All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.