One Close Shave - Battling with Noxious Fumes!

In the spirit of the new weekly Battle Mage Secrets challenges, I would like to take a look at a Splinterlands battle with a particular focus on a ruleset. Our ruleset today can be one of the more frustrating ones to deal with as a new player, and is a tricky one to play properly even with additional experience and cards. As is often the case though, careful card selection and strategy can help to give you a bit of an edge. Today, we will be taking a look at a battle with the Noxious Fumes ruleset!

When I was starting off playing Splinterlands, Noxious Fumes was one of the rulesets that I would dread to see when going into battle. In Noxious Fumes fights, every monster starts the battle off Poisoned. This means that unless a monster has Immunity or gets Cleansed, it will be taking damage every turn. Have any low health monsters on your team? Don't count on them sticking around very long! Helpful abilities for the Noxious Fumes ruleset include Immunity and Cleanse. Monsters which have Heal or have plenty of health are also useful here, as they can survive longer despite the Poison damage.

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. As expected, we have Noxious Fumes, which will apply Poison to every monster at the start of the battle. We also have Lost Magic and Lost Legendaries - no magic attackers or legendary monsters allowed! There is a fairly low mana cap of just 19, but we do have every splinter to choose from, which is nice.

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The Fire splinter has some great cards to deal with the Noxious Fumes ruleset, so I went with a Fire summoner for this battle. Tarsa is great for any battle where you are going to be using some melee monsters thanks to her attack buff, and that additional health is very welcome in a fight where Poison is involved.

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In most lineups you would lead off with your tank and secondary tank. For this particular battle, I am not going to be following "most lineups"! Instead of some bulky monsters, I started my team with Radiated Scorcher and Scavo Chemist. Scavo Chemist is an all-star in Noxious Fumes battles thanks to his Cleanse ability. Being able to remove Poison from your front monster is great in these situations! Radiated Scorcher is a melee monster who can take full advantage of Tarsa's buffs, but I don't expect him to be able to do much attacking. Instead, he is there as more of a meat shield to buy time for Poison to deal more damage to the enemy team.

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In the third position was another monster excellent for Noxious Fumes, and one that was the heart of my plan for this fight. Forgotten One is a great melee attacker, and has Immunity, which means that Poison won't be applied in the first place. My strategy for this battle was for Forgotten One to serve as the main tank and attacker on my team, while the rest of my monsters play more support or stalling roles.

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I finished off my team with Venari Marksrat. Similarly to my frontline monsters, I didn't expect Venari Marksrat to be very impactful on the battle. Instead, I mainly used it for the Martyr ability. Ideally, the Marksrat would get a couple of attacks off and then die to poison or random attacks, giving Forgotten One a stat buff thanks to Martyr.

With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am hopeful - my opponent and I both selected similar teams, but I like the slight advantages that my team has. My opponent opted for Brighton Bloom and the Flying ability, while I went with Tarsa and her melee buffs. I also have a bit of a level advantage on my monsters.

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The battle starts off slowly, but by the start of round 3, Poison has begun to take a toll. Most of the non-Forgotten One monsters on the field are heavily damaged, though my team does have a bit of a lead thanks to its additional bulk from Tarsa and higher monster levels.

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Two rounds later and we are down to a duel - both of us are down to our Forgotten Ones! I do have a level and attack advantage, but have to hope that Flying doesn't give my opponent a lucky miss or two. And actually, if you do the math here: one miss will be okay, but two misses and I will lose the battle!

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It ended up taking three more rounds and I nearly had a heart attack when my Forgotten One missed. But luckily it was just once, and not twice - just barely enough for me to eke out the victory! And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.

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While the RNG came awfully close to costing my the game, my strategy of stalling for time and buffing my Forgotten One was enough to win the day. This battle showcased several monsters which are great in the Noxious Fumes ruleset, and being able to select and organize those options were crucial in pulling off the victory.

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:

• Point Blank - Battling with Close Range! - Last week's Battle Mage Secrets challenge, featuring the Close Range ruleset!

• 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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Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!

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.