One Way Out - Battling with Lost Magic!

This week's Battle Mage Secrets challenge features the Lost Magic ruleset! You can probably already tell its effects from the name alone - in Lost Magic battles, monsters with magic attacks are unable to be used in your lineup. Any monster with a magic attack is banned from those fights. Melee, ranged, or no attack at all? Then you're good to go. The big loser in Lost Magic battles is fairly obvious - monsters with a magic attack are completely unusable. Accordingly, monsters who specialize in countering magic attackers also lose quite a bit of value.

Whenever there is a loser there is often a winner, and in this case there are a few. Any monster that is weak against magic attacks is rather happy to see Lost Magic - we're talking about monsters with lots of armor, or more specifically, low health and high armor. Monsters with Shield are great in Lost Magic fights, since they are guaranteed to reduce the damage from every single attack that they may get hit by. Monsters which strongly counter ranged or melee attacks also have a higher chance of finding their preferred matchups in Lost Magic.

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. This is a bit of a funny ruleset, since it combines Lost Magic with Fire and Regret. That means that on top of all magic monsters being ineligible due to Lost Magic, there is a "soft" ban on ranged monsters, since any ranged attacker will be taking counterattack damage any time it lands a hit. So it is a fairly restrictive ruleset, but at least there is a 99 mana cap and 5 splinters to choose from!

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The ruleset combination strongly encourages the use of melee attackers, so my plan for this battle is to counter melee attackers as much as possible. Mylor Crowling is the perfect summoner for this task, since his Thorns ability allows every single one of my monsters to deal some counterdamage to enemy melee monsters.

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We have a 99 mana battle, so I splurged on my frontline monsters. Grund is the hardest hitter in my deck, combining 3 melee attack with Double Strike for a whooping 6 damage per turn. Mycelic Infantry is a defensive powerhouse, with Shield and a whole lot of armor and health.

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The middle of my lineup consisted of a pair of support monsters. Disintegrator is a champ in this ruleset, since Demoralize will debuff all of the enemy melee attacks. Scavo Hireling may seem like an unusual choice, since it is a 3 mana monster in a 99 mana cap battle. But the Repair ability is very strong in this battle, since it can repair any monster on my team. And if my opponent uses a lot of melee attackers then that additional armor recovery could potentially add up a lot over the course of the battle.

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I closed out my lineup with some more beefy monsters. Arkemis the Bear is super tanky, and also brings along the Protect ability. This gives every monster on the team some extra armor, and ensures that Scavo Hireling's Repair ability can help out any one of my monsters. Terraceous Hulk similarly has plenty of armor and health, along with the Taunt ability. My plan for this battle was to bring as much bulk as possible, and hope that the enemy team wears itself out on all of my team's armor and Thorns damage.

With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am hopeful - my opponent has brought some very powerful melee attackers as well as a monster with Repair, but they are lacking any Thorns which means that my team should effectively be getting more attacks each round. Couple that with the fact that I have the only Demoralize monster on the field, and my team should have a much higher damage output over the course of the fight.

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The battle starts off a bit slowly, since not all of the melee monsters were able to attack right from the beginning. By the start of round 3 though, the Thorns and Return Fire damage is beginning to make its mark on the enemy monsters. My Terraceous Hulk is doing an outstanding job of drawing enemy fire, and Scavo Hireling's Repair is keeping my team relatively healthy.

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The battle grinds on, and by round 6 the field is slowly beginning to clear. I lose my front and rear monsters, but still have plenty of bulk remaining on my team.

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This ended up being a marathon battle, but by the start of round 10 my team was finally in a winning position - my Disintegrator, backed up by Scavo Hireling's Repair ability, was able to completely nullify the enemy Coeurl Lurker's attacks. From there, it was just a matter of time until my Disintegrator attacks and Thorns damage wore down the Lurker for the victory And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.

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This battle was quite the slog - it didn't finally end until round 13! But my strategy worked out perfectly - a team focused on bulk and anti-melee monsters was able to wear down the enemy monsters and seal the victory. This battle showcased the importance of paying careful attention to the battle rulesets. By noticing the one "available" attack type for this battle, I was able to lean hard into a counter-strategy and position my team for success.

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:

• Pauper Power - Battling with Rise of the Commons! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring Rise of the Commons!

• 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.