One Woman Army Returns - Battling with Born Again!

This week's Battle Mage Secrets challenge features the Born Again ruleset! Born Again battles are one that I particularly enjoy - it is always fun to get to use Splinterlands monsters in battle, and in these fights you could potentially be using every monster twice as much! In this battle I will be showcasing a few monsters (and one summoner) that really shine in this ruleset.

Born Again gives every monster the Rebirth ability. There are not many losers in this ruleset - basically every monster that already has Rebirth, since their mana cost takes the ability into account and they will gain no additional benefit. Rebirth will benefit all of the other monsters, but some gain more than others. When a monster is Rebirth'd it will come back will just a single point of health, but full shields. This increases the value of monsters with Shield and/or Void Armor, since they are less likely to instantly die a second time. Similarly, Divine Shield gets a second charge with Rebirth.

On the offensive side of things, monsters with multiple attacks or the Opportunity ability are great in Born Again, since they have a greater chance of pulling off that second kill on a Rebirth monster and finishing it off for good. Oh, and of course - Bloodlust, since there are twice as many potential kills on the battlefield. Keep that one in mind, it will be highly relevant in today's battle!

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!

Here are the rules for our battle. We have Taking Sides and Broken Arrows, which mean that Neutral monsters and ranged attackers are both ineligible to be selected in this battle. And of course we have Born Again, giving every monster the Rebirth ability. Finally, we have plenty of mana with a cap of 33, and every splinter except Water to choose from. Oh, I should also mention here - this was also a gold foil tournament battle, so deck options are a bit more limited than usual.

As I briefly mentioned in the introduction, monsters with Bloodlust are strong plays in Born Again since they have twice as many potential kills in order to gain Bloodlust stat buffs. Gladiators are a major source of Bloodlust, so for this battle I decided to go with Lobb Lowland as my summoner. Lobb costs a whooping 6 mana, but allows me to use a Gladiator card in battle and also gives the opposing team a speed debuff, which (nearly) always comes in handy.

I led off my team with two monsters that I was hoping would be able to stall for a while in order to buy time for my monsters at the back. Mycelic Slipspawn and Lurking Puffer are both fairly bulky, with Mycelic Slipspawn also pitching in some magic damage and having the Taunt ability.

Here was the most important part of my team - Quora Towershead. Quora is a menace, and I try to use her as often as I can. I have been lucky enough to pull a gold foil version of her which means I can use her in this battle, and thanks to her rarity there is a good chance that my opponent will not expect to see her.

I finished off my lineup with Goblin Psychic. Goblin Psychic is a great support monster, pitching in some magic damage while keeping my frontline monster healthy with Tank Heal. My hope was for Goblin Psychic to help my tanks at the front to buy time for Quora to get a few Bloodlust buffs and begin to snowball.

With the lineup set, it's off into battle! When I see the selected teams I am not sure what to think - my opponent has gone with a relatively balanced Earth splinter team, with melee damage at the front and some Obsidian-boosted magic damage at the back. That magic damage in particular is concerning - the enemy monsters are looking as though they will have a much higher damage output than my team.

To put things bluntly, the battle gets off to a horrible start for my team. My front line monsters both do down, and while my monsters are able to deal heavy damage to the opposing Mycelic Slipspawn, the entire enemy team is still on the field. This is not looking good for me, the only silver lining is that my Quora is now in the first position and is able to use both of her attacks.

As it turns out, a few rounds later that silver lining was looking to be more like gold. With Quora able to use melee attacks in addition to her magic damage, my team is finally able to score a kill on the enemy monsters. By the start of round 7 things are looking up - Quora has managed to earn a pair of Bloodlust buffs, and the enemy lineup is suddenly looking much more vulnerable.

Those additional stats from Bloodlust began to pile up, and by the beginning of round 9 my team had built a clear advantage. Quora has reaches not one, not two, but FIVE Bloodlust buffs thanks to the Born Again ruleset. And again, if you wanted to see the whole battle for yourself, you can see it right here.

While my team got off to an incredibly slow start, in the end my strategy for this battle worked out perfectly. Despite the stalling and tanking portion of my plan failing miserably, Quora was able to leverage Bloodlust buffs in order to snowball the battle into an overwhelming victory. The Born Again ruleset really left its mark on this fight - all of the additional available kills meant that Bloodlust had twice as many opportunities to trigger. Quora is already a very strong monster under normal conditions. Give her a target-rich battlefield and things can escalate quickly!

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:

• Divide and Conquor - Battling in Splinterlands! - A Splinterlands battle analysis, featuring a reliable, battle-tested strategy!

• 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!

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.